Whoa @Marvin and @Cornelia_Xaos! Thank you for all the food for thought!
I’m going to try shorter times when I wbtb. That might work better for me as I have trouble falling back asleep!
@Marvin I may have a solution for you re: alarms. I have a cheapo smartwatch. It only buzzes - no audio alarm. It’s subtle enough to wake me up but not my wife : ) just check out the inexpensive smartwatches on Amazon.
That’s a neat trick, @Joe_Canada! I can imagine that this also works for me. My sleep is getting a little patchy so maybe I can actually use those escapades when I’m waking up by myself, first. There are quite a lot of them.
Alright folks, March is here! Please share all your LD experiences!
What is your plan for LD this month? How do you plan to get lucid, and what are your goals once you do?
I had a 2-3 minute lucid dream on Friday using MILD. This was the longest LD I’ve had, and I was able to try out several things during the dream.
Basically, I was dreaming I was teaching a class (which I actually teach in real life) and an older student was talking while I was talking - about lucid dreaming. I asked her something snide like “would you care to share the LD you’re discussing with the class?” and this led me to question whether I might be dreaming. I realized I was! I walked around a bit at the university and tried spinning around (which yielded a totally real dreamscape) and rubbing my hands together (which really does prolong LDs, as I can now attest).
MILD does work! If you’re struggling with LD, here are some tips based on how I got results:
-Change up your reality check. Have you been doing the classic “finger-through-hand” RC? Try reading text over, looking at a clock, inspecting your hands, or going through a mirror. Or just pay extra special attention to your surroundings and simply wonder sometimes, “Am I dreaming?” Your brain DOEs get used to the same RCs all the time and they stand out less to your brain.
-During the day, visualize yourself becoming lucid in a dream. It primes you.
-I personally can’t do the “visualize yourself having a lucid dream and use the mantra 'I will be lucid”" MILD technique. It is too much mental stimulation - too much going on in my brain - so I can’t sleep! If you have this problem, here’s how I solved it. Just do one thing at a time. So, 1) affirmations, then 2) visualization of becoming lucid. Much easier to fall asleep!
I’d love to hear from you all. March is here! Happy dreams.
Congratulations to your record LD 
!
I wish you lots of more LDs. MILD in March seems to kick off nicely for you and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more!
I was too sleepy on Friday, and on the weekend I could not bring myself to more than very haphazard MILDing because I was too tired. Last night I did WBTB+MILD more properly and was rewarded with a micro LD and another LD that seems to be of similar caliber as yours 
I plan to continue WBTB+MILD when I can, which should be mostly this week and next week only. The other days I try to do a good MILD before going to bed at least. But my body seems to be asking for more sleep, so maybe I’ll take a break this evening.
As for what to do once lucid, there’s plenty to do. I really like the current quest and the Long Term Lucid Tasklist is growing and offering more and more options. Parallel to that my main personal goal is to transform myself and generally master the arts of lucid dreaming on a journey of exploring myself.
I woke up at 2:30 last night, well before my WBTB alarm that I had set for 4:30. I decided to do MILD right then and was successful.
MILD in May is doing good work for me
How did that happen 
Actually I’m a day ahead of you. That website (who made a website just for that purpose? 
) accurately says it’s 371st March.
Maybe my brain is like “May is also a good month for MILD“ so it’s already incubating that idea. And in between maybe we add WILD Wednesdays 
Dear MILD in Marchers,
I’m thrilled to report that, for the first time in my life, I had not 1 but 3 lucid dreams last night - including a WILD and an intentional transformation into a mouse! This came after a fruitless week of trying.
I learned a great deal from the experience, and since I know some of you are struggling with getting lucid, I thought I would share what I’ve learned, in case it can be helpful to even one reader.
MILD does work! Try using Stephen Laberge’s instructions to the letter, NOT the watered-down versions you’ll find online. I won’t restate his principles but I strongly suggest you find them (just do a Google search) and try following that. There are so many versions of MILD on YouTube, self-help websites, etc. They may be well-intentioned, but Laberge is a serious researcher and his instructions are proven to work. They’re the real deal.
WILD isn’t complicated or hard at all. I was just doing it wrong! I think I psyched myself out by reading up too much about it. WILD is simple. You need to:
a) keep a healthy, regular sleep schedule if you can (for most people, 8 full hours consistently - the same hours). On the nights where I’m too tired, or go to bed too late, or don’t feel tired enough, lucid does NOT happen at all.
b) be extremely close to REM already (so, try WBTB + a relaxation technique like 61-point, or just go back to sleep immediately with MILD after waking yourself during REM). “Relaxation” doesn’t come close to describing how close to sleep you need to be! If you’re too awake, it won’t work. You need to be GROGGY tired. Much closer to sleep than waking life.
c) I never understood instructions like “keep a thread of consciousness as you go to sleep.” What is a thread? How do you do that? I am still mystified, after so many attempts. Here’s what I found actually works: it isn’t your consciousness that stays awake as you fall asleep. It isn’t body asleep, mind awake. Not exactly. It’s your WILL to be lucid. It’s your intent. That’s the part that stays intact as you go off to sleep! That willpower will enable you to go directly into a lucid dream. If you’re doing MILD properly, you are visualizing yourself becoming lucid already. Now, as you do so, try to engage your senses! Literally pull yourself into the dream, using your sense of touch, for example. Engage with and touch things in your visualization as you repeat your mantra of wanting to be lucid (use Laberge’s exact words). If you are TRULY GROGGY-TIRED, then (if you’re like me) this will absolutely work.
