Thread: Lucid dreaming easier when not trying?

It seems like the less effort I put into lucid dreaming the better I do. I hardly try as it is but it seems like when I'm not even thinking about lucid dreaming I seem to do better. I wonder if this is true for others who are trying hard to lucid dream but can't.

This is kind of frustrating because I like to think about lucid dreaming. I like to try out different stuff to see how I could make myself and others better lucid dreamers. It's kind of gauche to tell others to quit trying to lucid dream in order to get better, but now I don't think I could now give other advice on how to lucid dream without being a hypocrite.

I'm trying to go back to simply telling myself my dream goal before going to sleep by thinking about as little as possible. No day work as usual, just trusting that I can lucid dream without trying. In order for me to stick with this, I need to not care whether I lucid dream or not.

Does this tactic even work?

Well, I think that when you have experience, it puts you in a different category, because you didn't try to LD for 20 years before lding, and you didn't have many lucid dreams.

If I don't try before I go to bed and wake for wbtbs and micro wbtbs, I quickly lose lding ability and recall drops to one dream. I have to at least do night work. I think that when focusing on dreams too much, you can get stressed easily, and stress kills dreams.

I feel like this has to be something to do with stress and trying to work too hard at trying to obtain lucidity. Sleep is pretty much about relaxing and not worrying on what to do next.

An example was two weeks ago when I had tons of work to do and I was like, "alright, I need to put lucid dreaming on hold and just get sleep and focus on work". Somehow during that week I was lucid about every other day.

And then you have people that try very hard for a couple of months, yet they can't seem have a lucid dream. I suppose the best advice I've seen was to stop regarding non-lucid dreams as failures. Non-lucid dreams can be just as fun/crazy as lucid dreams. Just keep writing in your dream journal and relax. You can try everyday for the rest of your life.

For me, I care and create new goals and plans for lucid dreams, but a laid back approach when I go to sleep seems to work best for me.

Originally Posted by dolphin

It seems like the less effort I put into lucid dreaming the better I do. I hardly try as it is but it seems like when I'm not even thinking about lucid dreaming I seem to do better. I wonder if this is true for others who are trying hard to lucid dream but can't.

This is kind of frustrating because I like to think about lucid dreaming. I like to try out different stuff to see how I could make myself and others better lucid dreamers. It's kind of gauche to tell others to quit trying to lucid dream in order to get better, but now I don't think I could now give other advice on how to lucid dream without being a hypocrite.

I'm trying to go back to simply telling myself my dream goal before going to sleep by thinking about as little as possible. No day work as usual, just trusting that I can lucid dream without trying. In order for me to stick with this, I need to not care whether I lucid dream or not.

Yes I know what you mean here Dolphin - it's in the general attitude and hard to explain without making it sound black and white ...but you gotta know it ...it's like when you know anything - you don't realy worry about it anymore but it is a part of you so it doesn't leave you ...something like this.

It reminds me of the ' Zen mind beginners mind ' saying a bit because it's about keeping things fresh without a bit of anxiety and a touch of non-botheredness as a way of accomplishing

I've had prolonged success with this in the past multiple times. I'm not sure it would work for everybody, though, as with every other lucid dreaming technique.

Looking through my Intro Class Workbook, I first tried this in December of 2013. October of 2014, I tried it again, (post #144, #145) even stating back then that I had prolonged success with it in the past. That was the only time I recorded my results for this, I had 17 LDs in 2 weeks. I even "set the technique in stone".

Now that I think about it, this approach is just like Stephen Laberge's autosuggestion technique, only I don't stress the relaxation, and I indirectly suggest to myself that I will have a lucid dream by reminding myself of my dream goal rather than directly suggesting to myself that I'll have a lucid dream.

There are so many variables and so much variability per person and so much delay involved between training and results that it's probably almost entirely impossible to evaluate single approaches.

Maybe it works because it's a change, and making changes keeps our minds slightly off-balance. I think sticking to a single routine for a long time runs the risk of the brain getting used to it and producing a decreasing rate of success. There are obvious counter-examples though, so "in all things, moderation, including moderation!"

I've had the same thing happen to me multiple times before, often a couple of weeks after kinda letting go of RCing and WBTB. Most of the time it motivated me to continue at it which might be your mind's strange way of telling you not to give up

But I do think it could be to do with stress, because for me personally, if I think about something too much, I often find it hard to comprehend after a while/think clearly about it, kinda like when you say a word 20 times and it loses its meaning. That means sometimes I'll have trouble completing reality checks and even if I try hard not to, I might end up going into autopilot mode while doing it. That's also an issue when trying to do stuff like self-awareness.

Maybe taking a break lets your mind process the work you've just done in terms of lucid dream practising and lets it put the stuff you've learnt to use? Like how when you revise something, you get better results when coming back to the topic briefly again a little bit later, and how when doing a sport/physical activity, too much all at once will damage your muscles rather than improve them?

I know what you mean. Same thing happened to me. Literally had my first 2 lucid dreams this week after 4 months. And the lucid dreams occured without me even focusing on lucid dreaming. I took a break like a week earlier and now I'm experiencing lucid dreams... I think it does have something to do with stress and thinking too much about it.

Now that I think about it, I suppose one has to try to LD if they aren't a natural. I'm not a natural so I have to try a little bit.

Hmmm... so I actually think that after reviewing what I do over the last 4 years, my technique is more incubation than induction, so this makes me wonder if that is why I am able to put so much energy into and get an equal amount of results, because I am not practicing intention or willpower, but incubation. Incubation is choosing what to dream of, so if I choose to have a lucid dream or dream of dinosaurs, or anything similar, I can now with only a little amount of time and effort, because I have practiced. However, the more I practice, the closer to bed time I start having them, and I can continue a dream through incubation as well, so if I start with a lucid dream through my first dream cycle, then I will have lucid dreams for the rest of the cycles, since it is like an extremely extended deild.

Things like intention and will power we have a limited amount of, so if we do it for too long or hard, we will run out and hit dry spells, and if we haven't yet gotten a lucid dream during that bout of intention and willpower, then we hit a dry spell, that can kill motivation.

I think I'm going to jump on this idea of focusing more on dream intentions (or, as Sensei says, incubation) than actual lucid dreaming. I had my first couple of lucid dreams after a year of trying. I think I had "given up" for about a month when it came around. One of my favorite tips of lucid dreaming (that I've given anyone) is to just not think about lucid dreaming too much. It's really very fun to think about, but if there's anything I've learned it's that lucid dreams are not like your favorite fandom. If you think about your favorite fandom all day then it's absolutely likely that you'll dream about your favorite fandom at night, or at least a night or two afterwards. For a long time I figured that it would be the same for lucid dreaming, but it's really not. I think people who do nothing but think about lucidity all day would be far better off if they take breaks from it.

This is kinda weird, it happened to me too now. I broke my two week dry spell with not giving LDing much of a thought throughout the day nor at night. During the two week period I have been working kinda hard at getting lucid. Well, glad I'm at it again