Thread: Too Short a Lucid Dream to Stabilize?

I've been having this issue throughout every single one of my lucid dreams but one. The problem is pretty self-explanatory, I trigger lucidity in a dream but it immediately ends within 1 to 2 seconds. After that I spend a little while in what I can explain as a state between wakefulness and sleep. During this short transition I experience a series of uncomfortable vibrations or whatever and then I wake up. I don't know if this last bit of information is relevant or not to my question but felt I should include it anyway.

I know the purpose is to stabilize once lucid, but I find the time I have to work with very limited that, by the time I fathom the idea of stabilizing I've already lost the dream entirely. I've only attempted using my senses to ground myself in the dreamworld but, I end up looking at a blank canvas at which point I realize I've fallen into this transitional stage. I've been thinking about imagining something, anything from within this limbo of a state to create myself a new dream, or even using the traditional stabilizing techniques (palm rubbing, spinning...), see what happens.

Do any of you have an idea as to what else I could do to surpass this obstacle?

To me it sounds like you get overly excited once you attain lucidity and end up losing it. The 'problem' you're suggesting is more simple than you think to solve.
Take off this pressure of 'having to LD every night', because you're making it the desired end result. You just have to focus on what would be fun to be doing inside your dreams.

For example: Instead of using the mantra "I will have a lucid dream tonight", use this "It would be fun to dream of myself inside of a spaceship tonight".

(Visualization goes hand in hand with this also)

Take off the pressure and add up the fun, if your brain doesn't work well with the stimuli you're giving, then it's worth a shot trying to get it another way!




Sleep on

The state you're in afterwards is REM Atonia. If you visualize or try and recall the dream you were just in or a dream you've recently had, or use another method to transition from REM Atonia you can use this as a springboard for DEILD. I often experience this when I get random DILDs. The dream ends within 2 to 5 minutes (if not flat out seconds), but since my body hasn't moved at all and I'm completely relaxed but still lucid, it's very easy to enter directly into a dream after exiting the original. Try searching around about DEILDs.

Originally Posted by Caiocontieri

To me it sounds like you get overly excited once you attain lucidity and end up losing it. The 'problem' you're suggesting is more simple than you think to solve.
Take off this pressure of 'having to LD every night', because you're making it the desired end result. You just have to focus on what would be fun to be doing inside your dreams.

For example: Instead of using the mantra "I will have a lucid dream tonight", use this "It would be fun to dream of myself inside of a spaceship tonight".

(Visualization goes hand in hand with this also)

Take off the pressure and add up the fun, if your brain doesn't work well with the stimuli you're giving, then it's worth a shot trying to get it another way!

I'm not sure "excited" is the word I'd use to describe my experience once lucid, though I do get an emotional surge the moment I trigger it. I do however, get stressed out over the fact the dream is about to end, so that might fall in there perfectly with being overly excited. Call it expectation, as I'm surely already unwillingly conditioned to fear the impending doom of the dream crumbling to pieces, so I need to work on that. As for having a focus or end goal beyond lucidity itself is something I hadn't thought about at all! It completely flew over my head, but makes perfect sense! My objective all this time has been to achieve lucidity, and yet, once I've met that goal, my mind senses there's nothing left for me to do and so wraps it up and ends the event! So, I'm definitely going to work on changing or extending my initial goal, maybe adding a bit of visualization as you suggest, and hopefully I can move on! Thanks for the tip Caiocontieri! Sleep on indeed.

Originally Posted by snoop

The state you're in afterwards is REM Atonia. If you visualize or try and recall the dream you were just in or a dream you've recently had, or use another method to transition from REM Atonia you can use this as a springboard for DEILD. I often experience this when I get random DILDs. The dream ends within 2 to 5 minutes (if not flat out seconds), but since my body hasn't moved at all and I'm completely relaxed but still lucid, it's very easy to enter directly into a dream after exiting the original. Try searching around about DEILDs.

Odd, I didn't think I wouldn't be able to move in this stage had I wanted to, then again, I never did try so no question on that! That DEILD thing still confuses me though. I thought the idea behind DEILD was that it kicked off from within wakefulness, which is why I never bothered with it seeing as I take a lot of time to drift back to sleep. Maybe I just misunderstood how it worked, so I'll follow your suggestion and use memory coupled with visualization to springboard myself back to dreamland. Thanks snoop!

Well, I really just meant even if you stop feeling the vibrations and essentially exit the state, not moving a muscle still allows for falling back to sleep very quickly while retaining consciousness. That, and I'm able to move during REM Atonia if I really want to, so sometimes I don't properly take that into consideration before I speak. I mean, I feel paralyzed but if I will myself to exit the state and move around I can (I just don't, normally, because it's so useful for getting into a dream).