Lucid Dreaming Techniques,guide,methods,tips,guided imagery,info & help for learning how to have lucid dreams & explore the world of lucid dreaming.

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Lucid Dreaming

Methods & Techniques

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dream Guide

They can help in dream interpretation and communicating with your subconscious.

I can’t control my dreams.

This is very rarely actually the case (though sometimes it is in nightmares). Usually it is just your memory which treats you as though it were beyond your control. If you become lucid in a dream where you have a body, you will almost always be able to control your body. However, you might not manage to do anything else. Don't worry, though — most people have no problem with jumping very high or flying in a lucid dream!

On the other hand, parts of your brain are less active while dreaming, which can lead to dream/trance logic and sometimes choices you will later regret. For example, you might choose to continue your lucid dream, although you know that once you wake you will only remember half of it. Once you wake up, you may wish that you had stopped your dream. Another example is of somebody

Lucid Dreaming - Introduction

Note

When attempting some of the techniques in this book, you may have some frightening experiences, such as falling sensations or sleep paralysis. Although the authors attest these are not dangerous, you should avoid techniques that create these sensations if you would prefer not to experience them.

Your own expectations will have a significant effect on your dreams. If you believe that dream characters act dull and lifelessly, they are far more likely to do so. If you believe they can be creative, original, and surprising, they are far more likely to be. Remember that the easier you think it is to dream lucidly, the easier it will be.

Many of the techniques and “facts” presented on these pages are not backed up by scientific research. This is not to say that these techniques do not work, only that they may be placebos or be ineffective much of the time.

About dreaming

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(NREM 4) Stage 4 is often called “deep sleep” or “delta sleep”. The heart beats the slowest and there is the least brain activity. It is during this stage that sleepwalking usually occurs.

After stage 4, the NREM stages reverse and move back to stage 2, and then into REM sleep.

(REM) During REM sleep, some parts of the brain are nearly as active as while awake. In this stage, your eyes flicker rapidly (hence the acronym Rapid Eye Movement). Your body is paralyzed, probably to prevent you from acting out

your dreams.

After the REM state, you sometimes wake briefly. This is usually forgotten by the time you wake up in the morning. If you don't wake up, you go to stage 2.

I never dream anyway.

Actually, everyone has dreams — but some people simply don’t remember them. In the next chapter, you will find out how to improve your dream recall.

The stages of sleep

Each night, we spend about one and a half to two hours dreaming. We dream about once every 90 minutes of sleep. The time you spend in dreams becomes longer throughout the night, from about 10 minutes to around 45 minutes or slightly longer. But what happens when we sleep?

There are five stages of sleep: four stages of NREM (Non-REM) sleep, also called SWS (Slow-Wave Sleep), and one stage of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. The most vivid and remembered dreams occur during REM sleep. Around 80% of our dreams occur in REM sleep. One sleep cycle is roughly 90 minutes long.

(NREM 1) The first stage is a transition state between wakefulness and sleep. This is the stage that hypnogogic imagery occurs in. It usually passes into stage 2 within a few minutes.

(NREM 2) During stage 2, the body gradually shuts down, and brain waves become longer in wavelength.

(NREM 3) Stage 3 usually occurs 30 to 45 minutes after falling asleep the first time. Large, slow delta brain waves are generated.

About lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming is basically dreaming while being aware that you are dreaming. If you are in a lucid dream, you will usually have some power over your dream — anything from being able to fly or making an object or room appear behind a door or inside a pocket, right up to being able to change into animals or create a whole world. Having a lucid dream is like being the director of your own movie!

Lucid dreams have been scientifically proven to exist. Stephen LaBerge of The Lucidity Institute used a special machine to track eye movements during a dream (these are linked to your eye movements within the dream). He asked lucid dreamers to point their eyes left and right in quick succession once they became "conscious" in their dreams, and this movement was recorded on the machine. For more information on this and other experiments, read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.

There are plenty of reasons you might want to dream lucidly:

For fun! Just flying in a lucid dream is an exhilarating feeling. Lucid dreams are generally far more intense and vivid than most non-lucid dreams. You can use a lucid dream to wind down after a long day.

Transforming into animals or getting superpowers is a unique experience that is hard to get any other way.

If you are particularly interested in dreams — either spiritually or psychologically — trying lucid dreaming could help you in your research.

If you're writing fiction or even creating a world for a computer game, lucid dreaming can help you visualize it. You could ask your characters how they feel about something or what they think will happen.

Some people compose music in their lucid dreams.

Lucid dreams can be realistic enough to rehearse a speech or musical performance.

You can relive previous dreams or experiences.

who dreamt they were sitting next to Mother Theresa. They wondered if they might be dreaming, thinking isn’t Mother Theresa dead? They then concluded that she was obviously right next to them and therefore alive, and that it wasn’t a dream!

