the BIG "How to stay lucid" topic part II

You know it sucks, ever since I’ve been thinking so much about becoming lucid in dreams I haven’t been able to. It’s like as soon as you start thinking too much about it, lucidity becomes more difficult to achieve.

Something my boyfriend suggested to try to stay in a lucid dream after becoming aware: Look at your hands. I realized I NEVER see my hands in dreams, but since they’re something that is supposed to always be there I suppose it makes sense that they would help anchor you in a dream.

Well, for the hands part, that is just one of the many ways to become lucid, many of us have a LD without looking at them; but nonetheless, it’s quite the good technique, just resolve that you will find your hands in a dream before bed, it helps placing them in front of you when you repeat the phrase.

For the first part, then I don’t see the problem: just think, or better, overthink less about it. Almost everyone here had had some break period where they had LD’s without even trying. So it doesn’t depend that much on how much you think about it, right? When going to bed, the only true state to cultivate should be a calm mind, and the awareness that comes with it. Try meditating a bit before bed, and see the results for yourself.

In An LD when I close my eyes I wake up and in nightmares to but in Normal Dreams isn’t it always so why is that? And how do I can get it to my LD’s?

I have a few good tips that always work for me :

  • rub your hands
  • spin around
  • put your tongue to your front teeth (this will help your dream getting more vivid)
  • rub your hands quickly trough your hair

I hope these things help for you!

Oh, these two are new to me. must try! :happy:

Just to be more precise, the tongue has to go pressing against the palate, and it works if you are doing it with your WL tongue, during the dream.
How you do that, it’s not an exact science :tongue: but like your eyes move when you move your dream eyes, there’s a chance your real tongue will move following your dream command as well.
It may be a risky move for most, since it could mean getting close to the dream threshold, so for the most part the other ones are suggested for the inexperienced. :smile:

Well Lucidity Master (what a name!), that depends a good deal on what you mean by “stay lucid.”

Do you mean to stay asleep? Or do you mean to continue in the same dream?

What happens in all dreaming is that after a while, the scenario changes into another scenario. In a normal dream you tend not to notice this happening, because when you’re not lucid you accept whatever craziness might occur. But in a lucid dream, you do notice it.

What happens is that everything fades out briefly, then fades back in with your surroundings now changed. If you were lucid before the fade-out, you might not be lucid in the next scenario. What can also happen though is that everything fades out and then you wake up.

Most dreams actually don’t go on for very long without that fade-out occurring, although a few do.

Now I’m guessing that you want to prolong the dream in which you’re lucid, and so the way to do that is to stop the fade-out from occurring.

How then can you do that? Well, there is a way. What you have to do is stare at any object in your dream. Just focus on it, and the fade-out won’t occur unless your body is simply ready to wake up. If that’s the case then it’s going to do so, and there’s no trick to make it stay asleep.

Of course you have to have a tendency to have lucid dreams in the first place before you should worry about stopping the fade-outs, and for most people to worry about that is putting the cart very far in front of the horse.

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I use an alarm every night to wake me up at 2:00 AM so I can try WBTB and WILD, I am always afraid though that the alarm will go off durring a Lucid dream and ruin it. Is there anyway I can stay in the dream through the alarmclock? In a few normal dreams I’m pretty sure I heard the alarm going off in my dream and it affected it for a few seconds before I woke up. The alarm turns off after about an hour of no attention payed to it.

You shouldn’t wake up until about 6 hours after you go to sleep. By then, REM should just be starting, so you shouldn’t miss any dreams, lucid or otherwise.

I go to sleep at 10:00 so its about 5 hours and the alarm almost always wakes me from a dream

There are other REM periods before that :tongue: Although they are shorter and yes, lucidity is more unlikely. I’ve had a LD after only 3 hours of sleep… once.

But yeah, I agree, it’s nothing you should really worry about :smile:

I now have 3 or more lucide dreams a week but I just can’t stay asleep. I always wake up after 1 minute or so when I become lucide. I can’t figure out how this happens, does somebody have an idea what causes this?

Hi Optimize, don’t fret! Many people have trouble staying lucid, only because it’s something that catches you off guard. This guide about Prolonging Lucid Dreams is all about how to keep yourself inside a lucid dream. And don’t worry! Stressing that you’re going to wake will cause you to wake up.

I always keep hollering I’m lucid over and over again while exploring. I have had some dream characters look at me as if I was crazy! :smile:
Also having a plan as to what to do once you are lucid helps to be focused and stay lucid. Very often after having accomplished what I set out to do will wake me up. I think only once did I lose lucidity and fell into a ND

Thanks a lot that will really help me out!

to stabilize my lucid dreams, i always rub my hands together, and that works very well. when i spin around i usually just get dizzy and fall over for some reason

Every time I get lucid sooner or later my thoughts go running wild and I wake up. This is improving slowly, but does anyone have some tips or experiences with this they want to share?

Try to calm down and look around, it worked for me.
You could also try to do something as soon you get lucid, like flying, teleporting, etc.

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I used to have lucid dreams naturally when I was younger, but i haven’t in years, although I always remember my dreams vividly, until today. I took a nap around 1ish and I had a dream as usual but at one point I realized i was dreaming, then I woke up, actually a FA, but I continued on as if things were normal then i had another FA, and this happened another 3 times,which got quite frustrating. It seems as though i’m waking from excitement only to still be dreaming over and over again. So i actually woke up, did a couple of RC 's, and fell back asleep. I had another dream in which i became lucid, and i stayed calm, rubbed my hands, and spun, but as i started to spin I woke up again and could fall back asleep. This was somewhat odd, to have so many lucid experiences at once, considering I’ve been trying for about a month, any other ideas on prolonging lucidity?

I just had my first LD and im pretty confident in myself as a dreamweaver.
Once I started lurking in these forums, reading post after post, 2 things said really changed my perspective on the subject and initiaed my LD, and sustained it too!

1. To produce LD for me, is to use your imagination specifically linked to you’re 5 senses before falling asleep. Before I learned to “imagine” like this I used to think of a tree. Just a vivid tree in my mind. Then after reading an insightful post, I applied my 5 senses to the tree. Feeling wind behind my ears as it blew the leaves, smelling the soft forest smell of the greatoudoors, tasting more fresh air with my lungs, walking up and tracing the lines of the bark. I do this to ANY object or scene before I got to bed and my mind starts going on autopilot. The scenes of my mind start unfolding by themselves! So just imagine the feeling, with 5 senses and you will be close to LD.

2. For me, I came across a digital clock that read something like “L4:-2” and thought what the shit? Looked away and looked back, letters changed and I became aware of the dream. From my observations after the dream I noticed that you have to be free to wanderlust! Just walk around and let things happen, do not try to concentrate on one thing too much or you will lose touch with the dream! So like that other guy said in this forum, let your ADD be free and expierence different things all the time to keep the LD going. Before my LD ended, I was limbering up to have acrobatic sex with this girl, The dream started fading as my singular objective was my only focus, and i awoke. :sad: