Getting high lucid?

I’ve gotten to the vibration stage of WILD once (didn’t know it was a good thing, had to force myself awake), and I’ve had 3 or 4 low-lucid DILD dreams. But here I mean very low lucid, I mean, it was exactly like a normal dream except I had a vague understanding that I was dreaming, I didn’t have a sense of intense awareness. I sort of forgot I was LD’ing very easy, though I dutifully rubbed my hands and/or spun the instant I became lucid to prevent losing it. But … I never have any really high lucid dreams, are there any tricks to getting high lucidity from low-lucidity? Maybe next time I should try superpowers immediately to excite me enough to wake up my conscious mind… but I’m not sure. Any ideas?

I`d advice from my experience not to try anything drastic-more to pay attention to details…looking around…exploring.Acting might sometimes ruin an ld(damn sadly sex too) and i guess the time for it is later when lds become stable.
good luck
just do not overreact-it happens very often to all of us-low level lds.
it will get better in time:)

I hope so. But the quality of my LD’s has actually been decreasing. But that’s probably because I’ve been reading less about LDs online every night, as I begin to know all I really need to. I’m kinda running out of stuff to read.

Let’s see… First off, you needn’t spin the moment you become lucid. I usually use spinning as a last resort, when I feel myself starting to awaken or I start losing vision. Spin hard and keep spinning.

It sounds like your problem is more of slipping back into, rather than awakening from, the dream. Spinning only makes this worse for me. Really, last resort, and remember that.

Instead, it helps me to chant “I am dreaming” over and over. Just keep saying it. Maybe even make a song out of it. Rubbing your hands is probably a good thing to do in tandem with the chanting. Boy, won’t you look silly…

If you get it down right though, I expect that you’ll have some nice long lucid dreams, as my longest ones are closer to the losing lucidity side than the waking up side.

Many of the lenghten-your-LD-techniques won’t work because it’s low-level-lucidity -you’re not lucid enough to remember all those techniques- so you have to work at your skills outside the LD too. Take longer waking breaks before your WILDS, this way you bring more alertness and wakefulness in your brain. Try to practice this WBTB-method as much as possible, it’s very efficient if you want higher lucidity. Don’t forget to do some MILD before going back to sleep, convince yourself that you WILL remember that you are dreaming. This has worked for me, I hope it works for you. Good-luck!

I do both MILD and WILD, both before bed and 5 hours into my sleep when I WBTB… (I try to stay conscious while falling asleep and focusing on the thought that I will be lucid as I sleep), so even if WILD fails I was still thinking very hard about becoming lucid. But yeah, I stay awake for like a minute and 30 seconds when I WBTB, since I sleep very hard and I find it very difficult to wake myself up. For example, when the Leonid meteor shower was here I set my clock to wake me up in the middle of the night, at the peak but even though I saw 3+ meteors in the 2 minutes I was awake, the desire to sleep was so intense I just couldn’t stay up for it. I gotta start working on that, after all, I can look at far more exciting lightshows in the sky in an LD :wink:

Well, that tiredness and already falling asleep after only 1:30min is a sign that longer breaks of wakefulness really could help! Normally, WBTB requires a minimum of 30 minutes waking interlude, more if you have time enough. Try to get out of your bed, that’s very important especially when you are such a deep sleeper.

I would disagree on that… someway. I wake myself up without clock and stay up only enough to feel myself concentrated again… That takes 5-15 minutes, then I go back to bed for relaxation and hypnagogics. Of course I’m awake at least that 30 minutes, but some >15 minutes goes for relaxation…
Well… it depends how look at this, but you don’t need to be up 30 minutes… :smile:

I allways do some math, it wakes the logical part of the brain, helps getting high level lucid and makes loseing lucidity much harder

Well Soothsayer, I assume you do it for WILD and maybe there length of interlude is not that important… Hypnagogia is most important there. But me, I almost never experience hypnagogia so WILD is pretty hard for me. I stick with DILD and WBTB has been a great help for me there, and the longer I stay awake the more succes I have!
Try this article for some scientific research about WBTB:
lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html
I read this article 2 years ago after practicing reality checks for months and only getting 1 or 2 LD’s/month. I couldn’t believe the percentages in the article and I tried it out for myself…so I tried to stay awake longer and then… REALLY had great succes with it: when I manage to fall asleep I have 50% chance of having an LD with WBTB! It has also a very logical explanation: the longer the interlude, the more you become alert and wakeful and this will be transferred into your dream state. At least try to stay awake until you don’t feel drowsy anymore, I think that’s the most important element in WBTB. Good-luck!

That’s right BrainHacker, I think everybody must find their own way. For example how long ‘up-time’ is needed during wbtb, that also depends on what stage of sleep you have been when you woke up, how much sleep did you have past few days etc.
Basically it’s all about knowing yourself: When you’re ready to try, how do you your relaxation… And if you’re trying wild, how do you handle hypnagogics… We all are different and when working with LD’s, we are so close ourselves that general instructions just can’t be adopted ‘as is’, some modifications must be done. :smile:

Also, try B vitamins. They really help with me. They’re abundant in Oraange juice and Marmite/Vegemite.

It’s time for me to contribute to this forum since i have been haunting it for awhile now. so…
With regards to the WBTB method, the moment in your sleep cycle that you awaken will also effect your alertness. If you awake during a dream you will be much more alert than awakening from the NREM part of the sleep cycle. Thus needing less up time before lieing back down to sleep. Its probably due to the increased brain activity in a dream compared to deeper stages. It also is harder to go back to sleep after awakening from the dream part of the cycle because you are more alert. So maybe you can you this fwongo.
This ties into how you can feel more refreshed getting only one and a half hours of shut eye at night as opposed to two and a half hours. It has do with awakening at the proper time in the cycle, near the end.( those of you who procrastinate{or those in school} probably know what i’m talking about from when you are making an art of your sleep deprivation and its management)
Also, i believe that when you go back to sleep the cycle continues from where it left off (assuming you don’t spend too long awake during the interval, like hours). Therefore, timing your(WBTB) waking moment to be just at the beginning of your dream cycle is better for WILD’s because you are likely to enter straight back into a dream.
Waking up at a set time(simply 4hrs or 6hrs into the night etc.), without specifically targeting the dream part of the cycle on your WBTB method would also likely hit the dream part of the cycle often because of the dreams being proportionately more often to deep sleep later in the night. Thus i think the sucess of the WBTB WILD’s is due specifically to the greater odds of hitting the dream part of the cycle at the waking moment later in the night. You having a bigger target later in the night so its easier to hit.
This is just my hypothesis(so not scientifically proven), which personally i found of value when i use to do WILD’s. If you have a powerful waking imagination you can really skip this timing and just kinda will a dream once you’re back in bed and relaxed at that late in the night.
:cookiemon: cookie monster kicks elmos ass anyday, could you imagine a talking cookie monster doll? With that voice? What does cookie monster say anyway? cookies?

In case anyone cares, I have been improving. Last night I had a really powerful DILD (I’d say 75% as vividly remembered as reality when I woke up - though a lot less so now), and it was really exhilarating and just an amazing feeling. I felt a slight loss of the dream, and tried rubbing my hands a little, and my memory of the dream cuts off at that point. It was really amazing while it lasted.

Sounds like you’re still slippin’ back into the dream… Chant, chant, chant… “I am dreaming, I am dreaming, I am dreaming…”