Are lucid dreams related to psi phenomena?

There are differing views on this. Some people claim to have organized shared dreams or precognitive dreams through lucid dreaming. Others say these are simply created in the brain like any other dream, something like self-hypnosis.

How long does it take to learn how to dream lucidly?

This completely depends on the person and circumstances. Some people have a lucid dream just a few nights after learning about it (without any specific effort), while some people can take months! If you don't get enough sleep or feel too stressed after work to try techniques, then it may take a long time, especially if you expect it to. It will also depend on how much effort you put in. However, everybody has the ability to dream lucidly.

I think I do this naturally. Does this happen?

It is quite rare to have regular lucid dreams naturally, although most people have had a lucid dream at some point in their lives. If you want to increase the frequency of your lucid dreams, carry on reading through the book; otherwise, skip to the Using section to get some ideas for your dreams.

I had [a dream], was I lucid?

In general, a lucid dream is defined as a dream in which you know you are dreaming at some point, regardless of anything else. Even if you were lucid one second but lost your lucidity, it is still technically a lucid dream.However, this can be a little misleading. Sometimes you dream that you fall asleep and have a lucid dream! This is often thought of as a sign that you will have a proper lucid dream soon, as your mind is thinking a lot about lucid dreams.

Try using this table:

Signs you were lucid

Doing a reality check which gave a positive result

Attempting to stabilize the dream (see the Using chapter)

Attempting to fly, walk through mirrors, etc. immediately after realizing you are dreaming

Waking up as soon as you realize that you are dreaming

Remarks to dream characters that you are dreaming

Signs you weren't lucid

Dreaming that you dreamt

Having an unusually poor recall for that dream after you became lucid

Not recognizing illogical parts of the dream as a dream

Attempting to fly, walk through mirrors, etc. without success

Treating dream characters as you would real people*

* However, some people may have lucid dreams and deliberately choose to treat dream characters as if they were real. In fact, it can be intriguing to have real conversations with dream characters, such as physics or philosophy discussions - you may discover they know more than you do!

Possible dangers of lucid dreaming

There is no current evidence of lucid dreaming being abnormal or unhealthy in any way. However, there may be some more or less minor side effects associated with having lucid dreams. Please don’t let this scare you away from this wonderful experience; rather, remember that with dreams you are dealing with your own subconscious mind and recklessness is not recommended.

Addiction

Lucid dreaming can be used for different purposes. Some may want to try it just for fun, using it as a "safe drug", or a personal virtual reality machine. Having fun is a fully valid application of lucid dreaming. However, be careful not to be addicted to this way of escaping your waking life. If you find that you are spending more time asleep than actually needed, or that you are thinking more about lucid dreams than your real waking life, take a look at your life: if you're accomplishing the goals you have for yourself, and/or are content with the state of your life, there's likely no cause for alarm. If you see that your life needs work, you might take a break... or, you might use the tools of lucid dreaming to explore what needs to be done in your life.

Alienation

Most people have never even heard of lucid dreaming, much less ever experienced it. Some people are also less than open-minded and receptive to new ideas. Don’t be surprised if someone considers this whole phenomenon “weird” or “crazy” (which it is not). Don’t preach, either; it’s not your job to convince anyone.

Often people who spontaneously lucid dream, especially children, may find it surprising that not everyone does. They may even start thinking that they are the only people in the world who have lucid dreams. If they’re worried, the best support is to let them know that they’re not alone.

Dissociation

Lucid dreaming may weaken the borders between waking and dreaming, the conscious and subconscious mind, reality and fantasy. This might lead to problems of a dissociative nature. Probably the most common form of dissociation involves having problems distinguishing your waking memories from dream memories. Everyone who recalls at least one dream will have to sort out their dreams from reality in the morning. This can really be a problem for those who have previously had zero recall and, due to lucid dreaming, have had a major uptake in recall. Now, suddenly, they have all these excess, illogical memories to sort out. This is unlikely to be a major problem, but may be a big annoyance. An example is when you have actually misplaced an item, and "find it" in a dream. If you cannot distinguish dream from reality you will now think you know where that item is, perhaps even placed it where you felt sure to find it later, but when you awake it will not be there.

However, there are signs that you should watch for that indicate a bigger problem may be developing. Lucid dreaming in itself should not cause these to appear in a waking state:

Ability to ignore extreme pain or what would normally cause extreme pain

Absorption in a computer game, television program or movie

Remembering the past so vividly one seems to be reliving it

Finding evidence of having done things one can’t remember doing

Not remembering important events in one’s life

Being in a familiar place but finding it unfamiliar

Seeing oneself as if looking at another person

Other people and objects do not seem real

Looking at the world through a fog or haze

Not recognizing friends or family members

Finding unfamiliar things among one’s belongings

Finding oneself in a place but unaware of how one got there

Finding oneself dressed in clothes one doesn’t remember putting on

If this has happened, and there is no other cause (e.g. drugs), take a break from lucid dreaming for a while. In fact, take a break from anything fictional for a while, at least until symptoms stop. In addition, you may consider avoiding experimentation with lucid dreaming if you have some form of schizophrenia.

