Constantly waking up from LD's

Hi,

I have this really, really annyoing problem; the past weeks, I have gotten interested in LD’s again, and I’ve started to read quite a lot about it and stuff, and that really works for me together with RC’s: I’ve gotten two LD’s since I started. :smile: The thing is though, that each time I realize that I’m dreaming, I wake up. Like this last night, when I looked at my hands and realized it was a dream, I kept on saying to myself: “this is a dream, I’m staying in the dream by looking at my hands” but still, I ended up in sleep-paralysis. I tried to spin around my own axis and leave my body, but it just won’t work! It’s so frustrating! :grrr: Does anybody else have these problems or is it just me? Is it possible that my body is trying to ‘protect’ itself by not allowing me to explore my dreamworld? Any tips on how to avoid this frustrating scenario?

Hello :smile:

I know what you’re talking about. That happened to me twice - the first time I had a LD but the second time I just woke up. What you need to do is to reenter your dream ASAP. What I do is once I realize I’m dreaming and start to feel my real body, I “zoom” into the dream(just like in WILD) and I’m there.

Good luck!

This happens to a lot of people in the beginning (my first 3 LD’s were like that too), it might be that you get too excited, or I’ve heard somewhere that your mind might not be ready to handle the LD experience (although I don’t know if that’s true)… it could be lots of things. It could also depend on your expectations, like if you expect to wake up whenever you have an LD, you might.

To me it seems like the problem goes away for most people with time and experience, so just have some patience and remember to always stay calm in your LDs.

As other people said, short LD’s are very common when you begin to practice LD’ing. Anyway, what you describe is rather curious because it seems you didn’t really wake up, as you ended in SP. :eh:

By the way, did you experience SP before? Was it a true SP, that is you couldn’t move your body? Please could you describe this experience more precisely?

And how do you suggest one stops this? Every WILD I have seems to end up like this, where I tell myself, “I’m scared I might wake up”, then I end up waking up. The only time I’ve been successfull in staying in a dream that I was waking up in was when I grabbed a hold of my brother’s hand and held it tight. I had an FA. Don’t know if I actually would have awoken if I didn’t hold on to his hand, though.

But yeah. How can I stop myself from thinking that?

EDIT: And how does spinning on your axis work? I’m confused about that as well.

EDIT2: I feel I should address the original post.

I, personally, tend to wake up from LD’s (esp. WILD’s), though I can have them fairly easily.

As for whether or not your body is trying to prohibit you from actually exploring the dream world, it is a possibility. Many people (from what I gather) have found it difficult to perform certain actions in LD’s (for example, my body goes very sluggishly when I try to jump out a window).

Perhaps prolonged LD’s come with practice, like all things.

Lots of people have problems with this. My current problem is that performing nose-plugging RCs leads to lucidity, but also to greater awareness of one’s real body. You have to totally expect not to wake up. And you have to experiment with which prolonging methods work the best for you. Studies show that spinning is supposedly the best way, but I’ve had more success with palm-rubbing (which is said to be second).

The thing is, I believe that almost everytime I have an LD, when I wake up, it is in SP. This could, however, just be purely psychological: the first time that I had an LD ever, I got excited and woke up in SP, and since then that’s the reaction I get when waking up from LD’s. I can’t move my body, and I hear this “whoosing”, buzzing sound, I see white shapes before my eyes and my body is stinging, almost as if somebody’s tickling me. After a while it stops and I either fall back to sleep or wake up entirely. Sometimes I wish to wake up, because the experience can be quite frightening, but most of the time I’m so incredibly tired that even if I’d like to wake up, I can’t. That’s about as precise of a description I can give you :content:

A couple of nights’ ago, I became lucid and managed to actually stay in the dream for maybe some seconds, but I could feel it slipping away from me, so I tried both the spinning- and rubbing hands-technique, but neither of them worked, because I was so tired in the dream that I fell back to ‘normal’ sleep, and lost my lucidity :cry: It seems not even prolonging-techniques work for me :help:

Happened to me my first counts 20 or so tries? [/exaggeration]

You’ll find something that works. I know I used to shout at myself that I would stay lucid. Rubbing hands may not be as effective as rubbing other things in your dream (the wall, ground, other things). I’ve found the latter to be more helpful, in any case.

What I’ve been trying most recently is remembering that I’m lucid, and when I feel the dream fading, I grab on to the nearest thing I can find. It’s been working quite well for me.

Thanks for these precise explanations, circusboy. :smile: When you wake up in SP, you’re still in a LD. Thus you can use it to enter a LD again. For instance, you can try to roll out of your bed (mentally of course). I’ve a friend who manage to do that.

I’m sorry but I have another question. You said that

Was it an unvolontary LD and then you got SP or did you try to have a LD and it ended in a SP? In this second case, did you read things about LD’ing and SP before? I’m just curious to know it. :content:

haha, that’s funny, cos a couple of weeks ago, I woke up from lucid dreaming in SP and I tried to get out of the body by rolling out of it, and I succeeded, but woke up in a FA, and then I lost my lucidity. Darn those alternative realities, they’re so confusing :tongue:

Well, the first time was an unvolontary LD, or I just realized that I was dreaming, that’s all. I don’t really remember, but I think I had read a little about LD’s and such but didn’t really engage that much in it. I had read a little about SP’s too, which was a good thing, cos I really freaked out when I couldn’t move, but then I recalled what I had read and tried to stay calm. I still think it’s kinda unpleasant with SP’s but now I know what I’m dealing with, and how I can take advantage of the situation :happy:

That’s the reason why reality checks are useful. :wink: