Learn to Lucid Dream

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Learn to Lucid Dream Introduction PART 1—GETTING INTO THE DREAM Understanding Brain Chemistry during Sleep Brainwaves NREM/REM Sleep Brain Chemistry Terminology Method vs. Technique Dream Recall and Vividness Dream Journal How to Do It If You Can’t Remember If You Wake Up in the Night Affirmations Get to Sleep Quicker Relaxing before Bed Rearranging your Sleep Cycle DILD Reality Checks Dream Signs If You Can’t Find Any Dream Signs Paying Attention to Details MILD Suggestion/Auto-Suggestion VILD CAT HILD Dream Characters and CHILD EILD, LILD, and SILD ADA WBTB and NILD UILD TILD Waking Up After the REM Cycle RILD and PILD WILD Sleep Paralysis

Stages Prevention and Practice Rollover Signal WILD HIT FILD White Noise Technique DEILD SSILD The “Cycle” What to Do What Will Happen WILD with DILD and Comparison Meditation, Music, and Mental Exercises Meditation Music and Sound Mental Exercises Lifestyle for Lucidity Drugs, Food, and Supplements Habits and Perspective PART 2—IN THE DREAM Understanding the Dream The Function of Sleep What Causes Dreams The Subconscious Mind Layers of Lucidity Variations of Non-Lucidity Dream Interpretation Becoming Lucid and Stabilizing the Dream Stabilization False Awakenings Controlling the Dream Transformation Teleportation Flying Creation/Manifestation Controlling Time Experimentation

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Nightmares Escape Prevention PART 3—IN SUMMARY Negative Effects Nightmares Sleep Paralysis False Memories Positive Effects and Usage Overcome Fear and Anxiety Practice and Rehearsal Learning

The Arts and Lucid Dreaming Final Notes Lucid Dreaming in the Future If You Need Motivation If You Still Can’t Lucid Dream Are Dreams Real? Extended Learning and Practice Books YouTube Channels Websites, Blogs, and Forums Apps

Introduction A lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming. This usually happens when the dreamer sees something strange in their dream, and, when stopping to question the dream, discovers that it is, of course, merely a dream. Some people seem to have a natural ability to do this and have lucid dreams every night, while others work hard for months for just one lucid dream. This will happen on occasion for many people, but making lucid dreaming a regular experience takes practice, skill, and special knowledge. This may appear to be a useless ability, but in fact it can stop nightmares, lessen fear and anxiety, assuage stress, and allow you to control your dreams—meaning that you can fly, speak to your subconscious mind, travel around the universe, and much more in your own dream world—the only limitation is your own imagination. There are many misconceptions about lucid dreaming that have survived since the time when lucid dreaming was only considered a pseudoscience, and I feel that I must first address these before moving on. Some people still believe that lucid dreaming isn‘t real. To thousands of lucid dreamers around the world, this statement seems ridiculous. If you don‘t want to experiment for yourself, there was a famous 1977 scientific experiment that proved lucid dreaming to be real, directed by Keith Hearne. At that time, it was known that a dreamer‘s eye movements in their dream would be reproduced while they were sleeping in real life. Because Keith Hearne knew this, he asked a lucid dreamer to get himself into a lucid dream and move his eyes in a certain pattern to indicate that he was lucid. The scientist would then detect this eye movement in the lab. The test subject actually did become lucid and tried to signal that he was lucid with his eye movements, but made an error, making the wrong eye movement. However, a few seconds later he tried again and made the right eye movement. The researchers detected this, and when he awoke they greeted him and he told them that he had become lucid, made the wrong eye movement, and then tried again, making the right eye movement. All of what he described matched up with the recordings of the researchers. Dr. Stephen LaBerge repeated this experiment seven years later and published it in a peer-reviewed paper. He would later go on to write Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming with Howard Rheingold, a book that fully introduced the public to lucid dreaming and

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established lucid dreaming as a popular phenomenon. Still, it is said that lucid dreaming is unnatural because most dreams are experienced nonlucidly. However, lucid dreams often occur naturally and happen several times in a lifetime without any effort. There is little difference between regular dreaming and lucid dreaming besides the fact that the sleeper is aware of the dream in lucid dreams. If one truly feels that lucid dreams are so unnatural—that taking control of your dreams and having fun is so repugnant, then they must hate man-made unnatural objects like jewelry, beds, airplanes, watches, computers, and books. Others argue that lucid dreaming removes the dreamer from reality and advocates for escapism. Lucid dreaming occurs during sleep, at a time in which we have literally nothing better to do than lie around in our bed. The only notable event from which the sleeper would be escaping are some vague, blurry dreams. Lucid dreaming wastes no time at all and in fact leads to many mental health benefits along with a much fun during sleep. Although many lucid dreamers spend time talking about, preparing for, and writing down lucid dreams, it is the same for any other hobby; in fact many other hobbies, such as playing video games, take the participant further away from reality than lucid dreaming. The next misconception is fortunately less common, but should still be addressed at once. Lucid dreaming cannot cause the sleeper to fall into a coma or die any more than regular dreaming. There is no reason why lucid dreams should be harmful or painful to the physical body. Some argue that regular dreaming can cause death because extremely frightening nightmares may cause the release of adrenaline, and adrenaline, if in large enough amounts in the bloodstream, can cause death (this is why small animals such as rabbits can be literally scared to death, although human hearts are much stronger). However, enough adrenaline would wake the sleeper up, which is why you may recall dreams in which you fell from a great height only to wake up just before impact—when your fear is at its greatest. Once the sleeper wakes up, they will realize that their experience was only a dream, and their adrenaline levels may then decrease. Although lucid dreaming has been associated with the New Age movement, it is not just a New Age trend. Everyone has lucid dreams occasionally, and anyone can do it—meaning lucid dreaming does not have to be limited by one viewpoint. There is no need to have any specific spiritual or astrological beliefs to lucid dream. Lucid dreaming is actually a very old phenomenon stretching almost as far back as civilization, so it is hardly new to popular cerebration; in fact, the ancient Greeks had whole temples built just for lucid dreaming, and some Indian cultures invented their own bed specialized for lucid dreaming. There are many theories about why we dream, but no one yet knows for sure. It seems dreams are most likely just assembled pieces of our subconscious thoughts, but I encourage you to do your own research, and choose what you think dreams mean. Even though some may say that lucid dreaming loses messages hidden in dreams, there is no need to be worried. Even if dreams are meaningful and important, many people do not remember their dreams or even pay attention to them (ironically, lucid dreamers can vividly remember their dreams and observe them carefully) and if our mind was really trying to send us a message, it would likely appear,

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lucid or not. Some dreamers think that lucid dreaming could be scary, but in fact there is nothing scary about being in a dream with the knowledge that it is just a dream. Furthermore, it is very relaxing and soothing knowing that there is nothing to be worried about or afraid of because it is just a dream. Even if something is scaring a lucid dreamer, they can manipulate the dream, and therefore remove whatever it is that is scaring them, or simply wake up. A couple other common misconceptions surround lucid dreaming. One is that you‘re not lucid dreaming unless you are in control of the dream. Although lucid dreaming and dream control are related, one can happen without the other. It is very possible (and common) for lucid dreamers to experience little or no control in their dreams, and it is also possible to control a dream without knowing that you are dreaming. Another misconception is that you‘re either lucid or you‘re not. This is not true—there are actually five different layers of lucidity, each with variations and four variations of non-lucidity about which I will get into further detail later. Lucid dreaming is natural, beneficial, fun, and interesting. Thanks to a variety of different scientific experiments, it has been popular in mainstream science since the 1970s and is now commonly known. Although I can‘t guarantee that you‘ll learn to lucid dream in one day or even in a month, I can guarantee the following pages will help you on your journey and will provide insightful tips and tricks to aid you on the path to lucid dreaming. PART 1—GETTING INTO THE DREAM Understanding Brain Chemistry during Sleep There are several processes that occur throughout human sleep that can help one learn to lucid dream or get to sleep quicker if understood. Sleep and dreaming are quite complex, and sleep is not at all a simple shut down of the brain. In fact, the brain is more active during sleep than during waking life. Knowing about how the brain functions during sleep is important to a central understanding of the function of not only lucid dreaming but also dreaming in general. BRAINWAVES The brain is made up of millions of microscopic cells that are called neurons. When one neuron wants to give another a message, the neuron will send an electrical signal that is detected by the other neuron. These electrical signals are called brainwaves and they can be measured in frequency, which is measured in Hertz (Hz). Depending on what an individual is doing, theses waves will vary in frequency. For example, watching television emits high frequency alpha waves while sleeping deeply emits low frequency delta waves. There are five basic types of brainwaves; going from highest to lowest frequency they are: gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta. Gamma brainwaves were discovered relatively recently and therefore not as much is known about them. They are associated with bursts of thought and learning and the only time that they ever occur during sleep is sometimes during lucid dreaming. Beta brainwaves are associated with being awake and aware; the brain is conscious and concentrated on conversation

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or some other task. Alpha brainwaves are associated with people who are awake, but relaxed— not as alert, but still awake. These brainwaves are also common during dreaming—both lucid and non-lucid. Theta brainwaves are associated with people who are in a deep state of relaxation, like meditation, hypnosis, or sleep. Finally, Delta brainwaves are associated with a state of very deep relaxation—deep sleep and loss of body awareness. Delta brainwave sleep is always dreamless and in it the sleeper is completely unconscious. Although different brainwaves dominate the brain all throughout the day, there is never just one brainwave active; in fact, all of the different brainwaves are being emitted at any given time—they just vary in quantity. It is important to understand that whichever brainwave is the most prevalent during a specific stage in sleep is associated with that stage of sleep, even though that is not the only brainwave emitted. In waking life, we emit mostly beta and alpha brainwaves, but these brainwaves are changing all day and all night, and while you‘re dreaming they follow a specific pattern that can be traced and mapped. NREM/REM SLEEP While sleeping, every sleeper goes through two phases of sleep called NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. In short, REM sleep is when the eyes are moving around under the eyelids to mirror any eye movements in a dream, while NREM sleep is when the eyes stay still because the sleeper is (most often) not dreaming. While sleeping, one goes through cycles of NREM sleep followed by REM sleep; these two switch about 5 times in the night. NREM sleep is composed of 4 or (according to some sources) 3 basic stages: 

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Stage 1: This stage sees a decline in alpha waves and relaxing theta waves starting to emerge. This is the stage at which one falls asleep; it is the doorway between awake and asleep. At this stage hypnagogic hallucinations may occur (mild hallucinations similar to dreams). During this time, the sleeper is very easy to wake up because they are just drifting to sleep. Stage 2: This is the stage at which the sleeper drifts into a little deeper sleep. There is no specific type of brainwave emitted, but a unique electromagnetic activity throughout the brain that I will not get into here for the sake of simplicity. At this stage, sleep paralysis may occur—when the body paralyzes itself to stop the sleeper from acting out their dreams. Stage 3: This is the beginning of a deep sleep when there is rarely any dreaming or vivid dreaming occuring. This stage is characterized by the emission of less than 50% of delta waves. Sleep paralysis does not occur at or past this point in NREM sleep. Stage 4: This stage has been recently excluded because it is paired with the third stage, but I will include it here. This is the stage at which sleep is as deep as possible (emitting more than 50% of delta waves) and it will be very hard to wake the sleeper. An individual would have a very difficult time becoming awake and alert if suddenly shaken out of this sleep.

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Remember that the above four stages are part of NREM sleep, not REM sleep. Throughout the night, these stages repeat, going from 1 to 4, then backwards from 4 to 1, then REM sleep, and so on, repeating like this all night. The whole process from NREM to REM takes about 90 to 110 minutes, repeating several times in the night. In a regular 8 hour sleep one will sleep through about 5 cycles of NREM and REM. As the time goes on, there is less deep NREM sleep and longer REM phases of sleep. With each cycle of NREM and REM sleep, the REM sleep becomes longer and the NREM sleep becomes shorter, making the most vivid and long dreams (in the REM phase) the ones that one has just before awakening in the morning. For example, the first REM phase is usually around fifteen to twenty minutes but after twelve hours of sleep the REM phase can be as long as two hours. This knowledge is very useful for certain lucid dream induction techniques. The REM phase contains the most vivid dreams and lucid dreams, making it more interesting for us to explore. Although the REM phase is very light and actually close to waking (during the REM phase, the brain emits alpha brainwaves), it is very essential for a healthy brain. When the brain is not allowed to sleep through REM sleep, it will show significant loss of memory, logic, and critical thinking. The NREM phase can still contain dreams, and even lucid dreams, but these dreams are not nearly as intense, vivid, or common as the dreams of the REM phase. This is a visual representation of the sleep stages and NREM/REM phases:

The only other time that an individual may go straight into REM sleep without waking up in the middle of the night is while taking a nap (although there is usually just a few minutes of light NREM sleep before REM sleep). This makes naptime very useful for lucid dreaming, especially because this allows the lucid dreamer to practice before going to sleep that night. The best time to nap is around 2:00 to 3:00 PM because this is when the body is most tired (with the exception of early in the morning from 2:00 to 4:00 AM). The best amount of time to nap is about 20 to 30 minutes because sleeping for much longer will cause the sleeper to enter a deeper NREM sleep and therefore feel groggy upon their awakening. BRAIN CHEMISTRY Once a full understanding of brainwaves and sleep cycles has been achieved, the next important concept to explore is the brain chemistry during sleep. The brain produces several different chemicals during the night which can be used to aid in the process of achieving a lucid dream.

