Recently as I’ve been falling asleep I’ve been just listening to my thoughts pass, sort of like meditating. But I’ve noticed the things I’m thinking of start feeling more real/like I’m there with my eyes closed. I start to actually picture it, but I know I’m awake. It’s like I’m dreaming but my body is awake almost? I wonder if I opened my eyes during if this would be sleep paralysis. This only happens when I’m falling asleep or after I’ve woken up and went back to bed. I don’t remember continuing the dream after I fall asleep though. Not sure if I’m forgetting or not bc I tend to remember whatever dream I was having before I woke up and nothing else. Any advice to get FULLY lucid ? I’ve had awareness in dreams like saying “this would be so nice if this was real life right now” but nothing past that. I do reality checks , but I’m not consistent with it. Whenever I see a clock, I make sure to check the time , look away, and check it again and I ask myself “am I dreaming right now? Well the clock stayed the same time, I’m probably not” I keep a “dream journal” by writing down dreams I remember on my notes app , I’m not sure if I should do a physical one instead? Any advice appreciated!

So not really a lucid dream but I did become lucid at the end, so basically me and my female cousin were just walking at a park and some skinny guy was looking at us too much (he looked like he was trying to be a Joe Goldberg copy) and so I said nothing meh he's just drunk, and when we were heading home I saw him following a girl, I was Hella suspicious, and he attacked her, I said hell no he's a women killer and what if he kills my cousin next yk, I grabbed a knife and went to his house, as. The door was opening I tried to kill him right away but it was his dad, and there was an awkward "oh hi hru I'm here for your son" idk why he had it so normally for a 15 year old coming up to see his I think like 30 year old son but anyways, there I go inside and see there are only 3 ppl in the house, killer, dad, brother, and so as time passes a bit the really really nice brother tells me to go to his room, and remember his room was upstairs with a bathroom door inside his room, I went there and no one was in the room but I opened the bathroom door there he was with a bathtub full of blood and the a dead body, I striked him but he took my knife and stabbed me on my shoulder (I felt that ouch) but remembered he was really skinny, I grabbed the nearest rop or wire and tied his neck up with the sink and he was choking, but there his innocent brother comes but he saw me and I had to kill him, so I started choking him with my forearm and poor guy i felt so shit, and man I had my finger prints all over his body so I cut him up to pieces and hid the parts, when i went home and tried to sleep I was thinking how the kill will be with me my whole life, you can add but you can't remove, and as I was sleeping I became lucid and jumped of happiness but man that dream fucked me up real bad, I'd never hurt an innocent soul in my life.

I’ve just had a dream and woke up after it. I woke up 48 minutes after I went to sleep. This was a nightmare, and it was horrific. It took place over the course of 3 months, and I lived through it all. This dream felt so real, like a horror game. There were visions on TVs that I saw every 5 minutes, but when I saw the visions and said, “I’m not scared, I believe in Jesus,” the demon seemed excited. I said that, but then it would go away. Then this turned into a fight, going into a bathroom, lights flashing, jump scares, running out to the hallways. A guy was there with a phone, jump scare, walking down stairs, jump scare, and repeat. This happened exactly 48 times, and the scary part is that I woke up 48 minutes later. Something was up about this. This was the first time I’ve been sweating when I woke up as well as sore. I also am extremely exhausted. This was the first time I’ve slept on my side. This dream was the longest dream I’ve ever had, but the weirdest thing is that I woke up from the dream and I see my dad, and this story has a happy ending. Then I wake up in real life. Why would I wake up in my dream, in a dream? This was the first dream I’ve had in almost a month. I’ve never had anything like a lucid dream or sleep paralysis or anything like that. Sorry if anything sounds stupid, but I’m just very confused.

Sorry, I am nit sure if this is the right group to post but..

Ever since I was young, there are instances wherein I see a different “life” in someone’s perspective when I close my eyes at a certain angle. It’s always like a small screen in my right eye side. I thought it was just an imagination or a dream but no, because whenever I start to see, I am still awake by that time and when I try closing/opening my eyes harder/wider, my vision of that thing gets smaller or fuller depending on if I get that angle right.

It does not happen all the time but I notice it happens when I get sleepy in the afternoon and only when I sleep on a certain angle on my right side (not fully, it’s almost laying on my tummy but I lean on a wall with a bolster pillow on my left so the right side is the side touching the bed) and when I shut my eye to see it, it has to be with just a very very little opening, just for a little light to shine through because when it’s fully shut, it disappears and when it’s wide open, it’s too bright to see.

I used to always see women in like a garden or forest and they always try to make my POV eat something or dance. There were even times when this one woman asks me to cross a bridge in a forest and I refuse everytime. (I always see her over the years since maybe I was 12 or 13 until 26 and she’s the only consistent and shows her face) but just today, after a year or two of not seeing, I saw something different for the first time. I was not in a forest or a garden anymore but I am in a big modern house, seeing a woman, def not me cause I am asian and this woman is a blonde caucasian (she’s not the usual woman in my dreams) in her mid 20s or early 30s playing with a 1 or 2 yr old kid on a white living room with a white couch. I thought it was a dream but I tried opening my eyes and touching my surroundings just to make sure I am awake and I went back to closing my eyes (not sleeping) and I saw it again. I tried closing my eyes sitting down and it isn’t there. I tried laying on my back & left side and it isnt there but when I tried laying down in the angle again and close my eyes in that certain angle, I saw it again.

What is happening to me? should I see a psychiatrist? I am actually more scared that it might be an early sign of an illness but I feel like it is more of spiritual.

I tend to create or consciously follow storylines. Different lives and people who deeply know and understand me.

Sometimes, I am living a life so vibrant and in a world with so much peace! Often hanging with a group of individuals filled with spirit… I may even find love that I never had experienced!

Some of them are in worlds with magic and lucid dreaming is a great way to communicate (I often beg them to let me stay lol)

I wake up feeling as if I lost someone.

Maybe college graduation being around the corner has my emotions on edge

Has anyone experienced this?

I had sleep paralysis recently, and I was fully aware of what was happening, so I stayed calm. Everything around me was completely black, and I tried to imagine a scene to transition into a lucid dream. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing appeared—it just stayed black. It was weird tho because it was kind of like I was in a dream because I knew I was taking a nap in that moment and I know there was supposed to be noise in the background since I had my TV on but everything was silent.

Best way I could describe would be like if i was dreaming about having my eyes closed but couldn’t move and was actively aware trying to lucid dream.

Has anyone else had this experience? Where you’re in sleep paralysis, aware of it, trying to lucid dream, but it doesn’t work? I’m curious if this is common or if anyone has tips for making the transition.

i been dreaming alot mainly been trying to see my ex again and ive been thinking about her before bed and seeing her in the dreams but i noticed to nights in a row i been to the same theater place i dont think im lucid dreaming because it seems so real but i think i wake up when i realise its a dream

Ok hear me out one of the main reasons people get into lucid dreaming is to confront their nightmares and to hopefully move on from them. But when I did this I had THE MOST vivid lucid dreaming I ever had. It went from terrifying to great in 3 seconds. I kid you not during this dream I thought to myself what if I could force this. That’s where I got a small idea for NILD (if this already exist I’m sry I don’t mean to copy I just did this and I want to share) Nightmare Induced Lucid Dreaming so about a week after the initial idea I tried to force a nightmare and I did it with the help of two main things and it is wolf laughing and threw out the day listening to “nothings new” by Rio Romeo. This is just for me it may work for you but I recommend finding you own nightmare triggers if your increased. Anyway I was able to have a nightmare and change it into a lucid dream consistently. What excites me about this is that I didn’t need to do wake back to bed and I think that improved my sleep quality. But again I can’t find anything surrounding this topic I thought it was cool and if you have any questions or answers I’m here and I’m listening.

