Thread: Dream Control Training Course

Modulate emotions

The first moments of a LD might be all a novice LD'er gets to see - might it be for the excitement, the panic of losing the LD somehow, or not managing to overcome the fear in a nightmare. As you see, it's mostly about emotions, and you will learn to control both them and yourself in these passages.

Don't panic - Of course, one can probably learn it by the first LD or so, but emotions play a very powerful role in dreams right form the beginning - and big emotions majorly so. When you realize you are dreaming, remember to stay calm - as it will allow the dream to continue.

Relax - During the first moments of lucidity, even if you didn't burst in excitement, and managed to stay put, you can still find you're pretty much hype inside, or shaken if you got lucid from a nightmare. What you need to know is, you most likely got lucid somewhere in the middle of the dream, and thus it can still go on for a long time, but you will need the right frame of mind to avoid losing lucidity or waking up altogether. So, after the first moment, take a second to notice your emotions. The dream will wait for you, the story always waits for the protagonist. Knowing what you feel, it will be much easier to you to get a stable hold of yourself.

Take deep breaths - Now to get a peaceful state of mind, stable foundations from which your dream can become pretty much anything. (If you allow feelings to pass unnoticed, they could later modify the dream and divert your attention - troubling your lucidity.) Take deep breaths, accompanied by mantras of your choice, like "I'm calm" or "I control my emotions", or a yogic mantra if you are practiced with those. If you know any on-the-spot relaxation technique, they all work pretty well.

Be aware of your dream body - Your dream body is one of the most stable elements in your dreams, as is the most powerful representation of ourselves we possess IWL, so getting to be aware of it can keep one pretty stable into a dream. Get to feel your positions, your senses (explained in another point), your movements, and if you can't manage, then move around a little, bump into things, force experiences to happen! Streams of information from the dream is what keeps you inside, so get it flowing.

Keep anchored to the dream world - During the whole process, it's important to keep contact with the dream world, as it keeps us informed of his changes (so you might prevent loss of lucidity) and prevents us from losing the dream state and waking up. This can be easily done by keeping your eyes open, keeping contact with your surroundings by any means you can think of (touch is often used). More explanation on this will come later in the guide. This is also a great way to stay in the dream if you find your eyes closing: just keep listening, grab something (even your clothes) and feel textures, until your sight comes again (remember that it's not necessary at all for the dream eyes to open, you can just visualize something, even a entirely new scene ^^)

Take it easy - Always remember, if you fear the LD will somehow end (because of either reason, lucidity loss or awakening), it will be that fear to end your LD, and not at all the thing you're fearing. Experienced LD'ers learn to take it easy, because being confident in their abilities is often all it takes for one to make it going the way they desire. If anything, it's a dream we're talking about This can be brought to the point of continuing what you were doing upon the realization, to let the transition into lucidity be completely painless for the dream scene, and more gradual, so to avoid bursts of emotions.

Slow down - While doing all this, if you often find yourself losing lucidity instead, you might want to stop what you were doing before you gained lucidity, as you will probably need some concentration the first times to maintain the lucid state. If you are in a nightmare, you could not have the material time to perform all this; however, nightmares often produce spontaneously a higher kind of lucidity, so you might not need most of the modulating practice for those. Nightmares are problems waiting to be solved, and will surely keep you in - since now you can actually be of some help in resolving the issue.

Tips

- If you possess any technique IRL which you use to focus, relax and/or concentrate, you can use that one instead, as it will surely have the same effect in dreams, if not more.

- I know, you are saying right now "But this is enormous! Must I waste minutes of my precious dream every single time i get lucid?" Well, luckily for you, the answer is no: you can indeed learn to modulate your emotions, as well as get any part of the preliminary moments to a LD done, much, much faster, with outside-the-dream practice, that is, while awake. But there is an appropriate chapter for the details.

Increase awareness and stabilize the dream

Congratulations! The first part was easy, but now it's only downhill from here ^^
Now that you're in control of yourself, you might or might not experience different kinds of problems, from inability to focus your eyesight, lack of sensory input of different kinds, to still having doubts about the dreamstate. This are related one to the another, as faces of the same problem: lack of awareness of the dreamstate - and as such, they can all be fixed with the same techniques.

