The Joys Of Being A Lucid Dreamer

November 25th, 2009 by author

So you want to lucid dream. Well that’s a good start, at least you know what you want to do; but how exactly do you go about it?

You’ll need to think about why you want to be a lucid dreamer, as well as the benefits of it. First, we’ll take a look at normal sleeping.

Normal sleep helps us refresh ourselves for the next day. However, when you experience lucid dreaming, you would be able to control the period of time when you were dreaming.

Normal sleep just seems to serve the purpose of simply refreshing ourselves in order to live out the next day. But what if you could control that period of time that you have dreams?

What if rather than being an active observer, you can be the one who can lead your dream to be whatever you want, rather than your dream leading you? This is what a lucid dreamer is; someone who is in total control of their dreams; able to explore new worlds that are not bound to the physical, societal and time-space laws of the real world.

If you want to become a lucid dreamer, how do you manage it? There are two main ways. The first is what’s called a dream initiated lucid dream, or DILD. That’s when the dreamer realizes they’re dreaming in the middle of a dream, restoring their consciousness without leaving the dreaming state itself.

The second method is called WILD, and stands for wake-initiated lucid dream. This is when you start out awake and fall asleep, but do not experience a change in consciousness levels. This is the process of simply entering a dream, the same way you’d walk through a door, instead of waking up inside the dream.

So, what methods are used to induce both of these kinds of lucid dream experiences?

Dream Recall

If you’re interested in lucid dreaming, dream recall is one of the most effective ways of learning to do it. Dream recall is the ability to remember your dreams. If you remember them, you’re more likely to be able to recognize them while you’re asleep. That’s because most of us have the same
dreams or dream elements more than once.

The way to practise dream recall is by keeping a dream journal. The dream journal is meant as a tool to write down anything you can remember about your dream, in order to recall it for the future. This should be done right after waking up; otherwise dreams will become harder to remember.

Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)

This is a technique that was developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, one of the lead scientists studying lucid dreaming. The intent here is to simply tell yourself that you will remember something, like an object for example and then in the dream, when you see this object you will realize it is a dream.

Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB)

The process here is to go to sleep, doing nothing but setting your alarm to wake you up a few hours later (5 or 6). Once you wake up, DO NOT go back to sleep. Instead, do something else like read for a while, or think as much as you can about lucid dreaming for around an hour then go back to bed.

Cycle Adjustment Technique

This technique was created by Daniel Love, and involves setting an alarm that will wake you an hour and a half before you’d normally get up. Once you’re used to waking up early, alternate between the early alarm and your old alarm. When you’re waking up normally, your body will already be expecting the early alarm, and make you more likely to “wake up” in your dream.

Wake Initiation of Lucid Dream (WILD)

This method was mentioned above. To achieve a lucid dream using it, all that’s needed is keeping your mind awake while your body falls asleep. This is one of the most interesting ways of having a lucid dream. It’s as if you’re getting ready to watch a movie – you start in the real world, sitting on the couch, and turn on the television and press play when
you start to sleep). The screen begins black, just like when your eyes are closed, and all you need to do is wait for the movie or dream to start.

This method was described before. If you would like to achieve a lucid dream this way, all you have to do is to keep your mind awake while you body falls asleep. This is perhaps the most interesting way of entering a lucid dream. It is as if you are getting ready to watch a movie. You are in the real world, you sit on your couch, you turn on the TV and press play (starting to sleep), the screen is black (in the same way as when your eyes are closed), and all you have to do is wait for the movie to actually start.

There are several different ways to hold onto awareness, including imagining going up or down a flight of stairs, chanting, counting numbers, breaths, or anything else, breathing control, and muscle relaxation. These and other self-hypnosis methods will give you something to concentrate on, but don’t do this when you’re tired, or you may lose consciousness.

In recent years, the advance of technology has brought us new devices to help us dream lucidly. These include strobe lights, dreaming masks, and other gadgets thought to assist with lucid dreaming.

These work by synchronizing your brain’s two hemispheres. They almost instantly allow your brain waves to reach the frequency that occurs in REM sleep and which is needed for you to be a lucid dreamer.

These work
because they’re able to synchronize both brain hemispheres, giving the effect of an almost instantaneous change to the frequency used in REM sleep, which is also necessary for lucid dreaming.

Combined with self affirmations and sessions of self hypnosis, these methods make it easy to become a lucid dreamer. You just need the practice and determination