Hello guys! This is my first post soo make me feel welcomed :D I've decided to finally reach out to the forums and talk about my most recent experience with lucid dreaming.
Even though I am kinda lazy and even more so distracted (having lots of things to do in my daily life) I am training my mind from time to time. But not training by recording my dreams. I am training by asking myself am I dreaming? As well as making other kinds of reality checks. BT Dubs, usually thinking about your dreams and trying to recall them in greater details also helps.
Sadly, I end up making like one reality check a day, which is highly insufficient in the short term.
I do have somewhat more frequent lucid dreams now, but the thing is, none of them occur mid-dreaming, meaning I do not realize I am dreaming by making a reality check or straight ahead, which is what I've been training for.
I would say they are a result from awkward sleep schedule and waking up a lot of times.
I always have had lucid dreams so I think I am very prone to having those. Now they are more frequent as I said, but I also want them to be. All my recent lucid dreams started when I started dreaming. I actually maintain consciousness from point A) to point B) meaning I am aware that my dream is starting. It is a weird weird (and I wouldn't say very pleasant) experience. It is commonly associated with a lot of tingling which increases in strength the more I relax to the point it is so strong that I have to stop and... do something else. This is where I usually have problems actually starting to dream, because of those powerful similar to paralysis formications. Sometimes, if I am perhaps a little less-aware they will appear transiently and won't stop my dream from coming to be. Sometimes my dream simply can't start because of that, but yesterday I think I actually found a way to force my dream to start! It's actually what motivated me to write now.
Having your lucid dreams this way means you got to be master in stabilizing your dream. If you realize mid-dreaming then the dream is already somewhat stable, but if you are constantly aware, your dream doesn't stabilize at all and you have to force it somehow. I've utilized so many techniques to stabilize my dream and I'll share it with you.
First of all, my new approach to force my dream to start when I experience powerful tingling the more I relax can't be easily described. What I did is pretty much all let them overtake me. I relaxed a bit, then I didn't care about that tingling (I am always aware that whatever is happening is weird AF) and then what is the key thing I think - I started imagining stuff heavily, thinking, trying to see my thoughts, really just like talking in your mind while imagining places while being.. what's the opposite of excited? That.
Even the slightest of excitement (for e.g when it begins to work) will interrupt it. I need to maintain focus. Now speaking about that - it sounds ridiculously hard, but it isn't as hard in practice. So don't worry. So the dream always comes severely distorted and unfocused. It's like a puzzle that begins to connect itself. I know it is weird, but I also realize it will stabilize if I continue doing what I found out is working. Previously I have had a lucid dream that de-stabilized in such a way that while I was flying (from known destination) and trying to travel to interesting new destinations I reached a point in the environment that looked like a game that won't render. I.e only the ground and the sky was visible and then I woke up. It was kinda frustrating. When the dream starts while I am being aware it is even worse. Everything is very noisy and distorted, but goes better eventually.
Suddenly I got a whole picture, but it was still distorted and hard to spot so I said to myself "Focus" and nothing really happened beside from a slight trembling. Then I was like "MAXIMUM FOCUS"! That didn't work either. I think that works when the dream is just blurry (read about it somewhere). It's just wanting your dream to look better, but at the point where I was at, I just needed to stabilize it and then do amazingness. Then suddenly my % of consciousness might have dropped or something, but I got a whole steady picture of a place I didn't really think of. It was random. (EDIT: No it wasn't THAT random. The place was actually the same place my previous lucid dream occurred at!)
It still wasn't looking very realistic, or so to say, so I began to apply my next stabilization techniques. First I rubbed my hands together (like practicing washing your hands). I read that these sensations help your brain work harder in your dream and it is scientifically proven to do so.
I do not know whether this is placebo (works, because I expect it to work) or it does boost my cognitive functions, but it always worked. My dream got more vivid, more colorful and sharp, detailed and immersive. What I also would do is spin around.
I ended up having a pretty decent lucid dream, doing all that I pretty much wanted to do in a lucid dream, even though I did not prepare for it all and didn't expect it. I am actually not the type of guy that is all interested in ***, flying or even exploring amazing words - the basics, which I have had enough with :D I actually want to test all the possibilities and bring it to the next level. I want to see what the brain is really capable of. I wanted to see if a person in my dream can cure my hand if I ask him to and how it will affect my real life injury (if at all). I needed deep concentration in my pain and expected to feel the most pleasant curing sensation in my arm and then test it out without experiencing pain in my dream and getting used to it. This time however I did not put much effort in it, because I knew this might wake me up and it isn't as urgent now anyway.
