tips on lucid dreaming?

reply to post by LucidWarrior


Very simple:

1) Remember a "frame" from a dream that you had, for example, I remember seeing a tree, so i take a pencil and draw that image on to a piece of paper, whenever I look at that paper, I remember the dream.

2) Take at least five or ten of these "frames" and take a walk.

3) Find real places that look similar to what you have drawn, for example, I go to a park and look at a tree that looks similar to the one in my dreams.

4) Look at the object and visualise that it is the same object in your dream.

5) Take a photograph of the real object.

6) For each "frame" you have a photograph and then, try to make the photograph look like the image that was in your dream.

7) When you have visualised this, you should end up with a completley "new image" - and this is a kind of "anchor" that allows you to actualise what you dream. I.e. a cross between the "dream tree" and the photograph.

8) Draw the new image.

9) Take each set of three (dream image, photograph, new image) and put them together into a sentence. For example, a car, a tree, a banana, a fox, and a cat - "The cat was chasing the fox and the cat climbed up a banana tree, as I was driving past in my car".

10) With the sentence you have put together, imagine it as a story in your mind - your first "day dream".

12) Take a guess at the average time it takes you to fall asleep - if it is five minutes, for example, then your "day dream" must be at least five minutes long - essentially, you have to direct your own little "movie".

I also have problems with lucid dreaming as well. I preform reality checks, keep a dream journal, wake back to bed, use binaural beats, but nothing seems to work for me. Sometimes I will have pretty vivid and intense dreams, but I never can take control of them. It seems to me I can only remember my dreams after waking up, having no ability to realize that I'm dreaming only until after I have awoken. Would anyone recommend taking supplements to enhance my dreaming ability? Any tips for my problem would be appreciated!

-S

a reply to: influencetheabove

try perusing this page. As for supplements, if it means that much to you, go right ahead and try them, I sure would.

I have had a dream about waking up in my own room before. I have had several of those actually..... I can recall one of my dreams from over ten years ago. I woke up in my room. Got up and everyone was packing for a vacation. I turn around to go back into my room and suddenly the entire house is empty. Like it had just been cleaned out completely. When I got down stairs the house suddenly looked like it had been condemned. When I made it outside my entire neighborhood had been demolished. Turning around again I saw a bunch of NOTHINGNESS. I turn around again and I am suddenly in a forest.

Every time I turned around the entire landscape changed until suddenly.... I was in the middle of a huge A ocean!

originally posted by: influencetheabove
I also have problems with lucid dreaming as well. I preform reality checks, keep a dream journal, wake back to bed, use binaural beats, but nothing seems to work for me. Sometimes I will have pretty vivid and intense dreams, but I never can take control of them. It seems to me I can only remember my dreams after waking up, having no ability to realize that I'm dreaming only until after I have awoken. Would anyone recommend taking supplements to enhance my dreaming ability? Any tips for my problem would be appreciated!

-S

This is as much a reply to everyone in this thread who is having problems achieving lucidity, as well as yourself.

As an experienced and fully fledged oneironaut, I will try to lend my two cents here.

It has been said by quite a few, but I'm going to repeat it because I can't stress the importance of this rule enough!

1. Keep a dream journal! That is absolutely rule number one. Without a dream journal, you will never be able to have regular and lengthy lucid dreams. The other factor also is, what is the point of having lucid dreams at all if you aren't going to write them down?! Write down your dreams, as many of them as you can remember, in as much detail as you can remember. If you are having trouble remembering your dreams, then there are some methods you can employ in order to help you remember them. Trust me, once you get into the habit of training your brain to remember your dreams, you WILL remember more of them. Even if you only remember a single small detail, WRITE IT DOWN. When I first started out many, many years ago, I could hardly remember anything from my dreams. But within a month, my journal expanded from being a scant few sentences each morning to four to five full dreams a night spanning several pages in minute detail.

A good technique to help dream recall is once you wake up from a dream, do not move, do not sit up; in fact, do not do anything for a moment, just continue to lie in bed. Do not let your mind wander onto thoughts about the coming day, or anything like that; instead immediately focus your thinking on the dream you were just having. Relax for a moment and try to relive it. If you find that nothing comes to you, don't give up and worry about it. Instead simply focus on remembering the very last thing you were doing in the dream before you woke up. Nine times out of ten it will come to you pretty quickly, and from this starting point, work backwards through the dream to recall the rest. I found this method of recall to be an absolute gem when starting out. Your memory of a dream is always strongest after you have just woken, so do not wait to write it down later in the day. Write it down as soon as you are awake and have remembered it. You do not need to remember every detail before you start writing, because as you put pen to paper, more will come back to you. So with this in mind, always keep your dream journal and a working pen right beside your bed so that it is within easy reach.