SHORT-TERM solutions: These are quick, short-term solutions to increase your dream awareness: most of them are collected into Sandra's "Prolonging Lucid Dreams", but there are some less known that might work for you:

Falling backwards - it works on the same principle as the spinning tech: it alerts your (dream) body, activates the equilibrium centers, gets you more alert and aware of yourself by auto; only, if you're afraid you might hurt your head, remember that you can't be hurt in dreams if you don't want, and even if you do, it's all harmless really ;p

Looking at your hands - many find this a efficient method to refocus your awareness and intent. Coupled with autosuggestion induction "I will look at my hands in dreams", looking at your hands can become pretty much all you need to do to both get AND keep a LD.

Eye movement - Moving your eyes in any pattern, will it be circular, left-right, or random, while having a look at what you're seeing, makes you more aware of the surroundings, and alerts equilibrium centers; it is even a form of psychotherapy (EMDR, used to recall forgotten past events, mostly), so its power is already widely demonstrated.

Jumping jacks - This aerobic exercise has been found by some as a great method to become more focused on the whole dream body, bringing more lucidity forth. It also brings up renewed excitement.

Adjusting dream properties - Some visualize knobs that influence some dream properties, like focus or color, or even lucidity itself, and play with them. Just imagining of having one in front of you and moving your hand accordingly can do the trick Plus it can really work with everything, so feel free to experiment.

Putting on your glasses - For you glass users, there is an obvious solution to clear the blurriness out of the dream - putting on your glasses ^^ or cleaning them, if you find them already on yourself. Just imagine them in your pocket, or clean them with your t-shirt, and see the difference for yourself |)

Engage more senses - A general idea consists in focusing more on the dream world by taking in multiple kinds of experiences at one, and this can be easily done by using more than one sense. Try to also hear your surroundings, touch or smell anything nearby, or even lick it! Try to feel the details of what you're experiencing, the subtle textures, be engaged in the act, try with different objects, keep trying to get the most out of any encounter throughout the dream: it also allows for enhanced DR and a more full experience all-around.

The cure-all: asking - In a way, it's you who is creating the dream around you, so your requests for some change in the dream properties will be very probably answered: you can either think a request, ask in a normal voice, or shout it with full voice: the choice is up to you and how you feel at the moment (if you feel groggy, for example, you might want to get some energy circling by shouting; if you are peaceful, you might only talk instead, as there is no need to force anything). The request can be pretty much anything, form "Increase lucidity" to "Increase focus" to "I want to stay in the dream", to the point the possibilities of this tech go beyond the simple stabilization: you can really ask for anything, ranging from "Show me something amazing!" to "I want to meet X" to "I want to go to Y" to "Show me how Z is done", it's completely up to you. Just be confident in the results, and they will come.


LONG-TERM solutions: If you think you have some more time, which you probably have , you can experiment with longer, more effective solutions, that work better in the long run, and can even pile up permanently if you wish so.

The most famous: the lucid pill - Put your hands into your pocket: do you feel something? Pull it out: it's a small pill, of the color you prefer, and it's got some neat properties: it can skyrocket your lucidity for the entire duration of the dream, or if you prefer, it can even extend its properties to other dreams, permanently, making you more lucid every time you realize it's a dream!

This is a quite common scenario, using a pill for enhancing your lucidity, but it is very flexible in all its properties: the "pill" can become any kind of aliment, or medication, or even a fluid in a syringe in extreme scenarios; the effects can range from any kind of lucidity increase, with durations variations, to any kind of dream property, to any power development, both IRL and in dreams (IE. it can power up your flying abilities, or your skill with a skateboard). Whichever it works or not, like any other thing in a dream, it's completely up to you, and your confidence in the process. To boost it, you can pretend it's made from some respectable source (IE. the lucidity institute, or some professional LD'er), and even contact this source beforehand to reinforce the whole belief construct.

Looking for dreamsigns - Start looking around, and find all incongruities that you can find; learn how do you feel exactly, and treasure that feeling (could be of pure joy and relaxation, to feeling weird, to being a little confused or feeling a little distorted); learn how a dream looks and feels like, so it will be much more easier to recognize it by these signs later in the same dream, or even in other dreams, opening up to faster and better lucidity in later sessions.