PLEASE NOTE: The following possibilities are controversial and have not been proven.

Controversial: Accidentally encountering “spiritual” entities

This depends on your worldview. If dreams are a creation of your brain and nothing more, you don’t need to worry about spirits or anything similar. If you want to be on the safe side, treating objects in your dream decently and politely won’t do you any harm.

The book "The Art of Dreaming" by Carlos Castaneda has a lot to say on this subject.

Controversial: Creating bad habits or becoming a control freak

When lucid dreaming, you have the option to control the dream world in ways that are impossible in the waking world. You can, for example, make objects appear or disappear, or make people act according to your will. Some people believe this may lead your subconscious to desire this kind of control in the waking world, where it’s highly inappropriate. Also, you might be tempted to apply dream-world solutions to waking-life problems instead of actually facing them; for example, just willing bad things to go away or escaping or destroying them by superpowers. Again, this is probably more of a problem if you are not mentally stable at the outset of your dreaming process.

Controversial: Exhaustion

Some people believe that experiencing many artificially induced lucid dreams often enough can be very exhausting. The main reason for this phenomenon is the result of the lucid dreams expanding the length of time between REM states. With fewer REMs per night, this state in which you experience actual sleep and your body recovers becomes infrequent enough to become a problem. This is just as exhausting as if you were to wake up every twenty or thirty minutes and watch TV. The effect is dependent on how often your brain attempts to lucidly dream per night. If you enter into a routine of attempting to lucidly dream, you may cause recursive lucid dreams that occur at each state change.

Controversial: Inability to stop

If you have trained your mind to the point where it can step over the boundary without conscious effort, you might find it difficult to stop. Do not become alarmed if you have trouble stopping the process of lucid dreaming, it is possible to get out of the habit. As long as you truly expect to stop having lucid dreams regularly, you will. You just need to stop any further attempts to lucid dream, and within a few months the lucid dreaming will go away by itself. Remember; do not be alarmed if, even with your attempts to stop, you experience further lucid dreams. It might take a while to break the habit. If you have real concerns, it may be advisable to talk with your doctor or therapist regarding appropriate treatment, including medication.

Controversial: Undesirable false awakenings

One of the advantages of having lucid dreams is being able to change a dream or wake up if things are not turning out as planned. But sometimes, while trying to leave a dream, you'll get "stuck" in a series of false awakenings. A false awakening is when you seem to have woken up but are actually still dreaming. For example, you may find yourself waking up in your room. But once there, new things will start happening—for example, someone might visit, or you might wander outside because of an odd noise, or there might be objects all over the place. Then you might realize you're dreaming, but "wake up" immediately, and the cycle repeats until you eventually do wake up or else dream about something different. This happens mostly with nightmares or when your body is very tired, so your attempts to wake up cause false awakenings. It's a good idea to get in the habit of doing a reality check just after waking up so that you'll realize when this happens and become lucid.

When this happens repeatedly in the same night, it can be very tiring and often frightening. Not only can the belief of being fully awake in your room while being exposed to unusual situations be scary, but you also may start fearing you won't be able to actually wake up. And, depending on the content of the dream, since all your dreams tend to start in your room, you may fear what could happen once you actually do wake up. But this is not a very common situation. Once you are lucid, it is usually easier to wake up or lose the dream than it is to keep dreaming.

Similar techniques

I can do astral projection, should I learn how to dream lucidly?

Possibly not. If you often enter a “dream world” after having the experience of leaving your body, that is basically the same as the method called Wake-Initiation of Lucid Dreams. Keep in mind that many people believe that “astral projection” or “out-of-body experiences” are actually lucid dreams. Whether these are real psi phenomena are or the creative product of your dreaming mind, learning to dream lucidly will expand the variety of your experiences.

If this is so similar, why learn lucid dreaming and not astral projection?

Here are some reasons:

Lucid dreaming is something that everybody can understand. Most people have already had a lucid dream. No single theory about astral projection is accepted even in the astral projection community.

If you are prepared to spend money, there are some gadgets to help people dream lucidly. Usually, they will give a light or sound signal shortly after the REM state is detected. Hypnosis tapes usually focus more on self-improvement and you cannot decide what to do with your hypnotic trance.

If you don’t believe in psi phenomena, you will likely be much more comfortable reading books about lucid dreaming than those on astral projection. If you have to keep stopping and thinking "but that's not possible", there's always the danger that your feelings of skepticism will affect the way you think about lucid dreaming and make it much harder for you to do.