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Two essential chemicals involved are serotonin and melatonin (melatonin is not to be confused with melanin, which gives skin, eyes, and hair their natural color). Serotonin causes an individual to become alert and aware while helping the brain to transmit signals more freely; it is primarily released by the brain during the day when the body and mind need to function and be active. Serotonin is made into melatonin, which is almost like the opposite of serotonin. It helps the individual relax and mentally and physically prepare themselves for sleep; melatonin is primarily released during the night and in the evening. Serotonin is made when one is exposed to light, while melatonin breaks down under light and is made in the dark. At dusk, there is very little melatonin because the body has been recently exposed to sunlight; however, the production of melatonin peaks around 2:00 to 4:00 AM and breaks down again at dawn. Another important chemical that is involved in sleeping is the fight-or-flight hormone called cortisol. This depletes from 8:00 AM until around 2:00 to 4:00 AM, when the production increases again in preparation for the day. Its production will gradually awaken the sleeper because cortisol is produced alongside two other hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which naturally increase alertness and responsiveness. At around 4:00 to 5:30 AM cortisol and melatonin cross paths, both at high levels, creating an ideal time for lucid dreaming using certain techniques. This is because the melatonin levels make relaxation easy and cortisol (along with epinephrine and norepinephrine) make the sleeper alert and mentally awake. Melatonin and cortisol cross paths twice, once at 4:00 to 5:30 AM at high levels (creating the ideal time) and once at around 9:30 to 10:00 PM, where they are at very low levels, making this time the hardest time to lucid dream using Wake Induced Lucid Dream techniques. Because melatonin is relaxing and therefore aids in the process of getting to sleep and it is created with serotonin, it is helpful to have enough serotonin in the body to make melatonin, which makes it easier to quickly fall asleep. This can be easily done by staying out in the sunlight for about an hour before bed. Humans are naturally accustomed to a gradual decrease in light that allows for a gradual decrease in serotonin levels and an increase in melatonin levels—this is what allows for thorough relaxation and a smooth transition into sleep. However, with the relatively recent invention of artificial lighting, the light does not gradually decrease but instead sharply drops off just before bedtime. This means that we go to bed with high serotonin levels because the light has only recently ceased to shine, making it hard to get relaxed enough to sleep, which can cause an inability to fall asleep. The human body is not designed for the abrupt light change and thus it is unprepared to go to sleep at the time that one may want it to. However, sunset may be simulated by gradually dimming the lights inside, making the body ready to sleep before bedtime. One other external influence on the body‘s ability to fall asleep the color blue. This may seem odd and surprising, but when the eyes perceive this color the brain thinks that it is looking at the sky and therefore it is day and the body and mind need to be alert. In this way, the color blue alone is able to make it more difficult to get to sleep, making it important to avoid blue things before bed like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and more. One of the most common activities that makes lucid dreaming much more difficult is

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watching television before sleeping. In addition to the obvious fact that the television (like any other electronic device) produces light and therefore wakes up the viewer, it also induces alpha waves in the brain within just 30 seconds. These alpha waves keep the viewer relaxed, but still alert in the waking state, therefore making it harder to get relaxed enough to emit more theta brainwaves which is needed for the first stage of NREM sleep. Television also greatly numbs the left side of the brain which is responsible for critical thinking (one needs to think critically to have lucid dreams) and watching television releases opioids in the brain which altogether produces a weak brain in a state that is susceptible to suggestion and will lead to hazy dreams, which is the last thing a lucid dreamer wants. A last note on falling asleep quicker is that it is important to have a regular sleeping pattern. A few days of having the same sleeping pattern allows the brain to rely on going to bed at the time that it is expecting, meaning that the body will able to sufficiently prepare for sleep. This also creates the opportunity for more even REM cycles which aids in an easier flow of dreaming and lucid dreaming. Although all of the chemical names and various patterns of chemicals in the brain may be confusing, the general concepts that are most important are that the best time to lucid dream is at around 4:00 to 5:30 AM (the worst being at around 9:30 to 10:00 PM), it will help to gradually dim the lights, having a regular sleeping pattern is good, and television turns the brain into mush. Next, I will explain terminology and other related concepts. TERMINOLOGY Throughout the book, you will most likely see words like ―conscious,‖ ―unconscious,‖ ―preconscious,‖ ―non-conscious,‖ or ―subconscious‖ often, followed by the word ―mind.‖ I will briefly explain what each of these mean. They were all based upon the ideas of Sigmund Freud, one of the world‘s most famous psychologists. He mapped out his perception of the human mind in his famous iceberg of consciousness. To understand each of the terms listed above, we must first understand the iceberg. On the tip of the iceberg is the conscious self, formed from everyday thoughts and perceptions. It is what one is capable of experiencing and living in every day, and the only part of themselves with which an individual is truly familiar, although it is only a small part of the personality. Below the tip, just under the surface of the water is the preconscious mind, also known as the subconscious mind. I will use ―subconscious‖ in this book rather than ―preconscious‖ because it is the term generally used in the lucid dreaming community. Stored knowledge and memories are contained in this level and the greater part of the subconscious mind can usually be accessed in everyday life, but only with a little digging. It is not actively part of oneself, but nonetheless an important part of the personality. This part of the mind is easily accessible through lucid dreaming or hypnosis and is naturally much stronger, wiser, and more knowledgeable than the conscious mind. Below the subconscious mind is the unconscious mind. This is the deepest part of the mind and can hardly ever be accessed, although its presence is still felt. This is where fears, violent motives, immoral urges, unacceptable sexual desires, selfish needs, shameful

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experiences, and irrational wishes are found. Surrounding the iceberg (the water) is the nonconscious self, which is made up of all of the things that an individual has not experienced or is not aware of. Below is a visual representation of the iceberg:

In addition to the separate parts of the mind, there is also terminology for different periods of sleep, in addition to NREM and REM sleep. These are several terms that you might come across in this book pertaining to sleep: 

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Hypnagogic Stage: a brief stage experienced during the onset of sleep just before NREM sleep begins. This stage is often characterized by hypnagogic hallucinations; these are perceptual experiences occurring during sleep onset, like fragments of dreams. They are usually only mild hallucinations. These can be easily noticed if one sustains a certain degree of consciousness while falling asleep. Hypnopompic Stage: much like the hypnagogic stage except it occurs just as the sleeper awakens. This stage is also characterized by mild hallucinations, but these are less common than hypnagogic hallucinations. Hypnic jerk: (also known as hypnagogic jerk or sleep start) this is when the muscles of the body contract just after sleep onset (or sometimes after a longer period of sleep) and the body jerks the sleeper awake. This whole process takes about a second, and it is usually paired with a feeling of falling backwards; sometimes one even dreams about falling backwards just prior to becoming jerked awake. This is a normal occurrence and it happens to almost everyone. It is not yet known why this happens, but perhaps it is because the heartbeat slows down so quickly when the sleeper begins to fall asleep that the brain thinks that the body is dying and therefore tries to jolt the sleeper back awake.

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Acronyms ending in ―ILD.‖ These include MILD, WILD, DILD, SSILD, HILD, and so on. I believe this trend started with Stephen LaBerge‘s lucid dream research in which he established the WILD and DILD methods and the MILD technique. In all of these the ―ILD‖ stands for ―Induced Lucid Dream,‖ for example, VILD is ―Visually Induced Lucid Dream.‖ You might also see other sources replacing the ―Induced‖ with ―Initiated‖ or ―Incubated‖ (like ―Visually Incubated Lucid Dream‖); this does not change the acronym or make any difference—it is just another way of expressing it. OBE or Out of Body Experience. Although these are still not completely scientifically proven, but recognized as a separate phenomenon from dreams, they are very similar to lucid dreaming, and one cannot speak at length about lucid dreams without occasionally mentioning OBEs. They occur when one‘s conscious awareness, soul, or ―astral body‖ leaves their physical body and explores the physical world, almost like a ghost. But don‘t be alarmed—this process is completely harmless and rarely ever happens when you are not intending it to happen.

METHOD VS. TECHNIQUE The difference between a method and a technique is not related to brain chemistry or dreaming, but it will make the ensuing chapters much easier to understand. A method never changes. For example, if one removes a light bulb and replaces it, that is a method. However, the specific manner in which one does it is a technique. Using the light bulb example, one could remove it with gloves, using feet, or using a contraption, but the method is unchanged—that the light bulb is being removed. The two methods to achieve a lucid dream are the DILD method and the WILD method and they each have their own techniques, which can become confusing if the difference between a method and technique is not fully understood. In fact, there is a WILD method and a WILD technique, which are both very different. In this sense of the word method, it is like a category—a category of different specific instructions to induce lucid dreams, while a technique is a specific means of inducing a lucid dream, in its own category. This is like music. In music, there are certain categories, such as pop, jazz, rock, and classical (the methods) and for each genre there is a specific set of composers to compose the music in that genre (the techniques). Dream Recall and Vividness Within five minutes of waking up, the average person forgets 50% of their dreams; within ten minutes, they forget 90%. Obviously, this is not good for a lucid dreamer. As a lucid dreamer, it is essential that your dreams are vivid and that you can remember them—what‘s the point of becoming lucid if you won‘t be able to remember it? Dream recall quite simply means the ability to recall one‘s dreams—this is the foundation of lucid dreaming. By recalling and understanding regular, every-night dreams, one can further advance their understanding of the subjects of their dreams. If you can‘t even recall your dreams, they must not be very vivid, and you must not be very conscious in them, which makes lucid dreaming much more difficult. Some people have naturally vivid dreams, and others can always

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recall all of their dreams, but every lucid dreamer needs to be able to remember their dreams. To make all dreams in general more vivid, one often strains to remember every dream in as much detail as possible, improving dream recall dramatically. By doing this, one may also be able to pay attention to recurring symbols in their dreams—for example, an old friend named Steven that appears in many dreams. These recurring images are called dream signs, and I will go further into them in the next chapter. DREAM JOURNAL As mentioned above, remembering dreams is a fundamental aspect of learning to lucid dream; it is the very first step. The most important and effective means of remembering dreams is by using a dream journal. A dream journal is a written or recorded collection of all of the dreams that one can recall. It is something in which one writes every morning after awakening or during the night if one wakes up after a dream. Writing in this journal is one of the most important tasks as a lucid dreamer. It is not a personal diary in which one writes down feelings and thoughts, but merely a record of all of the dreams that a lucid dreamer has had. I also like to include my experiences with sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and other interesting dream-like things in my dream journal. Most people who use a dream journal just have a small notebook and a pencil or pen on the side of their bed or near their bed, but others record their dreams on a recording device or type it on a computer or cell phone, but I wouldn‘t recommend typing it because the screen is bright enough to wake you up which is not good if you want to get back to sleep to have more dreams. Initially, it may seem that writing down dreams would not help remembering them, but it certainly will if you are doing it correctly. The main element of this is not the writing; it is the straining. If you strain to remember every last detail of your dreams every morning, your brain will eventually decide to just remember them like normal memories, making them more vivid and intense and allowing you to remember them much better. Straining every morning to remember your dreams in great detail is the only way that your dream recall will improve using the dream journal. So why then do we write the dreams and not just think about them? Writing your dreams helps you keep a record of your dream signs, helping you achieve lucidity, and if you reread your latest dreams before going to bed you will be more prepared to remember your new dreams. Also, it makes it easier to organize dreams and is necessary if you want to interpret your dreams. HOW TO DO IT It is important to be very detailed when writing down your dreams. Remember what you felt, heard, tasted, saw, smelt, or anything else you could remember—anything counts. Even if it is just a vague feeling or something completely random and nonsensical, like ―I remember smelling the color green‖ write that down. Here is an example of a poorly recorded dream: “I was talking to my friend at his house. It was rainy outside.”

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This does contain enough detail for us to achieve a general understanding of the dream, but there are many more questions to ask. Was it cold inside? What were you talking about? What room were you in? Did everything in the house seem normal? Was your friend normal? How long did you talk? Was the rain loud? Were you sitting or standing? How could you tell it was raining? And so on. If you cannot remember details of your dream as specific as that, do not worry— dream recall is a learned skill and you will get better as you go. When I started keeping a dream journal, my entries were short and simple—about a paragraph or less. In just a couple weeks, I was writing 1 to 3 pages of my dreams every morning, and it was actually a fun experience. It is also exciting to reread interesting or vivid dreams that you have had so that you can experience them once again. The way that you should start your entries should be with the date, time (or at least indicate if it is morning or night), dream title (you don‘t have to assign a catchy title to each dream, I just label them Dream 1, Dream 2, Dream 3, and so on in chronological order of what I can remember), followed by the dream description(s). I also encourage you to draw illustrations as much as you can, even if you‘re not much of an artist. Some people even draw more than they write. Anything that helps you give meaning to you dreams or helps you remember or record them accurately is worth doing. When you wake up to write a dream down, don‘t move. If you immediately start moving when you wake up your brain will be overloaded with sensory information and you will be too focused on waking up for you to remember your dreams vividly. Before you move, take the time to recall as much as you can without thinking about your daily concerns, building as many vivid details as possible. This can take a few seconds to thirty minutes. When you‘ve got what you think is all you can presently remember of your dreams, write them down in as much detail as possible. This is easier if your dream journal is right next to your bed. If you think you had no dreams in the night, you are wrong. Everyone has 3 to 7 dreams a night (about 2 hours of dreams in total)—you just have to remember them. When you are writing down your dreams, remember to write what you were feeling in the dream also. You could have a dreaming experience that would seem very peaceful, unless you felt afraid or angry in the dream. You could also have a vague feeling, like ―I was in the car, but I had the feeling of being home;‖ this is not uncommon. It is just as important to include feelings as it is to include the actual context of the dream. Also, if you are using the dream journal at least partially for dream interpretation, I recommend you leave a blank page after each dream entry for later interpretation. Even if you are not interested in lucid dreaming, you can still use your dream journal for dream interpretation, although I will not be getting into how to interpret your dreams in this book. Sometimes I make side notes in the margins next to my dream description that indicates why I believe a certain part of my dream was there (for example, I could have seen my old friend Amy in my dream because I had just called her before I went to sleep), although sometimes dream interpretation is not so obvious.

