1. 6-10 hours... depends
2. I usually remember 1 out of 10 of my dreams
3. wha? elaborate please?

ok well to get started

@ 3 basically after your day is over how much do you remember and how clear is it. The better this is the less work you have as it will be easier to get some habits started (IMO)

And basically the first thing you should do is start focusing on remembering your dreams more as well its very possible to be lucid in a dream and forget it because you can't remember your dreams well T.T

There is really only one fool proof way to do so, And that is to keep a Dream Journal. What this is in the morning night when ever you remember a fragment of a dream you write it down and keep doing so. This does a couple things it teaches you your dream trends and it also tells your brain hey these are important memories I should hold on to them.
This is kinda like a diary of sorts it can be kept in any thing from a note book to notepad.exe on a windows machine (nano any one?) and it should be kept with the intent of learning and growing over time

The dream Journal is probably the most important thing. EVERY ONE I know who keeps a decent dream journal (and is not a natural lucid dreamer) has much much better success while keeping one my self included. And it has many other uses which will get touched on later I'm sure.

On actually writing the dreams down you don't have to write them all out. If you have OCD like that please do so it's is not frowned upon, but I'm guessing your like me who has school and waking life to deal with as well. so its much more common to write down a few details and come back to it later. As these details will spark the memory back into existence for you to wright down properly later or remember them later or both up to you ^_^

The other thing is to start taking a inquisitive out look on just about every thing. It doesn't have to be full blown but when you change scenery see something new see something surrealistic or just plain awesome ask your self "Where am I? What am I doing?" Ect these should always be accompanied by what we call a Reality Check

Reality Checks are what they imply ways to check your reality
here are a few

Pinch your nose try to breath threw it:
If you can I would start thinking twice about what you want to be doing now as your not in waking life xD <-- thats my favorite and the most accurate one by large

Try to your hand threw an object with your intent:
Basically hold your hand up to a wall and try to "push" it threw it while focusing on your hand going threw the wall <-- this one takes practice but i here its a lot of fun when you get it working

Jump:
If you believe you will fall down slowly and like float down when you do in a dream you should <-- this ones highly subjective imo but it does work

Read something:
For alot of people digital watched and books and signs have a tendency to act like we all have dyslexically in dreams so looking at a watch or a sign and having it be all garbled is a way to see where you are <-- this one is also subjective because for me this doesn't occur because I no longer want it to books and other material in dreams can hold secrets and memory that can be accessed this way

In all honesty though you can do any thing you want as long as it proves your awake or sleeping by breaking physics. General rules of thumb though is do more than one in case you some how messed the other ones up. ^_^

interesting, I guess the only thing to get used to is remembering to do said reality checks, as you are sort of wiped clean of memory when sleep. Hopefully enough concentration can counter that

I will try the jump and the reading.. I am scared I will throw my glasses

Yeah, the part about possibly making it harder to distinguish real life from the world of lucid dreams is one aspect that worries me slightly. I know that things like Inception don't happen, but I still don't want to blur the line between my subconscious and reality.

Well thats the whole point of Reality checks they help define that line clearly

and after you get able to do it Alot its nice to Incorperate it into your reality. Dreams are lands of shared thinking(IMO) and alternative views. most people who lucid dream alot have places in there dream world where they can work on problems they have and get extra time/insight on them.

@quazz I'm seriously recommending the nose one as well works 1000% of the time compared to the others which are very subjective

I very rarely have lucid dreams, but somewhat recently I had a very very weird experience.

I had stayed up really late the night before so I was extra tiered that morning. I went to my first class and then came back to start catching up on sleeping again. Everything was normal at first, but as I lay there something weird started happening. My ears started making that rapid vibrating noise (like when you yawn, its hard to describe, you can do it voluntarily) and then I started getting really dizzy and started spinning.

I woke up from this because I didn't know what was going on, but i went right back to attempting to fall asleep again anyway. The same thing started happening but this time I decided to follow through with it. It was crazy! I was literally falling into my dream and was conscious during the entire transition!

I don't remember exactly what happened in the dream, something with a hallway and I was floating around. But when I was ready to wake up, I was in my bed and my friend was next to me. It was still a dream within the dream. I started panicking trying to wake up and when I finally did, my entire body was paralyzed! It was so scary, I couldn't move any part of my body until about 30 seconds later.

This was the first and only time this has happened to me. After reading some Wikipedia articles, I realize now that those symptoms can be explained and are rare, but it still freaks me out. At the same time, I'd love to try it again!

yes, that is why I plan to do the sign next to my bed, hopefully if I notice it is not there, or perhaps spotting teeth and claws, I will know I am dreaming and know that

Lol @ qazz

@Quigbo:
Thats called sleep paralysis as I am sure you know now and I can gladly comfort you in its 100% safe and 100% normal. Believe it or not every one here goes threw that every night just 99% of us are asleep for it or other wise unaware.

What you experienced because of the Sleep Paralysis is the equivalent of a Wake Induced Lucid Dream which are an amazing phenomenon in it own accord! You also had a False Awakening, which is to but it bluntly you "woke up" into another dream. I have had these They actually can lead to Lucid dreams if you just make a habit of Reality Checking when you wake up ^_^

I have had quite a few lucid dreams before. None of them intentional, however. It is quite an experience though!

I have gone into different levels, though, and that was quite frightening to be honest. People said earlier in this thread that it can be difficult waking up from a lucid dream? Try waking up from two! Being in a lucid dream inside of a lucid dream is quite an experience. The way I made it out was mainly calming myself. I really honestly got afraid and so calming my nerves and making sure I didn't panic helped me out.

