Mine is pretty simple, and I currenlty use nothing more than a back, inky pen to write in it. Hmm, I think I was more motivated back when I used a green pen to write with. Using fun colors is always a great way to get you motivated, or just a writing utensil that you like to write with for some reason.
Then again, there’s nothing wrong with writing it completely normally. The main thing that drives me to keep writing is the fact that I have a journal here on LD4all, and on SeaLife, so it is a must that I keep them updated as often as possible.
I always just use regular notebooks, for some reason I like the colors green and blue, blue because I associate it with nighttime and mystery, and green I dunno why…but anyway yeah that’s I use, just regular spiral notebooks.
I’ve just adopted LDing as my project for the rest of the summer, so it’s my focus these days. I’m finding it frustrating that I can’t work at it during the day and that the only time I can is when I’m sleeping anyways. So I was wondering: does regular meditation helps with LDing and DR?
So, there’s a lot of infor around here! Where’s the best place to start? I’m just looking for some personal advice on how to have lucid dreams and remember them.
My ultimate goal would be able to pretty much induce them at will, if that’ possible.
The main thing is to start a Dream Journal. After all you want to remember those Lucid Dreams when you get them, don’t you? It has more purposes, but that’s one of them. If you want to know more about remembering dreams your could go to this topic.
Once your dream recall is fine, or maybe it is already, you can try to use a technique to induce a Lucid Dream. You could read the How to Choose Your Technique topic to choose the technique that fits you the best.
Furthermore you could start doing Reality Checks during the day. The point of this is that it will get a habit and you will hopefully do it in a dream too. Then you will realise it is a dream and you’re lucid.
I merged your topic into this topic, maybe you can find some tips in here too. It’s a good thing to also read the main site, like LordAlexG said. There are a lot of techniques explained well in there.
As for dream recall, I don’t remember every dream I’ve ever had, but the ones I do remember, I remember perfectly, no matter how long ago they were.
Something interesting also happened when I was messing around with WILD last night, is that I fell asleep really quickly, which is odd, because it ususally takes me a rediculously long time to fall asleep (I"m talking anywhere between 20 minutes and several hours at the extremes). So that was interesting to fall asleep that quickly. Also, I’m certain it wasn’t a lucid dream, but I do vividly remember my dream from last night.
I am probably not the most qualified for making a post like this, but in the hope that it can help just one struggeling dreamer reach his/her goal, I will make it anyway. This is based on my own experience, and if this is pretty much a replica of an excisting post, I’m sure it’s easy to just lock it/delete whatever.
Now then: I believe that every single one has the possibility to have lucid dreams. I had them spontanious as a child, so I originally came here to get help with getting them again as an young adult. The problem though, is this: if you don’t LD naturally at this point, it MAY require a lot! of effort to get them (this sure was the case for me). And by effort, I mean a bit timewise, but mainly mentally. Keep in mind, this is totally individually, and based on me.
Based on my experience, this it what you could try:
If you don’t already got one, start a dream diary! If you are struggeling to LD and don’t have a dream diary, then you are really not doing all you can. Even if you remember a lot of dreams every night, start a diary. This can require a bit mentally, as you need to take notes of your dream every time you wake up. Make them short, and write down all the details later that day when you have the time. Only write down notes when you first wake up.
Choose one or two reality tests and stick with them. I chose counting my fingers. I found out that clocks and text and even flipping the lightswitch is a very poor RC for me. Counting my fingers works wonderfull though, every time! I also used the breathing through my blocked nose, but I think that 1 test should be enough.
This is the hard part. Perform the RC several times each hour every day (also a nice point to use the counting fingers; it can be done in public without you looking like a weird person, as you don’t have to do it obvious). Of course, this will require you to think about dreaming a lot, but I can’t stress how important this is. If you can manage to do 50-100 RCs each day, and thus making them a part of your life, you really have come quite far. But agian, this is extremely demanding mentally, and is the reason I needed a break in the end.
