I have just recently become aware of a very interesting Dreaming Conference. It takes place in Montreal this year, so I doubt I’ll make it, but the fact that a convention of this magnitude for dreaming exists is great news! They have two keynote speakers at the conference, both psychiatrists with PhDs and who have specialized in dream related studies.

There’s even a contest for students.

As in previous years, there will be two $500 awards. The first is for the best student submission of original scientific research on dreams and dreaming. The second is for the best submission of original historical, literary, artistic, or theoretical research.

Here is a ink to the pdffor the rules. So if you’re a student, it’s certainly a nice way to combine artistic talents (or the scientific method) with enthusiasm for dreams!

-Hatter

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I just finished watching a series by Tim, the founder of Lucidipedia. I was thoroughly impressed with the overall quality of the information as well as the way it was presented. The series is comprised of 10 short clips (11 if you count the trailer style clip,) probably averaging 8 minutes or so. He begins by explaining what lucid dreaming is, some general information, and his favorite books.

What he does next is what makes it so well done and interesting.

He walks you through a wake back to bed technique. Starting with waking, recalling dreams, and everything up until actually going to sleep. During this he gives you a first person perspective for the wake up and falling asleep scenes to give you a better idea of what you should be doing and what the experience is like. He then gives a brief section on dream control and what a lucid dream is like, by putting you in a mock lucid dream.

I am very impressed by the quality of this information and the interesting presentation. So here it is:
Trailer for the series
Or, if you prefer to jump into it:
Beginning of the series

You should probably watch it in order, as it’s essentially one clip cut up.

-Hatter

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Many people have trouble going to sleep, and I thought that I should share some of my strategies for the times I have trouble falling asleep. Following are some of my favorite ways I use to ensure that I fall asleep. The Approximate times to fall asleep are just guidelines for how long it will probably take you to fall asleep once you start that method. If you’re an extreme insomniac however, it may take a bit longer, but should still help you fall asleep faster.

Deepening the Breath
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 5-15 Minutes

This technique has many different roots, so I’ll just leave that part of it alone. The basic idea here is to observe and deepen your breath. As you breath in, try and take a deeper breath. Don’t strain yourself, just go as far as feels natural. Then let out a slow, relaxed breath. Try and keep your mind focused on this alone. (This will help alleviate a racing mind) If you find yourself thinking about other things, you can count up to the end of your in breath and count back down to the end of your out breath. Try not to go past your comfort level with how deep your breaths are; keep it natural.

Advantages: Helps slow down the mind and eventually to clear it. Fairly quick effects.
Disadvantages May not help some people even after an extended period of time.

Tense and Relax
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 15-20 Minutes

This is a method I first came across in a book by Robert Bruce. This is also meant for preparing for an OBE, and relaxes you fairly well. As you lay in bed, tense your larger muscle groups for 5 seconds, and then relax for about 10 seconds. Repeat this about 3 times for each muscle group. Start with your calves and move up until you reach your face. Tense your face in three ways. Tense all of your muscles on your face, and then make these different shapes with your mouth each time: An O, a smile, and a frown. Done well, this method relaxes your muscles very well. You may wish to repeat it for parts of your body if you still feel tension in certain muscle areas.

Advantages: Easy to do. You’re unlikely to forget what you’re doing as the physical activity keeps you awake while you’re performing it.
Disadvantages: Keeps you awake for the first parts. Doesn’t work as well if you’re sore.

Monroe’s Method
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 5-25 Minutes

This technique was developed by Robert Monroe to prepare you for attempting an out of body experience (OBE). Its main goal is to relax your body however, so it fills our purposes as well. To accomplish this relaxation, you imagine all the stress leaving your body with your breath. As you breath in, visualize your anxiety and/or stress and/or muscle tension build up as a black cloud, and as you exhale, see it drift away. While doing this attempt to feel the black cloud actually leaving you. After doing this for a few minutes, if you don’t feel relaxed enough to fall asleep, begin working on individual parts of the body. Start with your toes and work up to your head. Imagine all the tension exiting the toes in any manner you wish. Again, make it as tactile as possible. Remember to keep your body still during this, and you should fall asleep fairly quickly once you relax your body.

Advantages: Very effective overall, you can fall asleep while performing it.
Disadvantages: Extremely variable in the time requirements, as your mind tends to wander once you’re in a certain level of fatigue.

Melatonin
Approximate Time Until Sleep: N/A

Disclaimer: I do not recommend this method for anybody under 18, anybody not comfortable with supplements and the relatively new nature of Melatonin (wiki) to the supplement market, or anybody uncomfortable with the risk that it may have unknown effects. I am also not a doctor, so this advice, like everything on this blog, is simply my opinion.

