Peter- I see what you meant now. And I agree, that could be taking place. It might even have happened to me, but without my being convinced once awake, due to my having been truly lucid at other times, I guess. Dream on, Kate

I'm pretty new to all these methods but I have a theory about prolonging lucidity. I think that actively trying to prolong your lucid dream may actually be detrimental and may in the long term be setting yourself up to fail. When you feel your lucidity begin to fade and you actively try to prolong it you are creating an anxiety in your mind about losing lucidity, and this will become a pattern, repeating itself in all your lucid dreams. Eventually this will start to make you wake up or lose lucidity every night because it's what "always happens". Instead try some reverse psychology and comletely go with the flow - if you wake up you wake up, if you become non-lucid so what? By using this technique I believe you take the pressure off yourself, and when there is no pressure or fear of losing lucidity, I think your lucid dreams will naturally become longer over time as there is no anxiety about losing lucidity. Of course when you are in a lucid dream you want it to go on as long as possible, but consider the long -term benefits of this method. I'm convinced it will work.

Hi Nick,

Welcome to the Forum! And thank you for sharing your thoughts on prolonging lucid dreams. Anxiety over a dream's fading can indeed lead to awakening, however, you may be surprised to find what research in this area has revealed. I encourage you to read the article entitled "Prolonging Lucid Dreams" by Stephen LaBerge, available on TLI's website at http://www.lucidity.com/NL7.34.RU.SpinFlowRub.html.

Sweet long-lasting dreams to all! Keelin

Hi! Hope anyone is still paying attention to this thread because it seemed the best place to post in this instance. My issue is about prolonging. I had an LD this morning that ended alost imediately, but was pretty strong so I'm wondering if it could have continued had I acted differently. I was going down a street in my town in a nonlucid and imagined I was driving, but there actually didn't seem to be a car around me. Then I was suddenly still on the road, but it had changed. It was in a peaceful rural setting, quiet and with trees bordering the road up ahead, and yellow grass and a weathered wooden building where I was. I realized I was awake inside my dream. I felt the usual rush of gratitude, happiness and excitement, and was getting ready to walk down the road and experieince the dream. But my drean body had changed from being sort of suspended over the road to being lying on the left side of the road. I wanted to get up and I thought that doing so would be the best way to stay lucid. But it was as if I were exhausted, sick or dead drunk or something - it was a struggle to get myself upright. And in my efforts, I woke up. Obviously my dream body being hudddled on the side of the road was from some consciousness of my real life body in bed. And I guess I tried so hard to get up that it affected my real life body. I'm wondering if I should have just lain there in the dream and experienced the dream world from that position until the dream got stronger and I found it easy to stand up? Or is there some particular method I could have followed? In this case, movement was not the way to prolong lucidity. But I don't feel the dream was just doomed regardless due to my being too close to the waking edge. I was very much in the dream world, it was vivid, and I was very clear I was awake inside the dream. I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions. Thanks, Kate PS Enjoyed reading the postings above again. Especially the part where Joy tells Shane that Ralf we be along to interrogate him. It made me laugh.

Hi Kate,

In response to your question:

"...I'm wondering if I should have just lain there in the dream and experienced the dream world from that position until the dream got stronger and I found it easy to stand up?"

Next time you find yourself in a similar situation, why not rub your dream hands together until the dream feels more stable? Not attempting such a big move (as standing up when you're feeling a great resistance) might work better. This should allow your mind to continue to create and hold onto the model of your dream body that is at odds with the intruding sensory input from your starting-to-wake-up body.

Also, it's helpful to keep in mind that at some point the REM cycle will ultimately reach it's time limit. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you just fall awake. ;) Of course, if that happens, you can always try to slip into a WILD.

Prolonged sweet dreams to all, Keelin

Hey everyone, I'm new here on the forum; I started learning lucid dreaming for a year-long self-directed project for school last year. I emailed the Lucidity Institute to see if they had anyone who could help me out, and Keelin volunteered. She provided many helpful tips and a lot of encouragement throughout the project. By the end of the project in mid-May, I had had about 25 lucid dreams (before the project I had never had any), but I was having a lot of trouble prolonging them; most were no longer than a minute or two, so I gave up on dreaming during the summer. Then in September I had a spontaneous LD, and in the past few weeks I've been successful in inducing more. Also my prolonging problem has disappeared. Not sure why exactly. Some of the things I've been doing differently from how I used to are using spoken commands, like for instance 'focus' when my vision is all messed up, just being more confident and thinking clearly has helped too, and also not worrying about stuff like whether I'll remember the dream when I wake up if I make it go on too long.

I've been using the rearranging sleep method a lot recently; I'll wake up 4-5 hours before I need to get up, watch a movie, and go back to sleep after spending a few minutes setting my intentions and all that good stuff. I succeeded in having my longest lucid dream yet last week by doing this. And the best part is I can usually find the time to do this at least 4 times a week with my current schedule. The only big problem with it so far is that I'm not good at getting back to sleep when the time comes; It sometimes takes me an hour or more. Maybe I just need to spend more time doing a relaxation technique.

sweet dreams all -Garrett

Hi Garrett,

Welcome to the Forum! Your dedication was memorably impressive throught your project and it is truly a delight to have you join us here.

Bright dreams to you! Keelin