Tai's Crash Course on Lucid Dreaming

Step A: Dream Recall

The first hurdle to clear is to develop the ability to recall your dreams. Afterall, it'd be somewhat of a waste to have a good time you can't remember. Your brain is not not normally wired to remember your dreams.

You will use a dream journal. Whether you write it, type it, or record it verbally, it does not matter.

Have the journal device close to where you wake up. As soon as you wake up, write down anything you can remember of your dreams, and as much as you can remember. If you cannot remember anything, simply record the impression or mental feeling when you had when you woke up.

Continue this every morning until you can recall dreams from the moment you enter the hypnogogic state until the time you awaken. You will not have enough time in the morning to finish recording all your dreams. You will find your brain is working throughout the entire night. Continue writing as much as you can for a minimum of two weeks.

Step B: Reality Check.

What you do repetitively or what makes a strong impression on you during the day will be revisited in your dreams. You will now develop the ability of your mind to perform 'reality checks' during dreams.

Between 10 and 15 times per day or wakened period, perform a reality check. Simply concentrate on whether or not you are dreaming by analyzing the senses coming into your body. You can do this without performing any physical activity, during conversation, class, driving, etc. Some people perform to associate the reality check with a subtle physical movement, such as a nod, or tap of the fingers on a part of the body.

After a few days or weeks of performing reality checks, you will do a routine reality check and realize that you are not in the conscious world, but in a dream. At this point, your conscious mind is being woke up. Your dream will disintegrate back into non-lucidity, and you will recall this in your journal in the morning. Or you will physically awaken. You are now prepared to learn dream control, the first step of which is learning how to maintain the integrity of the dream world from disintegrating under the scrutiny of the conscious mind.

Step C: Maintaining Dream Integrity

Continue to perform steps A and B. When you perform a reality check in the dream you will feel the integrity of the dream quickly disintegrate. To keep the unconscious mind from disintegrating under the focus of the conscious mind, you must concentrate inward. You will do this by staring at the back of your hands in the dream. Focus on all the details of the back of your hands: the vascularity, hair, fingernails, finger polish, dirt under the fingernails, the color of your skin, winkles, moles, or scars. You will have an inherent 'feel' for your depth in the unconscious world. When you feel that the world maintains integrity around you, you can stop focusing on your hands and start exploring the unconscious world of your mind. If you feel the dreamworld's integrity coming apart - that you are waking up, stop whatever you are doing and focus on the backs of your hands. If you feel your lucid grasp of the world losing grip, focus on the back of your hands. You will likely lose control of the dream at some point, and this is natural. In fact, it's essential. See step F: Cautions.

Step D: Manipulation of the Lucid Dream

The definition of Lucid Dreaming is the conscious exploration of the unconscious world. You are now an active participant in the seemingly autonomous realm of your dreaming mind. You can fly, enter a sci-fi world, or become someone else. If you find it difficult to fly, simply concentrate on feeling 'lighter.' You will rise. To change your physical appearance, use the hand-focus technique. You can also conjure a mirror before you.

Lucid dreaming cannot allow you to enter a nightmare state. Gaining the ability to perform reality checks and control of your dreams enables you to stop the nightmare from occuring by changing the dreamworld to something attractive, or physically wakening yourself up. If you suffer from night terrors this is extremely helpful.

Step E: Continued Exploration

Your brain is like a muscle. You use a technique, language, or the ability to have lucid dreams, or you lose it quickly. If you are interested in continuing your lucid dreams, you must continue dream journals, reality checks, and the dream techniques described above.

Please read the next step before starting.

Step F: Cautions

Lucid dreaming is not beneficial sleep. The time you spend lucid dreaming is time that your mind is not benefiting from the self-repair steps that proceed while you are naturally dreaming. If you spend 4 out of 8 hours in lucidity, you have only slept 4 hours that night.

Lucid dreaming is not a natural technique. The abilities of the human mind contains many mysteries. The constant questioning, or reality checks, combined with strong recall of your nightly eight hours in another world can cause one to seriously question the validity of their own reality. This can lead to depression, anxiety, and general unhappiness, especially in people who already suffer these symptoms. Desist your practice of lucid dreaming immediately if it distracts you from reality. Lucid dreaming is an entertaining trick of your mind, it is not worth pursuing at the damage to your real life.