Melatonin is a hormone related to sleep cycles, which is secreted by the pineal glad. It typically takes noticeable effect around 45 to 60 minutes after having been ingested. Many of the supplements I have seen are sizes of 3mg. This is, in my opinion, overkill. You typically receive anywhere from 15-25 micro grams of melatonin from the pineal gland, and that 3mg supplement has 3000 micro grams. From my experience, as little as .3 mg (300 micro grams, still a large increase over normal, but a lot more reasonable) is an effective dose. Now, all that you really need to do to use melatonin is to make sure you have enough time to get a decent amount of rest (7~8 hours) and take it about 45-60 minutes before you plan to go to sleep. If it doesn’t make you sleepy enough, you might increase the dose, but I wouldn’t go above 1 mg. That’s just my opinion though.

Advantages: Easy, period.
Disadvantages: Dose issues, timing, potential unknown effects, money, not being able to use it on a whim. (You have to have it on you to use it)

Combinations

If those methods don’t work by themselves, you can also combine them for a greater effect. That means it takes longer to fall asleep probably, but if you’re unsure whether you’ll fall asleep in an hour or two, adding another ten minutes to make it two techniques is probably worth it. Here are some of the combinations I would recommend, as well as the orders I would perform them in. As a note, melatonin may be added to any of these as a general aid.

Deepening the Breath + Monroe’s Method
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 15-30 Minutes
First, you watch your breath and try and relax yourself in a general way by deepening your breath. (This will also slow your mind down) Then, get to the specific muscles and tight spots with Monroe’s Method.

Tense/Relax + Monroe’s Method
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 25-35 Minutes
The idea here is to relax the biggest parts of the muscles with Tense/Relax, and then get to the smaller tensions with Monroe’s Method.

Tense/Relax + Deepening the Breath
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 20-30 Minutes
Relax the big muscle groups with tense/relax, and then relax everything (including the mind) by deepening the breath.

Tense/Relax + Deepening the Breath + Monroe’s Method
Approximate Time Until Sleep: 30-45 Minutes
Get your entire body relaxed, then your mind, and then keep the body relaxed and occupy the mind.

As a parting thought: These are just suggestions for how to use these techniques in combinations. You might find that certain orders that I didn’t list work for you (although these tend to be the most successful.) You might also find that while one technique works great for you, the others don’t work at all. Experiment with what works, and try to suit the technique to the situation.

Sleep Well!

-Hatter

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Hello Readers,

I just thought that since I hadn’t updated for a while, and that the old theme was getting rather old, that I would give the blog a new theme. It kind of gives it a newer feel, and maybe it will alert people to the new stuff that’s happening now. I worked on some of the other stuff around the blog, behind the scenes stuff mostly. I’ve got some provocative questions coming up soon, so I hope you’re ready to answer.

If you have any suggestions for the new theme, or something you’d like to see (I know the “featured post” thing is redundant, I’m working on that, as well as getting a more unique banner up) please let me know. Either comment or contact me.

-Hatter

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I was dreaming about school and late homework assignments, something I’ve noticed I do when I’m stressed or worried about school. It was probably around 5:20 hours into my cycle, guessing by when I had gone to bed, and right in the middle of arguing with a teacher over what assignment I had turned in, I awoke to my alarm. This is where the sleep paralysis comes in. I reached for the alarm on my bed stand (my cell phone) and tried to pick it up. To my dismay, I only managed to kind of knock it around a bit before it hit the floor. This is when I noticed my fingers weren’t moving. After I realized this, they loosened up in a few seconds. This is a strange event for me, as I almost never encounter sleep paralysis. I typically fall asleep and wake up in a normal fashion, although I do fall asleep almost too quickly. This leads me to my next thought:

Is there any correlation to how lucid a person is in their dreams or how often the encounter sleep phenomenon and how long it takes them to fall asleep?

I was thinking about this because I recently found out that two of the people I know are natural lucid dreamers. What do they have in common? They’re troubled sleepers. I doubt there is a direct relation between ease of sleep and lack of dream phenomenon, (as in the harder it is to fall asleep, the more lucid dreams and sleep paralysis you would experience) but I bet that it certainly increases your chances of having such an experience. So I pose the question to you, my readers. How often do you experience sleep phenomenon (sleep paralysis, lucid dreams, hypnagogia) in a normal night’s sleep and how long does it take you to fall asleep/ stay asleep?

I’ll start. I don’t experience many interesting things. Maybe once a month at the current rate. I fall asleep on average of 10 minutes at first. When woken, it’s anywhere from 1-5 minutes. I can actually fall asleep between my 8 minute snooze intervals on my alarm. WILD has always been difficult for me.

-Hatter

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Galamantine and Choline: The Acetylecholine Boosters

(Note: if you’re a beginning dreamer you should probably go through the Introduction to Lucid Dreaming series before beginning this one)
Supplements may have unforeseen consequences, and using any brain altering substance may have consequences later.