Undressing - Getting your jacket, your sweater, or your shoes off forces you to get a more complete idea of your dream body, and its awareness can thus become much easier to maintain. A more extreme option is getting naked, or undressing in any high percentage, and while it might sound extreme, it has its advantages: you are now completely self-aware, and that sensation will surely be a whole lot harder to shake off; it allows for more sense interaction with the dreamworld (like feeling the cold wind in your chest), always a good thing, plus it opens up interesting conversation options with dream characters :p And not only that, another reason why it's so effective is that it distances WL from your dream, as you wouldn't go parading around in public naked (typically). You're also claiming the dream. "This is my dream, I can do what I want." Reinforcing the dream = better control and lucidity.
The original idea was laid down by Wyvern, in his "Get naked" topic.

Calling for help - Ask and you will be given, a good man once said, and dreams is one of the places where it is intuitively more so. You invoke the aid of a certain character - be it your SC, your DG, your SG, any advanced dreamer, any celebrity (Jackie Chan, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Rock Lee from Naruto, you name it) - to accompany you in that dream. Be sure to call someone you believe in, of which the friendliness you have never doubted, and that you think it possesses the power to effectively help you. It will make a nice acquaintance nonetheless. Have a nice chat |)

Power up your Conscious

This is an optional step; you are free to skip this part if you aim for the basic enjoyment of a LD. However, you may wish for some higher form of lucidity, like the power to manipulate the dreamscape, or developing any particular ability, and for this, you might need more presence of mind.

You might recall there you felt strangely in dreams, feeling completely separated form reality, being unable to remember details of real life, or to rationalize properly, like your mind was cushioned in cotton wool. This is because the conscious, rationalizing, left-hemisphere part of the brain is toned down during the night, leaving room to the creative, subconscious, right-hemisphere part. In order to get your conscious back to full power, and gaining thus more power over the dream, you might need some exercises.

Remembering your real-life details - Try to remember what your name is, where do you live, try to guess what time it is, what is your parents' age, etc.; but keep an eye on the wandering mind, remember yourself it's a dream, and keep consciousness of the dreamscape! ;p

Math - It can range from simple additions and subtractions, to anything onward - powers, factorization, geometry, even theorems and proofs. As you probably guessed, more complicated operations bring clearer states of mind, and clearer states of mind allow for even more complicated operations.

Singing a song - Remember a song you like, or make one on the spot (it's easier than you may think); sing it in your mind, or out loud, or make someone play it for you (ranging from a friend, to a tape recorder, to your personal orchestra). It allows for more emotional participation than mere facts recollection or math, thus is more enjoyable, and enjoyable things are always more effective.

Recite some poetry - If you have a flair for it, a piece of poetry can work just like a song; always remember to pick a happy/powerful one, preferably, and one that is dear to you, most importantly. It also applies that you can make one on the spot: it can also make for great art once you remember and write it down IWL ^^

Claim the dream - This dream is yours, state it, believe it, feel it. It is entirely made from yourself, the clothes you're feeling on your skin, the faces you're meeting, the forest and mountains you see in the distance, the music you're hearing now. It's all made by you, take time to realize.
The human mind is a powerful thing, isn't it?
And if you're doing all this at once, it should be an easy enough tasks to add a few modifications to the whole thing, shouldn't it? Afterall, you can see in the eye of your mind a fireball springing from your hand and being thrown, so it is very possible to bring it into existence here, just like you can normally visualize a tree, and that tree is standing right in front of you, in the dream, during this very moment. What's the difference, really? You are seeing its leaves, touching its bark, hearing its rustling, and let me tell you this, it's actually amazing, how we can bring this sort of realism up in a fictional world, every night, for any and every object.
In the same way, you can you can feel the heat in your hands, hear the roaring of the flames, see the flash of light that draws a line in the air. If dreams are a sensory illusion, why would a particular sensory experience be more difficult to you than another? You are in charge of this dream aferall, so it's up to you to decide what to bring up.

Grow your confidence

Believing you can is really the panacea for anything you might want to do in a dream, thus it deserves its own section in this guide.
The basis of this section is, dreams are heavily influenced by your thought and emotion, because all is taking place in the same mind. So, by learning to control your emotion, stay and think positive, it will be much, much easier to keep the dream under control and make it steer in the desired direction.

