Dear fellow oneironauts!

Seems that sometimes great problems are solved by means of cheating:

In earlier postings I wrote about my fear of loosing conciousness of physical body while drifting into a dream. It has been the same for some month: I'm caught by a dream scene and my fear throws me back "into" my body. Maybe by means of practising this in - and - out game for a while, I got used to being on the border. In the last weeks it seems, that some kind of mist comes up, I'm too drowsy to feel the fear clearly. This allows me to be on both sides (body and dream) simultanously. Neither the body -image is very clear, nor is the dream - scene. But the dream gains own life and I'm able to conciously act inside the dream. I'm optimistic, that the mist and the fear is going to vanish with more practise. Thanks a lot for your support, especially Nibbana.

I wish you all a merry X-Mas and a lucid life in the new year.

Yours

Ralf

Dear Ralf,

I'm delighted to hear about your progress! Please keep us posted regarding how your practice continues to unfold. It's great that you're optimistic about the fear vanishing with more practice, too. I think that is exactly what will happen. Your calm, patient, trusting attitude should take you far.

Merry x-mas and a lucid New Year to you also!

Warmly, Nibbana

Dear Owen

First of all: I'm very pleased, that you succeed in WILDs an DILDs. Your success is inspiring me to get on with my work, as we seem to encounter similiar hindrances.

"A problem with counting is that there are gaps between words and it is here that I am caught out and seized by sleep it seems."

Try and take a closer "look" at these gaps. I've experienced, they may be doors. Yet I haven't been able to go through, but I'm shure, they are doors. Another "door": I sometimes count very slowly. I expand the sound of a word, until I get very quiet. While doing this, the words change their quality. As they spread through inner space, myself opens up. The word "I" gains a different, new meaning. It's difficult to describe. I discover, that I have or am an Ego and in the same moment loose it / myself. Pure awareness remains. And that's a great point for me, because hanging on to me as an Ego prevents me from letting myself go and calmly drift into a dream.

"I can only describe as an expanding sensation in my upper nose, forehead, and front and top of my head."

Maybe it's not the same effect. But while focussing on the bony white, pill - sized dot, the sharper I get the image, the wider opens a space around it. And inside this space are floating the hypnagogic images.

"There must be a name for the kind of meditation I am doing now?" Maybe it's a kind of "Vipassana" meditation. Perhaps other members can say more. I'm not in need for a name. Sometimes I just do it ...

"My strategy has been to plod on and cope with the frustration of dry periods by becoming interested in non-lucid dreams as well. This is very important to me." I, too, think, that every dream is worthful. These days, I'm working a lot on my NDs, again and again surprised about the treasures to be found. It's rather effective to work on NDs to increase dream - sign - awareness: I often reach DSA2 - scores, without setting intentions or much DSA - training during daytime.

Dream on.

Yours Ralf

Dear Ralf,

Actually I haven't had a proper WILD yet, well I haven't had a WILD period, but I believe that my awareness of the hypnagogic dreamlets is improving. I've tried to get some info on the internet and library on a number of questions I have....I wonder if you have any ideas?

During my evening nap I believe I fluctuate between waking and stage 1 sleep where my mantra transforms or otherwise disappears as I enter my dreamlets. I assume these are short NREM dreams. They are not vivid patterns static or moving as I have seen described for hypnagogic hallucinations, but like short mundane dreams. I usually retreat from the dreamlets, or sometimes I fall asleep presumably to stage 2.

My GOAL: To pass lucidly into these dreamlets and thence either to reawake, or if it is possible to pass lucidly into stage 2.

My QUESTIONS:

Is this possible physiologically? At present, as I said, the counted numbers either stop or sometimes I can observe the mutations....then I'm non-lucidly in a dreamlet. Sometimes, I think the mutations and the dreamlets overlap a bit. The mutations are generally such that "ten" will change to "hello" etc OR I am aware that I've forgotten what to say next!

Possibly if I concentrate very hard on the counting I have better awareness (in a lucid sense) of the mutations (but not the dreamlets). But I never get close it seems to me to be able to carry out the hypnagogic dreamlet technique described in SLBs book as I do not observe the dreamlet scenes lucidly!!

