Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Lucid Dreaming!

What you will learn from the article:

• What is lucid dreaming?
• How to achieve a lucid dream?
• What are the rules of the dream world?
• What activities are worth trying while lucid dreaming?

The knowledge presented in this article is used by the majority of oneironauts (people practicing lucid dreaming) in the world. Some of this knowledge relates to my own experience, but I am sharing also some methods which I don't use, simply because these techniques tend to have different effectiveness among people , so the one that doesn't work on me may be just fine for you. The road to achieving conscious dreams must be discovered by means of trials and mistakes. Sometimes it takes 1 day, other time it doesn't work within a month. But certainly every person is able to do this! If you are interested, give it a try! Let us begin!

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Briefly on dreams in general

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Human sleep can be divided into two phases, which occur cyclically following each other:

• NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) - sleep starts with this phase. In this phase of dreams do not occur and the body moves freely on the bed. The NREM phase consists of 4 stages. Each stage is characterized by a different bioelectric activity of the brain.

• REM (Rapid Eye Movement), known as a paradoxical sleep - in this phase our body is paralyzed so that we do not sleepwalk while experiencing our dreams. The name of this phase stands for the rapid movements of the eyeballs, which reflect our looking around moves inside the dream. The cerebral activity during REM is very similar to that of the wakefulness.

The cycles extend during the night, so in the morning we have the longest REM phase, which makes dreams longer, more intense and more realistic. During the daytime naps we usually enter REM very quickly, and that makes the dreams last longer and be more intense and realistic too. Lucid dream is most easily achieved in the morning and during a daytime nap for this reason!

It is also noteworthy to mention hypnagogia. These are strong visual or auditory images that occur during falling asleep. They appear when our thoughts begin to float away while we are falling into sleep, and we begin to forget that we are lying in bed. They do not occur each time we fall asleep, or simply we do not remember their occurrence. These visions are not usually much related to each other, they are more chaotic than dreams and usually are accompanied by some kind of awareness that "we don't sleep yet".

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2. What is lucid dreaming?

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Lucid dreams are a scientifically proven phenomena. There is a number of studies on conscious dreams and some of them even use people who dream consciously to explore various properties of the dreamworld (!). A lucid dream is not really much different physiologically from an ordinary dream. What distinguishes a lucid dream from an ordinary dream is that the sleeping subject realizes that he/she is in a dream state and gains conscious control over the dream.

While lucid dreaming you can control your behaviour just like you do it in wakefulness, instead of passively "watching" the dream like a movie. You can compare this to a sudden embodiment into the flesh of the main character of the movie you are watching from your sofa. If that happens, you gain control not only over our dream avatar, but basically over the whole dream world - the environment, other characters, weather, etc. After all, all this is a projection of our own mind!

By becoming self-aware in a dream, you can begin to explore freely the meanders of our mind and interact with our dream world.

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3. Lucid Dreaming Techniques

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0. Dream Diary

I numbered "Dream Diary" as 0, because maintaining a dream diary is crucial for all techniques of achieving lucid dreams. Writing down your dreams right after awakening in a remarkable way improves the memory and quality of our dreams - after 2 weeks you should remember at least 3 dreams straight after waking up. Even if you tend not to remember any dream nowadays, don't worry - start by writing down anything you remember from the night, it may even be an unclear sensation/emotion from the sleep or just write "I don't remember anything" in your diary - you'll finally end up with a colourful dream that you'll be able tofully describe and with time you'll remember more and more of them.

Unfortunately, writing down few dreams every morning can be time-consuming and not everyone has enough time and willingness to do so. In addition, it is important to do this as soon as possible after awakening, because the details of dream, and sometimes the whole core of it vanish quickly from our memory. So it is worth to wake up, do not open your eyes and do not change the position in which you lie, and start to intensively try to recall your last dream. Then write down everything on paper. When you have not enough time, you can write down simple phrases that will easily recall the dream plot. The more detailed the description is, the better. You can also add drawings or even maps of the rooms in which you have been located. It is worth emphasizing all the unusual, dream-specific things that are not possible in real world, as well as those that occur regularly in your dreams. Thanks to this, you will pay more attention to these unusual phenomena, which will increase the chance that by experiencing them in dream you link them with the fact that you may be dreaming in this moment. It is worth making a ritual of writing down dreams. Decorating your dream diary is a excellent way to do so.