In my dream I closed my eyes and imagined my old apartment, I then realized that I was able to look around in the imagination meaning it was now a dream, this was my first lucid dream in months and it felt so strange entering it. Like some dimension behind my eyelids with this shivering feeling idk you guys have probably had something similar. Since this was my first Lucid dream since I learnt all those tricks I tried doing the thing where your finger goes through your palm and it actually didn't work, I felt and saw my fingers hit my palm. But then I shut my nose and took a deep breath in which was obviously pretty funny. I woke up from my lucid dream by opening my eyes into what I thought was reality and simply closed my eyes and imagined my room and was able to walk around until I opened my eyes again, then for the last lucid dream of the night I imagined I was at some round a bout, I tried to climb this column which was 3 times my height but it for some reason I couldn't really do it so I decided since I was in a dream I'd try to do something unrealistic and simply jumped up to it which worked, once I was up there I tried summoning one of the great pyramids of Giza but nothing really happened I just stayed looking at the horizon in a dumb way. Ended up waking up, telling my dad all about it and talked with him for a while about the feeling of it and whatever, I then truly woke up and realized that whole discussion was a dream.

I'm interested if this is a new method which has been discovered? Where if you close your eyes in a dream and imagine something you can enter a lucid dream, maybe thinking a lot about closing your eyes and imagining places can trigger this happening on its own in a dream

watching yourself in the mirror in dream and seeing how the faces change

So after doing A WBTB, we need to be completely still and focus on something right? So what if there are sounds of dogs barking or some sounds or some random thoughts that are somehow disturbing. Will they still interrupt the process if we don't move at all. And what if we are drifting off to sleep? Don't we need to be awake? And even after 20 minutes or more, do i still continue the process or just go back to sleep?

Also what are some techniques that I can do when I go to bed at night for sleep?

So I’ve been lucid dreaming since I was a little girl .. it wasn’t until maybe a year ago I promised myself to be more aware for my own personal studies. Such as Feel the atmosphere, look at the scenery of these places I travel to, really bask in it. Well these last few nights I’ve been dreaming but it’s always toward the middle of the dream where I gain realization and start becoming lucid and I make my decisions It’s almost like subconsciously I’m telling my spirit , “hey you forgot.” And I snap out of whatever state I was in and I’m aware. Before it wasn’t like that and yes maybe it is a mental barrier interfering with my travels but it’s almost like as soon as the dream is towards the middle to end , I gain it. I also have this thing where if the dream is going sour I will literally say out loud “yeah I’m not doing this bullshit , let’s go to the next place.” And I’m in another place doing god knows what. I pray someone really understands what I mean 😭😭😭😭

I’ve been trying to lucid dream over the past few months and I’ve done it a few times, last night included. But every single time, I get kicked out of it within just a few seconds of moving around. I’ve tried keeping calm and not doing much, especially in last nights dream, but I still feel like I can’t stop myself from waking up. Just for context, most of my lucid dreams so far have started in a swimming pool, since I found that that was the easiest scene for me to imagine and enter. Is swimming just too adrenaline-heavy of an activity for me to enter a lucid dream with?

Had a dream last night that I was walking down a road near my house. As I walked, I started to get anxious as I started to “remember,” that I ran a woman over with my car on that road. I became distressed, and took out my phone to look up my supposed crime. Before anything could load, it occurred to me that I had only dreamed of running a woman over. Like, I remembered I had a nightmare about that. This isn’t the first time I had a dream like that, but this was the most recent. Has this ever happened to you?

I recently started doing reality checks and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right or not. I've seen people say that you need to feel like you're asleep or believe that you could be asleep at that moment. Well, I don't do that. When I do my reality checks, I just hold my nose and try to breathe through it. I don't question whether or not I'm asleep or try to believe that I am, I know that I'm awake. I do it hoping that it will become a habit and allow me to realize that I'm asleep. Am I doing it wrong?