I'm not quite sure whether you are observing the white spot and counting at the same time? I had a go the last couple of days with the white spot, I think it might be easier than the flame under the chin.

You mention significance of the gaps between words. I instead have been trying to discover or work out whether it is better to have an intermittent mantra (counting) where one might get "lost" as I do, or a continuous mantra (visual or sound perhaps) where the "only" problem would be to focus on the continuity without risk of getting lost in the gaps.

I have tried counting visually but not aurally, imagining a flip chart turning over the numbers -this for me is harder than the aural counting.

The question of different mantras raises for me another issue. Different parts of the brain deal with sounds, visual imagery; different sides of the brain have different functions etc etc. Thus is it possible that one type of mantra is "closer" to whatever it is that the mantra needs to be closer to to accompany it into a lucid dream? Perhaps this is a red herring as all types of mantras can be used according to SLB.

Stephen LaBerge in his book, in one part, characterises the WILD as letting the body fall asleep while letting the mind stay awake, as in sleep paralysis. Is this where I should be looking? I have been practicing the muscle relaxation (I like this) and pot shaped breathing (I'm afraid I don't like the 61 point exercise). I have to say that in my evening nap I can now fall asleep in 30 seconds if I want to, lying down, sitting, slumped over a table, TV blaring etc, so I don't think I have a problem relaxing my body and mind at the same time..it's how to keep my mind awake as my body sleeps !!!

Regards,

Owen

Dear Owen

"Actually I haven't had a proper WILD yet" No matter. I've had only few WILDs. Although the goal is clear for me, I enjoy the way to and across the border. I think, there are some people in the forum having more experience in WILD, than me. But "I'll do my very best..."

"My GOAL: To pass lucidly into these dreamlets and thence either to reawake, or if it is possible to pass lucidly into stage 2. Is this possible physiologically?" It is possible. But it seems very hard, at least in the beginning of the night. Some yogis are reported to stay lucid through all sleep stages. But as far, as I know, no "western" dreamers can do the same. Anybody may proove me wrong! Refer to pp21-22 "Exploring ..., The sleepers night journey". As the night proceeds, the non - REM stages get less deeper. Near the end of the sleep there is a REM - Stage 2 -REM pattern. Now it is much easier to go conciously into REM - stage after a brief awakening. And I think, it's the same for afternoon naps: You only have to pass through stage 1 (maybe 2) to enter REM. I like to take the easier way and practise WILD in the morning or in an afternoon nap.

"But I never get close it seems to me to be able to carry out the hypnagogic dreamlet technique described in SLBs book as I do not observe the dreamlet scenes lucidly!!" Most of the time its the same for me. But continious training leads to success. I seem to get a "feeling" how to look at pictures or scenes more and more lucid.

"You mention significance of the gaps between words." ".it's how to keep my mind awake as my body sleeps !!!"

I have tried the gap - method, the continious method, the dream - body method, the vision - quest - method, the without anything method. The key is in my eyes the subtle balance between "doing" something (i.e. counting, visualising, just focussing on beeing aware) and letting everything else happen, letting everything evolve by itsself. Sometimes I have to count "weaker", because I don't want to disturb the dreaming image. I found out, that I have to be patient. I still work on the right timing, when to let go into a scene. Not to take the first small scene, but to wait for longer, more stable scenes. It's best to maintain the ultimate minimal awareness. Once I'm in this mood, I'm less frightend on sudden changes of body - perception. But its very close to sleeping. And sometimes it just happens, that I fall asleep for a moment and wake up in a dream. Now it's important to stay "cool". Just keep on and experiment and find your own way.

Wake up in ONE world

Yours Ralf

Wow. No posts in this thread since January.

@Alan and Dominick and all fellow lucid nappers

Here is a short report of my second try with the right - side -position: Duration: 40 Minutes

1. I can focus better, than ever (since I stopped with cigarettes and coffee) on the 61 points.
2. I'm not afraid to aspirate. I breath through mouth and nose for a longer period, but the throat gets too dry, so I close my mouth.
3. After 61 points I focus on the white dot (better, than ever, like I stated above)and count: "One, I'm dreaming, two,... I drift in some non lucid scenes and decide to use my "stick rubbing Indian picture" as a vehicle to "cross the barrier". The best result I get is to forget the physical body for two or three seconds and just be the Indian. That is more, than I expected. I'll keep you posted.

