It seems the man himself, Stephen Laberge, did an experiment to see whether spinning around, rubbing your hands, or “going with the flow” maintains lucid dreams the best.
After reading about this experiment, I thought of a new trick I’m going to try. I’m going to try to use these techniques during WILD and maybe this will help the environment become more vivid in my imaginition just as it would in a dream. Also if I wake up from a dream that’s still fresh in my head, I’m going to try to get back into the dream in the exact spot I left off. Then once I get a vivid image of the dream again, I’m going to try to use spinning and hand rubbing and maybe that will help keep it detailed. If I’m not mistaken, don’t people say the best way to visualize is to not just limit it to vision, but to try to experience it with all 5 senses?
Here’s a couple of people’s opinions and experiences from this experiment.
I find selfhypnosis better then those you named to prolong the lucid dream Trancewave…but most dont know how to use it in their lucid dream, so i speak alone here
I find spinning to do the exact opposite, though it does sharpen my senses ALOT, makes the vision more vivid But also makes me feel like having a orgasm, which actually lasts for the rest of the dream, which is not too long… i usually wake up 20-60 seconds afterwards… I have no idea on why spinning has such an odd effect on me
Rubbing my hands however, helps me to stay in the dream.
well, theres not many as experienced as you Jeff .Since I’m still somewhat novice I’m trying to stick to basics and work my way up. Even though I probably wouldn’t be able to do it in a dream, I would still like to hear your method of self-hypnosis during a dream.
Hm… I think the techniques to keep in LDs are different for everyone… LaBerge also found that rubbing your hand was second to spinning, right? However, I find spinning to be the worst thing you can do for a lucid dream and grabbing my arm, not my hand, to be the best thing to do to keep a lucid dream. Atheist mentioned staring at things for a very long time to get superlucid. There’s many ways, I think LaBerge’s research has too high of a margin of error to conclude spinning is the best. You could turn this into a “what’s YOUR best way to stay in your lucid dream??” topic. That would be interesting. You could also try out new ideas and help yourself decide which is best for you.
Rubbing hands works better for me… I think it might be because I can see my dream stabilizing and becoming more vivid. When I rub my hands, I expect everything to become much more vivid, and that probably plays a part in it. When I try spinning, I tend to close my eyes for some reason, which prevents me from seeing my dream stabilize. So when I spin, everything seems to be exactly the same as before… Or worse
But as infection0 mentioned, I think it varies from person to person. A lot of people on this forum have had great success with spinning, while others prefer rubbing their hands or observing something for a while.
Spinning always makes me wake up. Very strange… I’ve never succeeded in prolonging a dream, let alone lucidity, by the spinning technique.
Best method for me to prolong LDing: rubbing my hands, never standing still at one spot for a long time, trying to avoid gaze fixing (Paul Tholey has published lots of research about this), touching dream objects.
my very very first almost LD I realised I was dreaming and decided to try spinning, because for some reason that’s all I could remember. I lost controll almost emediatly, but I don’t know if it was just that I was excited that I actually was in a dream or if the spinning just didn’t work. I haven’t tried it since (I dont want to risk it!) I find looking @ my hands and rubbing them works the best!
I heard from my brother about spinning and looking at your hands while dreaming, after he read about it somewhere on the net. Spinning sounded wierd at first, but I tried it anyway. So when I’m lucid and I suddenly realize I’m starting to wake up, because I stop seeing clearly, like I’m slowly going blind, I just look at my hands and focus. It really helps. But in case that’s not enough I start spinning really fast until I’m completely lucid again and I can continue where I left off. Haven’t tried rubing my hands yet, but I think I’ll stick with looking at them and spinning as long as it works for me.
Spinning never worked for me. The last time I did it was a few days ago. I was in the bath room and noticed that the dream faded away. (I have to mention that it was a extremely low level LD without any control, so everything I did happend “automatically”) So I tried that spinning technqiue and I somehow fused with the sink. So, i was in the sink with my belly. I tried to seperate from it, I tried to push myself away from it, but it was really painful, it felt as if I was torn apart.
So be prepared for the possibility to fuse with your environment
To maintain lucidity I often use a phrase like “it’s a dream” which I say all the time. Seems to work.
Of course, according to the Guide you should always carry a towel with you whereever you go. The most important thing in your inventory
I tried spinning in one of my first ld… in fact i did a combination of spinning and rubbing but i guess i was too far gone, i felt myself being turned horizontally and then i kinda “fell” (more like heavily thumped) into my bed awake.