Next thing is I wanted to taste onion. Weird huh? Why would you waste your lucid dream by eating onions!? Well.. since COVID my sense of smell never really fully recovered and now I have what is called dysgeusia.
What Dysgeusia is in brief - a lot of foods taste the same (onion, garlic, french fries, fried, grill, non-white meat, pizza etc..) and they all taste like some heavy alien leftover spoiled and rancid thing that I am sick of.
Not-so-surprisingly the onion smelled like.. onion!
But I got another reward that actually surprised me. Sniffing onion created a very good stabilizer. Now I didn't expect that to happen so I'll say the thing with sensations is not placebo. Those stuff really do stabilize your dream. I hardly stopped smelling this onion as I experienced increase in my cognitive functions to the point I realized I must start repeating that I am dreaming, not to loose consciousness, especially as I changed ambients and perspectives. Changing locations is a great change that can easily lead to loosing awareness, because it is just too weird and impossible and sometimes works as a "restart". This is why I do not recommend to do point-blank sudden changes in the ambient. Instead, open a door and make a transition or something.
Last thing I wanted to do is travel to interesting locations. Which I did, but I rushed it too much and ultimately nearly forgot I was dreaming (maybe because they changed like crazy and was very sudden). Now that I am a master dream stabilizer I can say my downside is being very bad in traveling. There is something about it that destructs my dream and I feel like it has to be extremely stable in order to do even small steps. In this dream, I started repeating words like "Wait, what?, what?" as something weird was happening, but it was just me loosing focus, so I woke up.
The great thing in my involuntary approach to lucid dreaming is that you learn how to stabilize your dream and even when your dream goes away, you can force it to occur again. That's what happened to me this time. I had many hearts failing and receiving another opportunity. As long as you are not woke up enough, you can relax over again and experiment.
Excuse my English, I am Bulgarian.
Good day everyone! I hope this makes a discussion :)
Disclaimer: Do not take information here unconditionally. I am sure there are knowledgeable people out there that can correct me in many places, but my statements are a result from discussions with an actual neurologist and a close friend of mine, that is a well known psychologist in my country and studying the subject through trusted sources. However I am not able to remember everything literally (ironically, the text is about that) and I do not use academical terms on purpose. So just use it as something to make you question your own beliefs and knowledge :)
Thanks a lot! Reading it over again and honestly it isn't really very well-written. It's hard to read my own text, haha.
I am gradually going to be studying more and more peculiar concepts in my lucid dreams, which are increasingly difficult per se.
My very next "project" we could call it is accessing information that I am unable to consciously retrieve. For instance, recalling forgotten memories and details.
One of the fascinating things about dreaming is that completely different brain sections work during that time, but also those responsible for retrieving memories, especially long-term memories.
Whenever a person is waving at you in distance, in your peripheral vision - you've memorized it in detail. Whenever you hear someone talking about something in a restaurant when you are in a phone call - you memorized it in detail. But as the memorizing segments work less, the information is buried deeper in your mind and accessing it would require different approach that we can not utilize in our conscious life intentionally. More importantly, sometimes, it would require more "processing power". Sometimes memories are not only saved in usually unused segments, but are also with a questionable integrity. This behavior is well-observed by science and one of the examples I could give is a study where a robbery was simulated. The people that were robbed were able to tell everything and describe everything in a great detail. As the time goes by however, that information looses integrity (similarly to when new files partially override erased one's data in a HDD) and the people were susceptible to "make up" information. They did not have problems recalling it, no, people will always be able to quickly access memory from such an event. But details regarding this event will be replaced by other memories and as a result, they'll mix up everything about the story. This is different than whole information printed deep in our mind. The former would require your brain to use processing power, to correlate information so that it fills the gaps with what seems to be most logical, taking into account other memories that occurred that hour. This knowledge is actually exploited in criminal psychology, when the interrogated is unable to recall certain details with a certain level of certainty. The interrogator starts talking about events that do not matter, but happened in the same time frame so that the brain is forced to attack those memory segments aggressively and use residual information to fill the missing gaps in the already diminished data and so a more-truthful information is pulled out of nowhere.