Keeping a diary of dreams will significantly increase the number of dreams remembered by us, but it will also increase their quality - they will be more realistic, more sensual, longer, sometimes more complicated and interesting. Even if you don't achieve lucidity quickly, you should notice a qualitative change in your dreams quite soon.

1. Mnemonically Induced Lucid Dream

One of the most popular and effective methods, developed by Stephen LaBerge from The Lucidity Institute - in short, it is based on maintaining a strong intention to achieve lucid dream and visualization of that moment. MILD increases self-awareness of the reality of dreams, which makes it much easier to recognize the state of dream while dreaming. Our mind must be infected with the "idea" of a conscious dream so strongly that it will be recalled spontaneously during the REM phase.

The basis of this technique is affirmation and visualization - every time you fall asleep, affirm in your thoughts, e.g. "I will have a lucid dream tonight", "I'm in a dream, I'm in a dream" or "I will soon be dreaming". You can't just say these sentences mechanically - you really have to believe in what you think. Such a "dreamy mantra" should last for about 10-15 minutes, then you can start to visualize.

Begin to imagine the moment when you become aware of your dream. If you use this technique in the morning and you just woke up from a dream, you can imagine that you are still in the past dream. It's all about imagining "how it is like" to lucid dream and what you will do when you'll gain self-awareness. You can wander through this scenario for a few minutes and after a few moments you'll probably fall asleep and.... that's what it's all about. Thanks to affirmation and visualization performed before sleeping, you significantly increase your chances of becoming aware during one of your dreams this night. That's how mnemonically induced technique works.

Reality Checks

This technique should be supplemented by the so-called reality tests. Sometimes affirmation and visualisation are enough, but reality checks greatly increase the chance of success. It's all about creating a habit.... of checking if you're dreaming. It sounds quite ridiculous because you never have any doubts that you are wakeful while wakefulness! However, if you really ask yourselves this question in a dream, these doubts may come up and if they appear, it should be followed immediately by the thought "I'm really dreaming! I'm having a lucid dream! ".

How to perform reality checks?

• The easiest thing to do is to look at your hands and to ask yourself a real, sincere question: "Am I dreaming now?" and then look around to see if nothing strange, that could suggestthat you are sleeping, happens.

• If certain people, rooms or objects occur often in our dreams (and you should know that thanks to our dream diary), then it is worthwhile to do reality checks every time you see them during wakefulness.

• Another good idea is to put a simple question "Are you dreaming now?" on the wallpaper of your phone/computer and spend few seconds making reality check every time you see it.

• You can develop a habit of double checking the time. Watches do not work properly in dreams - if you check the time and it is 3 PM, and then you turn away for a moment and check again you will see a completely different time e.g. 6:30.

The essential thing is to do reality checks often enough and in a habitual way in order to make it appear at the time of dreaming.

To keep regularity you can for example perform reality checks every hour on the hour or whenever you enter home or get into a car. Of course, it sounds a bit absurd to ask yourself this sincere question several times a day -"is it a dream?", but when this becomes a habit, it is extremely effective in achieving awareness during sleep.

3. Wake Induced Lucid Dreams

This technique is much more difficult than MILD, but due to it the quality of conscious dream will be much better, so the dream will be very clear and you will have almost total control over it. This is because while performing this method you enter the REM phase directly from wakefulness without any break in our self-awareness.

To do this, it is necessary to experience the hypnagogia described above. The aim is to maintain consciousness as long as possible, while at the same time deepening the experience of hypnagogia and allowing them to develop deeper and deeper. This is very difficult because precisely at this point that we tend to fall asleep. You can focus your attention on counting breaths from 100 to 1 or on another repetitive activity that requires concentration. If you will withstand for a long time, hypnagogia should become more and more complex and realistic, until finally you should feel that you can submerge into them somehow, e.g. by catching an object that appears in front of you. If you manage to do so, you should be in the dream at this point with full control over it!

