Greetings:

Background:
I am a middle aged on and off-again LD practitioner. This is my 2nd (or 3rd depending on how one counts) cycle of practice. I have had some success with LD in the past. During my first cycle of practice about 10 years ago I worked for about 2 months and ended up with 3 LDs, all DILD. During my most recent cycle I practiced for about 10 months and ended up with 17 LDs, 15 DILD and 1 WILD.

All of my LDs end rather quickly, with the longest being perhaps 1 minute in length, the shortest 1-5 seconds.

My motivation and sleep schedule conspired to derail my most recent cycle, although I never completely threw in the towel and quit practicing like i did in the past. I just grew lax in my journaling and began to find my RCs were half-hearted and very habitual, I was not really developing more awareness with them.

I have recently renewed my efforts and started logging dreams or fragments each morning. I now have a solid week of journal entries with at least a fragment and sometimes 2 or 3 complete dreams per night since restarting.


Current Practice:

I usually get 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep per night. Very rarely less and maybe once a week 8 hours. Adjusting my sleep schedule is not really an option due to work and having small children to care for. I go to sleep between 9:30 and 10:30 and get up between 5:00 and 6:00.

I journal every morning and come up with at least a fragment. Usually it is 1 fullish dream and a fragment or 2 dreams.

I currently practice DILD with Reality Checks. When my sleep schedule allows I do brief WBTB. I have had some success with this method in the past.

RC Method:
I periodically think:
"My eyes see forms and my ears hear sounds, my mind knows these are just like forms and sounds in a dream" I follow this reflection up with a hand-check and nose plug, RC. and usually a "general state check", by which I mean recalling how I have arrived at my current location, recalling what I was doing a few minutes ago, etc.. I usually get 10-15 checks in per day. I have confirmed lucidity in dreams with both the the hand check and nose pinch, so I feel comfortable with both methods.

Goals:

reliably induce lucidity 1x per week.
lengthen the duration of lucidity.


THANK YOU!!