Imagination is the real power in dreams: trying to lift a heavy object by brute force will rarely take you anywhere, as you are losing focus and imagining there will be some resistance, like the weight, that keeps the object down. Instead, imagining of having superpowers, or the object being weightless, will work much better. Seeing yourself succeeding before attempting will almost result in a even higher rate of success.

What I'm trying to say is, how can brute (and fictional) strength take you anywhere in a world completely made of fantasy? Dreams are the realm of the mind, and thus it must be the mind to accomplish feats, not the body (not even the dream body, as it is a representation to you of the real one). Next time you must do something, relax your body, and use your imagination instead: by visualizing how the process will be, you are already putting it into (dream) reality, as the mind is actively working towards the visualization. Get engaged with your senses, with your emotion, make it feel as real as possible for you, and it will actually become real, as you actually are in the realm of your imagination. (I really can't stress it enough)

Chances of success can be boosted up a tremendous amount by starting with something more familiar to you, or in which you already have put confidence. It can range from a jetpack to fly for the tech lovers, to a potion made from a friend you trust, to dancing side by side with the best dancer you know. Just invoke the aid for something or someone that you think it will make things easier, and it will. After that, you are free to continue using the aid or realizing it was you all along and acknowledging it as your own power.

Tips

- Always, always remember to take it easy. Getting mad at things will bring you absolutely nowhere. Take some deep breaths instead, think positive, and think of an alternate way of doing the task at hand: it won't be long before you think of another one

- If you still find difficulties, then get some help! It can come by any mean, from dream guides of any sort (already described in the long-term solutions), to instruments with magical properties, either single-use or not, to anything you feel it might help really. And go forward little by little: do something that feels easy for you first, then grow in boldness, and reach for the stars, and beyond them! As long as you think it is possible, it will be indeed.

Establish and carry out your intent, prevent your dream from fading

Now that you've reached your desired lucidity level, it's time to do, be, make whatever you planned to!

It all starts with remembering your intent - it shouldn't be so hard to remember what you planned to do before going to bed; if it is, you might want to increase your lucidity some more (look for the "Powering up your conscious" section). When you are finally aware of what your goal for today is, remember to take it easy: trying too hard leads nowhere in dreams; instead, worry less and be confident a lot more in your abilities. If you find hard to spawn a certain modification in the dream (like teleporting to a certain place, make something appear, or shapeshifting your body), remember it's taking place in your mind, and as such you can put something in your dream just by thinking it: asking for changes activates related thoughts, or you can just start visualizing the change you want to obtain, and with as much detail as possible (including multiple sensory perception), to both increase the possibility of it happening and the satisfaction with the result.

Of course, if you find the dream fading and getting blurry while doing this, you might want to raise your average awareness of the dreamworld by focusing less on your task and more on what's happening around you, and your sensations.
For getting the task done, you might find more suggestions in the "Grow your confidence" part.

Your task, however, could take longer than expected, and in this situation it is a good advice to check regularly your lucidity level, at least the first times. Do so with quick RC's or other short-term solutions, or remind yourself it's a dream every now and then. Be sure to keep awareness over a minimum level. This is easily obtained by performing impossible actions, like practicing superpowers, or flying, so that they act as a constant reminder that you're dreaming.

When a dream starts to end, you will notice senses fading, visual getting blurry and/or distorted, and losing perception in general. Act quickly! One of the things to do is simply willing the dream to stay, or you could do any of the short-term solutions to regain contact with the dream, particularly touching objects and hanging on to them, as they are dream objects, and as such, you have to stay in the dream to keep a hold of them.

Writerscube posted an insightful advice on this:

Originally Posted by Writerscube

The next time your dream starts to fade, try treating the fading effect as physical matter--it'll make it easier to tear it off of your dream ^_^ and let some light in.
It's what I did when I first discovered how to keep myself in my dreams and not wake up.
1. Dream starts to fade.
2. Tear fade-effect-curtain down.
3. Discard curtain somewhere to the side or in a corner so no one slips on it.
4. A nearby trash can would be the best place to discard Fade-Out-Curtain.
5. (Optional) Sue whoever designed the Fade-Out-Curtain if you ever find him/her ;P I certainly haven't found the culprit for such an outrageous dream inhibiting dream-object so if YOU do, drop a fish market on him/her for me.