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IF YOU CAN’T REMEMBER If you cannot remember even the slightest detail of a dream, retrace your steps from the moment you woke up the previous morning. Your actions and experiences from the previous day form most of your dreams, so remembering them might serve as a catalyst for remembering your dreams. Also, it gets your mind in the right state for remembering things. While you do this, remember to stay still, and it might also help to close your eyes. If you can only remember snippets or scraps of dreams, write those down. If you still can‘t remember any dreams, there is still hope. While you go about your business in the day, there could be a random occurrence that reminds you of your dreams, and a sudden burst of recollection; however, this is less likely to happen later in the day as your brain immediately starts deleting your memory of your dreams when they end because they are not very important to the brain and their memory is held in a different place than the regular waking life memory (although lucid dreamers learn to overcome this). You could also try to vividly imagine snippets of your dreams and put yourself in their context; this might help in bringing back the fully memory of these dreams. If you can, act out the scraps of the dreams in waking life. If you find yourself still unable to remember any dreams for one morning, do not get frustrated, as it will not have a giant effect on your dream recall, but do write down that you couldn‘t remember any dreams. This is just to build the habit of writing down your dreams. In the future, try sleeping for longer, because the longer you sleep, they longer you‘ll dream, and remember that you will have more vivid and longer dreams later in your sleep cycles. If you consistently are finding yourself unable to remember any dreams, it will help you to improve your waking life recall as this will improve your dream recall. To do this, in your dream journal write down all of your experiences from the day in extreme detail. This may take a very long time, so you can just write about chunks of your day if it is more convenient. You may also ask yourself fundamental questions about yourself and ask why the answers are, asking a new question each day. For example, ask yourself ―who is my best friend?‖ and then ask yourself why they are your best friend, and how it got to be that way, and how that got to be that way, and so on, tracing back your memories farther and farther back. Record this in your dream journal. IF YOU WAKE UP IN THE NIGHT Because your brain deletes the memory of your dreams very quickly, it will be difficult to remember dreams you‘ve had earlier in the night, especially because these dreams are shorter and less vivid than dreams you have early in the morning. To combat this, many lucid dreamers wake up during the night right after they dream so they can write down their whole dreams. This can be done through training, special beds, timers, or just a natural tendency to wake up after dreams. After you‘ve had one of your first few lucid dreams, it is most likely you will wake up just after it ends, which helps. We will often wake up in the night unintentionally (the human body is originally programmed for two four hour sleep cycles, which explains why we are sometimes unable to get to sleep in the night). We wake up briefly approximately 10 to 15 times in the night, but we have

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forgotten almost all of these short awakenings by the morning because they only last a matter of seconds. If you find yourself accidentally waking up in the middle of the night and you have the memory of some of your dreams, write them down. I guarantee that there is a very low chance that you will still remember them in the morning. Whenever I wake up in the night and don‘t write down any dreams I remember, I always regret it, and it makes dream recall a slower and more frustrating process. If you do remember your dreams and get up to write them, remember that light will wake you up and make it harder to get back to sleep and have more dreams, so avoid turning on bright lights to write down what you remember. I actually will sometimes write my dreams in complete darkness. It is difficult to read my sloppy handwriting in the morning, but I am still able to decipher enough of it to remember the dream almost entirely. I also have a book lamp that is like a tiny flexible flashlight that I can clip on to my dream journal to illuminate the paper without being too bright; I recommend using something like this, but make sure the book lamp is not too bright. I also recommend using a bookmark of some sort in your journal so that you can flip to a blank page easily. As long as you are committed to writing down your dreams every morning, you will find that dream recall can come easily and quickly, but using a dream journal isn‘t the only means of recalling your dreams; you may also use affirmation to encourage your subconscious mind to hold onto memories of dreams. AFFIRMATIONS Because dreaming, memory, and beliefs are literally all in your head, believing and repeating to yourself that you will remember your dreams can actually work. If you mentally repeat to yourself expressions like ―I will remember all of my dreams tonight‖ or ―I will wake up after every dream tonight‖ you will find that it is much easier to remember your dreams. This mantra that you repeat will drill the statement into your mind until it is accepted, and it will surprisingly greatly affect your progress with dream recall. The best time to do this is just as you are falling asleep. While you fall asleep, be sure to repeat this to yourself many times. It might not immediately work, but, in conjunction with a dream journal, it can get you ready for lucid dreaming relatively quickly. Although this technique is usually not as effective as keeping a dream journal, it will psychologically prepare your mind for dream recall, rather than just trying to pick up the pieces of dreams and record them. There are also many vitamins, supplements, herbs, and diets you can take to help your dream recall and lucid dreaming abilities, but the details of those will all be in the ―Lifestyle for Lucidity‖ chapter, so read on. Once you have a dream recall that functions well enough for you to vividly remember at least one dream every night, you should be ready to start lucid dreaming. Get to Sleep Quicker It is important for lucid dreamers to get enough sleep because the most vivid dreams (and

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therefore the dreams in which you are most likely to become lucid) are the ones you have at around your eighth hour of sleep or later, and it is therefore very important to get at least eight hours of sleep every night. To do this, it will help you to get to sleep quickly so you can get as much sleep as you need, without having to sleep in late and miss work or school. First, I will review what I had provided in the first chapter ―Understanding Brain Chemistry during Sleep,‖ but I will not get into much detail. In the first chapter I said that you could get to sleep faster by getting about an hour of sunlight every day before bed, avoiding the color blue, gradually dimming the lights to simulate sunset, having a regular sleep schedule, and avoiding TV before bed. After you‘ve done these, you need to relax thoroughly so you can fall asleep easily. One more thing avoid doing before bed that I haven‘t mentioned yet is eating and drinking. If you eat food before bed, your body has to slow and stop digestion before you go to sleep, which takes time. It will also psychologically trick you into becoming more tired if you yawn as if you were tired, and yawns can also make you feel drowsy when much of your carbon dioxide is expelled on the exhale. RELAXING BEFORE BED If you want to get to sleep quickly to improve your chance of a lucid dream, it is important that your body is relaxed enough for you to peacefully fall asleep. To help you with this, I will explain a few physical exercises to do just before bed followed by two relaxation techniques that will relax your body into a comfortable state that allows you to quickly slip into sleep. Before I start, I recommend that you perform 20 to 60 minutes of physical exercise each night before bed as this will make it easier to relax. If you don‘t have any weights or a treadmill and you can‘t afford to go to a gym, it is acceptable to just do push-ups, sit-ups, and planking beside your bed each night. Also, avoid any substances that will interfere with your sleeping schedule, such as alcohol, coffee, sugar, or cannabis (cannabis, like alcohol, reduces the length and intensity of the REM cycle). Before you get in bed, you should stretch your muscles out in preparation for the relaxation. The most important muscle to start with is your jaw, because it holds the most tension. It is the strongest muscle in terms of exerted force, and can hold much more tension than other muscles. This makes your jaw the most important muscle to relax before going to bed. Below is the list of all of the muscles to stretch for complete relaxation: 1. Jaw Massage. Firmly massage the meaty part of your upper jaws in front of and below your ears—this is where the most tension is held. Press strongly with your fingers on both sides of your head until it hurts a bit. Next, squeeze your jaws with your palms instead of your fingers on both sides. Slacken your jaw while you do this, and apply much force. Your palms should be positioned so that your fingers are pointing behind you and rested on the back of your head. Once your jaws are more relaxed, stretch them by pulling them open with your fingers to remove any leftover tension. 2. Wall Chest Stretch. Place your palm flat on the wall so that your arm is horizontal and parallel to the ground. Turn your body away from your arm so that it is behind you (not

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3.

4.

5.

6.

beside you) with your palm still placed against the wall. Turn the trunk of your body so that you can stretch your whole arm, your biceps, and across your chest. Exhale and release all of the tension. Repeat this twice with both arms. Vertical Wall Stretch. Place both palms against the wall above your head and then lean forward toward the wall. Inhale and exhale slowly three times. This targets your shoulder and chest tension. Then, stand up normally and repeat this two more times. Foot Stretch. Prop your foot up against the wall so that your toes are against the wall and the heel of your foot is still on the ground. Do this with each foot, and then sit down and massage the soles of your feet with your hands. This will stretch your calves and your feet. Hand Stretch. Stretch your hands and forearms by pressing the fingers of each hand back with the palm of the other hand while holding your arm out straight. Do this with both hands. Windmills. Stretch your shoulder muscles (which hold almost as much tension as your jaw) by slowly moving your arm in circles, going from your side to behind your back to above your head to in front of you and then back at your side, creating a ―windmill‖ pattern.

(Adapted from Nicolas Newport’s “Fast Relaxation for Lucid Dreams and OBEs – Lucidology 101 Part 5/12”) This concludes the stretching steps, and after you finish these you should lie down in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Keep your limbs stretched out and do not cross your legs or arms. At this point, you should start breathing deeply from your stomach. It helps to put on socks before you do this because your feet usually get colder in the night when your body temperature drops which can make it hard to relax. Also, wearing earplugs to block out any outside noise can help if you sleep in a noisy environment (similarly, you may use earphones to listen to relaxing sounds such as a steady rain or waves splashing on the beach). After you are comfortable, close your eyes and use one of the following two relaxation techniques to relax your body: The first one starts with the release of tension in the forehead and goes down to your feet. You can do this in the opposite order, and it is optional to tense each muscle before releasing the tension from it. You should spend at least a few seconds on each muscle and exhale deeply as you release the tension. This is a list of all of the muscles from which you must release tension, starting with the forehead: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Forehead Eyes Mouth/Jaw Neck Shoulders Arms

7. Hands 8. Chest 9. Stomach 10. Thighs 11. Calves 12. Feet

The second relaxation technique is slightly different. Remember to breathe deeply, stretch

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your limbs out (keeping them uncrossed), and close your eyes. Progressively tense and relax each muscle group, starting with your dominant hand. Bend your hand backwards at the wrist, and hold that position tight for 5 to 10 seconds. Release the tension and relax. Then, take a deep breath and repeat the process for the other hand. Next, tense and relax your forearms, upper arms, forehead, jaws, neck, shoulders, abdomen, back, buttocks, legs, and feet, respectively. Pause to take a deep breath between each muscle. When you have done this, let your muscles go limp and tense and relax any muscles that still feel tense. It may help you to visualize any tense areas as bright red and relaxed areas as a cool blue. When you relax yourself, imagine these red areas dissipating and floating away while a cool blue mist runs down through the area and takes its place. Once you have done one or both of these relaxation techniques (Step 7), roll around in your bed for a few minutes and release any remaining tension you have (Step 8). By lying in a different position, you will be able to fully relax muscles that you hadn‘t been able to get to before. When you finish this, proceed onto the next few steps: 9. Stop. Lying on your back with your legs and ankles uncrossed, lift your arms above your head and rest them on your pillow. You elbows should be bent at around 90 degrees and your hands should not be touching your head. Relax in this position as deeply as you can and breathe deeply and regularly—mimic the breathing pattern you use when you sleep (deep and slow breaths). You can also inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and then exhale for 8 seconds and repeat. This relaxes you and helps you get ready for sleep. 10. Forget your Eyes. Roll them around in both directions a couple times and then let them rest. This is to stop micro-movements and forget about your eyes completely. Focus on your heartbeat or breathing instead, or you could count backwards from 60 to 0, preferably moving back a number each breath. If you find yourself forgetting that you should be counting and getting distracted, this is good; start again from 60 and you should fall asleep soon. If you don‘t, start counting from a higher number, like 100 or 200. 11. Drop. Drop your arms down by your sides; do not cross them or put them on your chest. This releases all the shoulder tension that you had with your arms up. 12. Tense and Relax. Do this with any muscles you feel are still tense. Do this slowly and remember to breathe deeply. 13. Roll. Wait until you feel a strong urge to roll over, and when you do, slowly roll to your left or to your right. This releases the tension held in your back. Your goal is to stay in this position until you fall asleep. Do not bend your legs, cross your ankles, or make any other movements as this will wake you up. If you do not feel this sensation strongly, daydream a bit and wait until you do. You may fall asleep before you get to this step. The combination of the Stop, Drop, and Roll steps is unsurprisingly called ―Stop, Drop, and Roll‖ and it is used to relax thoroughly and respond to your body‘s preparation to fall asleep.

