Stephen LaBerge says one dream per night. That’s a bit vague, but if you remember how a dream went or maybe a few minutes of the dream, you could start doing the techniques.
I think it’s a mess to write on your hand every time you do a reality check. Instead hold your nose and try to breathe through it.
Try MILD too, don’t just do reality checks. I suggest you work on your recall up to just a little bit, around one dream a night (fragments count as a dream, no one remembers their dreams in full detail!) Every time you wake up, you should sit around for a bit and think “what did I just dream about?”
The lucid dreams should come to memory first. So start whenever you feel like it. I started trying for lucid dreams immediately while working on my recall at the same time. I had good results, but it was sort’ve like Enron Corp
after that.
Your description of a reality check is pretty darn accurate. Only for me, the reality check triggers are random. Sometimes its the sky or the moon that triggers it, sometimes its a non-routine event. Starting with writing on your hand or sticking post its around your house is a nice way to get it in your head to reality check.
I ALWAYS remember my dreams and I dream every night. Ver very rarely I will have a LD but only for part of the dream. I can usually remember a good deal of my dreams for the better part of the morning but the details fade as the day goes by. It also depends on whether or not the dream seemed worth remembering at the time. 
Probably my favorite semi-lucid dream was one where I was back for another year in high school and we had to take some entrance test and I said “Screw this, I already graduated (in '99)” and walked out of the room with the teacher staring open-mouthed at me… sweetness. 
Uhhh… do you need help or are you just telling a story? Oh well, I’ll assume you do. You should keep a dream journal if you want to remember your dreams well (keep the little details too if you want, they will help out)
And the LD part… if you really want an entire dream dedicated to LD you’ve gotta do WILD because any other technique will have you realizing you are dreaming in the middle of it.
How accurate should your dream journal be? do you need to record all the details or just the general Idea?
Sorry, forgot to ask this in my last post meant to put it there but forgot, so here’s the question…
What is a good way for a beginner to increase lucidity? I have heard of several methods to try but I’m not sure what would be the best one to start out with.
Uh I use the rubbing hands method because it involves the least risk. You have to experiment to find the best for you, but you should try rubbing your hands and calming yourself down first.
Rowan - the important thing is that you remember as much details as you can. If writing them down helps you, do it, but you can try to remember everything and do only a short note in your DD, so you won’t forget the dream.
Rowan
I try to write down as much detail as I can. For long complicated dreams I even give them a title. I also will write down any dream fragments I may remember.
Sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night I will just write a sentence or 2 about the dream to jar my memory in the morning. Over a short time I did not even have to do that and was able to recall an average of 2-3 dreams per night. Don’t worry if your dream recall is not good now it will improve in time.
As mentioned above, rubbing your hands is a good way to increase lucidity. Some other ideas:
Another important thing to keep in mind is that you should have a plan for your lucid dream in advance. So before you go to sleep plan what you want to do if you become lucid. The reason for this is that the best way to maintain the dream state is to stay engaged with it. If you have to much down time where you are trying to figure out what you want to do you may wake up or the dream may loose its realness. If that happens use any of the techniques above to stabilize and intensify the dream.
I hope this was helpful.
Those techniques aren’t meant to increase lucidity.
Lucidity is how much you aware that you are in a dream.
Those techniques (except number 3) are meant to increase the vividness of the dream and make it last longer.
Wahey, my first post back!
r3m0t
I have found that those techniques work well for booth situations. I am of course speaking from my own experience and since these things worked very well for me under booth situations I thought I would share them.
You know, it’s funny, I’ve always been pretty good at Dream Recall. Lucidity is harder, though. Considerably.
Don’t worry it will get easier in time. Try not to think of lucidity as something that is hard to do. This is important because, I believe that thinking it is hard makes it hard. Believe it or not, lucidity is not as hard as you think.
Happy dreaming
I just recently got a large and annoying blister on my hand. Does that help in RC’s?
Is it possible to fall out of practice? Because I remember back in mid '03 I had dream memorizing skills (like, one a week on average), but then I stopped. I JUST got back into trying for lucid dreaming (because I’ve been told it’s a good bridge between Astral Projection), and not only is it nearly impossible to go lucid, but I can’t remember my dreams either.
Also, I find that the method where you wake up, then go back to sleep (forgot the acronym) doesn’t work if your 2 year-old nephew is up and about screaming right around when you get up; hard to get back to sleep. Ugh.
Get ear plugs !!! they are a big help.
Also you do not have to use the WBTB method. When I use WBTB I do not stay up very long. Just a few minutes at most.
It sounds like you should work on your dream recall first. To where you can remember at least one dream per night. Also, I suggest you start doing regular reality checks in your waking life and of corse keep a dream journal. Practice some sort of progressive relaxation technique at bed time.
Once you can remember roughly one dream per night:
place yourself in a state of relaxation then use MILD, WILD or what ever technique you prefer.
Happy dreaming
Lionheart, unfortunately everybody can fall out of practice, and some quicker than others.
I’ve had a lot of trouble with fake lucid dreams. This might sound like a stupid question, but in general, how do you tell if you are having a real lucid dream or a fake one? I know the definitions and understand them, but consciously, it’s difficult to tell. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Speaking from my own experience. I would say that if you have a lucid dream there will be little doubt in your mind about it. So, in short, if you have to ask, “was this a lucid dream”? The answer is most likely, “no”.
If you know you are dreaming and understand what that means (you can control it) then I would say you are lucid.
That’s what’s strange! In my most recent “lucid dream,” for example, I flew around and felt elated. I remember asking myself if I was dreaming, but I don’t remember verifying it.
I still don’t know if I dreamt that I controlled the dream, or if I did control it.
At any rate, if the dream WAS falsely lucid, at least I know I’m close…