I learned a technique to put the body to sleep and keep the brain awake. Yes, it is easy in theory, but I am afraid of sleep paralysis because if that black shadow man turns out to be a pervert, you cannot move, he can do whatever he wants to you. Do you have a solution?

I’ve always struggled to enter a lucid dream and I so badly want to! Any tips would be appreciated

So yesterday, I started listening to the audiobook Dreams of Awakening by Charlie Morley. Has anyone here listened to it? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Is it a good book to start my lucid dreaming journey, or should I explore other options? Looking forward to your feedback!

Hello Dreamers 🙂

Do you have a hard time remembering any dreams or just want to learn how to efficiently and reliably remember more of your dreams in vivid detail? Hopefully, this guide will be able to help you with exactly that.

Before we proceed, here’s a quick table of contents:

1. General information
2. Specific practices for improving dream recall
   2.1. Dream Journal
   2.2. Intentions
   2.3. Delving
   2.4. Tagging
   2.5. WBTB
3. DOs and DON’Ts for remembering dreams
   3.1. DOs
   3.2. DON’Ts
4. Summary

1. General Information

Now, first things first. What even is dream recall?

Dream recall refers to your ability to remember your dreams. It can be divided into two subcategories, which are quantitative recall (how much of your dreams you remember) and qualitative recall (how vividly you remember details of your dreams).

To improve your overall recall, both of these sub-division are relevant.

And why exactly is recall important?

Well, first and foremost, it’s fun to remember all those little adventures your mind takes you on several times a night and there simply is no reason to want to forget them.

Secondly, recall is the very foundation for all dream related practices like lucid dreaming (which I personally am most experienced in), or if you want to use it for meditation or e.g. interpreting your dreams to find hidden meanings (in this particular guide, I won’t judge, but simply help you with the remembering part independent of your further goals).

2. Specific practices

So, how do you work on remembering your dreams?

2.1. Dream Journal

The practice, which proves to be the single most reliable and effective for improving your recall is called a dream journal. As the name suggests, the main idea is to write down your dreams, preferably in the morning right after waking up (just as you’d journal about the day in the evening). 

The most important part here is consistency. Like it is with any other skill, consistently practicing for a while every single day will lead to the best results in the least time compared to just trying occasionally (you also wouldn’t expect to become a master at the piano by only practicing for a few minutes once a week or less, would you?) For journaling, I generally recommend doing it for at least 15-20 minutes a day and making this a fun habit that’s a fixed part of your daily schedule.

Now, you might be wondering what you’re supposed to write down, when you happen to not remember any dreams. Here’s the answer:

If you don't remember any dreams, write down things like what time you went to bed, when you approximately fell asleep, when you woke up, whether or not you remember waking up throughout the night (and if so, when), feelings that might come to mind when you think about that night, what you did before going to sleep, and whatever else you associate with the night, sleep, and dreams.

I'd then suggest ending with something like "sadly don't remember any dreams, but I will tomorrow".

Additionally, set the intention to remember at least one dream before going to sleep.

And if you don't, don't get frustrated. Recall can fluctuate and it might take a while to remember one dream or even more every day. That's perfectly fine.

Basically, the journal is more about shifting your focus towards your dreams and wanting to remember them to then increase your recall, rather than creating a library filled with your dreams.

2.2. Intentions

Speaking of intentions, those are also very helpful for improving your recall, and not just if you currently don’t remember any dreams at all. So, let’s have a closer look at what exactly they are and how to properly set them.

In general, setting an intention might sound like a really fancy technique to you, especially when you’re new to all this and/or English isn’t your first language. However, all this really means is “planning to do something”. Just like when you plan to watch a movie after dinner, meet a friend after school, or get a specific item at the store tomorrow. This means, we actually set intentions all the time without even having to think about it much, so don’t start overthinking them now, just because these particular intentions are related to dreams.