I have had many lucid dreams, though, and they're fascinating! I was quite intrigued when I saw the movie Inception, which brought me to research it a bit more. Before then I really didn't understand it all that well. All I knew is that the most fascinating lucid dream I experienced was inside of a lucid dream. Being inside two levels is a whole different experience. Someone mentioned reality checks, and I'll definitely vouch that they're more important the deeper you go.


On the subject of Sleep Paralysis, my brother Nick experiences this quite often. Not so much anymore, but he used to almost every other night.


I just briefly read your post above me, geekboy, about False Awakenings, and that might have been what I was talking about "levels", as they were referred to in the movie Inception. I have not done very much research on all this, but the one thing I do remember is having a lucid dream, going to sleep in that dream, and having a lucid dream inside that dream. After which, I woke up back into my original lucid dream and did a couple things. And, of course, some events preceded going to sleep in the "first level" or what have you.

I have also had one out-of-body experience while entirely awake and aware which was horribly terrifying, but that's another topic.

Thanks, geekboy1011, those are some interesting tips. Maybe I should get back on the lucid dreaming forum that I used to lurk on a few years back—I wasn't aware that those were common issues.

So far I seem to be accomplishing things gradually over time through not giving up. I'm not worried about whether I will accomplish what I want because I know it's only a matter of time. I believe this attitude is a sure way to convince the dream-generation system to give me what I want—I just have to be willing to wait for it. This has already worked for being able to fly (even though it's not perfect yet, going from 0% to 100% reliability at being able to do it at will to at least some extent is a big deal, I think!) Every now and then I hit a new success in a particular area of something, which is very motivating and encouraging as well.

Another thing I've been planning to experiment with more is having any people/characters in dreams that I happen to come across help me make what I want happen, since I believe I may be able to communicate with the dream generation process directly by interacting with them. One cool thing about my lucid dreams is that they're generally pretty receptive to whatever assumptions or suggestions that I decide to make. So, for instance, I can just assume that any character I walk up to in a dream will automatically understand my instructions/questions and be willing to help without my having to waste valuable time explaining or negotiating anything, and the dream almost always follows along with it.

Re. false awakenings, I have those quite a bit, too. Sometimes they can make me lose lucidity and other times they can cause me to gain it. The most annoying thing for me is when I have a particularly interesting dream that I want to record but end up having to redo the effort of noting it down, sometimes several times in a row, due to being fooled. In most cases, by the time I finally wake up for real, I only remember a disappointing fraction of the dream compared to what I could recall during the FAs.

@Travis well thats why making Reality Checks a habit when you wake up is a good thing ^_^

also what forum I'm on LD4all which is where most of my info has stemmed from (including there irc channel of course )

@Swivel I LOVED INCEPTION was a great movie although a lot of its concepts were born in Hollywood (even to lucid dreaming standards ). As for the levels concept I personally don't adhere to it, but if its works for you use it! Dreams are extensions of our minds there there to help us!!!! (In my opinion xD)

Hmm I will try to get another post together with more "decent" reality checks and some other practical knowledge on the topic. Seeing as I could probably fill in like 5-6 more Posts worth of info as well on different methods of inducing lucid dreams. I might just list them and you can ask about the ones your interested in ^_^ (If you so want of course xD)

Hey guys this is my first post here on cemetech. I was very surprised to find a topic on lucid dreaming. I actually keep a site where I post my experiences in a "journal" of sorts since december. If you are interested the site is www.fluidexistence.us. It's a relatively new, so some pages are still under construction.

My favorite reality check is jumping up to touch a ceiling, that one normally would not be able to touch in a normal waking condition.

Welcome to Cemetech, JBanna! You can introduce yourself here.

Wow nice to have you on Cemetech Jbanna! and very nice site ^_^

Hmm never thought of using that as a reality check but I can see how it works ^_^

Also if you wan't a hand with some content for your site feel free to ask ^_^ It's looking really nice so far ^_^

thanks geekboy1011 and souvik1997

@geekboy1011 yea jumping to touch the ceiling seems to work better than any any other methods I've tried because it's such a "physical" action. Sometimes people say to look at written numbers, then glance away and if you're indeed dreaming the letters will appear different. The problem is most if this is caused by the subconscious mind. If deep down you believe the numbers are the same, they'll remain the same.
Same goes for touching the ceiling, but because it relies on "physical" actions it seems to be easier to verify.
It all depends on the individual though

Yeah, and something more drastic and believable is sometimes necessary to keep you sane while awake as well. I've heard some people use subtle methods like looking at numbers and looking away. But when you're awake you can even trick your mind into thinking the numbers were different the first time you looked at them, which can trump you into thinking you're dreaming. People who aren't very aware while they're awake can sometimes get confused when dealing too much with lucid dreaming. I know a couple people who have. Of course, this is never the case when you're very conscious. Usually only when you strongly lack awareness and alertness.

Multiple times when I was a kid. They disappeared as soon as I hit the age of 12. I don't have any clue why. So no, I can't test anything FOR SCIENCE.

@Mapar yes you can all you have to do is relearn to Lucid Dream


@Jbanna Fair enough and I love the description of how that works for you!

@Swivel agreed thats the scariest part but thats also why I have those annotations stating there not the best ^_^. As they are very biased and mental state based T.T

The method that worked well for me for quite a while involved staring at my digital watch (or messing around with it, pressing buttons, etc.) and watch for anything odd. In a dream, it would always do something weird sooner or later (usually skip numbers, go backwards, etc.).

I'm switching over to simply seeing if I can fly, though, since I always do that anyway, and it's a lot faster to test than wasting up to 30 seconds or more looking at my watch. Also, there's no way I could possibly be fooled into thinking I'm dreaming when I'm actually awake unless the laws of physics suddenly decided to start getting really screwy.

Ok, today I am going to try and lucid dream, all other days I was to angry to concentrate >.>

Perhaps if O strap something heavy to my arms or something...