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This will help you get to sleep quicker as well as release all of the remaining tension in your body. One tip that you may use to aid you is to do all of the above steps until 9 on the floor (uncarpeted is best) so that when you do go to bed your body will be grateful to be resting comfortably and will relax and fall asleep faster. Take note that constantly rolling around when trying to sleep will reset your body and you will fall asleep very slowly. It is therefore important to, after the last step, remain still without moving and you will be able to fall asleep quicker. If I am trying to get to sleep fast but I don‘t want to use all of the above steps, I will lie perfectly still, focusing on my breathing and thinking nothing at all until I fall asleep. This works surprisingly well for me. If you have done all of these steps correctly, you should be very relaxed and much more likely to fall asleep. This is a list of all of the exercises listed above in chronological order: 1. Jaw Massage 8. Roll Around 2. Wall Chest Stretch 9. Stop 3. Vertical Wall Stretch 10. Forget your Eyes 4. Foot Stretch 11. Drop 5. Hand Stretch 12. Tense and Relax 13. Roll 6. Windmills 7. Relaxation Technique(s) Once you have done all of this and you do it regularly for at least two weeks you will start falling asleep faster. Although you do not have to go through this entire process every time you go to sleep, it is helpful to use one or more of the techniques presented here when attempting lucid dreaming. Using the information in this chapter and other information that will be presented later, you can start falling asleep much faster and easier every night and, if you are affected by it, you can make significant efforts to overcome insomnia.

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REARRANGING YOUR SLEEP CYCLE As I have explained, REM cycles are longer and more vivid in the later hours of sleep, making it essential that you get as much sleep as possible to improve your memory of your dreams and your likelihood of having lucid dreams. However, for many people this is impossible as they are busy and cannot find the time. Although there is no way to somehow fit more hours of sleep into the same time, there is a trick that you can use to increase your chances of having lucid dreams without increasing the time you need to sleep; this is done by rearranging your sleep cycle. If you normally sleep from midnight to 6:00 AM and then spend two hours preparing for the day from 6:00 to 8:00 AM, then instead wake up at 4:00 AM, spend the two hours then (until 6:00) and then sleep the remainder from 6:00 to 8:00 AM. During your second period of sleep you will have much more REM sleep than usual which will intensify your dreams and increase your chances of having lucid dreams. It helps even more to write, think, or read about lucid dreaming in your last 30 minutes of waking before you go to sleep for the second time and of course you can try an induction technique upon returning to sleep. This can be very effective for busy people, but it is only an example. Rearrange your sleep anyway you see necessary, varying the amount of time sleeping or staying up to see what works best for you. DILD A DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dream) is one of the two methods of achieving a lucid dream, the other being WILD. It takes place when the dreamer in some way realizes that they are dreaming inside the dream, after previously being unaware of this. This differs from the WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dream) method in which the dreamer almost always never loses consciousness and understands that they are going into a dream. One cannot directly induce a DILD from a waking state, unlike WILD techniques, and therefore a variety of different tricks must be used to have a DILD. I would recommend starting with the DILD method before the WILD method because the DILD method is usually less intense. It is also mostly easier and simpler, although it usually takes longer and there is less of a chance of becoming lucid (but remember that everyone is different; some avid lucid dreamers have only ever used DILD method techniques). The most important aspect of a DILD and one of the fundamental pieces of lucid dreaming in general is reality checks, sometimes called state tests. REALITY CHECKS Reality checks are based on habits. Habits we form in waking life tend to transfer into our dreams, especially when we are thinking about them often; lucid dreamers use this fact to have more lucid dreams. Reality checks are done in waking life in the hopes of accidentally and habitually doing them in a dream, thus making it easy to recognize that one is dreaming. A reality check is simply a check done habitually to prove to yourself that you are indeed not dreaming. These checks take advantage of strange oddities that exist in the dream world, such as how people often do not have a pulse in dreams or that you might have extra or missing

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fingers. Although we all have had dreams, you may not have noticed that there are many of these peculiarities in the dream world or that the dream world can be very different from the real world. Each reality check targets something that is dramatically different in the dream world which you will be able to notice due to your habitual reality check. For example, looking at your hands habitually (aim for about 10 to 15 times a day) to see if they are normal will eventually transfer into your dreams in which you will take advantage of the fact that they just could have 20 fingers on them, thus becoming lucid. This is called a RCILD (Reality Check Induced Lucid Dream), but this is an uncommon term and DILD is sometimes used in its place, although that can get confusing due to the difference between the DILD method and DILD technique. When you do reality checks, you have to concentrate fully on them. If you are just going through the motions, they will not work. For example, if you check your hands all the time but you are never really paying any attention to them, you might have very frustrating dreams in which you see that you have 6 fingers, but just dismiss it with ―Huh. That‘s weird‖ and miss out on an opportunity to become lucid. Also, I want to point out that there are two types of reality checks: physical and mental. Physical reality checks focus on physical features, like hands, while mental reality checks focus on thinking about dreaming, like asking yourself ―is this a dream?‖ If you combine these two and do these consciously throughout your waking life, you will eventually have a DILD. Note that some reality checks may not work for you—there is no universal reality check as everyone‘s dreams work differently. This is a list of all the different reality checks so far that have been discovered to work, although there could be more potential reality checks that haven‘t been noticed yet (you yourself could find some—experiment). 1. Check your hands. Hands are almost always very strange in dreams. It is not uncommon that the dreamer will notice, upon examining his or her hands, that there seems to be six, seven, or more fingers, an extra hand, and/or distorted fingers. This is probably the most popular one because it is easy and simple. Another important aspect of doing a reality check is that it doesn‘t attract much attention. If you‘re in a crowd of people and you decide you want to jump to reality check, you‘re going to get people asking ―what are you doing?‖ and you can‘t just say ―oh, checking to see if this is real or not, that‘s all.‖ 2. Jump, to see if gravity is normal. If you jump in dreams you tend to slowly sink down or just float there. Generally, there is a distorted sense of physics in dreams, and you might even start flying through the air after you jump. I explained how this could result in awkward social interactions, but if you‘re feeling energetic or you‘re at a rave, go for it. 3. Look around you. This is to make sure that everything is normal because in a dream sometimes things are not quite right. These differences can be hard to spot, so I recommend doing this with another reality check, perhaps a mental one. 4. Count your fingers. This is similar to checking your hands, but it is a bit more detailed. Hold each finger individually and go through each one on your hand, afterwards holding another imaginary sixth finger (or seventh if you happen to be

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born with six fingers) in the air next to your palm. In a dream, this finger may actually be there. 5. Blow through your closed nose. In a dream, you can still breathe through your closed nose. Hold your nose tight and try to breathe/blow through it. This is discreet and effective, but take note: this will not work well for you if you have a hole in your nose. 6. Flick the light switch. Light switches rarely work in dreams. Electronics also will only sometimes work properly, but still can act normally. This can be the most awkward of all reality checks and you can‘t find a light switch everywhere, making it not a very useful reality check. 7. Look at a digital watch or writing. These will look strange, fuzzy, jumbled, or they will change rapidly in a dream. In dreams, writing usually changes when the dreamer looks at it or examines it with a second glance. This is because the area of the brain that processes writing is shut down during dreaming. If you look at a digital watch or a sign in a dream, you might see the letters or numbers moving around in circles, like a pool of alphabet soup being stirred. The problem with this one is that you might just accept it and try to make sense of it rather than becoming lucid. Analog clocks may also look strange, but this is less common. 8. Push your fingers through your palm/a wall. Your fingers may be able to be pushed through your palm in a dream, and your palm may be able to be pushed through a wall. This will usually work in a dream, but because you are already using your hands I suggest you check them as well. 9. Stretch your finger. Simply pull on one of your fingers and if it stretches out like a rubber band you will know that you‘re dreaming. 10. See if you can see well without your glasses. This obviously only works if you wear glasses, but if you do, make a habit of taking them off or checking that they‘re there throughout the day and see how well you can see without them. In a dream your vision should rarely be affected by your glasses. 11. Change your appearance. In a dream, your appearance should be unchanged, so you can change your appearance and then observe it throughout the day. For example, grow a very irritating beard and check if it is still there every day. 12. Remember what you did before now/yesterday. You sometimes have a very active memory in a dream, but most of the time you can never remember how you got to a certain point in the dream. Ask yourself ―what was I just doing?‖ 13. Check your pulse. You rarely have one in a dream, although you usually can feel your heart beating if you are doing something exciting. This might work for some people, like doctors or nurses, but personally I can never find my pulse, so this would never work for me. I assume there are similar people. 14. Look in a mirror (but don‘t). If you look in the mirror you will rarely see yourself, but rather a blur, demonic or scary figure (which can induce nightmares, so be careful), a shadow, or just nothing at all. Looking in a mirror will often result in you seeing

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some unearthly figure rather than yourself, so it can be used as a reality check, but it can also cause nightmares, so my personal recommendation is to stay away from them completely for now, however they do have some interesting properties to explore once you become more experienced. For example, stepping through them can bring you to a parallel dream world. 15. Look for strange occurrences. As a general rule, anything that happens that is strange or unexpected is a good sign that you are dreaming. There may be more strange occurrences in dreams than in waking life, but if you ever even have the slightest strange experience, do a reality check. Also, you may feel strong emotions all at once in a dream, which makes it helpful to look for this as well. 16. Close one eye and try to look at your nose with your other eye. If you can‘t see your nose, you are most likely dreaming, or you just have a small nose. This can be done quickly and easily, but I think it would work best for people with big noses. 17. Notice your ability to feel pain. In a dream, you will very rarely be able to feel any pain, so while you are waking it might help to flick yourself or pinch yourself; however, these may not work very well because you can still feel pressure in a dream. 18. Set your watch to go off every hour and perform any other reality check with the alarm. This can be carried over to your dreams or directly programmed into them if the watch goes off when you are sleeping. This is more of an aid to a reality check than its own reality check. Similarly, an effective technique would be setting a picture as a home screen on a smartphone that reminds you to do a reality check, or writing something on your hand to remind yourself. 19. Use sticky notes. Write things like ―are you dreaming?‖ on sticky notes and place them around places that you regularly visit, like on the side of a mirror. This is more of an aid to a reality check as well. A variation to this is writing ―are you dreaming?‖ on small slips of paper and putting them all around in pockets, wallets, and pursers. 20. Jam out. Listen to a song frequently in waking life (try to use one that reminds you of dreams) and while you listen to it tell yourself that you are dreaming or do reality checks. When you go to sleep, loop this song loud enough so that you can hear it and it may be incorporated into your dreams. 21. Ask yourself ―is this a dream?‖ or ―what am I feeling? Does it feel like a dream?‖ Questions like these are mental reality checks, and they are best done with physical reality checks to double check. It is important to not just say things like ―obviously, I‘m not‖ to questions like ―am I dreaming?‖ because, just like the question, the answer will be carried over to your dreams too, and you will find that you answer your question as soon as you ask it. Don‘t just tell yourself that you are not dreaming—prove it. You may use sticky notes to remind yourself to do this. (There are a few more reality checks that are done without moving; these and their uses will be explained in the FILD section of the next chapter). Remember to always do more than one reality check at a time; this will help you avoid convincing yourself that everything is normal in a dream. When you do a reality check in a

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dream, your brain will try to stop you from becoming lucid by making you think what is happening is normal or just a bit strange. For example, if you wake up one morning and see you have no hair, your first though should be ―I am dreaming‖ and then you fly out the window or whatever else you want to do. However, your brain might trick you and you could think ―oh my god, where is my hair? What am I going to do? I have work in 2 hours, I‘ve got to find a wig!‖ To fix this problem, remind yourself what the purpose of the reality check is while you are doing it. For example, think ―if I am dreaming I will have six fingers‖ while counting your fingers. This should help you put two and two together in your dream. As mentioned above, it will also help to really question your environment—tell yourself to prove that you are not dreaming when you do your reality checks. Although any time is a good time for a reality check, there are four times especially to do reality checks throughout the day. Firstly, do them quickly once you wake up in the morning. This protects against false awakenings, which is when you wake up in a dream but think you‘ve woken up in real life. The best reality checks to do at this time are ones with little movement or none at all so that when you move about you do not forget memories of dreams. Next, do reality checks whenever you see a dream sign. In the next part of this chapter I will explain what a dream sign is and how it helps you, so stay tuned. Another time to do them is when you see anything strange, even if it is just slightly out of the ordinary; this helps because there are lots if strange things in dreams. Lastly, do them at night, just before going to sleep. This is to get yourself to remember to do them while you dream and to remind yourself of your lucid dreaming endeavors. When you do a reality check and it turns out that you are actually dreaming, I recommend you do it again and do other reality checks. This serves two purposes: to make you more lucid and therefore give you more control over the dream and also to make sure that you are really dreaming. If you do a reality check in waking life and see an optical illusion, you don‘t want to go jumping off buildings and flying around just yet. If you take it slow in your lucid dreams this will also make them less likely to collapse, meaning they will last longer. Another tip is to stick to one set of reality checks rather than doing random reality checks at random times. Personally, I ask myself what I was just doing, then I count my fingers and check my hands, then I hold my nose shut and see if I can breathe through it while thinking ―am I dreaming?‖ Your reality checks don‘t have to be as extensive as this, but it is important to choose a set of reality checks, put them together in your own order, and then do them regularly. Remember that you have to stick to the same reality checks to build the habit. DREAM SIGNS Dream signs are where reality checks and dream journals come together. I have alluded to them before; they are recurring images, thoughts, people, emotions, places, or events that appear in dreams. You might already have something in mind, but if you don‘t immediately recognize any dream signs, check your dream journal. Anything that appears often in your dream is a dream sign, so if you‘ve been taking careful notes of your dreams you should see some. Some people have water as their dream sign, meaning in their dreams they often see a