Before bed, you simply plan in your mind to remember at least one dream the next time you wake up. This doesn’t require any specific wording, let alone repeating random phrases (mantras/affirmations). Focusing on words would be the wrong approach. Instead, just focus on the action itself and don’t worry about it too much. Imagine in your mind how you wake up and think about the fun dream you just had, plan to actually make this happen, and then just go to sleep.

Great! Now you’ve heard about two common practices to actively work on remembering more dreams! What else is there?

2.3. Delving

Delving (or dream delving) is a little trick we like to use to practically multiply your memories of the night’s dreams in rather little time. The core idea is to use one memory, no matter how short or vague it may be (even if it’s just a rough feeling in the back of your mind) to spark a fire of recall with the help of simple associations.

So, how does this dark magic work?

After you wake up, the first thing you want to do is think about your dreams. Consider this a curious search, rather than trying to force something to happen. For that, get comfortable (preferably in a lying position), close your eyes, and see if any memories come to mind. If not, try to think about what might have happened in tonight’s dreams or if there are any feelings or ideas you had in mind when waking up.

As soon as something comes to mind, use it as a jump-start. Think about this specific feeling, memory, idea or whatever, and see if anything else comes to mind. And if that happens, think about that and see if it triggers more memories. From there, you just keep going, practically tracing back your dreams from end to start, until nothing more comes to mind. Then, you can either try to keep going by again thinking about what else might have happened and seeing if that triggers anything else, or you can start journaling whatever you remembered so far. Sometimes, the journaling itself can also cause more associations, so don’t underestimate this step.

Next up is

2.4. Tagging

Now, this word may sound random, but the practice it stands for is comparably simple and can be considered a subcategory of journaling. 

Tagging means to only write down core ideas about your dreams in the form of bullet points and is especially designed for when you lack the time for full blown journal entries. These core points are then supposed to help you remember more about your dreams, once you have the time to journal and fill in those details, and they can even be used for delving (which you btw can do anytime during the day, it just tends to be most effective in the morning - like all recall practices - especially for beginners).

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

2.5. WBTB

WBTB stands for Wake Back To Bed, which essentially means just that - waking up and going back to sleep. It is a practice commonly used for lucid dreaming, but can also be incredibly helpful for improving your dream recall. 

So, before we go into more details, this one actually comes with a few rules.

1. Make sure, you still get enough sleep despite being awake and practicing once or even several times throughout the night. This means, you should still get at least 8h of sleep after subtracting the time you’ve been awake for.

2. Directly adjacent to that, I recommend not staying awake for more than 20 minutes, and even less than that per WBTB if you do more than one per night.

3. NEVER use alarms for WBTB. You wake up several times every single night, so all you have to do is notice those natural awakenings, which can be achieved with the help of intentions. 

As the last point already explains, the idea behind this is that we already wake up multiple times every night, so we might as well use that fact to our advantage. Think about it like this: If you get a solid 8-10h of sleep, your first dreams will have happened as long as some 7-9h ago when you wake up in the morning. This means, waking up throughout the night and consciously using that to work on your recall (preferably by just tagging or delving for a short while), your practice will be significantly closer to the actual dreams you want to remember and after all, remembering something that happened within the past 1-4h or so is significantly easier than perfectly remembering what you were doing 9h ago.

3. DOs and DON’Ts

In this section I want to focus on general habits, ideas, etc., which tend to be either beneficial or harmful for dream recall.

3.1. DOs

Something, which is always incredibly helpful, when you’re working with dreams, is healthy sleep. One major component of this is getting enough sleep in the first place.

To give you a rough idea, how much that actually is, I’d like to include a graph from the US based National Sleep Foundation, which resembles the current scientific consensus of sleep requirements depending on age and is in my opinion easy to read: https://www.sleepdr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Sleep-Duration-Guidelines.png

Optimally, you want to strive for the dark blue area for your age-group (every single night). The light blue sections mainly resemble what can be ok either based on genetics or as an exception, when the circumstances happen to be unfortunate.