Another thing to remember when training and improving your dream recall is that as you start to remember more dreams, and your brain begins to get used to remembering, you will start to wake up in the night after each dream you have. Now, you don't want to disturb your natural sleep cycle too much, and there's no point fumbling about trying to write pages and pages in the dead of night. So just quickly grab the pen and write down a couple of key words, and then go back to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, after writing down the most recent dream, you'll only need to look at the key words you jotted down and the dreams will come flooding back to you.

Training your brain to recall your dreams can be a fairly quick process if you have the right intent. The brain is very susceptible to Stated Intent and Repetition. If you go to bed telling your brain quite clearly of your intention to remember your dreams, and repeating this as you fall asleep; you will be surprised how quickly your brain responds to this. The main reason that many people do not remember their dreams is because it is not important to their brain to remember them. By changing their level of importance to your brain, you will notice almost instant results.

2. Learn your dream signs. Do not even try to lucid dream until you have kept a solid dream journal every night for, at least, a month if not more. Once you have a good amount of dreams written down and your mind is used to dream recall, you will need to go back over your journal and try to identify your dream signs. These are basically certain things that occur on a regular basis in your dreams. These can be mundane or fantastic. Both are equally important. For example, one of my own dream signs is train travel. In at least 7 out of 10 dreams that I have, I either see trains, am on trains, pass through train stations, etc. So, the key here is to build this into your reality checks. As well as doing regular reality checks, if I am ever on a train or see a train, I will automatically do a reality check. The reason for this is to train your mind into doing it instinctively every time you see this dream sign. The intended result is that hopefully I will also check whilst dreaming if I encounter trains, and then hey presto! Of course, as mentioned some dream signs can be fantastic or surreal, for example, flying or dragons; but it is important to remember them and identify with your brain that these kinds of things will only ever occur in dreams. Then, once you are dreaming and they do happen, you shall hopefully remember to do a reality check.

3. Do Reality Checks. This is vital to lucid dreaming. Raising your own conscious awareness of waking life will help raise your conscious awareness of your dreaming life. Do reality checks often. Once every few hours is a fairly good rule. And also do them after waking up and just before you go to sleep. And also every single time you see a dream sign in your waking life. Some people have different techniques for their reality checks, but these are some that I use:

The twenty questions. Stop what you are doing and ask yourself questions. Usually I ask things like, where am I? How did I get here? What am I doing, or where am I going? What time is it? These are things you should know the answer to in waking life, but in a dream, you will rarely if ever know the answer to any of these. If you can't work out what the time is by looking at your watch, or don't know where you have just come from, then you are probably dreaming.

The observer. Stop what you are doing and look around carefully for a moment or two. Slowly and carefully look at the four corners of a room in turn, focusing on each for a little while. Relax and try to clear your mind of thoughts as you do this. If you are outside, focus on different objects in turn. Look back over each object after you are done. If you are awake, things should appear stable and normal. But if you are dreaming, they might not seem correct and will usually have changed when you look back at them again.

The dab hand. Stop what you are doing and look at your hands. See if they look ordinary and like they usually do. Pull your fingers and press against the skin. If you are dreaming, 99% of the time your hands will look and feel strange.

(To be continued...)

The way I learned to lucid dream was by simply reading every sign I would see during the day twice. If you see a stop sign, you read it out loud, look away, ask yourself if you are dreaming, then look at the sign again and read it out loud, and again, ask yourself if you are dreaming.

You have to do this until your mind starts doing it on it's own. It becomes a habit and you will start to do this in dreams. In a dream a sign will never say the same thing twice, and when you realize that the sign is different, you will start to become lucid.

It is a very simple technique I read in OMNI magazine many years ago (80's) and when I tried it, within a few weeks I was starting to have lucid dreams.