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glass of water, an ocean, or anything to do with water. Others have colors or people as dream signs, some people could have very strange dream signs, like an elephant in a suit riding a purple bicycle. You might have never realized you had a strange dream sign until you started keeping a dream journal and having vivid dreams. You can also have multiple dream signs, have a shift in your dream signs, or have temporary dream signs. The purpose of knowing your dream signs is to notice your dream sign in waking life and do a reality check whenever you see it. After you build this habit, you will automatically do a reality check when you see a dream sign while dreaming, which will be often of course— otherwise it wouldn‘t be a dream sign. This will increase your likelihood of performing a successful reality check in your dreams. If you build the habit well enough, you will start automatically doing them whenever you see a dream sign. Some people define a dream sign as anything that could make you question reality, such as waking up to see that you have no hair, but the majority of lucid dreamers define it generally as a personalized recurring element in one‘s dreams. IF YOU CAN’T FIND ANY DREAM SIGNS You might not be able to identify any dream signs. This is not uncommon and not a problem. All that you have to do is set a reality check for you to do whenever you do something often in waking life, like walk through a doorway, see a certain letter or word (this is easy if you write and read often), or think about something that you like doing. Essentially, all that you are doing is replacing a personal dream sign with something that happens often in everyone‘s dreams. Sometimes you can recognize a dream sign, but it rarely appears in waking life. If this is the case, there are two solutions to this: the first is to do the same thing as you would if you couldn‘t find any dreams signs at all—choose something you do commonly in waking life, and the second is to associate something that is related to the dream sign with the dream sign. For example, if your dream sign is an old friend from college named David, but he moved far away and you rarely see him or talk to him anymore, then find something that is closely related to him. Maybe he plays the guitar, and you think about the guitar or hear it often. Once you‘ve found a connection like this, just assign the guitar to David by always thinking about the guitar when you think of David and vice versa and whenever you think of, hear, or play the guitar you do a reality check. Because David has been closely associated with the guitar in your mind, he will often be paired with it in your dreams, compelling you to do a reality check. PAYING ATTENTION TO DETAILS In a dream, you may notice that most times things seem normal but aren‘t quite right. For example, if you have a dream about walking through your house but instead of walking into your bedroom you walk into a bar, then that is an indication that you have to do a reality check. To see these small (or sometimes large) flaws in your dream more clearly, you need to pay attention to the details in your dreams. This will be emphasized several times throughout this book. Using the same concept as a reality check, it will be beneficial to pay attention to your surroundings very closely in waking life, therefore transferring this habit to your dreams and thus increasing

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your likelihood of having a lucid dream. MILD A MILD (Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dream—the M is silent in Mnemonic) is more of an aid to a technique than an actual technique, although it can be very useful, especially when paired with another technique. It works best after just waking up from a dream to fall back asleep again and it is ideal for beginners because it is not very difficult or intense. A MILD is made up of several factors. First, you should be able to look for and recognize dream signs and you should be performing several reality checks daily. Once you are doing these, the next step is a form of repeating something in your head before you fall asleep (the phrase that is repeated is called a mantra, like meditation) and then visualizing a dream just before falling asleep. This will help you do whatever you just told yourself you were going to do and the visualizations could even put you into the dream that you had imagined. For example, if you wanted to increase your lucidity (your awareness of the dream) you would say to yourself ―tonight, I will become more lucid in my dreams‖ over and over again while you fall asleep and then visualize yourself becoming lucid. You could also use one of a variety of other mantras, such as ―I will notice dream signs,‖ ―the next scene will be a dream,‖ ―I will realize I am dreaming,‖ or ―I will remember my dreams.‖ You may say your mantra out loud a couple of times, but be sure that you are only thinking about it when you are falling asleep. You can use the MILD mantra technique for all kinds of dreaming abilities, from telling yourself that you will remember your dreams to telling yourself that your dreams will last longer. Here are a few tips and tricks pertaining to this: 1. Try to keep the phrase short, under around 15 words long because you want the message to be easy to remember and sink into your subconscious mind. 2. Avoid negative words like ―won‘t‖ or ―not.‖ Change the phrase so it is positive if you do have any negative words. 3. Do not use the term ―lucid dream‖ in your phrase. Studies have shown that using ―tonight I will realize I am dreaming‖ is far more effective than ―tonight I will have a lucid dream.‖ This is most likely because saying ―I will be aware that I am dreaming‖ is much simpler and easier for the mind to digest. 4. Focus on your mantra and put a feeling to the words—feel the intention as you are saying it. 5. Don‘t say what you ―want‖ or ―wish‖ to happen; say what ―will‖ happen. Say ―I will be aware that I am dreaming‖ rather than ―I want to be aware that I am dreaming.‖ This makes the statement stronger. 6. Ignore any random thoughts that come to mind when doing this. Do not suppress them, just turn your focus back to the mantra. 7. Personalize the phrase for yourself and see what works best for you. Although it is not strictly a mantra, you could also count down as you are going to sleep,

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like this: ―100. I‘m dreaming. 99. I‘m dreaming. 98. I‘m dreaming‖ and so on. This might help you stay on track and it can tell you how long it takes you to fall asleep. Also, every night before you go to bed plan what you want to do so that just in case you have a lucid dream you will be ready. This way you will waste no time thinking about what to do in your dreams and by thinking about it you will be planting it in your subconscious mind. It also helps if you read and think about lucid dreaming before going to bed. The mantra portion of the MILD technique depends on subconsciously remembering something by internal means only—repetition. This can be very challenging for some people, especially if they have a bad memory and usually rely on external sources to remember things, such as cell phones, alarms, or ―to do‖ lists. To increase your ability to remember things consciously while asleep, it helps to be able to consciously remember things while awake. There are daily exercises that you can use to help you with this and build your memory. Each morning, when you wake up, ask yourself to remember to notice three random things in the day. These can be ―the first time I hear a dog bark,‖ ―the first food I have after lunch,‖ or ―the first person I wave to.‖ You can keep your progress of these exercises in your dream journal. Take careful note of what you remember to do, what you remember to do but do not notice the first time it happens, and what you forget about. This should help your memory while waking, and therefore also while asleep. As for the visualization part of MILD, it will help if you have an active imagination and good visualization skills. I‘ll explain how to increase your ability to visualize in the ―Meditation, Music, and Mental Exercises‖ chapter, but now I am going to tell you what to visualize. When you feel like you are about to fall asleep, start visualizing yourself in a recent dream or one that you can remember well. However, this time you are going to re-dream it so that instead of it ending with your waking, you will observe a dream sign or perform a reality check and become lucid, saying ―I‘m dreaming!‖ Imagine this whole dream vividly and in as much detail as possible. Then, imagine what you are going to do when you become lucid, such as fly off to the moon or shape-shift into an elephant. At this point, you will probably fall asleep. This is actually the intention of this exercise—that your last thought before falling asleep is about lucid dreaming. Although you are really only day-dreaming (or rather night-dreaming), this will greatly increase your chance of having a lucid dream. This works even better when you wake up after 4 to 6 hours of sleep for 20 to 30 minutes and do this while falling back asleep. When used alone, MILD can be effective, but as said above it is really less of a technique and more of an aid to a technique, although it could be used either way. MILD will increase your chances of lucid dreaming when used with other techniques, although some people have found it to work well for them alone. SUGGESTION/AUTO-SUGGESTION The suggestion technique (also known as auto-suggestion or intention setting) is very simple and similar to the MILD technique. It uses a mantra targeted at lucid dreaming and sometimes visualization, although it is unlike MILD visualization. These are some easy mantras to repeat after you have cleared your mind and relaxed: ―tonight in my dreams, I will realize I am

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dreaming and become consciously aware,‖ ―tonight in my dreams, when I see something strange, I will realize I am dreaming,‖ or ―tonight in my dreams, when I see [dream sign] I will realize I am dreaming and become consciously aware.‖ Do not strain yourself or try too hard when repeating this; simply expect it to happen like you would expect the sun to rise in the morning. After this, you can either go to sleep immediately or first imagine yourself happily writing down your lucid dream in the morning. Remember to repeat his phrase until you feel yourself drifting to sleep. This technique works best for people who are easily hypnotizable. The main difference between the suggestion mantra and the MILD mantra is that when using the suggestion technique you need to be relaxed and sure that you are not straining yourself, whereas the MILD technique will become more effective if you try harder. A variation of this technique that is combined with reality checking is called the Castaneda Technique. It is done at night before you fall asleep. Sit on your bed and clear your mind, then stare lazily at the palms of your hands and tell yourself ―tonight while I am dreaming, I will see my hands and realize that I am dreaming.‖ Continue to repeat this slowly as you look at your hands. Then, after about five minutes or once you feel sleepy, go to sleep. You should see your hands at some point in your dream and mentally make the connection to your dreams, therefore becoming lucid. If this doesn‘t work well for you, you can set your alarm for about 4 to 5 hours after you fall asleep and do the exercise briefly again before returning to sleep; this will increase its effectiveness. VILD A VILD (Visually Induced Lucid Dream) is an imagined dream in which you become lucid and take control of the dream. It is imagined before going to bed and visualized just as you are falling asleep. This is a bit like the visualization part of the MILD technique, but it has some differences and tends to be a bit harder; mainly, the visualizations are more vivid and intense, making VILD difficult for some, although for others it will work well. First, you must write down your imagined dream sometime before you go to sleep and memorize it, going over it again and again. This can be a dream completely conceived by yourself or one that you have had recently. It is best to do this in the morning before you attempt VILD so that you will have plenty of time to think about it in the day before going to bed. Remember to write it down and, if you can, carry the writing (or a picture of it) with you throughout the day to look over it. The dream scene should be short and simple and you should become lucid in it by recognizing something as unusual. For example, in the dream someone asks you to show them one reality check and you do the reality check and realize you are dreaming. Here is an example of a VILD that you could write before going to bed: ―I am in my living room when my best friend, Mary, walks in. She asks me to show her my new engagement ring. I look at my hands and see that I have seven fingers on them. ‗I‘m dreaming,‘ I say. After I become lucid, I walk outside and fly away.‖ When you go to bed and you are relaxed and on your way toward sleep, start visualizing the scene. Not just once, but play the whole scene from start to finish in your mind again and

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again, like a ―gif‖ or a loop. The only requirement of VILD is that you should be visualizing this scene again and again—there are no mantras involved. While you visualize it, do not change or add any details to the dream that you originally imagined. You should fall asleep while visualizing the dream. This dream will stick to your subconscious mind, and, hopefully, when you enter your REM cycle you will start to dream it, inevitably ending with your lucidity. An advantage of this technique is that the dream you created is much more stable than a regular lucid dream and therefore will not collapse and cause you to wake up as easily because you are already familiar with the dream and have memorized it. This technique uses dream incubation, which is when you imagine a dream vividly and practice it enough so that you will actually dream it. This technique is more effective if you wake up after around 4 to 6 hours of sleep in your REM cycle and then do it. CAT CAT stands for Cycle Adjustment Technique. This technique is an easy means of attaining lucid dreams every other night for beginners, although it does take some commitment and a week of practice before any lucid dreams can be achieved. All that you have to do is slightly alter your sleeping schedule for the next week and you should start seeing results the week after. Before reading on, please note that this is not a technique for lazy people and it requires a certain level of discipline. This technique used alone will give you up to four lucid dreams a week, or about one every other night. This is less than the more desirable seven or more lucid dreams a week, but if you‘re having three or less lucid dreams a week already this technique is worth a try. This technique relies on your brain being more active during the early morning REM cycles, therefore increasing your chance of lucidity and dream vividness. This is how it is done: Your body has natural sleep cycles that make you want to sleep at night and wake up in the day. However, these cycles can be changed so that your body expects to wake up at a different time. For example, you may notice that sometimes you wake up just a few minutes before your alarm goes off. This is because your body has become accustomed to your sleeping schedule, knew when you were going to wake up, and woke you up naturally at the right time. Your body does this because it doesn‘t like being jolted awake and would prefer to wake more peacefully and prepared for the day. While your body was preparing to wake up, you started to have more brain activity and alertness so that you could wake up ready for the day. The CAT takes advantage of this phenomenon. This technique is done by waking up 90 minutes earlier than normal for one week, setting your body to wake up at that time. If you aren‘t a morning person, don‘t worry, you can still get plenty of sleep—you just have to go to bed earlier (but try to be consistent with sleeping and waking times). For example, go to bed at 10:00 to 10:45 PM every night and wake up at 6:00 AM instead of your usual 7:30. The hardest part of the technique is doing this for a week— getting out of bed early when you would love just another hour and a half. It helps to put your alarm on the other side of the room so that you have to get up immediately to turn it off. When you are up and awake, never go back to sleep. This is also a good time to do lots of reality

