Many people want to experience a lucid dream. If you’re among them, the first thing you need to think about is how you want to go about learning.

It’s important to think about why you’d like to become a lucid dreamer, too. There are a number of benefits to dreaming this way, but first we should look at normal sleep, so we’ll understand them.

Before we look at lucid dreaming, think about normal sleep; you get into bed, close your eyes for a certain length of time, and either dream or just see black for a few hours and then wake up! It isn’t very interesting now is it?

Normal sleep is just a method of refreshing ourselves for the busyness of the next day.However, it could be a lot more interesting if you could control the period of time in which you’re dreaming.

Lucid dreamers are in complete control of their dreams. This allows them to explore new worlds in their mind and expand the scope of their dreams. Lucid dreamers can also conscious choose not to have nightmares - they just change the dream.

So if you want to become a lucid dreamer how do you do it? There are actually two ways. The first way is having a dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD), which is where the dreamer is in a dream and then realizes that they are, restoring their sense of consciousness within the dream.

The second way is having a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD); where the dreamer goes from being awake, to being asleep with no change in consciousness. In other words, the dreamer enters their dream as if it were a door, rather than just “waking up” in a dream.

So, what

methods can you use to induce these kinds of lucid dreaming states?

Dream Recall

If you’re interested in being a lucid dreamer, one of the most successful methods you can use is dream recall. This is the ability to remember your dreams. By developing this ability, you’ll be more readily able to recognize them while you’re asleep.

That’s because you’re likely to have the same dream or dream elements on more than one occasion.

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

Cycle Adjustment Technique

Created by Daniel Love, this method involves setting an alarm to wake you one and a half hours before your normal wake-up time. Once you get used to this early time, alternate your alarm between a normal time and the early one. When your alarm is set to wake you normally, you’ll find your body’s already ready to wake up early. That makes it more likely that you’ll wake up in your dream, and dream lucidly.

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.

Technology has moved on in recent years, and there are various devices like dreaming masks and other scientific appliances which contain such things as strobe lights to induce lucid dreams.

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 by synchronizing the two hemispheres of the brain and have the effect of almost instantaneously changing your brainwaves to the REM frequency needed for a lucid dream to occur.

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

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