You would be sleeping anyway, so it doesn't take up waking time.

You'll be able to use this Wikibook to your advantage!

Lucid Dreaming - Dream Recall

It is important to improve your dream recall. While it is possible to have a lucid dream without remembering it, becoming familiar with your dreams will also increase your chances of becoming lucid in one. It is worth getting your dream recall up to a few dreams per night for exactly that reason.

First, a quick reminder about how often and for how long we dream. We have REM dreams approximately every 90 minutes of sleep, and while they start off at about 10 minutes, they increase in length to over 45 minutes. If you wake up while you are dreaming, you have roughly an 80% chance of remembering what you dreamt. Therefore, try setting an alarm clock to 4½, 6, or 7½ hours after you think you will fall asleep. This should wake you up directly from a dream.

The most important part of improving your dream recall is keeping a dream journal (a.k.a. dream diary). You could use an office notebook, artist’s sketchpad, an online journal, a sheet of paper, or even a Dictaphone — whatever seems natural to you. Here are some general tips for keeping your journal:

Write all your dreams and only your dreams

Write down everything you remember about the dream. Phrases, colors, feelings, everything. Write it down in the morning.

Sketch pictures into your notebook to help you remember symbols, places, faces, or whatever you think you will forget about your dream over time.

Ritualise your diary

Using a dedicated pen in a special color helps to make keeping your journal more of a ritual.

You might want to copy out rough notes into a neater dream diary later on in the day. This helps engrain the dream in your mind.

At bed

Try to go to bed early enough to ensure that you wake before your alarm clock rings. In the time you get, mull over any dreams you had and do a reality check.

You may want to keep your eyes closed for as long as possible, particularly if you wake up near the sunrise. Try to use a notebook which holds a pen and scribble down whatever you can with your eyes still closed.

Stay in the same position and run your dreams over in your head a few times before jumping out of bed. After you have remembered your dream, move to a different position (with your eyes still closed) than you normally sleep in, and try and remember other dreams. The position that you are in may help your brain remember what dream you had while sleeping in that position.

If you can’t remember anything, allow your mind to wander through events of yesterday or issues you’ve been thinking about. These may be a link to your dreams.

Throughout the day

Keep a small dream diary notebook with you all the time. It is quite easy to remember a dream in the day and then forget it by the time you get home.

Even if you only get a fleeting feeling of some dream during the day, note down as much as you can remember about the dream and what triggered the memory.

Think about your dream or dreams throughout the day, and ask yourself “What did I dream?” several times. Often, you only get a good answer to this an hour after you woke up.

You can try to remember your dream by “back-tracking” — start from the moment when you wake up, and try to remember what you were doing before that. You may even be able to reconstruct your dream to the beginning.

If you find that many of your dreams are about certain items, such as cars and painting, then, if you cannot remember your dream in the morning, think about whether it contained your specific dream signs, in this case, cars and painting. You can even make a “dream lexicon” — a piece of paper with common dream items written on it, so you can read it every time you wake up.

Also, use the autosuggestion technique to improve your dream recall (see the full description of the autosuggestion technique in the next chapter).

Once you have a lot of dreams in your diary, you can start looking through it for dreamsigns. Common ones include flying, running to chase something, and being in an old house. However, it could be anything, such as crouching, skateboarding, or having one shoe missing! Try to look for these dream signs in real life and always do a reality check when you notice them.

I sometimes remember more dreams than the time I was asleep could allow. How is this possible?

You may have had several dream scenes within a single dream period or some memories could be from past nights.

It is also possible that dream time doesn't strictly correspond to real time. Days may pass in a dream during a single night's sleep. Dreams which seem to last for hours while you have them have sometimes been found to actually have a duration of only a few minutes. There have been accounts of people having lucid dreams lasting years: Robert Monroe reported having a lucid dream that lasted a hundred years.

You might also be having a memory that was not an actual dream, but peeping in your dream circuitry that should remain shut when you are awake. Thus, these memories could be not dreams from the past, but ongoing subconscious experiences.

In what order should I write my dreams?

It is usually very hard to tell if the dreams you dreamt happened in the order you recalled them. Generally you should write them in the order you remember them, or in a random order. If you dream that you told somebody about a previous dream that happened the same night, then that previous dream probably came before the other one (though the “previous dream” could have been a false memory)

Lucid Dreaming - Induction Techniques

Preliminary

There are some things which are common to many techniques and these will be handled first.

Waking up and getting to sleep

Firstly, you need to know how to wake yourself up and then to go to sleep just 10–60 minutes later. Probably the easiest method is a fairly quiet alarm clock. You can put it on the other side of the room to force you up. However, you could also use the MILD technique (see below) to try and wake yourself up immediately after your dreams. This should also help with your dream recall. You might want to drink lots of water or some tea, which is a diuretic . However, you might just wake up in the morning feeling very uncomfortable! Also note that the diuretic effect of tea comes from caffeine, which may affect your ability to sleep, and which means that herbal teas will not work as well.