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checks. If you do decide to stay asleep until your normal time, you‘ve wasted all your hard work, and now your body is at least somewhat confused. You cannot do this, which is why the technique requires discipline. After this week, in the next week (and for however many weeks after that) get up 90 minutes early just every other day. On the days that you sleep in later, your body will have already started to increase brain activity and make you more alert by the time your last REM cycle starts, so you will be much more conscious in your dreams, making lucidity much easier. The CAT can be combined with other techniques, such as MILD and reality checking. Also, every night when you go to bed set your intention to wake up at the earlier time. This will plant the idea in your subconscious mind (even if you will not actually wake up at that time) and make it more likely for your brain to be more active. If you naturally wake up early on a day you should be sleeping in, try to get back to sleep or try the WILD technique (see next chapter. Also, this is called a WILDCAT). As explained above, after the first week you can wake up at the normal time every other day. However, it is recommended that you repeat the first week of training every few months to refresh the cycle. CAT isn‘t a technique that most people will like, but it is easy and it can be used for as long as you want after that first week of waking up early. You may not be able to achieve guaranteed lucid dreams every night with this technique, but up to four lucid dreams a week is better than none. HILD A HILD is a Hypnosis Induced Lucid Dream, or more accurately a Self-Hypnosis Induced Lucid Dream in which you plant the idea of having a lucid dream in your subconscious mind through self-hypnosis (hypnotizing yourself). Much of lucid dreaming relies on your subconscious expectation of your ability to lucid dream—dreams are shaped by our subconscious minds, and hypnosis programs your subconscious mind to help you have lucid dreams. Therefore, the HILD technique can be very effective. Although some people are naturally more hypnotizable than others, HILD can be like MILD on steroids; in other words, it‘s not so mild (pun intended). All you need to do is get into a relaxed, hypnotized state and repeat an affirmation to yourself and you can program your mind to lucid dream. You don‘t have to be an evil psychologist bearing an old-fashioned pocket watch to understand how hypnosis works, nor do you have to be the victim of some performing hypnotist that makes you act like a chicken; in fact, you have probably been in a hypnotic trance before, such as when you have been daydreaming when you realize you do not remember anything that just happened in the external world or when you were too distracted by watching a movie at the movie theatre to notice who was sitting next to you. Hypnosis is not some evil method of taking advantage of someone; in fact, it can be used for relaxation and helps many people become calmer and happier in their lives. Self-hypnosis is the act of putting yourself into a trance state, like meditation or sleep, which makes you more suggestible to repeated affirmations that will directly influence your subconscious mind. So, please, put away your old perception as hypnotism as vulnerability. You still maintain complete control over yourself while you undergo

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self-hypnosis. Hypnosis can be used for more than just lucid dreaming—hypnosis has been proven to be effective in overcoming insomnia, anxiety, addictions, and many other disorders. This works because when you are in a hypnotic trance, your focus is narrowed in on one thing and your subconscious mind is open to suggestion. Following is a step-by-step guide on how to hypnotize yourself to perform the HILD technique: 1. Put on comfortable clothing and make sure that you are not too hot or too cold. You will not be able to focus if you are too concerned about your pants cutting off your circulation. 2. Get into a comfortable position. You need to be able to relax, so comfort is essential, especially because you could be in the same position for a little while (about 20 minutes). It‘s best to do this when you‘re already tired, although not completely exhausted. 3. Unplug. Turn off your phone, drop your child off at your parent‘s house, and lock yourself in your room. Do whatever you need to do to be assured that you will not be disturbed in the ensuing 15 to 30 minutes. Remove yourself from the external world. 4. Choose your affirmation and try to keep it in the present tense. It could be about lucid dreaming or you could use one that helps you hypnotize yourself. For example: ―I am able to realize when I am dreaming‖ or ―I am calm and relaxed.‖ 5. Relax. Use a relaxation technique to help you. Stretch yourself out and un-tense all of your muscles. Close and relax your eyes and breathe deeply. Try to stay mostly still if you can. 6. Mentally relax. Clear your mind of the daily minutia that constantly pulls on your consciousness, such as ―ugh, I still have to do that thing for work‖ or ―what if someone needs to call me? Am I missing anything on Facebook right now?‖ Do not think, and when thoughts do arise, gently take your focus off of them. Practicing mediation will help you do this. I will give a detailed step-by-step approach to that too in a couple of chapters. 7. Imagine that you are at the top of a flight of stairs which, at the fifth step, start to submerge into water. Picture every detail of this scene vividly, from the color of the water to the smell of the air. Imagine yourself descending the stairs slowly, from the top step. Take another step down each exhale or two, and see the number of the step you are on, counting as you go down. Tell yourself that you are getting more relaxed and calm as you go down the stairs. Remember to visualize each detail. Feel the steps under your feet, especially when you reach the fifth step, when you should feel the refreshing coolness of the water on your feet. Once you get to the bottom, feel the sensation of floating in the water as the water goes up to your chest (or wherever you want it to). Once you are in this stage, you are hopefully in the beginnings of a hypnotic trance, and you can influence your subconscious mind, as you have walked down the stairs of the conscious level to the subconscious level. 8. Start repeating your mantra. The affirmation you should use should be just like the MILD technique—it should be somewhat short and aimed at what you want to do, like ―I will

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have long, vivid dreams tonight in which I will realize I am dreaming.‖ Remember to try not to include anything negative in your mantra and to keep the word ―lucid‖ out of it because your brain does not process the meaning of it as well as simply stating that you will know that you are dreaming. Focus on your words and what they mean while you repeat them. At this point, you are basically programming your mind. You might also fall asleep from this pleasant state of consciousness, or you could choose to return to waking life. You can return whenever you want to. 9. Ascend back up the stairs. Do it slowly, and count each number as you go up, feeling the sensation of the water and seeing everything else vividly. Once you reach the sixth step, you may feel yourself getting heavy. Simply wait until this feeling passes, and continue up the stairs. 10. Once you have ascended, give yourself a few relaxing moments before opening your eyes. You may want to slowly count down from 10 and tell yourself that when you reach zero you will open your eyes. Stand up slowly, and give yourself plenty of time to reawaken. After you have woken from this state, your subconscious mind has hopefully been programed to lucid dream, meaning that you only have to go to sleep and you will likely find yourself in a lucid dream, or at least with increased awareness in the dream. You can do this exercise before bed, but I recommend you do it in the morning after waking up in the middle of your REM sleep because after you finish the hypnosis and go back to sleep you will be put right back into REM sleep which means dreams, so it is more likely that it will work because the affirmation is fresh in your mind. There are other ways to induce hypnosis, and some may work better than others for you. This is the second out of the three techniques I will be presenting: 1. Follow the first six steps of the first HILD technique above, except keep your eyes open. 2. Focus on an object across the room—a clock, a picture, anything. Choose an object that is a bit above your line of vision so that you have to strain your eyes a bit to see it. 3. Continue staring while saying to yourself, ―My eyelids are becoming heavier and heavier. My eyelids feel as if heavy weights are pulling them down. Soon they will be so heavy they will close.‖ Repeat these sentences to yourself about every thirty seconds (do not actually count). 4. Focus on your eyelids. You will notice that your eyelids are actually beginning to feel heavier. Don‘t rush yourself, but let your eyes close when you feel they need to close. As they close, say to yourself, ―relax, and let go.‖ You can say this quietly or think it. 5. When your eyes close, take a deep breath in through your nostrils and hold it for a few seconds. Then, exhale through your slightly parted lips, letting your jaw drop and feeling a wave of heaviness spread over you from your head to toes. 6. Continue to breathe slowly and smoothly. As you exhale, say or think the word ―calm‖ or ―relaxed‖ to yourself and let your relaxation deepen. You‘ve now entered a light trance. 7. Going deeper, take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. Exhale slowly through

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your lips while saying the word ―deeper‖ to yourself. Repeat this process a few more times. 8. Imagine that you‘re stepping onto a slowly descending escalator that will take you to a state of deeper relaxation. Say something to yourself like ―I am slowly sinking into a deeper state of relaxation.‖ 9. As you descend, count backwards on each exhalation, from 10 to 1. 10. When you reach the bottom of the escalator, imagine that you are stepping off of the escalator and onto another similar one. Again, count backwards from 10 to 1. Continue this to deepen your trance until you feel you have reached a comfortable level of relaxation. Depending on how hypnotizable you are, you may only need one escalator ride or you may need several. 11. Repeat your affirmation at this point, like you did in the other self-hypnosis induction. 12. To leave the trance, count slowly backwards from 5 to 1, between each number saying to yourself: ―when I reach one, my eyes will open and I will feel completely awake and refreshed.‖ As you count down, notice your eyes beginning to flutter open and give yourself time to relax after they are open. This is the final technique, which does not use any stairs or escalators and requires a coin of some type: 1. Once again, repeat the first six steps of the first self-hypnosis technique, except you must sit on a chair with arms and legs uncrossed and feet flat on the floor. 2. Hold the coin with your dominant hand and extend your arm out in front of you. Your palm should be facing the ceiling and your fingers should wrap around the coin in a loose grasp. Start to breathe deeply and regularly from your stomach. 3. Start to feel the warmth of the coin in your hand. Internally narrate what is happening and how the coin feels. Tell yourself that you are aware of the warmth surrounding the coin. 4. Convince yourself and truly allow yourself to believe that in some way the coin possesses special qualities, taking the shape and form of a balloon. 5. Imagine that each breath inflates the balloon steadily and that the coin is expanding slowly. Vividly imagine it inflating in your palm so that your fingers start to open and unwrap. 6. Imagine that the coin-balloon is getting comfortably warmer and is expanding more and more. Notice that your fingers are opening up and tell yourself that they are opening up on their own. Convince yourself of this and it should happen naturally. 7. Imagine the pressure building in the palm of your hand as your fingers open. 8. Rhythmically breathe as you count down from 10 to 0, relaxing more with each breath and each number as the balloon inflates and your hand opens. Tell yourself that the time it takes for you to count to zero is the time it takes for your fingers to fully open and for the coin to drop to the floor. 9. Remind yourself of the coin dropping, and, as soon as it does drop, you have reached a light trance.

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10. Now imagine that without the coin supporting you your arm is starting to feel heavy and you want it to float down into your lap. As your arm gently drifts back to your lap, you should be going deeper into a state of hypnosis. Tell yourself that you are going deeper as your arm floats back to your lap. 11. Once your arm reaches your lap, exhale and relax yourself further. You may now use your affirmation. 12. To leave the state, take some deep breaths, reorient yourself, and open your eyes when you‘re ready. After you‘ve used one of these three techniques, remember to go to sleep relatively soon. If you are interested, you can also listen to subliminal messages for lucid dream induction before you go to bed, which are similar to hypnosis but are a bit milder. DREAM CHARACTERS AND CHILD Although it is uncommon, spontaneous lucidity can occur. Sometimes you just suddenly realize that you are dreaming with no effort at all. This can also happen when dream characters—the people in your dreams—tell you that you are dreaming or give you hints. This sounds very strange, but it is possible for you to be fully submerged in a non-lucid dream and have someone walk up to you and say ―you‘re dreaming‖ and then walk away, resulting in your lucidity. A dream character could also say things like ―look around you. Don‘t things look a big different? Aren‘t things a bit off?‖ This seems like some friendly advice, but it is actually your subconscious thoughts informing you that you are dreaming through dream characters (I‘ll get into communicating with your subconscious mind through dream characters more in Part 2). I have also heard of a couple of lucid dreamers who tried an experiment to ask one dream character to stay in the dreamer‘s subconscious and appear in every dream that the dreamer had in order to tell them that they were dreaming. For example, they would see their friend in a dream and ask him or her to come to their dreams every night and just say ―you‘re dreaming.‖ The lucid dreamers that tried this got no results, but it has yet to be tested on a larger amount of people—for many people it could even work every night. Other than this example (if it does work), there is no way to rely on dream characters to tell you that you are dreaming, but it is interesting to know that it could happen. This has been called a LILD (Lucid Induced Lucid Dream) but that can be confused with LILD as in Light Induced Lucid Dream, so here I will call it CHILD (CHaracter Induced Lucid Dream). You can try it yourself; in your first lucid dream, ask a dream character to help you become easily lucid in the future. This would help if the character you asked is in many of your dreams. You can also ask the whole dream to help you become lucid in the future. This could be more effective, however, this technique depends on your expectations. If you expect it will not work, it probably will not. But if you believe it will work, it certainly could. That‘s not to say this is just a placebo (something that only works if you believe it will), but dreams are literally all in your head. Even if it was just a placebo, who cares? Placebos still work. Something else that is interesting is another experiment that at least one lucid dreamer has tried. It was actually the opposite of the first experiment, but first I want to give you a bit of

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information about when you first realize you are dreaming. This will be in Part 2, but the basics are that most beginner lucid dreamers will get so excited when they have their first lucid dream that the dream starts shaking and falling apart and they lose the dream, therefore waking up. There are ways to get around this, but I will save that for later. In his experiment, the lucid dreamer, by the name of Giz Edwards (an experienced lucid dreamer) was in a lucid dream when he suddenly turned to one of his dream characters and told her that she was dreaming. A look of surprise took over her face, and the dream started shaking, as if it was collapsing. Giz tried everything he could to keep the dream stable, but he soon woke up, despite his efforts. It was almost like he was in her dream, and he just told her that she was dreaming, resulting in her short lucid dream. You might immediately jump to theorize that it was a shared dream experience and that this explains why dream characters will randomly tell you that you are dreaming, but the next day Giz asked the dream character he had spoken to in the dream (who he knew in real life) if she had had any strange dreams, but she said she didn‘t remember any. This seems to be a bit open to interpretation because she could have forgotten it, but either way it is interesting. EILD, LILD, AND SILD EILD stands for Externally Induced Lucid Dream (or sometimes Electrically Induced Lucid Dream) and LILD (Light Induced Lucid Dream) falls into this category. An EILD is typically caused by sounds or lights that have been transferred into the dream from the outside world, usually by a device created for this purpose. While we sleep, we are not totally detached from the outside world. We still hear and sense things and these external sensations are often brought into our dreams without us knowing. For example, if someone was playing the piano while you were sleeping you might dream you were at a concert, or if someone kept telling you to wake up you might hear their command in your dream. An EILD device takes advantage of this fact. EILDs can happen without a device; for example if you were sleeping next to your husband or wife and you could hear them snoring you might become aware of the fact that you were dreaming and that the snoring was due to your brain monitoring your external surroundings. These dreams are somewhat uncommon, especially because if the sound or light from the outside world is intense enough it is likely it will wake up the sleeper rather than make them lucid and if it is not intense enough it will not be incorporated into the dream. There are several ways to induce EILD, but the most common use light and sound. The most common device using lights are sleeping masks that go over the sleeper‘s eyes and flash red or white lights in a specific pattern. These lights are bright enough and close enough so that they will be detected by the retina and therefore incorporated into the dream. This can happen in a variety of ways, such as seeing flashing lights flying around the dream, a dream character handing the dreamer a device that emits intense lights, or the lighting in a dream flashing and changing colors rapidly. The hardest part of this is recognizing that the light indicates that you are dreaming. Products that work like this include the Remee or the DreamLight. EILD audio devices and software most often will either use repeated phrases such as

