How long are your LD's?

[Sangfoot]

Hi All! I am wondering how long your lucid dreams last? I am trying to set some realistic expectations for myself. My lucid dreams usually only last what feels like three or four minutes. I know some people seem to be able to spend MUCH more time in the dream. I have had maybe 20 or 30 lucids at this point, so I am thinking I may need to start adjusting my expectations so that I am not so disappointed. If people respond and say that they are able to spend much longer amounts of time in the dream then I will keep on trying! Thank you for the responses! - Sangfoot

[FryingMan]

How do your dreams end? Slow fade out, or instant eject? Are your dreams ending based on certain actions or at seemingly random times in the dream? Maybe resolving to keep your senses immersed in the dream, periodically do stabilization like quickly patting down your body (chest, stomach, legs) with your hands, etc. Do you know what time in your sleep schedule are you dreaming? I'm not quite as far along as you (I just hit LD #10), but I know that my LDs almost all end due to increased excitement or losing track of the dream environment. My longest so far are also all about 3-4 minutes. That's just about the time, I'm noticing, where my lucidity may start to waver a bit. Personally I'm going to work on becoming really well grounded, and periodically boosting awareness of my dream body by doing a quick pat-down and glancing down at the body, it just takes a few seconds and I think the results are very good. I think 20-30 LDs is still considered in the beginner range. I know I would like really long LDs as well (20+ minutes, 40 minutes ,etc.). But first, just getting lucid is the goal, and once there, begin to work on control and stabilisation. The more lucids, the more practice, the better they'll get. At least that's my focus. And practice visualizing in waking life becoming lucid, doing a quick stabilization, and "grounding" yourself (reminding of goals, etc.) before just running off . p.s. and learn to enjoy all your dreams, don't become frustrated, keeping a positive expectation is key to LD frequency and quality.

[Sangfoot]

Hi FryingMan! Thanks for the response! My lucids usually slowly fade out as I start gaining awareness of my real body again. I feel like I catch most of my lucids as I am naturally waking up and I have not been able to put myself "back to sleep" to enter another long REM cycle, so I have short lucids then wake up. I completely agree about stabilization. I have practiced grounding my senses in several lucids and that has really helped increase the vividness, but hasn't seemed to have a large impact on the duration. I will keep practicing though. It's so funny you would mention not getting frustrated and keeping it a positive experience. That is something I always have to keep reminding myself. I have practiced this in the past and have found that as I relax and try to be okay with whatever dreams I have my dream vividness and lucid frequency really increases, so I think you are right on with this!

[FryingMan]

Hi FryingMan! Thanks for the response! My lucids usually slowly fade out as I start gaining awareness of my real body again. I feel like I catch most of my lucids as I am naturally waking up and I have not been able to put myself "back to sleep" to enter another long REM cycle, so I have short lucids then wake up. I completely agree about stabilization. I have practiced grounding my senses in several lucids and that has really helped increase the vividness, but hasn't seemed to have a large impact on the duration. I will keep practicing though. It's so funny you would mention not getting frustrated and keeping it a positive experience. That is something I always have to keep reminding myself. I have practiced this in the past and have found that as I relax and try to be okay with whatever dreams I have my dream vividness and lucid frequency really increases, so I think you are right on with this! OK slow fade, that's good to know, sounds like a normal dream ending rather than an abrupt ejection from excitement. I have only experienced a slow fade out in my very first LD, where upon the first fade I instantly did a spin that saved the dream for 10-15 more seconds (but did I take that time to stabilize? No, I kept running like a madman Second spin didn't save it ). Well that's not entirely true, I did get slow fades on a couple others, but in those I had already lost visuals. If I had learned the full-body patdown and applied it I maybe could have restored that dream, or even just tried spinning, I had about 10-15 seconds of blindness before the fade-to-body happened. Unfortunately in my other dreams I either got ejected instantly (excitement) or the fade was so fast that I didn't have time to react. Have you tried spinning when you felt the fade begin? Another DV member says he "dives into the ground" when he feels the fade starting and many times "lands" in a new dream. I think practicing these things in RL (diving into the ground may be a bit hard to practice ) helps when they happen in a dream, you can do them as a reflex instead of having to think "uh, oh, what should I do, ...ah, too late". Then there's DEILD, which is supposedly very effective upon leaving lucids. You might try that, and work on DEILDing attempts upon the exit from normal dreams. The experienced LDers with a lot of dreams all seem to use DEILD quite a bit. So cultivating the ability to wake up and remain still and try to re-enter the dream is probably a very good investment.