If you have trouble getting to sleep in the first place, don't drink water for about an hour before you think you'll turn your lights off. Try drinking water an hour or more before, to stop you from needing to use the bathroom right when you try to or become lucid. Avoid caffeine and sugar before bed, however, depending on your sensitivity to it, caffeine can stimulate the mind, but not the body, and so it can help to make you lucid. Exercise during the day for thirty minutes or more is a good way to make your body tired and ready for sleep at night. Be sure, however, to exercise more than three hours from bedtime, as it stimulates the body. The morning or afternoon is the best time to exercise.

If it still takes very long for you to fall asleep, you can take advantage of this by reading books about lucid dreaming before going to sleep. This could greatly increase your chances of getting a lucid dream. You definitely need a light next to your bed to read until you're too sleepy to carry on, as getting up to turn the light off can often wake you up fully.

Reality checks

Reality checks are a method of discerning between dreams and reality. It is extremely important to perform these. One could say they are the “keys” to lucid dreaming. It is also extremely important to make sure that you expect these to produce dream results — you accept your reality, even when it is a dream. It would be counterproductive to expect real-life results in a dream, as the outcome of a reality check can be modified by the placebo effect. It won't affect outcomes in real-life (unless you have a mental illness), but you will probably have a higher success rate in dreams.

So here are some reality checks. You should be familiar with the entire list even if you only use a few.

Reliability

Speed

Discreetness

Overall

Breathing

Can you breathe through a tightly shut nose?

If you're swimming, can you breathe underwater?

4.33

Jumping

When you jump, do you float back down?

3.67

Reading

Do sentences change when you read them? Read, turn away and repeat it to yourself, and then turn back and read it again. Do this twice.

4.33

Vision

Do you have perfect vision? This only works for people who have at least slightly blurry vision in the waking world. Alternatively, if you have perfect vision in the waking world, you may have blurred vision in the dream world.

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Hands

Are your hands a strange colour, have too many fingers (sometimes they disappear and reappear when you try to count them!) or have other abnormalities? Can you push your finger through your other hand?

4.67

Time

Does your watch or clock tell a reasonable time? Are you even able to read the time off it? Sometimes clocks have the wrong number of hands or have strange symbols. Note: Digital clocks often work better for this reality check.

4.33

Powers

Are you able to fly (just visualise it), unlock doors, or use other magical powers? Try to change the shape of your body, or walk through a wall, window, or mirror.

Light switches

Does a light switch work?

Mirrors

Do you look normal in a mirror?

Nose

Can you see your nose with one eye closed?

Memory

Are you able to remember how you got here, why you are here and what happened an hour ago? This is not always a reliable reality check!

3.33

Choose a few reality checks which you will do regularly. Keep doing reality checks until you are convinced that you aren't dreaming. You should always carry out more than one reality check. If you find that it is not a dream, look around you and think of what would be different if it was a dream. If you do this it will make it more likely that you will do a reality check in a dream.

Apart from doing reality checks throughout the day, you also need to do a reality check immediately after you wake up. This helps you become lucid in false awakenings, when you begin to act out the following day in a dream.

If you have trouble bringing reality checks into your dreams then before going to bed imagine yourself in a dream, noticing odd details and doing a reality check. Then do a reality check in real life. If you do this a few times before bed you will find that you will do it more often in dreams.

If you are in a situation where you cannot do a reality check, such as at a public speaking, try to do one as soon as possible. You can do some reality checks very discreetly, such as feeling your fingers to make sure you have five. If you start to say “well, I can't do a reality check now” you should not be surprised when you make this mistake in a dream!

Which reality checks are best?

When selecting reality checks, the most important properties of a reality check are reliability, speed, and discreetness.

The reliability of each reality check is how likely you are to recognise the dreamsign's results as showing that you are dreaming once you do them in a dream. It changes for each person but some reality checks are overall more accurate than others. The figures in the table above are rough only and differ for each person.

It is important for a reality check to be fast. It wastes dream time if you have to search around for a book or (perhaps worse) a mirror. Plus, it could also give your subconsciousness more time to produce real-life results, especially if you believe that the check will give real-life results.

Last of all, a reality check should be discreet; that is, it should not draw too much attention to you when you do it in the waking world. Suddenly jumping in the air or trying to walk through a wall as a reality check could cause much embarrassment!

On the table above, these are scored out of 5.

I have trouble remembering to do reality checks throughout the day. What reminders can I use?

You are lucky to have an interesting day and forget about lucid dreaming! It isn't advisable to explicitly write “reality check” or “lucid” on your hand, as this could create an overdependence on this reminder, which may not exist in a dream. However, you might want to just draw a dot or small circle on your hand. This should be enough to remind you to do a reality check.