More in general, since we are used to interact with physical objects in reality, we can treat events in dreams as such, effectively bending the dream to better fit our customs.
Do you think you can't do that? Then think of when people turn a knob to focus better the dream sight; now why is that, how can that happen? How can a thing such as the entire sight of the dream be related to a (fictional) hand gesture? Besides, that correlation would not at all be a fixed dream property, since one can use tons of other ways to do that, or can use the same knob later (or the same hand gesture, if there wasn't any knob in the first place ;p) to accomplish entirely different feats, such as making the sun rise, or rotating a distant object. So, who decided that pill you're ingesting will help you with your flying skills? It isn't given at all, it could transform you into a bear for all one knows before actually trying. Dreams are the realm of fantasy, afterall.
So, who's really in charge of saying what goes? Think about it. A little hint: you did wish, or command those things to happen before doing them, didn't you?
The answer is, therefore, simple: it is you. This is your dream afterall, you define the rules all the time, unconsciously for the most part. But you can take this process in your hands, and by the time you can create some really advantageous rule, you'd better sieze the opportunity .

Tips

- Taking it all like a game will help a long way - not only you tend to forget about all those concerns this way (and that's a very good thing, since enjoying the dream = keeping it stable, plus the whole fun factor ^^), but it also allows for more mental agility and prowess, the kind that only rapturing moments can draw out of ourselves, and that's quite the best that could happen to you, since it's all taking place in your mind.

- And what after you did what you have planned beforehand? Don't call yourself done yet, there's still so much to do! |) You probably have thought of something else along the way, and you can now get right to it; if you didn't, you still have the other goals you planned to do in your LD; and if there's none left, either take your fun or think of new ones, not even the sky's the limit to what you can accomplish in your dreams! Or, there's always the beautiful dreamscape to explore, remember to take some time for that every now and then ^^

- If for whatever reason, you want to end your LD and wake up, you only have to disengage from it: some go to sleep in the dream, or you could just stop, close your eyes and start wandering with the mind, maybe trying to remember what position you were in while you got asleep. Just remember to do a RC after you woke up, as you could have ended up in a FA!

Nightmares

Nightmares require to be dealt much differently from normal dreams, both for the different pace of events and the urgency of the situation.
There is already a guide on nightmares by LDphone, so feel free to use both in conjunction.

First things first, Lucidity is much easier to obtain in nightmares. Sense of fear, monsters tormenting you, particular things that you do, recurring details, are all reliable dreamsigns, that can be effectively used to become lucid mid-dream.

Lucidity is also much easier to maintain, and this for various reasons: fear activates the mind (and the body) more fully, preparing for the common fight-or-flight response, making us automatically more aware of our surroundings, in order to better plan a strategy. It is much harder thus to lose the perception of the dreamstate, in any way.

There is also another reason: nightmares are obviously a signal of some problem, a problem that is calling out to be solved; if it wanted to stay a problem, it might as well have kept itself hidden; instead, it's showing its face, pleading for your attention, so you might acknowledge. For that reason, when you finally are able to solve the problem by being lucid there, it will cling to that and won't certainly let you go easily. Many people reported trying to elude the problem and minding their business in such situations, only to find themselves in a FA with the nightmare still chasing them. Nightmares are still a part of your mind, so they're not totally evil, and will often try to reason with you if you do the same.

That brings us to what exactly to do after you acknowledge the nightmare: the options are mainly 2: dialogue, and if that fails, fight.
To establish a dialogue, bring yourself above the level of the nightmare tormenting you: its only instrument against you is your fear, so standing ground, head high, against your problem, knowing that it's your dream, not its, and thus you are in control and cannot be harmed; when you let fear take control of yourself, or give your back to the nightmare, you are allowing it to happen. So just stand there, and interact. By this process, the enemy will likely stop, and dialogue can begin. It's important to to get a picture as big as possible of the whole thing, so ask generic, friendly questions:

• "Who are you?"
• "Why are you here?"
• "What do I have to do?"
• "How can i win my fear?"
• "Can you help me?"
• "Can i help you?"

and let the answers enlighten you. Ask more, of course, if you feel it is needed.