Guys - "on positions": Paul Thoely, one of the Lab Rat Great LDers, seemed to use a most unique position -- flat on his stomach, face down. Sort of awkward, but I've had some success here as well. Reference = Lucidity Letter (avail on web) .

Shimmering light,

Dominick

Position explorers-

Correction on my assertion that P.Tholey was the "Face Down" explorer. The reverse prone position was explored (required?) by Alan Worsley as reported in "Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain", pg. 325, Gachenback & LaBerge (the same), Editors. I recommend the anthology if you can find it.

-- Dominick

MILD Query

I am interested to know if experienced MILD practitioners generally go back into the same dream and are cued by the dreamsign that they were visualising prior to sleep or tend generally to be cued by different dreamsigns in whatever dream comes along when they go back to sleep.

Owen

Dear Owen,

This is a reply to a posting in the "Prolonging - Thread":

Thanks for your advice. I had a dreambody.

The MILD exercise:

"I tend to fall asleep too readily or the visualisations become confused and I don't feel that I am able to establish a really strong intention to remember to recognise I'm dreaming."

It is important to get enough sleep. And then the pot - shaped breathing exercise is helpful. If I'm very tired, I do some physical exercise combined with deep and fast breathing. That clears the mind. For a real MILD I have to get up. Getting up seems to be the key to success in attaining lucidity. It is not enough to simply wake up and drift off again. This works very seldom for me. Mostly I sleep at least five hours, use alarm clock or ND and then get up for at least five minutes. The time of being awake depends on the mood, I'm in. The clearer I feel, the shorter I rise. If I'm too wide awake, I can't get back to sleep.

Generally I get back to bed and do the MILD until I hopefully get lucid. Rarely do I cycle through all rounds. Mostly it is the first or second and I fall asleep. I can't say, how long I stay with one part of the exercise. But I tend to pick out short dreamscenes, so that I can more frequently imagine to get lucid. I think, that is important. So, nowadays I don't do the exercise like it is written in Stephens book, but I started doing as I was told, and that is important today.

OK. Continue picking on us.

MILD and WILD dreams to you

Yours Ralf

Hi, Dreamers

Inspired by the successful work with the MILD exercise, I decided to have another LD on the last day of July, just to achieve a new highscore of LD per month. And that is what I did: I had two, one earlier in the night, and one in the frame of MILD exercise in the morning.

So I had seven LD this month, and that is quiet satisfying for me, a new "highscore". And I proved to myself, that I can have LD (nearly) at will, if I work diligently with the MILD and morning napping technique.

Take a look at the following list and see, what methods I used to succeed:

Date Method

0307 none, had an interrupted night 0807 Re - entered dreamstate after awaking due to ND - Cue, NOT MOVING 1707 MILD + nap 2107 MILD + nap 2407 MILD + nap 3107 Intention 3107 MILD + nap

Hope, that inspires some of you.

I'll post my LD of today later.

CU

Yours Ralf

I started using the nap technique every chance I get. It is unbelievable. I don't use mild with it however. I just intend to enter the dream state. Sometimes I use repetitive mental affirmations. I keep my mind focused and wait for some detailed imagery to come along, then I find ways to get myself into the dream scene. Once in, I stabilize the dream as best I can and enjoy myself immensely. I basically induce a wild. The hypnagogic imagery and dreamlets are so intense and vivid that I rarely lose consciousness when they start appearing. I end up passively witnessing some scenario or other, and then try to enter by engaging in whatever activity that seems appropriate to the dream scene. Or by starting out already using some prolonging method, usually involving bodily movements and sensations.

Sometimes I wake up after entering, or a short time after entering. I am very careful not to move a muscle. After waking up and not moving, I try again. I don't necessarily try to enter the same dream, but whatever vivid next scene that comes along. When I first started using the nap technique I would get a lucid dream almost every time. Now, I get several. They happen in clusters. This is helping a lot I think because I can really break down the process of how to get my self into the dream. These tend to be shorter dreams when they happen in clusters. These dreams start out really vivid and I often fail to use prolonging methods.