[PalmDreamer]

My one and only lucid dream was about 4 seconds long. It ended suddenly (because I woke myself up accidentally while attempting to teleport).

[DreamscapeGoat]

I've only had an LD last about a minute or two before fading away. I'm working on stabilization and prolonging, though, so it shouldn't be a bother in the future. Also, shouldn't this be in General Lucid Discussion?

[Scionox]

Mine last very various amount of time, starting from a few seconds and maximum was, i think, around within 30-60 min range, one of more recent ones was around 15-20ish min. It helps to not think about 'time left' or waking up in lucid. Also when stabilizing be calm and focus on dream senses, never rush it. Also something that worked out for me at times when dream fading out is 'grabbing' into dream and focusing all will on that. And like FryingMan said, DEILD can be great, especially if you can manage to chain a few of them. *Moved to General Lucid Discussion*

[Sangfoot]

Haha Frying man I have tried diving into the ground and falling backward. I guess you could say that the technique worked for me the problem was that I entered a FA and didn't catch it either time lol. So I probably will experiment with that more in the future as I have quite a few FA's and they are a good source of lucidity for me. Scionox, wow that is so cool! I am very encouraged to hear that you can have these longer lucid dreams, thanks for sharing! That is great advice for me about not rushing the dream. Usually even if I do remember to stay calm and stabilize afterwards I usually start trying to rush the dream plot along wondering how much time I have left. I think that things would go better, and I would definitely enjoy it more, if I just stayed calm an didn't rush anything.

[Sangfoot]

So for some reason even though I have recorded so many non-lucid dreams I never thought to try to judge how much time I spent in the dream in them. Because of this thread last night I tried to see how long the dream time is even with my non-lucid dreams. I am so encouraged by the results! I believe that even in my shortest non-lucid dreams I have like ten or fifteen minutes of dream time!! That gives me a lot of hope that I can have similarly long lucids!

[FryingMan]

Yes good point about non-lucid length. When I can recall the transitions between scenes well the duration does seem to get upwards of 20 minutes or even more. Add DEILD to that and you can probably fill up entire REM cycles lucid with experience. That's what I'm hoping and what I'm working towards .

[Laurelindo]

They usually last one or two minutes after I fully realize that I'm dreaming. I tend to forget about stabilization techniques, but I will make sure to remember it next time. My longest one so far was about five minutes though, and I spent most of it making out with a pretty girl. It was cool, because it felt exactly like in waking life.

[Rothgar]

In my experience, the longest ones I was less lucid and sort of going along with the dream. I have also had the ones for 2-3 minutes where I was more lucid. Usually these end when I do something like flying around and then say "that was cool. What should I do next?". Then I will wake up. Or last night a dream character then went after me in the air after i stopped to consider my next action, and I awoke. I am curious if it is more about what you are doing with the time that determines ithe length.

[AnotherDreamer]

My longest lucid dreams have lasted for hours, in dream time, whatever that means. On average, they last about 5-20 minutes depending on how close I am towards wake up time (I get an adrenaline rush and I can feel it in my dreams so I know that I'm about to wake up and I try really hard to calm down). But I read in this book written by some Rinpoche guy (The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep) that when you become a true master, you can stay in a lucid dream as long as you desire.