I’m glad I could provide the motivation! That is a long time to be trying to lucid dream. I have not even been practicing for THAT long.
You will find that this guide will not only help you start up your lucid dreaming, but it will provide the proper foundation for consitent lucid dreaming. Just keep pushing the boundaries with your recall and your brain will keep building on its ability to recall dreams, as it must adapt!
You and myself both lol. It is important to write down immediately, even if you feel like you will remember it later on in the day. The way our memory works isn’t like a video camera, rather something closer to a jigsaw puzzle. We have one piece, and it helps us find another. However, very frequently our brain makes up parts of stories. So if you write down your dream later on in the day, it may be completely different then what actually happened, which in turn could make a discontinuity in your patterns.
I would also love to hear the progression made by anyone following my guide. Feel free to keep the thread (and me!) updated on your progress!
Timing is VERY important when it comes to recording dreams in your journal. Every minute upon wakening, you will start to forget more and more. I personally wake up, go to the washroom if need be, then turn on my laptop and begin writing.
Good advice. I find it the hardest to recall details in conversations I have in dreams so hopefully my brain will get the message soon.
Sometimes I get the gist or a detail about something that happened in a dream is just on the tip of my tongue, but I usually have a hard time putting it in words while I’m writing in my dream journal.
Yay! Person who wrote this, you have inspired me to write my first entry in my dream journal! Status: normal dream. Rank: step 1.
I’m glad I could help out!
In the past month or two I have not been keeping up with my lucid dreaming at all and have lost most of my recall and have not been lucid dreaming at all. However, I see this as a chance to start fresh; close to where the beginners start (only difference is I have experienced a lucid dream and know the feeling).
I will be following through my guide and recording my progress in this topic. I think this will provide an interesting addition to the guide as well as provide a good comparison for people who are also following my guide.
If anyone else is willing to join me in this, let me know! The only thing I would require of you is to allow me to post your progress and DJ entries in the topic.
Reply in this topic or send me a PM and we can arrange something!
Im completely new to ld but im very exited over the prospect and i have decided to collow this guide religously as it seems to have got many compliments. thanks for posting it. I do have a few questions though , personally im not very good at remembering dreams (think im pretty much at stage one) will keeping a journal and adding my one dream a week see my dreams increasing in frequency or just vividness because i would love to have them more regularly. and another question i have been advised from someone not to look in a mirror which has me worried , is there anything in them? haha sorry for the long post any help would be appreciated
thanks 
this is gold… “If you have increased your vividness enough, you will automatically become lucid.” i have done some wbtb with wild, with good success(but short dreams). but i dont like taking naps or going up 4 hours earlier just to go back to bed again : 
it would be awesome if i could ld when i sleep “regularly” i will definitely write down my dreams in the future
Hi ritchie222 
In regards to your journal, keep it ready at all times. Whenever you wake up write down anything you can think of, even if it is just a setting, a feeling, a picture or just a though. Anything will help. I also suggest you wake up about 5 hours after first going to sleep and then going back to sleep. This will drastically help your recall.
As for the mirror, there’s nothing wrong with looking at one. Some people have said the image can be disfigured, but for many others it’s perfectly normal. Just don’t freak out about it and it won’t bother you. If you want some real fun you should walk through the mirror 
thanks for the help and putting my mind at ease haha
as for the journal im going to keep a pad next to my bed
hi I´m very glad I read your guide because I´we try´ed almost every method there is with little to none progress.
And I have always been very lazy in the DJ stuff simply because I did not think it was as important as ppl claimed it to bee, but in my opinion what you just wrote makes a lot more sense than I ever thought it could make when I first started to read it.
Anyways I have decided to follow your guide as well as I can but there is a little problem, when I´ve written in my DJ in the past,
I´ve had no problem remembering at least one dream that has had me writing like 2-3 pages (my handwriting is weary poor and in big letters so for normal ppl it might actually be like 1 and a half pages 
).
Anyways what I´ve been wondering is this, which should i pay more attention to when I´m first starting out my DJ the details of the senses like the smell,sound,sight,surrounding,feeling and touch etch or the storyline it self like what happened or what it was about and so on and so on, because as I said those 2-3 pages where all about the story but if I would add the senses it would probable add another 2-3 pages if not 4 and I´m afraid that trying to do both @ the same time or one at a time would increase the risk of forgetting a big part of the dream story or sens I would otherwise have remembered.
And I would like to add one thing (if I´m not already making you insane with my unnecessarily long post-replay 
) I have always had a slight memory problem as in I can be thinking of something (day dreaming) and even thou I´m really in to what ever it is I tend to all of a sudden forget it and be like trying my very best to try to remember what the f*** it was to finish it sometimes even for hours, and that is what I´m a bit scared of happening if I take to long trying to remember my dream 
well thanks for reading my post-replay and if you see it fit to replay to it I´d like to thanks in advance for it
Thank you Rathez, this is really an Ultimate Guide.
Quoted for truth.
Great guide, and you’ve motivated me to finally start writing a DJ! ^^
Yeah, I’ve always assumed that it’s probably beneficial for your Lucid Dreaming abilities if you allow it to take some time.
For example, rather than being all “it’s about time I’m having a lucid dream tonight!” you are more like “ok I will record my dreams and it’s fine if this takes a month or so, getting lucid at once is not a must”. 
Thanks Rathez it a great Guide/Tutorial
I`m so tired reading 
about different techniques. What i think is the most important (for a rookie) is a Journal and recalling dreams. Now you and your guide just proved it to me.
Thank you, utah
The techniques are still pretty useful, though;
if your dreams become super-vivid then reality checks will let you know that it is in fact a dream.
I think that’s how you’re really supposed to do it - my little brother gave up on this because his reality checks didn’t work, but he would probably succeed if he knew about the technique mentioned in this thread.
Oh wow! I JUST read this guide last night and I must say, it motivated me SO much to keep track of my dream journal more! It’s weird, just last night I had a dream where I wrote in my dream journal. The dream wasn’t that vivid though. Boo.
Anyways, my question has to do with the senses. When I dream, I really don’t take notice about senses like taste and smell. If you’re vividness increases, will those senses increase too? How can I really feel these senses when I’m dreaming? I’m basically talking about everything BUT seeing and hearing. Thanks:)
First of all, the senses will only start to appear more often if you place emphasis on those specific senses.
What you need to start doing then to bring the senses into dreams is to start recognizing them when you’re awake. Your normal daily routines is the vessel that carries over qualities to the dreaming world. If you make smelling the air a normal routine action for you, you’ll start doing it in a dream.
Then from the dream, you just have to record it like you would with vision and hearing. Hope this helps!