Many people want to dream lucidly. 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. 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?

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.

If you want to become a lucid dreamer, there are two major ways to accomplish it. The first way is called DILD, or dream-initiated lucid dream. That’s when you’re in the process of having a dream, realize that it’s happening, and retain your sense of consciousness inside the dream.

Another popular method is to have a wake initiated lucid dream (WILD); this is a straight shot from awake to asleep with no lapse in your consciousness. This is usually achieved by purposefully retaining awareness during the hypnagoogic state, which directly precedes sleep.

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

Dream Recall

If you’d like to lucid dream, perhaps one of the most successful way of doing so is known as dream recall. Dream recall is simply the ability to remember one’s dreams. By remembering your dreams, you are able to recognize them when you are sleeping, because most likely, you will have the same dream, or at least aspects of it, more than once.

To make dream recall easier you can keep a dream journal. This is a notebook or pad of paper that has the sole purpose of recording your dreams. Whenever you have a dream, you should write all you can remember in the journal as soon as you wake up. The longer you are awake the more details of the dream that will be lost.

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.

According to Stephen LaBerge, there is a 60% success rate of this technique. The reason why is that you would have woken up during the process of sleep, meaning that your mind is not fully aware of this, and are still in the middle of REM cycle. So basically, it’s like going to your mind and telling it that you want to lucid dream.

Cycle Adjustment Technique

This was created by Daniel Love, and what it is, is setting your alarm to wake you up an hour and a half before your normal time. Once you’ve adjusted to waking up early, alternate your alarm to wake you up normally and early. During times you are to wake up normally, you’re body will already be ready to wake up early, and therefore, you will be likely to be awake in your dream.

Wake-initiation of Lucid Dreams (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.

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.

If you want to increase, your chances of success use the method that has proven to be the best. Using a set of headphones listen to binaural beats at the right sound frequencies during sleep.

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.

With self-hypnosis and a conscious preparedness before you go to sleep anyone can practice lucid dreaming.

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