Try putting a little label on your clock, mobile phone, or watch, reminding yourself to do a reality check. (Some weird colours will make it more noticeable and it will take longer for you to get used to it and ignore it.) If you check these regularly during the course of your waking day, you will be doing lots of reality checks.

A simple coffee mug with a reminder such as "Are you dreaming?" printed on it or random alarms can also serve well, but try not to become too dependent on them. Another technique is to write down three things you do regularly in a day. Examples include hearing your name, going through a doorway, turning on a TV, beginning to read a book, or seeing a stranger. In the morning, choose three such events and intend to do a reality check whenever they happen in the following day.

I did a reality check in a dream but it said that I was not dreaming. What went wrong?

Some reality checks work perfectly for some people and awfully for others. These are mostly the light switches one and the hands one. If you find that the light switch works or that your hands are perfectly normal, you need to change to a different technique.

I did a reality check in a dream but I didn't quite realise I was dreaming. What went wrong?

An example of this is looking into a mirror and seeing some huge boils or a grey mist on your reflection and not realising that you are dreaming. This is rare if you actually intended to look into the mirror as a reality check. You need to be more careful when doing your reality checks in real life or pick more reliable reality checks which show more obviously that you are dreaming. Also try to pick reality checks that are easy to do. For example, don't pick the Time RC (Reality Check) if you never wear a watch, and don't pick the Mirror RC if you hardly look in the mirror or you know that you won't find a mirror in your dream.

Techniques

When you read through these techniques, remember that different techniques work for different people. There is no “best technique” and most techniques could be used to have 2–5 lucid dreams every night! You could have several lucid dreams in a night, but you will not know it unless you remember them!

However, you will probably want some advice as to which technique you should try first. A major choice is whether you want to use a method which starts from a dream or a method which starts from being awake.* If you master a technique which starts from being awake, you are able to have lucid dreams wherever you can sleep. For other techniques, you have to rely on your luck to give you lucid dreams after you have done your technique.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages for specific techniques:

Technique

Summary

Advantages

Disadvantages

Best for...

WBTB (Wake-Back-To-Bed)

Summary: Wake after some sleep and then return to bed.

Advantages: Simple. Can be very reliable, especially when used with other techniques

Disadvantages: Disrupts sleep cycle

Best for: People who want to strengthen other techniques, or who wake up in the middle of the night anyway.

Autosuggestion

Summary: Let yourself genuinely believe that you'll become lucid—without intending to become lucid—so that you really will.

Advantages: Simple

Disadvantages: Less effective than some other techniques (such as MILD)

Best for: People who are highly susceptible to hypnosis or who don't have the energy for other techniques.

MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams)

Summary: Fall asleep while focused on your intention to remember that you're dreaming.

Advantages: Simple

Disadvantages: Can be boring

Best for: People with a good prospective memory (remembrance of future intentions).

WILD (Wake-Initiation of Lucid Dreams)

Summary: Keep your consciousness while falling asleep and go straight into a dream.

Advantages: Lets you truly induce lucid dreams at will

Disadvantages: Can cause frightening experiences. Can take long to master

Best for: People who want to reliably have lucid dreams.

VILD (Visual Induction of Lucid Dreams)

Summary: By repetitive visualisation, incubate a dream in which you do a reality check.

Advantages: Also lets you induce lucid dreams at will. Works extremely well for some people...

Disadvantages: ...but not very well for others. Visualizing can keep you awake

Best for: People who have good visualisation skills.

CAT (Cycle Adjustment Technique)

Summary: Adjust your sleep cycle to encourage awareness during the latter part of your sleep.

Advantages: Requires relatively little effort other than adjusting your sleep cycle. Is very effective

Disadvantages: Requires you to wake up early on some days. You're only likely to get a lucid dream on every other day (though this could easily be more frequently than with other techniques)

Best for: People who have a very regular sleep cycle.

Remember, it'll help a lot to have your recall up to at least one dream a night before attempting these techniques.

* The usual acronyms in forums for this are DILD (Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream) and WILD (Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream). All the techniques that induce WILDs are described under WILD on this page.

WBTB

Rated green. This technique has been successful in scientific research and/or is part of a commercial book about lucid dreaming.

WBTB stands for “Wake-Back-To-Bed”.

Wake yourself up after 4 to 6 hours of sleep, get out of bed and stay up for anywhere between a few minutes to an hour before going back to bed. It's preferable that you do something related to lucid dreaming during this time (such as reading about lucid dreaming), but it is not required. This is best combined with other techniques; many people have amazing results with a MILD/WBTB combination. The WBTB technique significantly increases your chance of a lucid dream, and using MILD (see below) in conjunction with it puts you at good odds if you're planning to sleep an hour or more after your WBTB session. However, you might need plenty of sleep time and therefore you may only be able to use it on weekends.