Cool stuff!

s&f

The reflection test. Find a mirror or a reflective surface and observe yourself in it for a few minutes. Remind your brain that you are performing this as part of a reality check. In a dream, your reflection is very unlikely to look exactly like you. You may look slightly different, be it the length of your hair or posture, or you may appear to a completely different person. This is a sure fire sign that you are dreaming.

4. State your intent, train your brain, and practice lucid dreaming induction techniques regularly. Read about lucid dreaming and lucid dream experiences. Talk about it to people in your social circles and on forums and websites. Think about what you would enjoy doing if you were to have a lucid dream. Make lucid dreaming a talking point and a subject that you focus on regularly. Tell your brain that you want to lucid dream. Repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. When you are falling asleep, state your intent to your brain. Tell yourself: "Tonight, I will have a lucid dream. Tonight, I will have a lucid dream..." And repeat it as you fall asleep. And BELIEVE it. Believe that you will. Learn about the different techniques to induce lucid dreams and attempt them. You don't need to attempt them every night, but do so fairly regularly. Read about WILDs, MILDs, DILDs, Wake-Back-To-Beds, and other well researched and practiced techniques. Attempt them, and do not be discouraged by failure. The more you practice, the sooner you will be successful. And you WILL be successful. Be determined.

Now, influencetheabove, I know that a good deal of this you already do, but if there is anything I have mentioned so far that you have missed, be sure to incorporate it into your techniques and efforts. Do not be disheartened. You say you have quite vivid and intense dreams. How many dreams on average would you say you remember per night, and in what kind of detail? In terms of supplements, you can take B vitamin supplements as these can improve dream clarity and recall. Eat greens. Eat cheeses. You can also take Choline Bitartrate, which can aid lucidity and awareness in your dreams.

A good thing to also remember is that by definition, a lucid dream is not synonymous with taking control of your dreams; lucidity is simply to become aware that you are dreaming. Whilst control of the dream usually does also come with lucidity, this is not always the case. And the level of control you have over a lucid dream will depend entirely on how experienced you are, how many you have, and how aware you can become. So, focus initially purely on the aspect of becoming conscious of the dream itself rather than the control aspect. That hurdle will come afterward, as you won't be able to control things until you become aware.

Binaural Beats don't work for everyone, but can be helpful, however there are also some good hypnosis type CDs available, particularly regarding guided dream induction specifically to do with lucid dreaming that you can listen to while you fall asleep. You can also attempt to setup an outside dream aid if you have a regular bed time. This can be achieved by setting something to occur on a timer around 5 hours into your sleep cycle, such as a light switching on (not the main light!) or a recording playing (not too loudly!) something along the lines of "you are currently dreaming, so do a reality check" or even simply the words "lucid dream".

Out of interest, how long have you been keeping a dream journal, and how long have you been attempting to lucid dream?

a reply to: 8BitOperator

Wow, thanks for all the information. I didn't know that about vitamin b supplements, Ill be checking cvs for some later today

a reply to: 8BitOperator

Thank you for all the advice. I will definitely try incorporating more reality checks, the only thing I lack of out of all the info you stated. Usually I will have at least 3 dreams a week, mostly random things with people/places that are relevant to me or i saw earlier that day. I've been keeping a dream journal for maybe a year and a half now. I had at least 40 written down dreams in my phone, but then they got deleted. I still have an updated version with about 15-20 on there right now, and intend on sharing them one day. Ever since I've had an OOBE about 2 years ago, I've been fascinated with lucid dreaming and astral projection. It just takes a lot of dedication and practice to reach my goal of becoming lucid and/or astral projecting.

what worked for me is having a journal and whenever i awoke i would jot down what i could remember. ANYTHING that i could remember: colors, items, places, time and date. even the simple things.
then i would look up on different sources what they all meant.

as far as lucid dreaming, it doesnt work for everyone the first couple of times so you will have to do this repeatedly for you to get your results. but here you go !

lie down on your back with your hands on your side. make sure to adjust your neck and body comfortably so you dont move. its very important.

close your eyes and soothe yourself. think of simple things, like your day, music, etc.

after a while, you will start to feel itchy or like you want to move but you can not give in otherwise youll have to start the process again.

you will have to keep your eyes closed and keep relaxed for about 20-30 minutes.

by this time, you should feel a pretty heavy feeling, or weight if you will.. the trick is to STAY AWAKE while your eyes are closed and body is completely relaxed.

voila, you should be lucid dreaming.