So anyway, I highly recommend the nap technique. I have used it a total of 10 times, resulting in 17 lucid dreams. Only twice did I fail to have a lucid dream at all, just intense hypnagogic imagery. 10 of these lucid dreams were this month. Sadly, I only have time to use this technique on the weekends I would do this every single day If I had the opportunity. I have tried it during the workweek, but can never fall back asleep, as I am worried that I have to get up and go to work soon. Waking up for only a short amount of time doesn't work out for me; I need to be awake for about an hour when I use the nap technique.

If anyone has some advice on incorporating this technique into a 40 hour work week, I'd be more than glad to hear it.

Hi, Ryan. How does the nap technique work? Whenever I drift off into hypnogogic sounds or imagery, I can't keep it going no matter how calm I try to stay. I just wake up again. Never give up, never surrender. Kate

The way I do it is I sleep for about 5 hours, wake up and stay awake for one hour and read about lucid dreams, or read on this forum, then go back to sleep attempting to have a lucid dream via wild/mild. Usually wild because it seems to work better for me. Check out this link:

http://www.lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html

I'm having a strange nap problem.

Typically, I wake up at 5:15 when my partner's alarm goes off (or right before it, because my body seems to be sensitive to that... I lie there awake in the dark being quiet, until the alarm goes off)then read dream literature, emails, and the like for half an hour to an hour. Some time between 5:45 and 6:00, I go back to bed, and I have to wake up at 7:10 to get up for work.

This has worked wonders for me, except for the past week. I would lie there in bed for a few minutes, start hearing the hypnogogic voices and seeing bits of imagery, then black out for a short span, then find myself dreaming, already fully dream-aware. I had some fantastic lucid dreams doing this.

The entire past week, however, has been a dud. I wake up as usual... read and relax, then go back to bed, drift off toward sleep... and then half an hour later, find myself lying awake in bed. I do seem to go through a black-out period of about 30 minutes or so - I'm conscious of lying in bed waiting to fall asleep for about 15 minutes, then I'm conscious of being in bed awake for about 10 minutes or so at the end. I feel like my body is still numb (not sleep-paralyzed, because I can move if I want to, but I feel like I haven't moved at all) and I don't open my eyes... but I just can't seem to get to REM. I keep feeling like if I could just lie there long enough, I'd go to a REM state... but I can't. I even tried setting my alarm later a couple of times, which didn't seem to help.

I had a cool lucid dream this morning at five AM - so I know I'm dreaming lucid. The Magic Nap just doesn't seem to be working.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Michael

Hi Michael. The only advice I can really give is to relate to my personal experience using the nap technique. Which, by the way I have used successfully every Friday and Saturday night for about 3-4 months in a row. You'd think I would do this every day, but I can't. Why? Because of my job, which is Monday through Friday, 8 hours a day. I have tried many times during the workweek and only managed to get the nap technique to work once. I had lain there in bed until I knew it was too late to get anymore sleep. At that point I thought ' oh what the hell, it's too late for me to get any rest'. I fell asleep and had a lucid dream. Oh yes and I used a visualization of my morning ritual, which seemed to placate my mind into not worrying about getting up and getting ready for work. I visualized getting up and getting ready for work. In my visualization I was driving to work when I finally went into dreaming. My mind just seems too damn preoccupied on workdays to use the nap technique successfully. Perhaps your mind is too preoccupied with work?

Okay. Some other things I have noted about my personal experience of the nap technique. I always use the nap technique in combination with wilds. I start by tensing and relaxing every muscle in the body starting with the feet. I flex the calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, buttocks, abdominal, lower back, pectorals, upper back, biceps, triceps, deltoids, neck, and even flex and relax my facial muscles, distorting my face grotesquely. I hold the flex for 5 seconds and then release. Unfortunately, my girl friend once saw me flexing my face and burst out laughing. Anyway, I find this ensures a greater chance of relaxation. I have noticed that if I am not sufficiently relaxed I tend to spontaneously awaken when I had no intention of doing so. Or simply can't get into dreaming.

