Becoming a Lucid Dreamer

You’ve heard about lucid dreaming and you’re sure that it is something you want to try.However, you are at a loss as to how one becomes a lucid dreamer.

You also need to think about exactly why you want to become a lucid dreamer. What are the benefits of lucid dreaming? To help us find the benefits, let us first look at ‘normal’ sleep.

What typically happens is you lay down, you close your eyes and you wake six to eight hours later – you may or may not remember any dreams you gave had in this time. In and of itself, not terribly exciting.

Average sleep has a purpose it prepares our minds and bodies to carry out the duties of the next day. However, consider the idea of managing your dreams consciously.

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.

This sounds great, but how can you become a lucid dreamer? There are two ways to reach this state – one is by having a DLID, or dream initiated lucid dream. These are instances where the dreamer has taught themselves to recognize that they are having a dream and start to assert control over the direction of their dream.

The next way is called wake initiated lucid dream (WILD); in this process, you go from wake to sleep stage with no loss of consciousness. To put it more simply you walk through the door from here to your dreams instead of just happening upon them

Now that we know the basic how, what are the fine points to entering either one of these lucid dream realms?

Dream Recall

The easiest place to begin your lucid dream search is in dreams you have already had. When you can remember your dreams, you will be able to recognize when you have that dream again. Many times, we will have the same dream or part of a dream over and over.

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 based on entering your dreams with the intention of realizing you are dreaming or looking for a dream sign. For instance when you awaken in the nigh from a dream and recall a blue dog you mark that blue dog in your mind as your dream sign. Then when you encounter this again you will know you are dreaming.

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.

According to Dr, LaBerge, this method has a 60% success rate. The idea here is to wake yourself in the midst of a REM cycle so that upon returning to sleep, lucid dreaming will be easy to achieve.

Cycle Adjustment Technique

Developed by Daniel Love, in this technique you first acclimate yourself to waking 90 minutes earlier than usual. Then alternate waking early with waking at your usual time. When you wake up at the later (regular) time, your body will begin to stir 90 minutes earlier, giving you a much better chance at achieving a state of lucid dreaming, at least during this 90 minutes.

Wake-initiation of Lucid Dreams (WILD)

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.

A number of ways to stay aware are counting, imagine climbing or descending stairs, chant, control your breathing, count your breaths, and concentrate on relaxing the body from their toes to head. (This all falls under the term ’self hypnosis’.) It is best to do this when you are not tired, like in the afternoon.

Like many other areas of our life, technology has made its mark. Today you can find several electronic devices that can aid you in inducing lucid dreams. There are masks that can detect when you enter REM sleep then use a vibration, sound or small lights to induce lucidity.

Listening to binaural beat frequencies through a head set is the simplest and most consistent way to create a lucid dream.

These binaural sounds induce lucid dreaming by causing the hemispheres of your brain to synchronize, making your brainwaves reach the state required for lucid dreaming.

Put all or many of these techniques together and you are ready to begin your journey into the wonderful world of lucid dreaming. It is a simple process that anyone can do.