Due to the fact that in the evening we usually enter the NREM phase and the REM phases are short, this technique works better in the morning, during short naps or in combination with the next technique - WBTB - when our sleep tends to have a longer REM phase and our body is already partly rested.

4. Wake Back To Bed

Waking up at night, awakening fully and then returning to sleep is a great technique that can be combined with any other method described in this guide.

• The point is to wake up more or less at the end of the REM cycle. Wake up for a dozen or so minutes and go back to sleep. Cycles last about 1.5 hours, so you can set the alarm clock to 3h or 4.5h from the moment of lying down.

• After awaking get up from bed and wake up completely for about 20-40 minutes. It is worthwhile to read something about lucid dream and keep you mind occupied. You can do several reality checks during this time, which will also increase your chances of doing them during the next REM phase.

• Then go back to bed and now you can try the MILD or WILD technique. If remember and wrote down any dream from the past sleep you can use MILD technique to visualize the continuation of this dream and maintain consciousness within it.

5. Finger Induced Lucid Dream

To do perform this technique, you should be very, very sleepy. Finger Induced Lucid Dream should be done on the threshold of sleep. So it is worth to try it in the morning, when you still have some time to sleep for a while or in the middle of the night. If you wake up in the middle of the night, don't try to awaken up completely like in WBTB, but rather immediately go back to sleep and try to do this technique.

• When you'll be very sleepy, imagine playing the piano with your index finger and middle finger of one of your palms. Try to do the smallest, microscopic movements with these fingers as if you were playing a miniature piano. The aim is to make as little effort as possible and not to interfere with falling asleep. This movement should be monotonous and very small.

• Every 30 seconds perform a reality check - you can grab your nose with the other hand and try to breathe through it. After a few such cycles you should finally be able to breathe through your blocked nose, and this will mean that you are already asleep and dreaming :)

6. Senses Initiated Lucid Dream

Like most techniques, it is best done in the middle of the night when the body has a lower NREM demand.
In the Senses Initiated Lucid Dream technique, the aim is to focus attention each of the senses consecutively, making this cycle several times.

• If you are already relaxed and sleeping, start with your sight. Look into the darkness with your eyes closed for 20-30 seconds and try to focus only on what you see. Try to gain as much visual information as possible. If you see only black darkness it's ok. It's all about being fully conscious and focused on seeing.

• Then switch to hearing - for 20-30 seconds listen to the sounds of the environment, your body and perhaps even some imaginary sounds. Try to listen as consciously as possible and focus only on that.

• Touch and proprioception are the last set of senses. Try to feel whether it is warm or cold, feel the weight of your body and the texture of your sheets. Feel the position you lie in, how your hands and legs are arranged. Focus your mind 100% on your body and skin.

• Repeat these cycles 5-7 times. Don't count anything in your mind, focus only on your senses. Try to do it as reliably as possible. After this time you can relax and fall asleep. This technique sharpens your senses and makes it much easier for you to feel these senses consciously in your dream.

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The techniques described above are worth combining and experimenting to find the mixture that works best on you. You know yourself best and you are the most acquainted with how your mind and body works during sleep, night and morning, so it is worth to be guided by the intuition, which technique or combination of which techniques will be the best. Dream diary, high motivation and excitement about lucid dreams are by far the most important factors. Sometimes after several hours of reading about lucid dreams they happen spontaneously without the help of techniques. But without a dream diary you may have a lucid dream that you won't even remember! Excitement with a vision of lucid dreaming helps in affirmation and visualization of this state. By far the biggest obstacle is to give up techniques because of sleepiness or laziness.

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Phenomena related to lucid dreams

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"Dream Physics" and dream logic

• Unfortunately, we don't always have full control over everything during lucid dreaming. It depends above all on the level of awareness - sometimes it is so low that we actually do not control our dream and we "go with the flow" with its content almost as if it was a normal dream. Another time you can feel that you can change literally everything, including the will of characters, the weather, etc.

• When you achieve your first lucid dream, you might be so excited that you will wake up almost instantly! Try to calm down a bit before it happens :)

• In order to increase the quality and clarity of a dream you can yell really loudly "FOCUS" or "SHARPNESS". The vision should immediately become more sharpened. Another way of sharpening the view is to look at a small object for a few moments, e.g. to look at details of a flower.