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―you are dreaming‖ or a certain type of music that puts the brain in the right state to lucid dream (this is called brainwave entrainment). The device inducing the lucid dream has to know what stage of sleep the dreamer is in; this is normally done through careful timing. There are several apps available on the app store that will do this as well as YouTube videos. More information on this can be found in the ―Meditation, Music, and Mental Exercises‖ chapter. You can also use your cell phone to have an EILD by setting an alarm to wake you up by your phone‘s vibration (do not use sound—just vibrations). Keep it in your pocket or in some place where it is touching you and the vibrations might be incorporated into your dreams. In the day, set your alarm for random times so your phone will vibrate in your pocket and do a reality check every time that you feel it. This way, when you feel the vibrations in your dreams, you will do a reality check by habit and become lucid. However, you could also just be woken up by the vibrations—it depends on when they occur and what kind of sleeper you are. The SILD (Smell Induced Lucid Dream) technique is an EILD and works basically the same way. It‘s not very popular or as effective as other EILD techniques, but it may work for some people with a good sense of smell. You can purchase machines that will emit a certain smell (like lavender, for example) at the right time in the night. You can also fill your pillow with aromas and hope that you notice these smells in your dreams. These will be explained further in the ―Lifestyle for Lucidity‖ chapter. EILDs tend to be very effective and some even will allow the sleeper to have a lucid dream in the first night, but some EILD devices can be expensive or only made for certain types of sleepers. However, if you do decide to purchase a device that induced EILDs, I recommend you use MILD along with the EILD device as that will significantly increase your chances of having a lucid dream. ADA All Day Awareness (ADA) is a true DILD technique. It is done by becoming and remaining extremely aware all day long and then becoming more aware in dreams as a result so that the chances of lucid dreaming are increased. For example, when one performs an ordinary, mundane activity such as driving they must truly observe the activity, their surroundings, and their own physical and mental state. Some questions to ask, going from the most general to the most specific are, where are you driving? How long will it take to get there? Are you going slowly or quickly? When was the last time you stopped at a red light or stop sign? What was the last road sign you passed on your left? What is your current speed, and what time is it? Are there sidewalks on the side of the road? Once you have considered all of these and more, do not forget to take the time to examine your own physical body. Can you feel the muscles tensing up in your leg as you drive? How do your clothes feel on your body? Can you feel the texture of the steering wheel on your hands? Do you smell anything in particular, like the smell of French fries from a fast food restaurant nearby or exhaust fumes from other vehicles? Do you feel the way that your tongue rests in your mouth? What do you hear? What was the last word that you heard someone say? When was the last time that you blinked? Are your shoulders relaxed? Are you breathing quickly? Then, consider your

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mental state: what emotion are you currently feeling? Are you excited about where you are going in the car or do you dread it? Doing this may obviously be difficult, and doing it all day will of course be all the more difficult, but it will eventually increase the chances of a lucid dream, as awareness from waking life transfers into dreams. It may be easier to start small with this technique before concentrating on becoming constantly aware; perhaps five to ten minutes daily would suffice. After one becomes increasingly acquainted with this technique, most of the time being this aware will become automatic, so that practice becomes much easier and more convenient. WBTB Like the MILD technique, the WBTB (Wake Back To Bed) technique is sometimes considered an aid to a technique and sometimes considered a technique—it could serve as either one. This technique is great for beginners because it has a high success rate and doesn‘t have to be involved with sleep paralysis (a process that occurs during dreaming that can sometimes be frightening; I will properly introduce sleep paralysis in the WILD chapter). Another advantage of this technique is that it can be combined with many other techniques to provide a larger chance of success. The first step of the WBTB technique is to go to bed at your normal time and wake up about four to six hours later—during or near your REM sleep. Alternatively, you could wake up about 90 minutes before you usually do. If you wake up naturally during the night or you have used a technique to wake yourself up after each dream you may proceed to the next step. It is best to wake yourself up in your later REM cycles because they are the most vivid and last the longest, but you can use any REM cycle. To find your REM cycle, wake up at about five hours after falling asleep. If you remember the beginnings of a dream, you‘ve woken up at the right time. If you have no memories of dreams, you should‘ve got up later; if you have extensive memories, you should‘ve got up earlier. After you wake up, you must get out of bed and stay up for 20 to 60 minutes (some even stay up for 90 minutes). See what time works best for you. A good rule of thumb is that when you start yawning you should go back to bed. If you have trouble getting up, try putting your alarm on the other side of your room or get someone else to drag you out of bed (you have to get up). Do something to keep your mind alert, especially something that involves lucid dreaming because it will plant the idea in your subconscious mind and make it much easier to have a lucid dream. Reality check often in this time period and really question your environment. Write in your dream journal, start practicing MILD, and maybe do a little reading on lucid dreaming. It also helps to get motivated and excited to lucid dream. However, do not get too alert because then you could have a hard time getting to sleep. If you have nothing to do when you get up, do chores, use the bathroom, get a sip of water, or walk your dog. Try to dim the lights in your room and do not wash your face or take a shower (unless you are staying up for a longer time). When you are ready, go back to sleep—the faster you fall asleep the better off you‘ll be. If you are too alert, you might want to reduce the amount of time you stay out of bed or practice meditation or relaxation techniques. As you are falling asleep, this is a good time to try MILD,

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VILD, or simply imagine what you will do when you become lucid. When you fall asleep, you have a much higher chance of lucid dreaming than if you had never woken up (especially if you involved yourself in lucid dreaming things while you were awake). This works well because you stimulate your conscious brain at the time you would normally be experiencing REM sleep; this will lead to consciousness in dreams. Also, when you return to sleep you will go right into REM sleep which means if you were involved in anything related to lucid dreaming when you were awake the idea will be fresh in your mind and most likely incorporated into your dream, which should be an obvious indication that you are dreaming. These two factors make this technique very good for beginners because it is easy and often successful, especially when paired with MILD, VILD, or anything else. The only disadvantage of this technique is that you will lose sleep, so I recommend you only do it on weekends or when you will be able to sleep in. A technique similar to WBTB is NILD, which stands for Nap Induced Lucid Dream. All you have to do in this technique is sleep for 5 to 6 hours, then stay up for 1 to 2 hours, then go back to sleep. This can be used with MILD and lots of reality checks to make it more effective. The time spent awake should be spent doing lucid dreaming related things, like reading about it or just counting your fingers periodically. It is essentially the same as WBTB, except you stay up for longer and the remainder of your sleep is more of a nap than finishing your sleep cycle. UILD UILD is an interesting technique and it can be somewhat successful, but you stand at risk of wetting the bed while using it. Hence, the Urinate Induced Lucid Dream (UILD). This is a bit of an extreme technique and something that shouldn‘t really be done unless you have tried everything else, but it still works. If you have a health condition that prohibits you from drinking too much water, then this technique is not for you. If you have a very weak bladder, then this technique is also not for you. Now that that‘s over with, here is how to do it: Start by doing reality checks every time you use the bathroom for at least one day. Then, before going to bed, drink enough water so that you will have to urinate in the night. The amount of water varies from person to person, so you just have to be sure that the amount that you‘re drinking is enough for you. When you do this, you will often have dreams of using the bathroom. Because you have been doing reality checks in real bathrooms, you should also do a reality check in the dream bathroom, therefore becoming lucid. Another advantage of this technique is that it can serve as a variation of the Wake Back To Bed technique, called the Wee Back To Bed technique. This is almost the same as regular WBTB, except your bladder wakes you up at the right time rather than the alarm. This is actually more natural because your body can prepare fully for your waking. When you do get up to do Wee Back To Bed, you should use the bathroom to avoid the risk of bed-wetting. If you want to do UILD again, you can drink more water at this time, or you can just sleep regularly. One of the major disadvantages of UILD and Wee Back To Bed is the possibility of actually urinating. Children often wet the bed because they have less control over their bladders, and an adult over-filled bladder can act just the same way. This doesn‘t mean you are going to

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wet the bed every time, but just be cautious, especially if you sleep in the same bed as someone else. Also, while you are in the dream you may feel like you need to urinate the whole time, which can be distracting, but still manageable. TILD A TILD (Thirst Induced Lucid Dream) is just the opposite of a UILD—you drink no water in the hours before bed rather than lots of water. This is also a technique you should use only when you‘re having a hard time becoming lucid, but it can be very effective, and you don‘t have to wet the bed to do it. Although TILD is the opposite of UILD, it uses the same concept. You start by doing reality checks whenever you drink something. Then, before bed, you become very thirsty, so you dream of going to get a drink and hopefully do a reality check to become lucid. The goal is to avoid any drinks starting a few hours before going to sleep and you might also want to eat salty or spicy foods, but to me that just a bit cruel. Then, you go to sleep normally and wake up 5 to 6 hours later by alarm (or anything else of your choice) and place a large glass of water or juice right next to your bed and while you‘re falling asleep think about how good it would be to drink from it. Remember to do reality checks whenever you find yourself drinking something. If you do have a lucid dream, make sure to hydrate yourself after you wake up from it because it is healthier and it is good to reward yourself after lucid dreaming (see RILD technique). If you have any health conditions that prohibit you from becoming dehydrated, do not use this technique. Also, pregnant women should not try this for the health of their babies. Although this technique can be uncomfortable, it is effective because you will almost certainly dream about drinking and it doesn‘t involve your bladder, which is always a plus. WAKING UP AFTER REM CYCLES The two previous techniques, UILD and TILD, involved waking up after REM cycles. This can be very useful for dream recall, especially right after a lucid dream. Holding in your urine or being thirsty are two ways of waking up after an REM cycle, as REM sleep is very close to wakefulness and your body will probably wake you up after or during this time to try to get you to use the bathroom or drink. Some people can naturally wake up after REM cycles, although for others it requires training, usually in the form of the suggestion technique. You can manually do this by setting an alarm to wake you up every 90 minutes in the night so that you can recall your dreams right after you have them, but this costs you a lot of sleep and can be irritating. RILD AND PILD The RILD and PILD techniques are hardly techniques at all, but really aids. However, I don‘t want to add another chapter for aids because many aids can also be used as techniques, so I will just include them here. These techniques don‘t really fall under either method perfectly, but they do not involve maintaining consciousness while going into a dream which makes them closer to the DILD method. The first technique, RILD, stands for Reward Induced Lucid Dream. This is about

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motivation, and relies on your subconscious perception of success. This can‘t actually be done until you have your first lucid dream, but after that it can help you to have more. To use this technique, first have your first (or just a regular) lucid dream using either a DILD or WILD technique. Then, as soon as you wake up, reward yourself like you would reward a child or a pet. This reward will make your subconscious mind happy and associate lucid dreams with rewards, therefore making it strive for more lucid dreams. It will also help to constantly remind yourself that you will get a reward if you become lucid. So what does this reward have to be? Well, it depends on what you like. Some people keep a favorite drink or food by their bed and take a bite or a sip of it after waking from a lucid dream. You might also give yourself a foot rub, take a bath, or do something else that is pleasurable to you. Just make sure that it makes you happy. A PILD (Punishment Induced Lucid Dream) is just the opposite. It focuses not on your desire to get a reward for your efforts, but rather your desire to not get punished for your lack of effort. It uses the same concept as a RILD, except when you wake up and you don‘t have a lucid dream, you punish yourself immediately. Throughout the day, remind yourself that you must become lucid or you‘ll be punished. You have to carry through with the punishment quickly, or it will not work. You can use this for dream recall too, not just lucid dreaming. Although the idea of punishing yourself may seem strange, your punishments shouldn‘t be harsh or severe; however, they should be severe enough so that you really don‘t want to experience them. They shouldn‘t really be punishments at all actually, more like discomforts or annoyances. You don‘t have to get a spanking or a slap every time you fail to lucid dream (unless you‘re into that kind of stuff, but then I guess it would be a RILD), you just have to do something that is distasteful or uncomfortable. For example, take a cold shower, eat a breakfast that you dislike that morning, try to do UILD, miss out on something that you enjoy, or text an ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend. Overall, the main goal of RILD and PILD is to treat your mind like a dog—say ―good boy‖ when it does well and ―bad boy‖ when it doesn‘t. You can just use either PILD or RILD alone, but together they are far more effective because your mind wants to avoid punishment while seeking rewards. Remember that these techniques are really just aids and therefore you shouldn‘t use them alone—use them with something else like MILD, VILD, WILD, etc. These techniques are more for beginners who need a boost, and once you are having lucid dreams frequently, you probably won‘t need these techniques anymore. They‘re more like training wheels, and you won‘t need them after you‘ve become somewhat skilled at lucid dreaming. After all, who wants the possibility of taking a cold shower or eating something distasteful every morning? WILD The WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dream) method is different from the DILD method in several respects. It is usually quicker and more likely to get you to lucid dream, but it can be intense and sometimes frightening, which is why I recommend starting with the DILD method. In the WILD method, the dreamer goes into the dream with the awareness that they are