Important side note: Getting enough sleep is not only relevant for your recall, but also for your physical and mental health in general. Constantly getting considerably too little or too much sleep can and will severely impact your health.

Related to that, a consistent sleep schedule is recommended a lot. Making it a habit to go to sleep and wake up at similar times every day allows your body to adjust and makes it easier to guarantee getting enough sleep.

Think about your dreams throughout the day and frequently go over past experiences in them whenever you have the time and feel like it.

Additionally, try creating a positive mindset regarding sleep, dreams, and recall. Don’t overthink everything, but rather focus on what helps and how much fun it is to remember your dreams. How we think about something strongly influences how we do it and with that how effective it is and even if it will work at all or not. Being positively curious is always good to avoid that.

I also recommend using blue light filters on your technological devices, as blue light is known to decrease the production of melatonin (the sleeping hormone) by mimicking sunlight.

Exercising and being active throughout the day can also go a long way, as well as making sure to drink enough water.

Last, but not least, do make sleep a priority. You won’t regret it.

3.2. DON’Ts

First of all, don’t take random substances. Neither drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), nor random supplements or scam pills you have seen on Tiktok, Reddit, or whatever. For the latter, never take any supplements without consulting a doctor first (and then following their advice accordingly). Getting too much of something is just as bad as getting too little and sometimes even more harmful.

Secondly, avoid caffeine, specifically some 10h before going to sleep. Caffeine messes with your melatonin receptors and negatively impacts the quality of your sleep for many hours after consuming it.

Also, try not to eat right before going to bed. You should have your last meal a few hours before bed. If you eat right before sleeping, your body will have to use lots of energy to digest this food, which means less energy for the cells in your body to relax and recover from the stress of the day, hence your sleep will be worse.

Avoid social media before bed. There’s nothing worse than using precious sleep over something as useless as getting caught in a loop of short content.

Analogous to one of the DOs, don’t focus on what you can’t do yet or think about what might be negative. Focus on what you can do and consider every small step a win. Every scene you remember, every journal entry, every time you at least tried. All of those are wins in my book and they should be that in yours, too 🙂

4. Summary

Before anyone thinks that, this isn’t a TLDR. Just quickly going over what you should’ve taken away from this guide.

So, to improve your recall you can journal, delve, set intentions, and use tagging. In addition to those active practices, it is beneficial to build healthy habits and positive mindsets, as well as avoid unhealthy ones. Also, out of all those things, journaling is practically obligatory if you want to remember more dreams.

This is practically it.
Thanks for reading my guide and enjoy your dreams 😀

So today, I experienced an interesting syncronicity. It involves name plates(which are always a big thing event for me, to get past my rational mind). It came with words without thinking so I'm gonna give it to intuition. The words: Lucid dream, you right now.

Right now I'm trying to comprehend the whole thing.

What do you think about it?

I have read countless times - most recently in the book by Prof. Tholey - that you should imagine intensely that you are dreaming and not just asking and answering the question automatically when doing a reality check as if it was a rethorical question to which you already know the answer. What I don't quite understand is the part that says you should really imagine that you are actually dreaming. What is meant by that? Does it mean it would help to imagine what I would subsequently do if I was dreaming, such as flying, or like just imagining the realization itself?

This post will be reasonably long in order to give enough detail. Unfortunately, the level of detail I would like to include is too long for a comment, so I thought having a post with my ideas would be beneficial to the community. My goal is to provide a generalized roadmap that someone can read and follow to develop a lucid dreaming practice as a beginner. I intend to link this post to reply to those who ask how to lucid dream and are starting at the verry beginning. There are some explanations I don't exactly enjoy in the start here section, so I'm hoping to provide some resources and advice that will be of use.

