inducing dreams without the use of traditional techniques?

First of all, I'm happy to be here! FryingMan lured me away from Reddit's Luciddreaming-sub.. not that it took much convincing, since I already had spend some time here at DV reading some of the very excellent tutorials.

A little bit of backdrop; usually I do WBTB in weekends, I mostly do DEILD's with occasionally WILDs.. and have recently taken up MILD again.

Regardless of method however, the overall approach is the same, in that I'm handed a setting and then excersize control over it in various way, with varying success. So I've been thinking about ways to induce dreams w i t h o u t having that as part of the traditional techniques.
So the question is about dream induction. The average opinion, as far as I can tell, is that if you think a lot about what you want to dream about during the day, the repetition will do it for you. - Provided that there's an emotional backdrop, that is it really 'means' something to you.

While I tend to agree, that it's a viable approach, it's also seems as if it's only a part of the story. There's a lot more to dream formation. Like things from the past that was not significant in any way, or things that never happened, takes place in my dreams. All events I did n o t think about or even remotely concerned myself with during the previous day.

Why is this interesting then? Well, if there is a key to unlocking the logic to what is being dreamt, we could potentially make induction far more easier than simply working with repetition (or digging into WILD and variants).

The situation could potentially be that the schemas are purely emotionally selected and that the randomness is truly random within the context of the overall emotion. Like, let's say I'm feeling slightly stressed, a bit short on time f.ex - it's no surprise to me that I dream about a chaotic train ride where I struggle to find the right train and get to it in time.. but it's less obvious why there's a kangoroo onboard the train f.ex.
For this example it would make sense if I had any reason to think of a kangoroo, like I've seen one on tv during the day, thought about wildlife in Australia etc. My point is that I have a slightly hard time assuming that anything in our heads are truly random.. mostly because like 50% of what I dream, I can trace back to a why I dreamt it with ease.. but it still leaves a lot of seemingly random stuff. Can we exploit the random parts?

TLDR; any ideas about dream incubation that doesn't rely on repitition w. emotional content or are a part of WILD (w.variants)?

Woohoo, glad to have you here! My only successes with incubation involve either repetition (daytime MILD), or thinking about something in the process of falling asleep.

Children seem to be able to induce lucid dreams simply from feeling excited about dreams and then deciding for themselves "hey, I want to do that in my next dream!" - and actually believing in their ability to become lucid, without any doubts.
This, of course, will make them more focused the next time they fall asleep, which in turn will increase their chances to become aware during the next dream.

I believe this is probably the simplest way to induce lucid dreams - just firmly decide for yourself that you are going to become aware in your next dream, and really believe that you can do it.
In fact, I think this is how Stephen Laberge did it when he started practicing his skills in lucid dreaming - at least, it was a major part of his practice.

Thanks for the replies.. I don't have that much of a problem of becoming lucid (of course more is always better), but I'm thinking more of it in context of not having to control the dreams more than absolutely necessary, since exerting a lot of control tends to make my dreams unstable.
So if I could just have the setting I wanted to begin with, I would in effect not have to 'control' my way to get that far.

I'm not sure I'm being clear here.. But say f.ex that I want to be at my first girlfriends house, in my dreams, rather than going lucid in a random place and have to figure out a way to teleport/fly/conjure myself to get there, and risk the dream becoming unstable, I'd prefer to simply start out by being where i want to be.

I have had a marginal success with controlling the starting point/setting using WILD, but I find it pretty difficult to get anything resembling consistency. I basically start of someplace random for 90% of the time and have to start out with trying a trick to get where I want to be, which is frankly f***ing annoying.

RiftMeUp, I've wondered the same things about dream content and also really want to be able to induce the exact starting setting that I want. I've never been able to get it right off the bat, but I've gotten it very closely after being lucid. I think the EASIEST method I've seen is just thinking, feeling, "being", where you want to be as you fall asleep. I did this and became lucid within the dream after some unrelated nonsense. I then tried to get where I was going, only to realize it was right outside the whole time. So, for me, the best/easiest way is to really feel yourself in the place you wanna be as you're falling asleep, then while lucid in dream, just keep wanting to be there. I'd suggest walking around corners and wanting the place to be there, this works best for me. This lets the subconscious do things for you and keeps things easy as opposed to trying to control the setting directly, which seems to exhaust the consciousness (you).

I really like that concept of inducing the feeling of being present at a place.

I did at one point try to go through every detail imaginable in a specific room, right down to the dust on the lamps and the vains in the wooden table.. But that really seemed counter productive compared to honing in on a single item unique for the location.

I actually think someone at DV wrote about it in a thread; finding one item unique to a setting and the dream would build the rest. - Which did work for me 2 times, but that was like 6 months ago and I hadn't made it work again.

Since the schemas, at least in part has an emotional backdrop, the feeling of 'being there' could be a part of it. Like if you want to play out a scene from Star Wars, you could watch the scene, imagine it in a 3D space during the day and then when going to sleep, recall how you felt about watching the scene for the first time while imagining 'being there'.

