Okay, it has been some time! Up until now I have been practicing dream recall and noticing short awakenings during the night to prepare myself for lucid dreaming. It is going great. I have noticed that training becomes more effective when I let go of the training pressure. Instead of frantically setting alarm clock times, reading everything about lucid dreaming and frustrating myself when I don't make any progress, I actually seem to make the most progress when I don't pressure and try to control myself. This is somewhat paradoxical, letting go of control seems to feel incompatible with the seriousness of goal setting, sustaining discipline, and planning for lucid dream experiments. Occasionally I have a lucid dream. I am unable however to relate those to any specific kind of behavior or action from the previous day(s).

Currently the most challenging issue is how to integrate exercises, like Reality Testing, into my everyday life activities; when I go to work, visit friends, doing sports, etc. Because this is one of the most core training exercises to master, I really need to find a "natural" way to integrate Reality Testing (event-based) without 'pressuring' and 'controlling' myself.

A great assignment for this week! How are you guys doing? Still doing Reality Tests?

Well, I have finished up my last exercise concerning Reality Testing the whole day long. The main reason: no incorporation of testing or reflectiveness whatsoever. No lucid dreams. After doing the exercise a couple of times last week, with no results, I thought it was time to move on. Reality Testing seems to me a more appropriate technique for assuring that you are dreaming, rather than a technique that should be incubated to become a dreamsign.

The next thing I will focus on is learning to wake up with my eyes closed. This is a valuable exercise for two reasons: (1) for recalling dreams (makes it a lot more easier!), and (2) for recognizing wakefulness. The latter is paramount for doing WILD. Noticing the times at which you wake up naturally during the night is a great way to implement WILD naturally.

But before I start practicing that, I first need to become more aware of wakefulness!

An interesting thought. What if you could use dream incubation to intentionally incubate your own dreamsigns instead of waiting for them or discovering them after weeks of dream journaling? I could for example decide on a particular person to become my personal dreamsign, think about him or her all the time during the day, thus making the person a big part of my primary waking thoughts, and so securing the fact that my mind picks up on my particular interest and incorporates the person as dream content the following night: turning it into a pretty easy dreamsign to recognize.

From reading some research literature on the subject, there is actually very little scientific ground for the effectiveness of dream incubation. For one, almost any practitioner reports experiencing much difficulty of incubating predetermined dream content. In most cases, none or even very few (often ambiguous) elements come through. The justification of the ineffectiveness of dream incubation is argued to be related to the random (and thus unpredictable, chaotic) nature of dreaming in which dreams are generated from the brain stem during REM. This popular notion that we all process our daytime experiences during our dreams the following night is actually for all not certain. Just take a look at your own dream accounts.

On the other hand, I do have enjoyed several lucid dreams in which my mind incorporated my Reality Checks from daytime practices. Without ever recognized a single dreamsign, out of daytime routine, I just executed a Reality Check out of nowhere and suddenly realized that I was indeed dreaming. Obviously, turning a Reality Check into an "incubated" dreamsign is quite effective! Paul Tholey was one of the first exceptional lucid dreamers who actually argued that performing RC's on a regular basis during daytime (10, 20 to 100 times a day) greatly increases ones chance of becoming lucid. Stephen LaBerge agrees. Reality Checks are the best dreamsigns you could ever incubate.

So if this is true, and scientifically grounded, the best way to start off my daytime practices is to perform as many Reality Checks as possible. This means that prospective memory is utilized differently: this kind of Reality Testing is not related to recognizing predetermined events, persons, or other cues that would serve as training targets. It is not event-based but rather time-based. Instead, I just perform as many Reality Tests as possible ... just whenever I think about one. No doubt I will end up Reality Checking over 100 times, I'm sure.

But let's give it try. Like to join me? Tomorrow I will start with this experiment and reflect upon my recalled dreams the following morning. Feel free to share yours!

In the past few weeks I have started to sleep properly (longer and better) and enjoyed a fair increase in my ability to recall dreams (3-5 each night; occasionally lucid ones). It was so much fun to revisit my dreams in this engaging and experimental way. In the first week I found it hard to stay in bed after waking up because I automatically wanted to go out of bed to do work, but that completely changed the second week. It takes some time to automatically wake up with that intention to recall dreams. But ones you're there, dreams are just "there" the moment you wake up.

In the following days I noticed something important though. Although it is physiologically true that the longer you sleep, the more you will dream, psychologically speaking I tend to experience more difficulty to recall dreams when I sleep long and awaken naturally. I guess that that has something to do with waking up from either REM or non-REM. Waking up in the middle of a dream makes dream recall almost inevitable to occur because the dream is still vividly lingering in your experience. In contrast to waking up naturally in which your last dream has most likely "fade out" before you actually wake up. Almost no one wakes up naturally out of REM. Because of this, Stephen LaBerge recommends novice lucid dreamers who find it difficult to recall dreams, to set multiple alarm times throughout the night (targeting for the 4 or 5 REM periods) in order to intentionally wake yourself up directly from a period of dream activity (REM). That would certainly make dream recall much easier, as I experienced myself.

The reason why I think this is important to write about, is that you should not confuse your lack of dream recall (when you sleep longer) with the idea that that also means you haven't dreamt that much. That is not true. When you sleep longer, you dream more, and the more chance you give yourself to recognize one or two dreams while you are dreaming and become lucid. Simply waking up from REM makes you feel like you have dreamt much more, because it made recalling dreams much easier. Sure, but that generalization is not true. There is a difference between how much you dream each night and how much you are able to recall.

I will continue to keep up my dream recall practice and start with daytime practices next week. Until then, happy dreaming! How are you guys doing?

Once you feel you sleep properly, a good habit is to check whether your dream recall abilities have improved as well. In most cases, this has simply to do with how much time you have given yourself to sleep. The longer you sleep, the more REM you generate and the more easier it becomes to recall dreams. Dream recall is therefore not mostly an 'ability' but rather a re-scheduling of your sleep rhythm (prolonging your sleep time by getting later out of bed or earlier in bed). Of course, there are several ways in which you can make the recall process more easy (see Learn-section).

Another very interesting view on the importance and relationship of dream recall to lucid dreaming, is the fact that recall is only possible if the mind was to some extend conscious of the experience you are able to recall; you cannot recall something that you were not conscious of at the time, obviously. Because consciousness is one of the building blocks of lucidity (lucidity is more than merely being conscious, it's much more a cognitive processing leading to a form of understanding), your dream recall ability could be seen proportional to your ability of becoming lucid. Good dream recall is a great sign that dream consciousness is arising. Simply put, the degree in which you are able to recall dreams is a great and simple measure to see whether you are progressing as a lucid dreamer.

Remember that lucid dreaming is not a different physiological form of dreaming. There is (as I and the Lucidity Institute are concerned) not something like an "ordinary dream" and a "lucid dream"; a "lucid dream" is not a 'different kind of dream'. So, it is not like you 'want to have lucid dreams' in a way ... you actually want to recognize dreams! A very powerful change of heart. Consequently, becoming a proficient lucid dreamer has more to do with ordinary non-lucid dreams than with lucid dreams. For becoming lucid you first need to recognize non-lucid dreams before you are able to become lucid (WILD excluded). Dream recall is therefore an essential ability to master. Get to know your dreams because you must be able to recognize them. Not knowing your dreams makes dream recognition and thus 'becoming lucid' understandably very difficult.

During the time you are re-scheduling your sleep rhythm, aiming for a longer time to sleep, notice whether your dream recall ability is also improving. A good sign.