I would advise a road map for developing a lucid dreaming practice that looks something like this. Researching dream recall and lucid dreaming > practicing dream recall techniques to remember a minimum of 1 dream a night with a decent amount of detail > incorporating daytime and night practices > practicing with a routine for at least a month without switching methods. That's a decent enough road map to get started. Once you have practiced with a routine for at least a month, if you have no results or no signs of progress, you can consider switching the methods you are using.

Let's start with dream recall. We typically dream around 4-6 times a night, only counting dreams from REM sleep. This is based on an approximately 90 minute sleep cycle, with one REM period per cycle, over the course of 7-9 hours of sleep. The most common method that is recommended here is dream journaling. Do this by recording your dreams in as much detail as you are comfortable with as close to waking up as possible. During nightly awakenings, you can tag your dreams by recording key words and phrases with the intention to fully recall and record your dreams when you wake up for the day. Do this in a format of your choosing. A dream journal is useful not only to help you remember your dreams but as a tool for analysis. Reviewing your dream journal can help you notice dream signs, recurring dream signs, themes, and patterns that may be present in your dreams, which can be useful for attaining lucidity. There are also some additional techniques for dream recall, see below.

There are several things you can do to aid your dream recall in addition to dream journaling. First, review recently journaled dreams before bed. This helps you remember those dreams, find patterns in dreams, and remember more dreams. Next, also before bed, set intentions to remember your dreams when you wake up by actively deciding that you will remember your dreams when you wake up. The more important this decision is to you personally and the more you think about it, the more likely you are to remember your dreams when you wake up. There's nothing mystical about intentions, as any time we decide to do something in the future or at a later moment in time we set an intention. Finally, whenever you wake up and as quickly as possible upon waking up, do a thing we call dream delving. This involves laying in the sleeping position you woke up in and thinking about what you were last dreaming, thinking, experiencing with your senses, feeling emotionally, etc. If you cannot get anything, try to think about what you could have been dreaming about. If you get vague emotions or thoughts, try to think about why you were getting those thoughts. If you get dream scenes, work your way backwards from end to beginning to recall as much detail as possible. Once you've gotten as much as you can from one sleeping position, move to any other sleeping positions you may utilize throughout the night and repeat the procedure. This works by utilizing the mechanisms for how memory access works. First, accessing dream memories works partly off state dependent memory, so those dream memories associate with the sleeping positions you were in when you had the dreams. Second, memory itself works off association, and since the memories at the end of the dream are easiest to recall and access overall, you start with those and associate to the memories before those and so on until you've gotten as much as you can. Then you journal what you have been able to recall.

Now, for daytime criticality practices. This involves critically questioning whether or not you are dreaming, never assuming the answer, and being aware of what you are experiencing, sensing, thinking, etc. Examine your environment, current circumstances, recent memories, emotions, etc, for any potential dream signs. A dream sign is something out of place in some way, something with a low chance of happening while awake, or something with a high chance of happening in your dreams. EG, a flying car would be a dream sign as that is something out of place with a low chance of happening while awake. If someone dreamt a lot about being in a specific location, being in that location would be a potential dream sign even if the place itself wasn't anomalous, or if it wasn't necessarily abnormal for the person to be there. Once you have done all of that, you can do a state test. Most people refer to them as reality checks, but the correct term is state test or reality test. This is an action you can take, with critical awareness, to attempt to test if you are dreaming or awake. These should not be done mindlessly or on autopilot as they require critical awareness to be useful. Not all state tests are created equal as most physical tests only work through dream control and are thus unreliable. The most reliable tests are holding your nose closed and attempting to breathe, and repeatedly examining and re-examining something complex, like text, and attempting to force or notice any changes. In dreams, state tests chiefly act as a confirmation measure and not what actually causes lucidity. I personally recommend learning over time to trust your ability to get lucid in dreams without feeling the need to state test in a dream to confirm lucidity.

Now, for night practice techniques. I'm going to link some guides I personally recommend.

