Nightly Routine

Explain what you do every night when you are aiming for a LD. Tell us what you eat, drink, etc.

  1. After posting and reading some messages on ld4all, I go upstairs and watch some TV.

  2. While watching TV I usually eat either: ice cream, yogurt, bowl of cereal.

  3. I go upstairs and when I get to bed I set my alarm to 6 hours after I go to sleep, usually around 6-7 AM.

  4. I read a book about LDing for 5-10 minutes.

  5. Put the book away and proceed to do my MILD excersises. I do it for 10 minutes while sitting up in my bed, and the rest in my sleeping position until I fall asleep. Usually I get images in my head and hear sounds/voices for a brief amount of time. I try to stay calm and not to move.

  6. When I wake up I either get out of bed to go to the washroom, or I sit up for a while and remember my dreams. Then I go back to sleep repeating “I am about to dream, I am in a dream, I know I’m dreaming”, or something along those lines.

I have a regular routine, but if I’m really trying for an LD, I’ll usually add a bunch of additional rituals to it. Anyway, the average night goes something like this:

(After finally luring myself away from the PC for the night, and retiring to bed)

  1. Set alarm for a random time between 5 and 6am. This is achieved by holding down the ‘minute’ button on my clock for anywhere between 2 and 5 seconds, depending on how lazy I am.

  2. Prepare journal, taking into account how horribly tired and lazy I’m going to be when I wake up at the time designated in step 1. This means making sure the page isn’t full, and ensuring that a pen is available.

  3. Run through a few idle fantasies that I’d enjoy participating in should I have an LD tonight. Usually accompany with some “Am I dreaming?” (among others) repetitions until I fall asleep.

  4. Wake up, scribble some notes down without turning anything on, or moving any more than is required to reach the pen. Ponder the dreams I just woke from and reset my alarm for the appropriate time. Optionally, I might also begin playing a CD (set up beforehand) with something LD-related on it.

  5. Wake up again, write down anything I recall from the last 2 hours, negotiate with myself how much time I can afford to spend laying there before I’ll be critically late for work. Usually I also spend this time trying to decode the notes I scribbled down in step 4.

That’s pretty much it.

Hmm, I usually don’t eat anything before going to sleep… or drink anything… But here’s a rough outline of what I do:

  1. Set my alarm for 4-5:00am.

  2. Write in dream diary; goals, technique I’m using, etc. Have a pen ready and a blank page open.

  3. I let my thoughts wander for a bit; I’ve found that relaxing is a key factor in achieving a lucid dream. I’ll open my eyes every so often and do a reality check, or repeat “I am dreaming. I am dreaming. I will remember this dream,” things like that.

  4. After waking up from the alarm, I jot down any notes on dreams I had. Then I stay up reading my dream journal for 15 minutes or so, looking at any notes I’ve taken about LDing.

  5. Then I go to sleep again, usually trying WILD or MILD.

  6. After waking up again, I write down any dreams I had, and also if I was successful with having an LD or not.

So far this “routine” hasn’t helped me achieve lucidity. This schedule isn’t entirely out of the ordinary, either…

/d.s

You guys sound organized :wink:. Recently I have gotten pretty lazy, and sometimes I don’t even have it in me to write down my dreams immediately. Since I know recalling my dreams is important, whenever waking up I remember as much about my dreams as possible. Atleast it’s better than forgetting completely. Sometimes when I wake up 6 hours after sleep, I really want to wake up and get out of bed to walk around a bit, but for the times I don’t feel like it I try really hard to stay awake, and after eventually drifting off to sleep I wake up 5-10 minutes later. Then I fall back to sleep and when I do that successfully it sometimes gets me a LD :smile:.

Well, that’s what happens most of the time. Sometimes when I wake up for WBTB I don’t bother getting out of bed… I turn off the alarm, and go back to sleep. Sure, I want to get up and do stuff but I get pretty lazy sometimes :tongue:

Maybe I need to be more dedicated to LDing before I can actually get an LD purposefully. :eh:

/d.s

Well I was much more enthusiastic about it the first week I started, and I got out of bed most of the time. Now I find myself staying in bed. I guess this hasn’t been much of a problem because I still have LDs this way. I think the solution would be to drink a few glasses of water or something before we go to sleep, then we won’t have a choice on what to do :tongue:.

Hmm, last night I didn’t do WBTB or anything. I repeated to myself a few times, “I am dreaming. This is a dream.” Then I just let myself go to sleep. I didn’t attack my thoughts with lucid dreaming.

What do you know, I ended up having 2 LDs. Concentrating on it too much seems to do the exact opposite of what you want it to do. I had three dreams that I remembered, and I didn’t wake up once until I woke up at 8:46am and started my day.

From now on I’m going to try not forcing myself to think of LDs before going to sleep. The mind seems to pick up on small thoughts that you’ve had during the day or before you go to sleep. It seems to ignore anything you force yourself to think… or repeat over and over and over again. Or maybe my mind’s just messed up :tongue:

/d.s

Most things i do are MILD method parts.During the day i try to feel how would it be if it was a dream(wish i could rem bout reality checks more often).
Then im here everyday keeping in touch with the topic and eventuall new ideas.
Before i go to sleep i just wish for ld tonight and hope for a good recall.

Wow daysong, great job! That seems to be the case for me sometimes, as I have had a few LDs on nights I didn’t even try having them. Was that your first LD or have you had some before?

I think you guys are touching on something that’s starting to strike me as a catch-22 thingy.
I’ve had a total of (i think) 5 LD’s in my life, but NEVER after doing the exercises or any of it during the day or even for several days before.
So, yeah, it seems like a lot of people get some success when they try less, but if we want to be able to learn to have them frequently, I can’t imagine that just not trying too much is a very good answer because I figure there are millions of people who are not trying at all, and they never have LD’s.
And I don’t know if it’s a matter of finding a middle-ground i.e. “not trying toooo hard.” I do RC’s, MILD, and a few other things quite regularly, but definitely with different levels of intensity from day-to-day.
Oh, frustration.
Peace,
Sruthan

I’ve had a few LD’s before, but never actually with the intention of having one. So I’m happy :grin:

Sruthan – I’m not saying that not trying at all/not trying too much will give you an LD automatically. I’m just saying that it seems when you burden your mind with a billion different exercises it tends to not work very well. Not trying at all definitely isn’t the way to go, but neither is over-doing it.

And I do see it as somewhat finding a middle-ground. You don’t want to kill yourself/keep yourself awake with exercises and constant thoughts of LDing. You also don’t want to not think about it at all. Of course, everything I’m saying could be wrong. It’s probably different for different people.

I see it as you need to let yourself relax if you expect to have an LD. That’s all… You don’t need to give up MILDing, WILDing, etc. to have an LD. Obviously these exercises do something for some people, if everyone’s still using them…

/ds

What do you do when you can’t sleep straight away? I’ve had this problem twice since recently I started attempts at LD’ing…

Don’t try WILD when you’re first going to sleep. It’s better to try it right when you wake up at like 3am. The best thing to do is maybe concentrate for 1 minute on your intention to have an LD, then forget about it. Fall asleep like normal. Also, make sure you’re sleepy. :wink:

I’ll try that then, the next time I wake up during the night. I’ve been waking up quite a few times these days, even though I’m not trying to WILD…