Galamantine and Choline are going to be the primary aids that we use to help us induce lucid dreams. The combination of the two have specific effects on the neuro-chemistry of the brain, inducing a favorable state for dreaming. Simply put, both Choline and Galantamine increase the levels of acetylecholine (ACh) levels in the brain. Galantamine by inhibiting ACh’s breakdown and Choline by promoting its production. Why are increased ACh levels desirable? ACh and serotonin control the state of sleep we’re in. Serotonin promotes deep, dreamless sleep, and ACh promotes REM sleep. ACh has also been linked to memory formation and brain function. From my experience it helped my dream recall and my general awareness in the dream, from asking questions of the dream environment and using some of my waking logic although not actually gaining consciousness, to lucidity.

Now that you have a basic idea of how this works, Here’s how you use these two supplements to aid you in dreaming:

SAWBTB: Supplement Assisted Wake Back To Bed

This is not really a technique in itself, just as WBTB is a method for improving your success of other methods, so is SAWBTB. Used in conjunction with MILD, Simplified MILD, and WILD it can greatly increase your odds for lucidity. The technique is effectively the same as a typical WBTB:

Go to sleep around your normal time, do not consume any alcohol or caffeine or any other dream altering substances. Sleep for about 5 hours. (Anywhere in 4:45 to 5:05 is about right. Check out the REM graph to see the zone you want to land in. Remember you want to have some REM still left to dream in when you wake up) Get up out of bed when the alarm goes off (or when your internal clock does, or whatever method you use to wake up by.) My typical dose of Galamantine was 4mg and 500mg of Choline. Both are well below dangerous levels. Thomas Yuschak (The Author of Advanced Lucid Dreaming: The Power Of Supplements) recommends 4-8 mg of Galamantine and 250-500mg of Choline. The next part is dependent on how quickly you fall asleep and how groggy you are, as well as the technique you are attempting. You want to remain awake for a fair amount of time (or all of it, if you are doing WILD.) The peak blood plasma level of Galamantine is around 60 minutes, which is what you should try to land on for the end of your technique. For example, you’d want to fall asleep after having laid your intentions for MILD, or transition into the dream around now for WILD. I will leave the rest of the MILD or WILD details up to you, oneironaught.

Important Notes:

Choline Absorption

Choline increases the amount of ACh in the brain by a sort of diffusion. The higher the levels of ACh in the brain, the less Choline puts into it. This means that Choline is effective early on and not as much later, even though it’s peak blood plasma time is three hours. If you think you’re going to fall asleep more quickly then you want, you might consider taking a 500mg of choline to get more a higher ACh level more quickly. (Really put an effort not to, by the way. Adding a little choline won’t fix dosing off in a minute)

Galamantine Half Life
Galamantine plasma levels may peak relatively quickly (around 60 minutes) but the half life is a long one. This means that it takes a long time for it to filter out of your system. It takes roughly 48 hours to get the rest of the Galamantine out of your system. To avoid building up a tolerance to it (and ruining its effectiveness) try to space your attempts at least 48 hours apart. Three days is a nicer spacer. This also gives your sleep cycle a little time to recover from your meddling with the WBTB.

Using Galamantine or Choline Without a WBTB
Using these supplements before bed without a WBTB is a bad idea. As the REM chart demonstrates, the first half or so of the sleep cycle is mainly deep sleep. Taking Choline and Galamantine increase ACh levels, which promote light sleep. Pitting your body against external supplements does not cause success, generally it causes conflict and a messed up sleep cycle. (The reason this doesn’t happen as much in the second half of the sleep cycle if because it is primarily REM sleep.)

Part II may take a while to write. (Don’t wait around for it.) I do however plan to write it though, so it’ll be here eventually. I also plan on updating more frequently again, so check by again soon.

-Hatter

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As I’ve hinted at and alluded to a new series of articles that I would post soon. The time is nigh, and I present to you a recent and exciting method of achieving lucidity: Supplements.

SALD stands for Supplement Aided Lucid Dream. I italicized the “aided” to draw attention to the fact that although these supplements are a great aid to achieving lucid dreams, they are no magic pill. They will not give you the powers of a Tibetan monk or the equivalent value of practice. What they will do is give you about as favorable setup as you can ask for. These supplements work by altering brain chemistry (because of this, they aren’t recommended for anyone under 18, you don’t want to mess up what’s still developing) to give you various situations which are beneficial to dreaming.

The information I draw upon in these articles was gleaned from the book Advanced Lucid Dreaming: The Power Of Supplements. To Be clear about a few things: These articles represent my experiences with these substances.I recommend the book as it has a lot of great information about supplements and how to use them. One more formality: I am not a doctor, so everything in these articles is yours to use at your own risk, and should not be attempted if you are 18 or under. It is also worthy of note that supplements may have unforeseen consequences, and using any brain altering substance may have consequences later.

One more thing: These are more advanced practices, and won’t benefit the new dreamer as much. If you’re a new dreamer, I’d suggest going through my Introduction to Lucid dreaming, then coming back to this series.

Without further ado, here is the first in the series.

Part 1: Galamantine and Acetylcholine

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