MILD: https://www.mindfulluciddreaming.com/post/mnemonic-induction-of-lucid-dreaming-mild

WILD: http://www.ldguides.com/wild

SSILD: https://community.ld4all.com/t/ssild-2-0-tutorial/38546

This should be enough to get started as a beginner. I will happily answer any questions people have regarding lucid dreaming. I hope you all find this post helpful.

Hey everyone beginner here. I have been trying to lucid for the past two months, but the thing is I barely do reality checks, is that okay, or reality checks are a must to lucid dream. And I also cannot set an alarm for 4 or 5 in the morning as It can disturb my family members.

Another thing is , before I sleep I keep saying to myself that "I will a lucid dream tonight, I will enjoy it , control it consciously, and will remember everything after waking up" I keep saying this 20-30 times and then sleep.

Sometimes I have vivid dreams , but not lucid. Should I give up, or keep trying or do any other methods. Any kind of help will be truly appreciated, I just want to have an experience of lucid dream at least once in a lifetime.

I am creating a smart dream journal that tracks dreams and provides insights into dreams and helps you remember your dreams and gives you techniques to remember and improve dream recall

combined with sleep paralysis, which happens to me pretty frequently. so I found this subreddit, and wanted to tell y’all about it. 1: I was definitely aware I was dreaming. 2: I couldn’t control it as well as I thought. for example, during part of the dream I was in my car when a weird looking bee flew into the window and landed near me. I tried to shoo it out, but then like 10 more zoomed through the window and got in. I was like ahh! but then I was like wait i’m fine, picked them up and played with then, and then just sort of wished them away. but then I thought, what if there was 50 million bees? I turn around and there’s 50 million bees outside. I also wished myself out of there and ended up in a house where I did some other shenanigans. it was fun, but not as fun as I thought. especially when my brain woke up and my body didn’t and I was stuck like that until my apple watch went off.

some other stuff I did:

talked to ethan slater about his role in wicked (not joking) (I don’t even like ethan slater but he was there so I figured why not)

jumped really high around a room

threw myself on the ground to see how much it hurt (it didn’t)

threw myself into walls (also didn’t hurt)

changed a girls face (she didn’t have any eyes and I really didn’t like that so I put my hand over her face and it turned normal)

saw myself in a mirror and REALLY didn’t like that, my face was all kinds of messed.

Hey, I've been trying to lucid dream for ages now but every time I begin to fall asleep whilst conscious, I get this horrible buzzing/tingling feeling all over my body which is almost loud in an audio way along with physical way. Hard to describe. It envelopes my whole body to the point where I feel so strange that I force myself to wake up. Anybody know what this is/how to get around it? I have lucid dreamed before normally but this has started to happen recently and drive me mad.

I'm new to the sub, so sorry if I ask stupid questions.

I have very good imagination. I can imagine whatever I can in my lucid dreams (what I have pretty often, around 2 a week). I can also "emulate" others in my mind. Why should I lucid dream instead of daydream?

i was wondering if this dream i had last night counts as a lucid
so i didn't do any methods, just went to sleep. i woke up at 5am because i had to use the bathroom, and i was awake enough to have like two sentences of thoughts.

i went back to sleep, then had a nightmare where i was in front of my house facing the other houses, there was a dark black fog and monsters and stuff.

i had a moment of "oh shoot I'm in a nightmare!!" then i told myself things like "if i think about __ then __ will spawn so i should stop thinking about __ and think about __" etc. woke up shaking, not sure if i was actually shaking or if i was imagining it. it was cold, so that's why i had a nightmare.

so... does this count as a lucid? since i had a "realisation" that i was dreaming and i kinda accidentally did a method (don't remember what that one's called, but the one where you wake up halfway through your sleep)

apologies if this is the wrong place to post.

just wanna ask something random, do you have specific positions that make it easier for you to have a lucid dream? And do I need to change positions after WBTB?