If you are a sleep walker, I don't advise you practice lucid dreaming. Notice in Step D I advised learning to fly in a lucid dream by concentrating on your body becoming lighter - not jumping off a building. This is not a joke whatsoever.

Lucid dreaming is fun to explore, and the biggest advantage of practicing it I found was that I never again suffered nightmares thanks to my practice of dream control. This is an ability you retain for years when you are not even in a lucid dream. You can drop and regain your ability to have lucid dreams at will using the above techniques.

Have fun, see you in our dreams.

Great post!

I'm gonna save this and give it a go

This is very informative.

It is great to see all of this information in one place. From my extremely limited experience on lucid dreams, maintaining dream integrity has been the hardest part for me.

I think its time for me to start my dream journal again...

Interesting.
I had never heard of Lucid dreaming until i started practicing visualization and meditation techniques, i was going through various visualization excercises and i fell asleep whilst i was in a meditative state.
I think this must have allowed me to stay conscious, while my body fell asleep!
Since then ive had three progressively longer lucid dreams, but still my problem remains maintaining them. Thanks Taibunsuu, i will try the thing with the hands.

As with any crash course the warnings are just as important as the rest of the process. I don't mean to take away from the post, but wanted to add my 2 cents.

Although you will wake up from AP,oobe and lucid dreams and remember them for the most part as dreams, there is a side effect.

What you do in the spiritual is no different than what you do in this reality. Bad choices will have bad consequences. If you have an explicit encounter in the spiritual it will still be to you as if you had really done it, and the truth is that you did do it. There is a fine line between fictional dreams and spiritual travel. If you allow yourself to go wild and do things that could be harmful to others you may one day regret you actions. I learned this the hard way. Be respectful to all that you encounter, and remember that actions have consequences.

I'll agree that having the ability to suddenly go lucid in a dream brings a quick end to any potential nightmare. Even if you do have a nightmare, you can possibly redo the dream and have it have a happy ending instead of a nightmare. Got an evil monster ready to torture you, just imagine it suddenly encased in a sphere of a nuclear fireball. Problem solved. I usually only lucid dream when I am getting too much sleep on the weekend. If I'm not really getting normal sleep, that might explain a few things.

I thought that I would add that I can replay computer games in my sleep too. My brain will even analyze the moves from games played during the day and let me know what I should have done different or should do different if it was an ongoing saved game. I suppose this may be similiar to a programmer dreaming in code analyzing the program in his sleep. Having the ability to replay computer games in your sleep I believe is an example of dream control similiar to lucid dreaming.

[edit on 10-9-2004 by orionthehunter]

Originally posted by popeye0314
There is a fine line between fictional dreams and spiritual travel. If you allow yourself to go wild and do things that could be harmful to others you may one day regret you actions.

I remember once having a dream where I was very evil and quite enjoyed it within the dream. I believe it was just a fictional dream. When I woke up though, I was horrified that I could even dream of those things that I did let alone enjoy it. It was almost as if I was tapped into something very evil in that dream. Fortunately most of my dreams are fun and/or exciting.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
I remember once having a dream where I was very evil and quite enjoyed it within the dream. I believe it was just a fictional dream. When I woke up though, I was horrified that I could even dream of those things that I did let alone enjoy it. It was almost as if I was tapped into something very evil in that dream.

Perhaps one of the early stages of the phsycology of a serial killer

anyways, on the lucid dreaming, a good and easy way to do this is to set an alarm for half way threw your dreaming time which would wake you up then after your awake, stay up until you drift into unconciounceness while still being aware that you are concious. A bit complicated but quite easy when you do it.

Originally posted by orionthehunter

Originally posted by popeye0314
There is a fine line between fictional dreams and spiritual travel. If you allow yourself to go wild and do things that could be harmful to others you may one day regret you actions.

I remember once having a dream where I was very evil and quite enjoyed it within the dream. I believe it was just a fictional dream. When I woke up though, I was horrified that I could even dream of those things that I did let alone enjoy it. It was almost as if I was tapped into something very evil in that dream. Fortunately most of my dreams are fun and/or exciting.

wow I have had a very similar dream recently... its quite un-nerving to say the least...

Peace Taibunsuu


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