Wouldn't that cover all the bases pretty well? Emotional context + visual ques + sense of presence = auto location/scene setting.

Thanks for the input, it's greatly appreciated.

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Originally Posted by RiftMeUp

I did at one point try to go through every detail imaginable in a specific room, right down to the dust on the lamps and the vains in the wooden table.. But that really seemed counter productive compared to honing in on a single item unique for the location.

I actually think someone at DV wrote about it in a thread; finding one item unique to a setting and the dream would build the rest. - Which did work for me 2 times, but that was like 6 months ago and I hadn't made it work again.

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I've never actually tried that, thanks for the inspiration and glad it worked for you! And remember, if it worked for you once it can work for you again someday, you never really know when it'll happen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RiftMeUp

Since the schemas, at least in part has an emotional backdrop, the feeling of 'being there' could be a part of it. Like if you want to play out a scene from Star Wars, you could watch the scene, imagine it in a 3D space during the day and then when going to sleep, recall how you felt about watching the scene for the first time while imagining 'being there'.

Wouldn't that cover all the bases pretty well? Emotional context + visual ques + sense of presence = auto location/scene setting.

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Yeah! I've never tried to incubate a specific series of events, I usually just create a motionless setting, but if you really imagine being there while it all happens, that could definitely work. And I'd say bases definitely covered!

And when I say "feel" like you're there, I mean really "feel". Like imagine what the floor feels like on your feet, the air on your skin, etc. And if there's action going on you can even add in what it would sound like. And of course, visualize it as realistically as you can, as if you were standing there in person.

You're Welcome! :cheeky:

This is somewhat shocking to read, as I am developing a technique that goes off of this very idea. I have begun looking at all the events and people in my dreams, and tracing them to the time of day and activity I was doing the day before to find patterns. I do believe it is possible to discover the mind state and type of activity one must be doing to implant them later in your dream. If this can be perfected, a person could implant a series of events or a consistent dream sign every day, and reach very consistent lucidity. Still developing it, alas...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RavenOfShadow

This is somewhat shocking to read, as I am developing a technique that goes off of this very idea. I have begun looking at all the events and people in my dreams, and tracing them to the time of day and activity I was doing the day before to find patterns. I do believe it is possible to discover the mind state and type of activity one must be doing to implant them later in your dream. If this can be perfected, a person could implant a series of events or a consistent dream sign every day, and reach very consistent lucidity. Still developing it, alas...

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Don't want to burst the optimism, but I believe StephL mentioned a study that showed that dream content tends to be related to experiences of several days before (as opposed to the day before like the general public believes). Still, I believe there indeed seems to exist some pattern, so all you would have to do would be to calculate around that average. I'll pm you the study if I find it ;)

I don't doubt it at all Zoth.

What I am interested in finding out is if there is a specific time or times of day where induction is more likely to occur. That way if I thought about my desired content at the correct time for 7 days, (arbitrary example) on the 8th day it would work and then continuously work, or at least more often than not. Just something fun to test while I go about my normal awareness *shrug.

I'm pleased that you already had the same ideas.. and are working on developing it no less.
I've had some incidents that might help us get a bit closer, in that there seem to be a hint on how to go about it. Here's a short version of them

a) During the awake part of a WBTB I was in the bathroom and I was annoyed by how loud the the toilet was running, so I reached down partially behind the water container and turned the knob that controls the water intake (figuring that I would actually deal with it once I got up for good). Partially out of sight I had to look at the knob to grab it.
Back in bed I had lucid dream where I was in a white basement-like room. The only thing of note was a big water outlet. A piece of pipe with a diameter of a CD, with a lever on top of it.
There was a pretty fair and obvious connection, so much so that I in the dream realized the connection. Proportions and look was off, but the prior action was clearly being re-used.

b) This was about a month ago. I had been wondering about shapeshifting in lucid dreaming for a while. By chance I was standing in sunlight in the kitchen and my hand was casting a big shadow, showing it to be 5-10 times bigger than real life... and I immidiately thought of The Hulk.
A few days later I had my first shapshifting experince in an LD where I changed into The Hulk.

c) This was just this thursday. We were at a dinner with the in-laws. I poured my wife som water from a fancy glass container. However the design and the angle I got a hold on it, made the pouring awkward.
Same night I dreamt of a bedroom where there was a huge TV suspended at the end of the bed. Hanging from the wall by some metal contraption in a peculiar way. Looking away and then back at it, it was gone and I realized I was dream.
Waking up I realized that the back of the TV had had the shape of the water container and the angle it had hung in was how I had poured.

My point it is, that it would seem, that physical actions that are just slightly unusual have some way to slip into LDs. The first example seem pretty obvious to happen - just moments before the dream, you ecco what is in your short term memory. Example b was motivated by a desire to try morphing, so not so surprising really.. But the last example felt like an epiphany. Like it short of clicked into place. The things that mostly seem incomprehensible dream stuff are severely distorted events from awake life... It must be possible to figur out small actions that could trigger events for later dreams, on purpose.
Thoughts please?! :)