Lucid Dreaming - The Lucid Dreaming Techniques

Author: Stephen Turner, for www.dreaminglucid.co.uk

Reality testing and dream signs

The secret to lucid dreaming success is to get yourself into the habit of noticing when you are dreaming, and when you are not. The way you do this is to train yourself to do 'reality checks' during your waking hours. Do enough reality checks during your waking hours and one day (or rather one night) you will do a reality check during a dream, when, hopefully, you will spot that you are actually dreaming. This is the moment of ‘going lucid’, and after perhaps weeks of hard work, to discover that you are actually lucid dreaming it is likely to be some pay off!

Reality tests not only focus your mind on whether you are awake or dreaming, they also focus your mind on looking for dream signs, signs which give away an experience as a dream. Try doing reality tests four or five times a day. Ask yourself, 'Am I dreaming now?’ A good time to do a reality test is just after something odd happens during your waking hours - the logic being that many odd things happen in dreams, and if you can get into the habit of reality checking right after something unusual happens then sooner of later you will do a reality test in a dream.

Remember that when you do the reality tests during the day, you are looking for dream signs - indications which would give away an experience as being a dream. Of course during the day there will be no dream signs, you’ll be awake - but your search for them will prepare you for an experience where you will think you are awake but you’ll actually discover that you are dreaming.

What sort of dream signs should you look out for?

Watches are good things to focus on, so make sure you wear one during the day. Look hard at the numbers to see if they remain constant or if they change. Do this often enough and then one night in a dream - you will stare at your watch and the magic will begin. I am referring of course to the dream phenomenon noted by researchers where text (words or numbers) changes before the dreamer's eyes. This happens in 75% of cases where the text is re-read and in 95% of cases where it is re-read twice. So during the day, train yourself to look at the numbers on your watch, then look away and back again, away and back again. If the numbers on the watch face change then 'no' you are not going mad, the truth is that you are actually dreaming. Re-examining any form of text in a dream is likely to give away the dream since the words will rarely hold their configuration on repeated re-examination. What you just read and understood as a coherent sentence will in most cases morph into nonsense when you re-read it thereby revealing your experience as a dream, provided, of course, that you have trained yourself to spot this dream sign.

A good idea is to carry a bit of text around with you during the day and look at it regularly. Soon enough you will remember to look at the same text in a dream (your mind will reproduce it) and you’ll spot the dream sign as the text breaks up, or changes before your eyes.

Another dream sign to look out for are light switches; try flicking a light switch in a dream and you'll generally find that they do not work to alter the lighting conditions.

Other dream signs will be your abilities. In dreams we are often able to fly, we may be able to pass through walls, or make things around us move. Things around you may also not be as they are in waking life: in dreams you might encounter strangely coloured animals, malfunctioning devices, and you may meet deceased people. In order that you are ready to spot these odd occurrences in a dream, try to imagine such things happening during the day. One such test that works for me is to imagine myself lifting off the ground. I did this several times a day for a few days and sure enough, I remembered to do it in a dream, took to the air, spotted the dream sign and ‘went lucid.’

Your dream signs

Of course not everyone will experience the same dream signs - the signs you experience will be personal to you, but this is where your dream diary will be of assistance, since it will record those dream signs which you regularly experience. By studying the patterns in your dream signs you will be on notice to look out for them in future. Reality testing may sound a little crazy, but once you get yourself into the habit of frequently testing reality in the real world, it is only a matter of time before you remember to do it in the dream world, and then you will start lucid dreaming.

Stay calm

Going lucid for the first time can be pretty exciting, so try to keep calm or you are likely to wake up and your lucid dreaming experience will be over before it has really started!

Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)

This is a technique pioneered by Dr La Berge, which should be practiced immediately before you go to sleep and involves setting yourself up to notice you're dreaming and then to wake and remember the lucid dreaming experience in as much detail as you can. What you do is repeat out loud your intention to lucid dream and to have perfect dream recall - rather like a mantra. I tried this technique and had immediate successful with it. I should add, however, that by this stage, I had already trained myself to pick up on dream signs. As I lay in bed I repeated over and over, 'I will have a lucid dream, and I will remember it, I will have a lucid dream..’ etc., etc.' I pushed all other thoughts from my mind and focused hard on my intention to start lucid dreaming as soon as I fell asleep and in no time I found myself in a garden, when it occurred to me that I might be dreaming. Uncertain as to whether I was dreaming I tried my flying reality test, and took to the air - comfirming the experience as a dream.

You can also use the MILD technique (or the mantra technique as I like to refer to it) to direct yourself to have a lucid dream about something in particular, or to perform a particular task. Just adapt your mantra to the specifics of the task.

Napping

Dr La Berge's research has revealed that periods of waking interjected during sleep increases the likelihood of lucid dreaming. This is known as the napping technique.

Try waking one and a half hours earlier than you usually do, and then remain awake for about half an hour, then go back to sleep. Research suggests that you may be able to increase your chances of lucid dreaming by as much as 15 to 20 times! It helps if during the waking period you read about lucid dreaming, think about practicing reality checks, and follow MILD as you fall asleep.

As a general point, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - the type of sleep during which you dream - comes in cycles, and each cycle is longer than the last. The final cycle could be as long as 45 minutes to an hour, so by waking at, say, six in the morning, then setting yourself up for a final bout of dream sleep (using MILD) you could have a fruitful hour long lucid dreaming experience.

Lucid dreaming induction devices

You can also buy devices, known as lucid dreaming induction devices, such as DreamLight or NovaDreamer which you wear whilst sleeping and which give you artificial dream signs e.g flashing lights. The lucid dreaming devices work subtlely so that they do not wake you up, but rather the signals enter your dream and become part of what you percieve.

Research shows that these can be very effective at notifying the dreamer that they are in fact dreaming.

Such devices are expensive and I would suggest that you try the lucid dreaming techniques detailed on this site before having recourse to an induction device.