Please help. Noobie here. With some questions.

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello. I have been trying to LD for almost a year now, all-be-it, only the last two months I have been extremely dedicated to it. I can only remember fragments of my dreams, but I was LDing in all of them, because I knew I was dreaming. Because I could only remember a few minutes of the dreams, I don’t even know if I had control over the dream or not. Any help there?

Next, I suffer from a severe case of Sleep Paralysis; I assume most of the people here know what that is. Anyway, it seems to be induced more after I dream, and I don’t know why. Please note that Sleep Paralysis, while still scary, doesn’t bother me anymore. Its really bad and happens about twice a week, sometimes lasting over a minute long. I have been to a doctor for this becuase of discomfort. And no, I don’t have the good kind “hypnagogic paralysis” which helps in the LD process becuase it happens before you fall asleep, but I have “hypnopompic paralysis”. How can this affect me?

My dreams, are really crappy also. There are really hazy “on the sides” like I’m looking through a telescope or something. When I become more aware of my dream that fuzzy-ness fades, but since my dreams don’t last long I don’t have clear dreams much. How can I prolong the dreams, or the memory of my dreams?

Then my last question, would be has anyone ever heard of anything like this; I just dozed off while watching TV. When I do doze off and I’m sleeping VERY lightly I can always control my dreams, I always have been able to do that since I was little, I didn’t know I was LDing, so that is natural for me. Unfortunately those dreams don’t occur often. Anyway, I dozed off and started dreaming, in these “light dreams” I hear the real world, like the T.V., but I visualize dreams. Well last night when I dozed off I was dreaming and controlling everything in it, it was only a few minutes long. After a while the sound from my TV started interfering with my dream and I woke up. Unfortunately I didn’t actually awake because I entered sleep paralysis, and couldn’t move for about 30 seconds. I’m use to it so it didn’t bother me, but this time was weird. It seemed like I could watch the real world through one eye “I was watching the show on TV”, but I was also watching my dream with the other. It’s like if my world was split in to, on the left side I could see reality. On the right side I was still in dream state. I just entered it until my motor neurons started running again, and after my paralysis spell wore off, so did this odd “dream”. This was very intriguing, can anyone explain what happened?

2

Congratulations on your beginning LDs and dedication! You’re doing so well, that you kind of skipped the first VITAL step to Lucid Dreaming: Dream Recall.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you whether or not you were having a Lucid Dream. Only you can remember. However, there are some exercises you can do to improve Dream Recall. All can be found in Stephen Laburge’s Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming book. However, to sum up a good exercise found in that book…

You have to be able to remember things in WAKING life to remember them while dreaming. So, make a list of things you would like to remember this week, such as “Do a reality check every time I see a dog.” Read the list over the night before. Then, the next day, try to remember (don’t cheat and look at the list!) and do a reality check every time you see a dog, or whatever you’d like to remember. Check off how well you did on your list. Keep doing this until you can check off every single thing in a day.

Another great way to improve Dream Recall is to, simply put, practice! Don’t try and LD, just focus on remembering every ounce of any dreams you had the morning after having them. It helps to have an attractive Dream Journal and a special pen just for recording dreams.

All sleep paralysis is good, because it all segways into a dream. Even if you wake up in it instead of falling asleep in it, you can still pull yourself back into the dream conciously(sp?). Unfortunately, I don’t know the difference between hypnopompic paralysis and hypnagogic paralysis, so I have difficulty helping you with your problem, but I’m sure if your body’s still in REM, then it is perfectly possible to weild it to your advantage and perform a WILD.

Are you talking about a regular dream, or a Lucid Dream? If it’s an LD, don’t worry, because that happens to everyone at the beginning. It gets better. As for the memory, look at the stuff I told you about Dream Recall. Also: Try to focus on one thing in your dream and JUST that. In my experience it makes everything so much sharper. There are also various other “dream tests” that improve the quality of your LDs. But of course, the best way to improve your dreams is to practice it more.

That is SO cool!

Unfortunately, I can’t shed any light on that for you. I have NO idea xD

Anyways, I hope I helped a little. Good luck LDing!

3

SP doesn’t help me at all, becuase it only happens to me after a full nights sleep, thusly … I’m not going back to bed.

And I didn’t purposely skip a step lol, I’ve just been doing it since I was little, not knowing the significance.

I tried reality checking, alwasy asking myself… Am I actaully at work? Is this really pie? But it doesn’t seem to be helping :sad:

And is the reason I can LD only when I have the TV on because the sound from the TV reminds me of reality? When I am in a deep slee[, I can’t LD.

4

I didn’t mean to imply that you did purposely skip a step =P It’s fine to do it if you can naturally recall dreams, but in your case it caused a few problems.

Reality Checking’s great, but DILDing’s not for everyone. It’s never worked for me. WILDs work better for some people.

Also: It’s always just been so much easier to LD in a lighter sleep, such as your dozes with the TV on, than in deep sleep. You’re on the verge of waking all the time, so it makes everything a lot less realistic and allows you to think a little more rationally during dreams.

EDIT: Read this. It’s about SP. It’s kind of long, but I hope it helps.
dreaminglucid.com/articlejc.html

5

Thank, I guess Ill try WILD, anyway I know all about SP, I have had them about 2-3 times since I was 6 or 7. Hence why I went to a sleep doctor, becuase when I was little I complained to my parents. After you go through it so long it becomes natural, I realize that if can fall back asleep I can easily enter a lucid state, the problem is that I’m not tried anymore :sad:

6

bit of clarification here, when you go through deep sleep outside of the REM phases, so no-one can LD in that!
you mean when sleeping normaly, correct?

7

Yea, I guess :meh:

All I know is that I can only LD when I’m just “napping”