Then next critical issue for me is getting into a relaxed position. Sometimes something simple, like the placement of my hands will force me to move once hypnagogic images have begun. I find that any movement sort of resets the whole process for me. For example if I get all ready to go, and I begin to see images, and say it took about 5 to ten minutes. If I suddenly have an intense itch on my nose and give in to it by moving my arm up and scratching vigorously, I have just reset the process. I will now be laying there for another 5 to ten minutes once I settle down and quit moving again. If I do have to itch or need to relocate, I do so very slowly and deliberately, so as not to disrupt the process.

Anyway, after I am in my relaxed position I quiet the mind. If I have thoughts, I have them about what I am getting ready to do. Such as; now I'm out of body, or now I dream aware. This is where, I believe, wild has the advantage over mild. There is no black out period. Sometimes there are brief non-lucid dreams that happen very fast. How I get into the dream is through the hypnagogic imagery. When it appears I either start visualizing in my head where I want to go, or try to feel myself walking into the dream scene. Quite often I find myself walking directly into some dream scene that started out as a random hypnagogic image, but gelled into a full on dream scene as soon as I interacted with it. I have noticed also, that I can "add to" hypnagogic images. For example I saw a chair. I thought of desk, and now I was seeing a chair and a desk. I thought office and a row of desks and chairs appeared, inside a room. It's a trick of visualization and categorization. It is fairly easy to add to hypnagogic imagery if you are adding something that belongs to that schema.

An annoying factor of hypnagogic imagery, in my experience, is that they have triggered normal sleep for me all my life. It's almost like a hypnotic trigger. Flash goes the image and boom I'm asleep. It becomes important at this point I believe, too interject tidbits of rational process to avoid simply blacking out and falling asleep. I had trouble with this a couple of weekends ago, and had noticed that I was just waiting for the images and expecting to get into the dream aware instantly. Then, even though I was getting intense hypnagogic imagery and occasional dream scenes, I would just pass out to wake up annoyed later. I couldn't figure out where I had gone wrong. Then I tried using affirmations on the next time around, and got right into the dream with ease. It was a big difference.

I can relate to what your are saying about the body being numb but not dream paralysis. Usually just moments before getting the hypnagogic imagery, my right thigh goes numb. Then, eventually, my whole body sort of feels numbed out. If I move, it immediately feels normal again. If I focus on the weird feeling of numbness it tends to intensify and annoy. When I find myself doing this the dream attempt usually fails. I have learned to get around this by visualizing. When I start visualizing, even if I can't "see" the visualization but just have an idea of an active scenario that keeps me involved, I lose the focus on the body. This gives me immediate relief, and allows me to quit focusing on my body. In some cases when I am not feeling very visual, I try to feel myself outside myself. I try to keep my awareness exterior, focused away from my body. As you probably guessed, this often leads to the classical definition of dreaming aware, the "out of body experience'. If you ever find yourself lying there numb and unmoving, you might want to try that. Sometimes I think nothing is going on and then I get an exterior focus and boom, I'm off, astral style.

Wow I'm a bit long winded today. Must be the several cups of coffee I just slammed. I hope you can find something helpful out of all that. Other than all that the only thing I can think to add is to maybe shake things up a bit. Dreaming routines can sometimes become stagnant, play around with different techniques. Take off that mask and leave it up to your own devices every once in a while.

Dream well

Hi, nappers!

Thanks for sharing thoughts. In fact I'm having similar problems as Michael lately. I have been successful in one of two or three nap and MILD attempts. But lately I had a dry spell of more than 10. One reason is, that I'm getting up too late, I think. Body is too wide awake. And mind wanders to things of everyday, easily. And then I had and still have that snoring problem. But seem to get used to the thing. This is pointing to that something changed, because I learned to relax deeper. All in all it seems to be a question of motivation to me, too. On one hand I'm over motivated, I do very much work on LD, nearly all day in the last weeks, since I'm home from hospital and still not back to work. On the other hand maybe there is some resistance to be conscious always. That is what may apply for Michael, too. Just a thought on top of Ryan's excellent mail, that goes into deep on his napping - practice.

