How Do You Become A Lucid Dreamer?
You have decided you want to be a lucid dreamer, otherwise known as a conscious dreamer. Knowing what you would like to do is good, the question remains on how do you accomplish this?
It can be helpful to know why you would like to be a lucid dreamer. What do you have to gain from the process? In order to find the profit in lucid dreaming we should begin with the normal dream process.
When you go to 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 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.
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 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.
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 best way to remember your dreams is of course to write them down. Keep a pen and pad by the bed and immediately upon waking from a dream write it down. The reason you want to write it immediately upon waking is so you do not forget any part of the dream. Dreams tend to fade from our conscious mind rather quickly.
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)
This simple process has you taking no action except to set an alarm that will waken you in less time than you normally sleep. For most of us about five or six hours will do it. After the alarm awakens you do not try to fall back to sleep. For about an hour you should read, watch TV or concentrate on lucid dreaming then go back to sleep.
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
This method was created by Daniel Love in this technique you set an alarm to awaken you 90 minutes before you normally would awaken. This is done for approximately a week. After a week, you begin to alternate between normal wake up and early. On the normal waking days, the body will come alert earlier thereby increasing the chance of lucidity.
Wake-initiation of Lucid Dreams (WILD)
This technique involves maintaining mental alertness even as your body shuts down for sleep. Think of it as if you are in a movies theater, with the film soon to begin; your closed eyelids are like the black screen just before the movie starts.
You can also use this technique with tactics like counting, chanting or imagining yourself climbing stairs as you go to sleep. This method of achieving lucid dreaming is best done in the afternoon or other times when you are not terribly tired.
Technologies like strobe lights and dreaming masks can also help you to become a lucid dreamer.
Listening to binaural beat frequencies through a head set is the simplest and most consistent way to create a lucid dream.
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.
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.