If you feel from experiments with this technique that you are sleeping too deeply in order to become lucid then instead try returning to sleep somewhere other than where you usually sleep, e.g. on a couch, a different bed, or even on the floor; or maybe change the way you sleep, e.g. try sleeping with a lighter blanket or reversing the orientation of your body while in the bed (that is, swapping head and feet). Do this in order to teach your body that these different surroundings mean you want to have a more conscious sleep rather than a deeper sleep. In the beginning, different surroundings will also make you more alert, which can heighten your level of consciousness during sleep.

I am sometimes awake for very short times, but cannot pull myself together enough to get up and out of bed. What can I do?

Put a bright piece of paper on the wall or ceiling so that you will see it when you wake up. Other stimuli could be a hot water bottle, a light turned on under your bed, or an alarm clock. A good technique is to place an alarm clock out of arm's reach so that you are compelled to physically get up from bed and turn it off. If this is still insufficient to restore consciousness, try making a note of your intentions to remain awake and place the note on your alarm clock. After you get a lucid dream with this method, you'll find it easier and easier to get out of bed because you'll have more motivation.

Autosuggestion

Rated green. This technique has been successful in scientific research and/or is part of a commercial book about lucid dreaming.

This technique describes how to use autosuggestion to have lucid dreams. It can be especially effective for people who are highly susceptible to hypnosis, but for most people, MILD will probably be more effective.

As you're falling asleep, suggest to yourself that you will have a lucid dream either that night or in the near future. You can use a mantra (such as “I will recognize that I'm dreaming”) if you want, but make sure you don't try too hard to get a lucid dream. Instead of putting intentional effort into the suggestion, try to genuinely expect to have a lucid dream. Let yourself think expectantly about the lucid dream you're about to have, but be patient if you don't get one right away.

You could also use autosuggestion to improve dream recall. Just use the technique as described above, but instead of suggesting that you'll have a lucid dream, suggest that you'll remember your dreams when you wake up. You could also use a mantra with this, such as “When I wake up, I will remember what I dreamt”. Just be careful not to put too much intentional effort into the mantra — try to genuinely expect to remember your dreams instead.

MILD

Rated green. This technique has been detailed in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge.

MILD stands for “Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams", or sometimes, “Mnemonically Induced Lucid Dream". The MILD technique was developed by Stephen LaBerge, and is described fully in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.

With the MILD technique, as you're falling asleep, you concentrate on your intention to remember to recognize that you're dreaming. Repeat a short mantra in your head, such as “Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming”. Think about what this means (i.e., that you want to remember that you're dreaming—in the same way you might go to a grocery store and suddenly remember that you need bread), and imagine that you're back in a dream you've had recently, but this time you recognize that you're dreaming. For example, imagine yourself flying and realizing that it's a dream because you're flying. Keep repeating and visualizing the mantra until you're sure that your intention is set in your mind or you fall asleep. If you stop repeating and visualizing the mantra, then still try to make sure the last thing in your mind before falling asleep is your intention to remember to recognize that you're dreaming.

In general the MILD technique can be practiced when you first go to bed at night, or after you have awakened from a dream during the night. If you practice the MILD technique after you have awakened from a dream during the night you should first run through the dream you have awakened from in your mind to ensure that you remember it. Some people find it helpful to jot down a few notes about their dream in their dream journal.

Once you have committed the dream to memory, go back to sleep following the steps above, except this time visualize the dream you just had. Run through the dream until you encounter a dreamsign that you originally missed. Now instead of missing the dreamsign in your visualizations recognize the dreamsign and become “lucid”.

Repeat these steps until you have fallen asleep, hopefully you will find that you have reentered the dream that you just had and will recognize the dreamsign you marked earlier and become lucid.

WILD

Rated green. This technique has been successful in scientific research and/or is part of a commercial book about lucid dreaming.

WILD stands for “Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream”, or “Wake-Initiation of Lucid Dreams” to refer to any technique that involves falling asleep consciously. These techniques are similar to self-hypnosis. Some people believe that WILDs are not actual dreams, but are instead astral projection. Various detailed resources are available under that moniker.

For most people, they are far easier to induce in the early morning after waking up or in afternoon naps, as the sleep cycle will continue with a REM period. Once you are experienced with inducing WILDs, you can try to induce them at other times.

For WILDs to occur, it is best for your body to be completely relaxed. When you go back to bed, lie down comfortably. Now tense and relax your body, starting from your shoulders and working downwards, then back up to the face. This (or similar relaxation, meditation, or trance techniques) should make your body feel slightly heavy and relaxed.

There are many different ways to induce WILDs, but they all involve doing something to keep the mind awake as the body falls asleep. A few techniques are detailed below.