CU in LD

Yours Ralf

Ryan and Ralf,

Thanks for your excellent suggestions. I think that perhaps I have somehow gotten my sleep schedule a little out of whack - perhaps this will just sort itself out as my circadian rhythm re-adjusts. We've got a big festival to host this evening, and then I'll be back to a more regular sleeping life.

I experienced the same weird frame of mind this morning. I tried going the OOB route, and found that I couldn't get a sense of the dream/astral body separate from the physical body; I tried several different separation techniques, from pulling hand-over-hand on a rope to rolling sideways - I felt like I was out of touch with my real body, but couldn't get any sense of reality to my dreambody. Gentle efforts to move (rocking, swaying, shifting sideways) had no result, and too much effort caused my physical body to move. It's a very boring state of mind to be in - the mental equivalent of sitting in a quiet dark room with nothing to do. I tried visualizing dream-starting scenes, thinking about where I wanted to go once lucid, etc... nothing worked. I got flashes of hypnogogia, but nothing more than just a second or two, and they vanished before becoming "real".

Thanks for letting me vent... I'll let y'all know when I get back on the Lucid Bus!

Michael

Ryan or others, I too have had the frequent experience of "blacking out" after intense hypnogogic imagery... can anyone elaborate on suggestions to keep the consciousness there? Affirmations? Like what? Thanks and Peace!! Michael

Greetings WILD nappers, This is my first post on this forum and since the napping technique is what allows me to be successful at inducing LDs often, I thought that this will be a good place to start. Like most people, I have a tight schedule because of work and other things. Having lucid Dreams was very rare for me and was something very difficult to achieve. Many of the other techniques didn't work for me, and keeping a dream journal was very impractical. To keep things not so long, I'll go straight to my technique. Between the time I have when I'm free to sleep and the time I have to leave for work, I would schedule myself 5 to 6 hours for the first phase of sleep. This would mean going to bed sometimes between 9:30pm to 11pm. Since I'm not a morning person, I would drink a glass of whine to help me sleep. Then, depending on when I was able to fall asleep, I would get up between 3:30 and 4:30. I would take a shower, get my coffee machine set up to brew in the morning, and whatever I would normally do in the morning. I prefer to be up at this point around 2 hrs, minimum of 1 hr. Before napping, I would occupy my mind with what I want to dream about. For me I use my computer 3d graphics art and animations about a character I want to dream about. Then I'll take the nap, giving my self 2 hrs of sleep before I have to wake up and go to work.

Through research and self experimentation, I use chemical substances to help enhance my REM sleep periods and my level of awareness during sleep. An hour before the nap, I would take a dose of 5htp to help increase the periods of REM sleep 1 hr before the nap. Then when I take the nap, I would wear a final stage nicotine patch. I found that falling asleep with a nicotine patch will make dreams very vivid. The disadvantage of the nicotine patch is that if I have a hard time falling asleep, it will make falling asleep worse. If I found myself not asleep within 30min from the start of the nap, I take it off.

The results I get very from week to week. Some weeks I will have an LD every morning to maybe only 1 LD that whole week. Hopefully this info will help many LD-ers, especially the ones who have a hard time making LDs happen, because I was one of them. I might later on post results of my LD experiences on other topic specific threads, like dream control, ex.

Cheers, Josh

Josh,

I've heard of using nicotine patches to have more vivid dreams. Does the vivid dreams help you to become lucid?? I've also heard that these vivid dreams can be vivid nightmares. Have you had this problem? I thought about using the patch for dream enhancment but I'm a former smoker and I was worried that getting a dose of nicotine might make my very small cravings (quit 10 years ago) for cigarettes become worse. By the way... what is "5htp"?? Thanks for sharing your experiences!!

The patch by itself won't make you lucid. I tried it on the earlier stages of sleep before and I would just get very interesting non-LD dreams that were very easy to recall. I haven't experienced nightmares from it yet, but I can recall only a few close calls. My friend who unintentionally gave me the ideal of using the patch to enhance dreams recalls getting nightmares from falling asleep with the patch. He also watches horror and zombie films alot.