Last night, in this state, I simply waved my arm in front of me. To my amazement, it was a pale, bare, shimmering dream arm. I was completely lucid and went on to explore and talk to dream figures.
Happy dreams and let’s keep posting throughout MILD in March! I learn so much from reading all of your posts.
that’s really cool you were able to have three lucid dreams! WILDing was always my preferred method as a teenager and hopefully you will have continued success with your dream awareness ^^
(I still am interested in the challenge although im not sure how well I will do given my situation with the meds, since i keep coming across cues in my dreams which should by all accounts trigger lucidity, but aren’t working.)
That’s awesome, three LDs in one night is a really cool and impressive feat! I hope you can continue to be so successful throughout March and beyond.
I’m curious what the dreams were like and what you were doing in them. I would love to read more about them.
And what are your plans for future LDs?
I’ve also continued with MILD and the occasional WBTB. But sleep hasn’t been good enough for normal dream recall even so I should fix that first 
Yeah I totally agree. I’ve found there’s no point even trying LDs if your sleep is out of whack. You have to figure that out first.
1st dream: I was at a Walmart checking out a neat treasure chest underneath a table (lol). I was able to read the first two words fine (pretty sure they were “frequency” and “atlas”) but the third was garbled. I realized I had to be dreaming and started laughing. It was really funny!
After walking around randomly, I segued into
2nd dream (lucid upon entry): My mom was in a small closet in our old house. There was this neat dim golden lighting and I wanted to go see her and say hi. But in between us was a wall. I could only see her through a small cat-sized trapdoor! I thought to myself, oh, I know what to do, I can just turn into a mouse since other people have said they’re able to do that in lucid dreams. I tried saying “I’m now a mouse” with authority, to no avail. It was ridiculous. But then I tried turning around, deciding I wanted to be a mouse when I turned again to face the wall; closed my eyes, and turned around again. Thankfully, I didn’t wake up. I was a mouse and went through the trapdoor fine. My mom was wearing a blue bathrobe and we chatted for a while. Not much was happening, to be honest! I got a little bored and decided to check on my physical body to see if I was still wearing my sleep mask. I tried waking into my body and checked that the mask was on, all right. (In retrospect this was a false awakening, because I was wearing a different mask last night, haha!).
Segue to…
3rd dream (much longer). I was in a music studio, with an old friend behind the glass at the controls. I went around back and said hi. He was out of it / non responsive. I noticed there was a door next to me so I took it and went up the stairs. At the top was a landing. When I opened that door, I saw a bunch of old professors waiting for someone to hand them their course notes. This was definitely the college where I teach in real life, but that room doesn’t exist in real life. I sort of said hi but they were non responsive, too. I went back to the studio and since my friend wasn’t very responsive, I thought it would be neat to get up close and really inspect the character. It turns out he was wearing lipstick and was more of a she. (Incredibly vivid.)
At this point, my 4-year-old woke me up in real life, and after that, it was too late to hope to fall back asleep.
After 2 False LDs and several slip ups, I did manage a MILD the other night!
I was kicking myself so hard because MILD is my favorite method and it’s MILD March for goodness sake I was almost embarrassed that I hadn’t got one yet bahaha
I had several near CALDs but my DCs (masquerading as others that I only recognized upon waking) wouldn’t come out and say it because if they did it would have been a CALD, and we couldn’t have that in MILD March, apparently
Hope everyone else’s practice is going well!
MILD can take a little time to get set in, I bet everyone will suddenly get a ton of MILDs in April.
I did it! My first successful MILD of March! It took me a while to achieve one, but I ended up with two very clear LDs in one night. I’m glad I didn’t give up! I’ll link my Dream Journal below.
https://community.ld4all.com/t/asterias-dream-journal-part-1/75148/73?u=i_am_asteria
I loved reading about all the successes in this topic, and I also learnt so much from reading them too. Keep posting, you’re all doing so well 
.
I have a feeling that this will be very very true 
I actually had a MILD this morning! I feel a bit more encouraged now ^^
https://community.ld4all.com/t/nexuss-dream-journal-nuve-arkt/76218/35?u=thenexus
thanks! I didn’t use the WBTB technique exactly, it was more of a brief awakening before falling back asleep for another few hours, but im wondering if that would work for me if I officially tried it 
In a book I’m currently reading by Charlie Morley, he cites something like 2,000% more lucid dreams if you use WBTB. It’s definitely worth trying out! (By the way, his book, dealing with Dream Yoga, is absolutely riveting.)
I’ve had a dry spell since my triple-decker LD - I can’t even remember my dreams! I think I psyched myself out somehow. : (
ill definitely try that out, then! i tend to have many more dreams in the morning anyways, so that might just work ^^
Lucid dreaming tends to be a bit sporadic i’ve found, like i had a recent dry spell myself. I’m sure soon you’ll be back on track and find more success with your LDs 