If you pay attention to your physical body while using these techniques, then you will likely enter sleep paralysis (which usually happens after you're already asleep) without losing conscious awareness of your body. You will get a tingling and buzzing sensation (this might be unpleasant). These sensations might be so strong that you feel that you will die (e.g., you might feel a choking sensation), but don't worry, this is perfectly safe! In fact, this process happens to you every time you sleep, you are just not conscious during it. Sometimes you can simply wait until you fall asleep straight into a lucid dream. However, if you don't fall asleep, and you become completely paralysed (with the exception of your eyes), don't try to move. Imagine your dream hand (or spirit hand if you prefer) going up and leaving your physical hand behind. Now you should have two separate bodies, a dream one and a real one. Control your dream body only — if you control your real one, you will wake up. Now you can try to roll out of bed into your dream world (alternatively, you can get up and walk through a mirror, or sink into your bed).

Hypnagogic Imagery

Try not to think about anything for more than a second or two by constantly switching your attention. This simulates your thinking patterns when you are about to fall asleep. Once you have done this for long enough, the images and sounds begin to take momentum on their own (this is called hypnagogic imagery) and get very strange and illogical. You should enter a dream at about this point and you will probably become lucid quickly. Otherwise, you will eventually realise you have entered sleep paralysis consciously (see above).

Counting

Another technique is to count up to 100 in your head, optionally adding (for example) an “I'm dreaming” between each number. Alternatively, you can imagine going down stairs, and, on every floor, reading the floor number from 100 down to 0. Try to make this image as vivid as possible — include not only what you see, but also what you hear, feel (touch the banister), and smell. At some point this image should continue into a dream or you will begin to get sleep paralysis as described above. It is easy to lose count, especially with counting up to 100 with an 'I'm dreaming' with each number. But you must think this: you are not going to sleep. Your body is, and you must concentrate fully.

Sound Technique

This method might suit certain people, but not others. The idea is pretty much the same as the other WILD methods, which is to remain conscious while entering the dream state. In order to use this method, you must sleep in a perfectly quiet place. You need that to hear the tinnitus, which is the inner sound buzzing inside your ears. Lay down and relax as much as possible while trying to hear the sound. This method is best combined with the WBTB technique. When you are too tired, you will usually fall asleep too fast and it is difficult to remain conscious. By the time you realize that, the buzzing sound will increase in intensity. This might frighten newcomers, but be assured nothing bad is going to happen. No, you will not be deaf when you wake up; it's perfectly safe! It is just an effect caused by your brain trying to change mode, from listening to the ambient sound to listening to the sound of dreamland, which is not real sound but just electrical charge inputed to the part of the brain to create a sensation of hearing. By that time, you will enter the hypnagogic state. All you need to do is concentrate; do not be afraid or think of anything, just be still, and in time your dream body will float, separating from your physical body, and there you go, you arrive in the dreamland.

Slight Physical Discomfort

For the purpose of helping to retain your conscious awareness, slight physical discomfort is useful while performing any WILD technique. This prevents you from just drifting off to sleep. If you are lying down on your bed to do WILD and you are totally comfortable then your chances of going to sleep instead of remaining conscious are very high. The WILD technique relies on a form of deep trance induction, and many people who induce trances for other reasons rely on slight physical discomfort — for example the lotus position, or sitting in a hard-backed chair. Depending on your own preferences and your requirements of discomfort for success, you could choose from the following methods, arranged in ascending order of discomfort:

Stacking pillows so that you can sit up in bed — the discomfort is caused by not being in a normal sleeping position.

Lying down on a hard floor.

Lifting your forearm vertically upwards, with the rest of your arm resting on the bed.

Sitting in a hard chair.

Incubating Dreams

Rated green. This technique has been successful in scientific research and/or is part of a commercial book about dreaming.

To incubate a dream about a specific topic, you should first think of a phrase that summarizes that topic (e.g., “I want to go to Atlantis.”). It may help to write the phrase down. If there's something you want to do in the dream, think of a phrase to summarize that too (e.g., “I want to watch Atlantis sink into the ocean.”). If you want to become lucid in the dream, then you should probably write something like “When I dream of [the topic], I will remember that I'm dreaming.” beneath your topic phrase. Immediately go to sleep and focus on your topic phrase. Visualize yourself dreaming about the topic and (if you want to become lucid) realizing that you're dreaming. If there's something specific you want to do in the dream, visualize yourself doing it once you become lucid (not very likely to work if you don't become lucid in the dream). Think about your phrase and topic (and intention to become lucid) as you fall asleep. Make sure that the last thing in your mind before falling asleep is your intention to (lucidly) dream about the topic you want to dream about. You might want to wake yourself up when the dream starts to fade so that you remember more of the dream; you can do this by ignoring your perception of the dream environment — the opposite of dream stabilization techniques (just make sure you do a reality check when you wake up to make sure you're really a