Most importantly; accept that you may be dreaming now. Don’t ever think that you know you are awake, because we all know that the only way to know for sure, is to test it. Failing this point made me loose out on my first lucid dreams. I was counting my 8 fingers in my dream, while telling a DC that this was a very good example of what would happen if it was a dream. I was sure I was awake though…
If you can do all of this for some time, you should be able to get that LD in not too long. It took me a few weeks (and LDs comes more often in the weekends when I can sleep to 12 and not 7), but it was deffinanlty worth it. As far as I can tell, LDs also get’s easier in time, after having some, I found it easier to get them more often, with less effort. So even though I had given up all the effort for I while, I did have LDs, just not as good ones or as often.
After you can get them, you need to find out about all the other stuff, like what to do once you have one, how to stay there longer, make them clear and such.
Indeed, I cannot stress this enough. Anyone who wants to learn to LD, has to put some effort in the RC’s. I know that some people are natural WILD’ers, but most are not, and they (I should say we) just have to try hard. But I can tell you now, it is indeed REALLY worth it
I personally don’t do any RCs during the day as I use WILD as my only technique. But even if the WILD fails, there is a good chance to slip into a LD during the night because I think the subject kinda stays in your mind. So the only RCs I make are after I realize I’m dreaming, just to make sure.
Hi, I’m new as well. I did my first attempt at LD last night. I guess I was using MILD, since I just went to sleep and thought about what I wanted to happen. I was focusing more on recall than acheiving lucidity; I just wanted to take baby steps. In the past, I have only recalled a few dreams per year. The ones I do remember were extremely clear and I can replay them exactly in my mind. So, I focused on having a dream in which I walked down the street (keep it simple) and more importantly remembering it. And just in case I acheived lucidity, I wrote a mnemonic on my hand for an RC. I fell asleep pretty slowly, like I always do. The next morning, I woke up and didn’t remember ANYTHING. Not a single thing. What was I doing wrong?
Just expecting too much on the first try. Some people do have an LD on the first try, others take over a year to get the first LD. About two weeks seems to be the average, so keep trying.
don
I don’t know if I would say that it is normal, but it does happen a lot. It even happens after you have bult up your recall to the level that you normaly recall several dreams a night.
You could look at this topic to get some help with DR.
[Dream Journals - The more you use them, the better!)
It is about dream journals, but has some tips on DR. If you search for dream recall, you will also find lots of posts here.
don
Well, I tried WILD last night before going to bed and got extremely close! I used the 61 point relaxing technique and had barely stopped focusing on my forehead when I entered the HI state. My body began to go numb, my extremities got really cold, my face started twitching violently, and my heart rate shot up. Is that normal? I think it happened because I got nervous. After what must have been ten minutes, I could really feel I was on the verge of entering this black void. It was the strangest feeling ever- nothing could have prepared for that moment. Well, I was just about into a dream state when I got too scared and chickened out. At least I know I can get that far. Do you recommend doing WILD with eyes open or closed?
Anyway, I woke up 20 minutes ago and will go back to bed in forty; I’m trying WBTB. Hope I have better luck this time!
It sounds good. The cold, twitching and heart rate sound normal, at least a lot of WILD’ers report that type of experance. If you can reamin calm, you could get into the dream world. It can take some practice, so don’t give up right away. WILD is not the easyest tech for most people to learn.
don
OK, last night I did WBTB+WILD. The WILD was a complete failure- I don’t think I was tired enough. I had trouble falling asleep after that. When I woke up, I had a really vague, hazy recollection of a dream about animals. I don’t remember any of it, just that it involved animals. However, during the HI state of my failed WILD, some of the images looked like animals and I was concentrating on having a dream about animals. Is it possible that I fell asleep and had an LD about animals and I don’t remember it?
Using fun colors is always a great way to get you motivated, or just a writing utensil that you like to write with for some reason.
I merged your topic into this topic, maybe you can find some tips in here too. It’s a good thing to also read the main site, like LordAlexG said. There are a lot of techniques explained well in there.