• It is quite difficult to do things contrary to physics in lucid dreams. It is very hard to materialize something in your hands while looking at them. Therefore, if you want to create something, imagine that it appears behind your back - when you turn around, the imagined thing should waiting there for you :)

• If you want to get to some place, it is worth imagining a door behind you. Then you can imagine that when you open the door they will lead to a desired place.

• Some people find it difficult to start flying. If this is a problem for you, try to "lie down" in the air first, as if you were lying on the surface of water. This should succeed without any problems. Now you can begin to slowly move upwards and accelerate faster and faster. However, you may still experiencing problems with rapid turning and stopping while flying, but there's probably no way to change that.

• Even during lucid dreams the part of the brain responsible for logical thinking and scepticism is less active than during wakefulness. This is why you can think, for example, that if you take a picture of something in our dream then you will be able to develop this photograph after waking up :)

• Watches and light switches do not work in dreams. The text read in the book will be completely different each time you look at it, and the letters will float and will be very difficult to understand.

False awakening

False awakening is a phenomenon in which we dream that we have woke up. You can even begin to do various morning activities in a dream like brushing your teeth. It occurs often after a lucid dream, even during the same REM phase. You can experience even few false awakenings during one night, which can give the impression of being imprisoned in the dream like a protagonist of Waking Life movie!

Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis occurs when a paralysis that occurs during the REM period and protects us from sleepwalk is not removed despite the awakening. In other words, the mind is already awaken, but the body is sleeping. This phenomenon is accompanied by numerous hallucinations, usually of a very unpleasant, "horror-like" character. Most people feel anxiety and fear. During the paralysis we can't move or make any sound, even though we don't sleep anymore. The sensation of breathlessness also occurs, as the chest muscles are also paralysed. This phenomenon sometimes occurs while using some of the lucid dream techniques. It is quite horrifying, but it is completely harmless - after a few moments it passes by itself and we wake up or fall asleep again. It is easy to go start lucid dreaming thanks to sleep paralysis, if we let ourselves be carried away by hallucinations while trying to keep our awareness.

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What can I do while lucid dreaming?

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You can do whatever you want! Sky is the limit! It is worth to give yourself a goal before each lucid dream. You can set a quest to do something new each time you are lucid dreaming. If you have a goal, it will be easier to visualize it during the MILD technique. Examples of goals are as follows:

• Flying! Probably the most pleasant thing to do. You can fly over imaginary cities and admire the architecture created by your own mind or fly over nature and admire the dreamy natural landscapes.

• You can try to dip under water and start swimming in the ocean without worrying about oxygen!

• You can try sex with whom you only wish :)

• Try how the sense of taste works during sleep, some things may taste quite surprisingly.

• One of the most interesting activities is talking to people from the dream. It's the only opportunity to have a REAL conversation with our own unconsciousness! These conversations can be quite funny, absurd, surrealistic, but also very symbolic.

• If you are haunted by returning nightmares, you can try to face night-time fears - for example, you can attack a source of anxiety with fireball or the whole army of fully armed soldiers and tanks!

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If you have any questions, I will answer in the comments. Have you ever experienced a lucid dream? What did you do then? Which techniques work for you? Share your own experience!

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Literature:

_{Blackmore, Susan (1991). "Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?". Skeptical Inquirer. 15: 362–370.
Gackenbach, J. (1988). The psychological content of lucid versus nonlucid dreams. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain (pp. 181-220). Springer, Boston, MA.
Hearne, K. M. (1978). Lucid dreams: an elecro-physiological and psychological study (Doctoral dissertation, Liverpool University).
Hishikawa, Y., & Shimizu, T. (1995). Physiology of REM sleep, cataplexy, and sleep paralysis. Advances in neurology, 67, 245-271.
Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. (1994). Lucid dreaming as metacognition: Implications for cognitive science. Consciousness and Cognition, 3(2), 246-264.
La Berge, S. P. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51(3_suppl2), 1039-1042.
Tholey, Paul (1983). Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 1983, pp 79–90.}

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