Quite some knowledge isn't it? But to be honest I have no idea if that is possible in a lucid dream and to what extent. I do not know if it is possible to for example ask an entity in your dream about something that you want to recall. Your ability to recall is sometimes utterly diminished in such a manner that you need to stimulate your brain to work harder (use more processing power). In a lucid dream neither your conscious processing skills and subconscious ones work well. Lucid dreaming is about establishing a close balance between conscious and subconscious. You need to maintain dreaming, but also activate your brain segments responsible for memorizing (short and long term) to be able to 1. remember the dream 2. remember that you are sleeping. This is the reason why I speculate that achieving this goal might be possible, albeit inefficiently and difficulty. But it has happened to me so many times during regular dreams. I just want to see if I can do it willingly.
I am actually planing to write a big note on my wall next to my bed "Are you dreaming?" with my signature. Since I am working on a PC on the bed, I'll be constantly seeing it with my peripheral vision, which by the way is quite developed :D
Another thing I'd like to check is whether it is possible to read text and numbers in a lucid dream. We all know that this isn't the easiest in regular dreams, when those brain segments responsible for interpreting information such as reading a clock or a text in a book in real time do not work in full capacity. But I am guessing that in lucid dreams it should be much easier. Well.. everything is a matter of which parts of my brain will work well enough and which won't during my lucid dreams so it's a project establishing the question "is it possible" and not "how to". But that was all just the beginning. I am planning to test out way more arcane things.
Hi, @Al3 , and welcome to the forum!
Unfortunately, I need you to either edit out the part regarding [supplement, edited out after original post had been edited], or repost this post without that part -- otherwise, I will have to delete this thread, as supplements and/or drugs should not be discussed here, as we don't want to cause the impression that this might be a good idea.
For anyone else who might be reading this: NEVER, EVER START TAKING ANY SORT OF SUPPLEMENT OR DRUG WITHOUT ASKING A TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL FOR ADVICE FIRST. Here is Daniel Love's video on this topic, "Do Lucid Dreaming Pills Work? - Lucid Dream Supplements": https://youtu.be/OeAbs_aDlt8
I'm sorry that I have to welcome you in this manner, as I really like your post! Please do feel free to keep posting, but please also be mindful of the rules, and refrain from mentioning supplements, etc. I'll give you a little bit of time to edit or repost, but if it hasn't been edited out within a day from now, I'll unfortunately have to delete this.
All this said, we're really glad to have you here, and I look forward to seeing more posts about your lucid journey!
It's my pleasure!
Saying my English is good and after that "I may have misunderstood you" made me giggle š
To be fair, I just wanted to find a place where I could share my Lucid Dream experiences finally and discuss stuff with others who are interested in the subject. So I googled "Lucid Dreaming Forum" and your SEO must be on-point - it was the very first link that was leading to this site.
I'll definitely check the YT channel. As for your recommendation about doing reality checks more often and having a dream journal as I said I am not doing it, mostly because of me being distracted with programming and my mind being differently placed. I'd wish to do much more reality checks and do it consistently though.
And regarding the dream journal - that would be the laziness. Due to my weird sleeping "regimes", when I wake up I don't feel like doing a thing š
I have interesting, vivid and long dreams I usually remember. I remember that they were extremely realistic, but since the memory fragments loose integrity as they get buried in different, deeper memory segments they start to fade away and being remembered as less realistic as if they occurred years ago. I also used to dream with a lot of sensations like smell, touch, pain and in several occasions even immeasurable grief. I remember crying in a dream felt like I am doing it IRL too. It was THAT realistic. I really feel real emotions in some dreams. I think I've already trained my mind in remembering dreams, because I think and talk about them (relatively) often. It could definitely be better, but it's not the worst either :)
Welcome Al3! Your English is good.
If you havenāt already, I would recommend checking out the YouTube channel related to this website if you have time. Itās called, āLucid Dream Portalā, and it has lots of information on Lucid Dreams. I may have misunderstood you, but I think you said you did only one Reality test a day, and did not dream journal? If this is the case, I would highly advise doing a lot more reality tests and start dream journalling, as it will greatly improve your practice.
Also, Huperzine A should be used, if at all, very rarely, as we here in the forum all care about peopleās health, and donāt want them prioritizing Lucid dreams over physical and mental health. Be careful with supplements.
Anyways, great to have you here, and thanks for sharing :)