For me, how the patch helps me LD when inducing a WILD is by keeping me alert while falling into REM sleep. If you happen to find yourself having problems retaining conciseness while trying to induce a WILD, the patch in my opinion, may help.

Sometimes for me, the process the leads to the dreaming stage would be extended, which is what I call The Void. It's the stage where you first lose direct sense of your body, kind of like an internal OBE, first you feel the sensation of floating or falling, then vision of self kicks in (it's when I can see my own hands), then the dream environment kicks in. I don't know if this is typical when inducing WILDS or if it has to do with the chimicals I'm using.

As far as info on 5htp, there's a sight called 5htp.org that has all the details. I learned of it's use on another LD forum and tried it for myself. The dreams did seem longer when I tried it, so then it became part of my routine.

Josh,

I think 5htp is a serotonin precursor. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter in the brain that has something to do with mood. Some anti-depressants raise serotonin levels in the brain. I think I remember reading also that serotonin neurons are involved in dream production in the frontal cortex.

I've had many WILDS without the use of chemicals, and the pre-dream experiences I've had are as you describe.

As to the nicotine patch: Darn, I never should have quit smoking!! Seriously, though, do smokers have more vivid dreams? I don't remember this being so when I smoked. Maybe it's once-in-a- while nicotine that does it.

Paul

Hello fellow Lder's,

This is also my first post to the Lucidity Discussion Board. I've recently found the most consistent success in inducing lucid dreams using LaBerge's Napping method outlined in Unit 4 of the Course in Lucid Dreaming. During the past 6 months I've spent working at lucid dreaming I've only had the opportunity to sleep in on the weekends; my work schedule and daily travel time severely limits performing the technique to it's fullest. I am normally a night person but I've been keeping a pretty good sleep schedule during the workweek to facilitate dream-filled nights. However, I still have the bad old habit of staying up late on Friday and Saturday nights, which throws my sleep schedule out of whack. I have experienced 98% of my weekly lucid dreams on a Saturday or Sunday morning but, up until last week, they've been pretty much at random.

As a diligent practitioner of the Course, I decided to perform the Napping method on a Friday night/Saturday morning, going to bed as if it were a work night. I went to bed at my usual time (10:30 PM), got up at 4:30 AM and stayed awake until 6:00 AM, keeping busy recording dreams and staying away from caffeine. This has certainly seemed to do the trick. I had two back-to-back lucid dreams on Saturday morning. However, I stayed up much too late on Saturday night (1:00 AM), performed the technique at a relatively later time the following morning and no LD. Given the opportunity to have Tuesday off from work, I once again went to bed at my usual weekday time, performed the Napping method and was rewarded with another lucid dream.

Has anybody experienced negative effects from altering their sleep schedule in the way I've described above? I get the feeling that a consistent 7-day-per-week sleep pattern is a requirement in developing and enhancing lucid dreaming skills.

P.S., like Josh, I also use herbal and (legal) chemical substances to aid in dreaming, a particular favorite being DMAE taken after a middle-of-the-night awakening. I, too, am a smoker and plan to quit within the next year. I've used the patch to help me quit in the past and look forward to its dream-enhancing benefits on the next go-around.

Rich

This week, I decided to up the dose of my 5htp intake from 150mg to 200mg 1hr before napping. Here's the Positive result; The lucid dreams lasted twice as long! The last one with that dose that I can recall, (I don't keep dream journals, and this one happened half a week ago,) after I finished an experience I typically like to do in LDs, I found myself still dreaming and Lucid. Normally around that point, I would lose lucidity or wake up. But after that point I got to have my induced experiences again, but with variation to keep it fresh. I could recall being aware enough on do reality checks during the later phase of the long dream when I temporally lose Lucidity.

Unfortunately, where there's a positive, there's a negative. The main one is that the higher dose could put me to the dream phase too fast and not have a WILD. I remember another morning where I attempted to not let myself drift of two fast and then have a hard time falling asleep. I might continue experimenting with that higher dose this week to learn more of the character of it's effects and then set priorities. (Quality vrs Quantity.)