It's not reminding yourself that you're awake throughout the day. It's questioning whether you're awake or dreaming throughout the day, and it can be effective if you really make a habit of it. When you do this, also do a reality check. Look at the time. Then look away for a few seconds then look again. If it irrationally changes, you're dreaming.
I find this topic very interesting! I have lots of vivid dreams, especially on T-breaks; but that's as far as I can go. They are often very intense terrifying dreams, as an example of one ;someone breaks into my house at night, not sure where the person is, hearing sister screaming, dreams like that. I feel like I may have moments of lucid dreaming, as when I wake up I knew I was dreaming, I'm not completely sure. How is the first lucid dream perceived by the mind? How does it effect the body? Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum mobile app
I don't know the science behind any of it or anything, but I've managed to do it unintentionally possibly 4 or 5 times in my life, all a few years back. I dunno how I did it, I literally just thought of situations playing in my head (I do it every night) and then eventually it just clicked that thoughts had transitioned into a dream - I feel asleep without realizing but somehow managed to stay conscious. I know I was conscious because I was talking to myself in my head, saying shit like, "Holy fuck, I'm asleep but I'm still thinking? What the hell is going on?" I could consciously change what happened in my dreams and I had complete control of what environment I was in. All of them ended up being raunchy dreams with a redhead, but they were pretty epic. Wish I could do it again, although when I try nowadays I seem to get sleeping paralysis and I get freaked out. Dunno how else to explain it.
This is new to me and I've never tried this, however when I was a child I used to have nightmares almost every night where I actually became aware that I was asleep in the dream but couldn't seem to open my eyes. The way in which I would purposefully wake myself up was to build up this strong willingness (not sure how to describe it) to get out and generate this 'hard flinch' of my body, and this would take me out of the dream. It's weird because I was actually aware of the dream and what it took in the physical world to get myself out of this dream and yet because my body was in paralysis, I had to generate this body flinch...kind of like the 'kick' they used in the movie Inception. I hardly dream anymore, it could be the weed.. I noticed when I stop weed for a week or two I get crazy dreams lol. Maybe I'm deficient in zinc, magnesium, or adenosine. I read somewhere those supplements aid in the dream-state. Alot of what you say resonates with me as I've experienced some of this involuntarily as a child.
Relevant to this thread, and relevant to the discussion on techniques to induce lucid dreaming, and reality checks. Something you learn with regular lucid dreaming is that your mind compensates and adjusts to your levels of awareness within the dream world. So, with the 'clock technique' as a reality check to induce lucid dreams. If you make this a regular thing, and do it a lot, to the point where you are regularly looking at clocks in dreams in order to become lucid, your mind will adjust. Now don't worry, this won't happen for a long time, but it did eventually for me anyways. For me now, if I just look at a clock, look away for a few seconds, and look back, there is a good chance it will hold and be the same time. My mind knows I'm paying attention to these details, and it adjusts by maintaining them, or at least increasing the likelihood of its being maintained. This never happened originally, for a long time, but it began to happen eventually. There were times when I was quite certain I was dreaming, and yet the clock kept holding up. I would look away and look back again and again, and usually if I just kept doing that it would turn. At first I just tried to wait longer before looking back, but I haven't thought that would be a very good technique because the way it is in the dream world if you take your attention off of something for enough time there is a very good chance you'll just get sidetracked and forget about it. So what I do now is look at the time, look away and while looking away repeat a bunch of numbers in my head, 5769334, lol, you get the point. This seems to sufficiently scramble my brain's processing of numbers, so that it doesn't maintain the time when I look back. It's kind of like, some people think it's impossible to read in dreams, or others can read but the text has to be big. It is not uncommon for me to read small print in my dreams. As you look more closely, your mind must respond by filling in the gaps to make sense of that closer inspection. People can't read small print because their mind doesn't see them looking that closely, focusing that well, so it can't fill in that level of detail. This can be taken advantage of as well. I have taken advantage of it in terms of increasing the vividness and general visual quality of my dreams. Actually these benefits aren't fully there right now, cuz I haven't worked on them for a while. But there is a specific technique, which anyone can do to do it. I'm sure the same basic principle could apply any number of other ways. Basically, when you are lucid dreaming, look very closely at everything you see. Specifically try to see the details. Look closely at the exact shade of color, the exact shape of everything, minor visual markers. Over time and I believe nearly instantly potentially as well, your mind will respond to your heightened focus of these details by filling them in more. Colors intensify, things become so incredibly perfectly detailed. It will get to a point where everything literally looks 100% real, like you are really in reality and can do anything you want. It is an amazing feeling. Once you get to this point though, don't think you need to stop. When I was really doing this before, once it got to the point of looking completely real I just kept focusing as much as I could on all of the details, and my mind just kept responding by filling it all in more and more. It truly got to a point where everything looked 'more real than real,' by a good deal. Putting it into words, it doesn't sound like it makes sense, but when you see it it does.
Ii tried to overlook this thread a few times but anyway. Technically if your a sleep your non concious. You may be confusing relaxing into a meditative state which is not the same thing.
It does not work that way. It defeats the purpose of dreaming. At best your misinterpreting your perception and denying your sences.
To be fair I just read your introduction and maybe... just maybe its a miss use of correct terms. A few times myself at the point of falling asleep I have expreinced unusual sensations eg a feeling of disconnection from body like Im above it but slightly off centre, also floating and spinning sensations. I put this down to something to do with the spinal cord im not sure what exactly but I assume its a natural experience thats gives a sensation. Now your saying your body falls asleep which like I said above is a state of relaxation it may possibly lead to similiar kind of sensation that I have felt. Now in regards to you brain and conciousness, you cannot enter into a sleep state without losing conciousness of self. Your interpretation of a dream state is likely a day dream. The idea behind dreaming is for your brian to sort through the collection of images, feelings, possibly emotions etc and clean up and file your concious experience into gray matter/unconcious parts of our brains.. An actual dream may only lasts a few seconds but feels like a mini story if we wake up with any recollection of it. Thats what makes me think that its more than just a collection of random images. (this is off the cuff so maybe look into it yourself) So first learn what is a actual dream state and the varying degrees of sleep and also the function and neccessasity of dreams. The connection between conciousness and perception of self and possibly the relationship with the spinal cord and the brain when entering into a state of sleep and if this can be acheived in some way while concious.
I've lucid dreamed my entire life, and dreaming has been a big part of my life. I know what dreaming is. I enter into a lucid dream in which I am consciously doing all sort of things in an environment that looks completely real. Obviously you just have pre-conceptions, cuz what you're saying does not fit with the experience. You have defined things in a way that says my experience is impossible, this you can't accept it. But my experiences themselves disprove those pre-conceptions to me, knowing what happens and that I've done it many times and it's something that can be learned and repeated at will. Nothing else I can say.