If you find your nightmares are too short for any of this to happen... do it in daytime. You could outline the problem beforehand, by remembering what could be a cause for the nightmare to occur. What are you doing before the "bad part" occurs? How do you feel about the situation? Why do you perform those particular actions? For what reason this happens?
When you have found out more, you'll discover the dream is telling you something, and the next move is up to you. Acknowledgment and acceptance can work in most cases: fears can be useful after all (like fears of pointy things), you just have to acknowledge it so you can choose whether to act out of it or not, where it is needed. So just try to find out more on the situation, and try a friendly approach with the problem : it's all parts of yourself we're talking about, after all .

The next phase often consists in a positive outcome: The nightmare could represent a memory tormenting you, and then it undergoes a transformation into a much friendly and nice looking entity; or, it could be an unaccepted part of the self (like a particular fear) and thus it need integration. A hug is usually the most obvious choice of action, and the nightmare can either disappear and become part of the dream self, or undergo a transformation like said before. You can now enjoy your LD |)


Remember, those scenarios are purely representative; being a product of your mind, like all dreams, nightmares are sure subject to changes in form and behavior: this, however, is a general code of conduit that has been proven useful in most cases.

Tips

- In some cases, the nightmare might refuse to cooperate. This can be because of multiple reasons, but mainly it could be because it represents a situation in which courage and action are required, like when this situation is lived through daytime with submission. It's up to you, then, to fight it, but only shouting and commanding him to go away might prove useful: the important part was taking action and imposing yourself in that situation, after all, and that's what you just did.

- After the nightmare is defeated... demand a gift! Those gifts can be prove themselves the most amazing experience in your existence. It can vary from some beautiful music, to feelings, to a more all-around enlightenment; be sure to treasure it!

DAILY PRACTICE

Did you enjoy reading through the dream practice? |D It sure is a lot of stuff to do, and one wonders if all these developments in skills, attitude and confidence could be helped outside dreams. Well, the answer is, they indeed can, and here we are, at the Daily Practice part. You probably noticed your behavior plays a major role in dreams, so by learning the right behavior during daytime, you can affect dreams positively, and be sure to get the best out of your next LD's.

Show your motivation, and pick and exercise or two (more are of course a good choice ^^) to practice through your average day, and remember to have fun doing them, they can be both fun and quite interesting They will cover multiple grounds, from building confidence, to actually developing recall skills, to focus, to lucidity, to getting used to the idea of staying lucid, its practice, and its consequences. Find the one technique that appeals you the most, and apply it, for the time you need, remembering to put quality over quantity. Whenever you do it, mean it. That's all I'm asking, for bringing your sessions to full results.

Originally Posted by pasQuale

What do you do in real life, when you want to stay calm? Try doing that in your LD.

Content summary:

• Using your dreams:
  Rewriting dreams; Learning from your previous dreams; "Chose NOT to"; Interpreting your dreams
• Going through your ordinary life:
  Lucid DayDreaming; Retracing your thoughts, retracing your day; Lucid Living; Affirm your intentions
• Taking time for yourself:
  Keeping your motivation high and getting a checklist; Meditating; Beyond the Impossible; Law of Attraction

Tips

- You can also verify what method should work better for you, to keep lucidity in a dream, during daytime! In fact, the main difference between being lucid in a dream or not, is not a property of the dream itself, but rather how you relate to it; in this sense, you can practice anchoring yourself to your surroundings even if what's around you isn't effectively a dream. When experimenting with ways to stay lucid, see how well you manage to grasp the bigger picture and stay aware: there are several symptoms, as sensing like your view has widened, more senses got engaged, there is more awareness of your position of your body, while keeping check on what happens around you; you know what your present thoughts are, without being dragged by them in the daily rambling, and this by diverting your attention on what's outside, in the present moment. It is possible to sense a distinct feeling of being there, alive, participating actively in the context, being the "I" that experiences its senses. With practice, it becomes easier and easier to bring up this state at any moment, thus being able to maintain lucidity for extended periods. It complements extremely well with LL, since it brings about the same sensations, and both methods can aid the other in keeping an increased awareness of the surroundings.