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dreaming; they almost never lose consciousness like they would using the DILD method (although there are some techniques that are exceptions). Before I go on, I want to remind you that there is a WILD method and a WILD technique. Right now, I am explaining the former, and the latter will be explained later on. To avoid confusion, I will indicate if I am speaking about the method or the technique from now on. To use this method, you don‘t need reality checks or dream signs—those are part of the DILD method. In the WILD method, through most of the techniques, you go through the same process as you do every night—you‘re just aware of it. The most famous (and infamous) part of this process is what is called sleep paralysis and it is one of the most essential parts of not only WILDs but also OBEs (Out of Body Experiences). SLEEP PARALYSIS Sleep paralysis, otherwise known as REM atonia, is when your body shuts itself down and paralyzes itself in your sleep. This might sound like part of a horror movie, but it happens 4 to 5 times every night (one for each sleep cycle) during REM sleep and sometimes in the hypnagogic or hypnopompic stage (just as going to sleep or just as waking up). This stops you from acting out your dreams—people who cannot paralyze themselves in their sleep sleepwalk and move around in their beds every night. This whole process is normal and healthy, and many people will occasionally experience this while they are conscious of it, more often just as waking up than just as going to sleep. This is nothing to be afraid of. However, what comes with this is very frightening. If you were to wake up while your body was paralyzed in sleep paralysis, you would find yourself completely unable to move at all besides using your eyes or breathing and slight finger/toe wiggling. You would also usually feel a numbness (kind of like the same feeling you have when your foot falls asleep) and you would most often feel like you were being pressed down, like something was sitting on your chest. Other common feelings include a feeling of spinning, being stretched or squashed, being lifted, falling, floating, or vibrations that are created because your body and mind are not quite in touch with each other and don‘t know what you are feeling. This would be bearable for a lucid dream even though still a bit frightening, but that‘s not all. Auditory, visual, and kinesthetic hallucinations are common in sleep paralysis and they are sometimes (but not always) frightening hallucinations. These hallucinations do not indicate that you are going insane or have a mental condition—they are just fragments of dreams projected in front of you because part of the brain is asleep and dreaming while the other is awake, thus allowing you to see images from a dream in waking life. When you wake up and find yourself unable to move, you often get frightened, allowing your subconscious mind to feed on this fear. This is normally what causes you to see frightening hallucinations in sleep paralysis. The most common of these are a shadowy figure, some kind of demonic creature, the sound of shuffling feet, or the sound of a door opening. Also, closing your eyes or using a blindfold during this usually will not help, as the hallucinations can still appear on the back of your eyelids, like pictures (however this may make the experience more bearable

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as it is less convincingly realistic to see the hallucinations in this way; this is recommended as it is often at least a bit less frightening). These dreadful images, however, are common only for those who are not familiar with sleep paralysis. When you‘re aware of what is happening, fear is often never there in the first place. But even if you are not willing to experience sleep paralysis, don‘t be disturbed by this information—you don‘t need to give up on lucid dreaming to avoid sleep paralysis. Understand that sleep paralysis is only used in the WILD method—the DILD method doesn‘t get involved with sleep paralysis, allowing you to have lucid dreams without it. Furthermore, you can still use the WILD method without going through sleep paralysis; even though most techniques are involved in it, some aren‘t. There are also several techniques that you can use to get out of sleep paralysis quickly, even though you cannot move. I will explain all of them as well as how to prevent sleep paralysis altogether. As for the hallucinations: they can actually be pleasant, although this rarely ever happens. The hallucinations feed on your subconscious fear, like nightmares. If you are not afraid, it is much less likely you will experience them. The only problem is that it is very difficult to stay fearless, but it helps to remember that these hallucinations are entirely in your mind. They can only scare you—they cannot harm you. The more experienced you become, the less frightening the hallucinations will be. You may also feel like you are unable to breathe in sleep paralysis, but remember that although it may feel like it, you are not being suffocated, and you can still breathe just fine. If you couldn‘t, you would be at a great risk of dying in your sleep every night. These hallucinations are created by your own fears, and a great example of this is that it was only after the popularization of aliens and UFOs in films and television that people started reporting vivid alien abductions in which the aliens paralyzed them and probed them in their sleep. When you are experiencing negative hallucinations in sleep paralysis, what you fear the most is usually what appears the most. Most people experience this at least a couple times in their life and they will usually call it a bad dream, ghostly encounter, demon, or alien abduction. Some people have sleep disorders that cause them to experience this more often than normal, which can lead to insomnia if not treated properly (speak to your doctor if you experience sleep paralysis often and read on about how to prevent sleep paralysis). People experience and have experienced sleep paralysis all around the world. In fact, many cultures have their own saying for it; for example, in Mexico, most teenagers know the phrase ―a dead body climbed on top of me‖ to describe this, and in African culture it is known as ―the devil riding your back.‖ As horrifying as this might sound, many lucid dreamers try intensely to achieve this whenever they can; sleep paralysis is the doorway to the dream world in which you will have perfect dream recall and be fully lucid. To lucid dream using this technique, you must have your mind awake, but body asleep, rather than the regular sleeping experience of having your mind asleep while your body is awake. I will explain not only how to get into sleep paralysis but also how to get out of and prevent it. How to enter the lucid dream from sleep paralysis will be covered later with the WILD technique. The reason you rarely ever experience this when getting to sleep is because your mind is asleep before your body shuts down—you‘re not conscious to witness your body paralyzing

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itself. When our body is getting ready to wake up, we are naturally coming down from our deep sleep and our body is preparing to start the day, so the brain un-paralyzes the body so that when we wake up we can act immediately. However, when we are woken up prematurely (like from a nightmare) and our brain isn‘t completely aware of this, it is likely that we will still be in sleep paralysis. Another time this happens often is when we wake up early in the morning to do something out of bed and then quickly go back to bed. The body is eager to get back to sleep and you are already relaxed so the sleep paralysis stage will often come on early, before you are unconscious. If you don‘t want this to happen to you, avoid waking up early in the morning with the intention of going back to sleep within a few minutes (you should be safe if you‘re staying out of bed for 20 minutes or more). In summary, sleep paralysis is normal and healthy, but if you are conscious during it, it will tend to be frightening. It is preventable and escapable, but most lucid dreamers do not want to escape it because sleep paralysis is one of the best ways to get into a lucid dream. If you really do not like to see hallucinations, I suggest you use a DILD method instead, but the WILD techniques can be much more effective. STAGES There are three main stages of sleep paralysis that should help you identify where you are in it. Each person is different in when they enter certain stages and how they experience the stages, so I will adapt the three stages for what the majority of people will experience, although if you have had different experiences do not feel like you‘ve done anything wrong or you are unhealthy. Before the first stage begins, the sleeper has to feel relaxed and physically tired. Then, the sleeper enters the first stage: The first stage is when the sleeper is relaxed and the body is preparing to sleep, but is easily awakened (this is called the hypnogogic stage). This is usually paired with hypnogogic hallucinations, but do not confuse these with Stage 2 hallucinations. The hypnogogic hallucinations are very mild and dull in comparison to the infamous sleep paralysis hallucinations. You will usually see a very clear image pop into your head for a split second or a flash of light. You could also hear a slight mumbling or a musical instrument being played. As for motor hallucinations, you can feel your body gently swaying back and forth, spinning around, or moving in any other way. These hallucinations are usually short, vague, and somewhat vapid. I have never had an unpleasant hypnogogic hallucination, and I have never confused one with reality. This is also paired with an intense desire to roll over, swallow, or scratch an itch. Stage 2 is the real deal sleep paralysis. This is when the body detects (or thinks) that the mind is asleep and almost always paralyzes the body at least partially. This is often felt with tingling or vibrations through the body because the brain is not completely aware where the body is or what it is doing. This is also when vivid, intense hallucinations could occur which are most often unpleasant and could be mistaken for reality. This is the stage at which the sleeper can have an OBE or start to safely enter a lucid dream. By the time Stage 3 commences, there is a bit of separation between the mind and body. That‘s not to say you leave your body—you just lose your sensation of it completely, like a

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regular dream. Your body could feel like it is vibrating, numb, in a different position, or just without any sensation at all. Your mind enters or begins to enter a dream lucidly around this time. At this point, the body is paralyzed and the mind is free, which is almost the opposite of Stage 1. PREVENTION AND PRACTICE Before I explain how to use sleep paralysis to induce lucid dreams, I want to explain how to prevent it and escape it first, as it can be a terrifying experience. Remember that sleep paralysis is a very personal experience so some techniques here will not work for you while others will. First, to escape it, remember that the body is paralyzed, and there is no use trying to sit up or break free; in fact, this puts you deeper into the sleep paralysis. Instead, think of the two parts of your body that aren‘t mostly or completely paralyzed: the eyes (because you use them in REM sleep) and the diaphragm (because you do need to breathe). The eyes don‘t really help much, but you can use specific breathing to alert the brain that you are alert and peeing yourself. Breathe deeply and irregularly as if you just ran a marathon and now you‘re trying to meditate. In other words, inhale deeply and pulse your breathing, like you‘re shivering, and then exhale deeply, doing the same. Relax as much as you can and remind yourself that any hallucinations can only scare you. They‘re not evil entities unless you consider a portion of your mind to be an evil entity. Make an active attempt not to fight back and just go with the flow. It might help to repeat a mantra like ―this is only sleep paralysis; I am okay.‖ Another way you can get out is to try to focus on the areas of the body that aren‘t that paralyzed. The paralysis is mostly concentrated on the chest and legs and less concentrated on the fingers, hands, toes, and feet. If you flex and wiggle these four areas, you brain will understand that you are awake and remove the paralysis. Your face is also not as affected, so it will work well for some people to scrunch up their face two or three times, snarling and squinting. Some people can also speak in sleep paralysis, but not everyone. If you can, and you sleep with someone every night, you can say ―help‖ or cough loudly to try to alert them that you are in sleep paralysis so that they can shake you out of it. Coughing could actually get you out of sleep paralysis alone because it exercises your diaphragm. Once you do awake from sleep paralysis, if you do not want to go back into it, get out of bed, turn on a light, and wash your face. If you just stay in bed, you will likely slide back into it. If you want to stay in sleep paralysis to have a WILD, breathe normally and at the same rate as you were when you woke up, do not try to move anything at all, and try to stay fearless to limit the amount of unpleasant hallucinations (of course, this can be difficult if you are a beginner). If you do wake up from it and you become un-paralyzed, do not move at all, but stay very alert and it will easily come back to you. If you find yourself frequently experiencing sleep paralysis and you want to prevent it, there are several things that you can do to decrease your chances of waking up during it. First of all, make sure you are having regular sleeping patterns and that you are not sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation can make you enter the REM state prematurely, causing sleep paralysis. If you tend

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to sleep on your back, make a habit of sleeping on your side. Sixty percent of sleep paralysis episodes occur when the sleeper is on their back. To break the habit of sleeping on your back, it may help to attach a tennis ball to the back of your nightshirt. Eat healthy and avoid foods or beverages that can influence sleep, such as alcohol, candy, or coffee. You may find triggers in your diet that influence sleep paralysis; you must identify these and avoid these. There is also a specific method of inducing sleep paralysis on your own. I will provide a numbered list for this as it should occur in a somewhat specific order. 1. Go to sleep at around 8:00 to 11:00 PM and wake up at around 4:00 to 5:30 AM. This is optional, but in comparison to the morning, the nighttime will rarely allow you to slip into sleep paralysis because of your brain chemistry; I explained this in the first chapter. If you do want to try to experience sleep paralysis at night, go to bed physically exhausted (after exercising) and avoid bright lights before going to bed. Also, perform a relaxation technique. Your sleeping area should be comfortable and there should be nothing that could disturb or awaken you. 2. After waking up, you will be already relaxed. You are most likely to enter sleep paralysis if, upon awakening, you immediately stay completely still, not even moving your eyes— not even a bit. If you do need to move (to turn off an alarm, for example), make the movements small and unnoticeable. Sleep paralysis will not begin until you do not move at all. I will explain why this is soon, but in short the body will think you are ready for sleep paralysis if you resist urges to move. 3. Breathe deeply and regularly. Stay relaxed. 4. Close your eyes (they should be already closed, actually, and don‘t move them) and stay mentally awake. You can count in your head to stay alert; count ―1…I‘m dreaming, 2… I‘m dreaming, 3…I‘m dreaming‖ and so on. This will also help you identify how long it takes you to enter sleep paralysis. 5. Wait for the paralysis. If you have just woken up and you haven‘t moved at all, it should only take a matter of minutes or even seconds. If you have moved a bit, it will take a little bit longer. If you chose to do this at night, unless you are extremely tired, it‘s going to take much longer than that, probably at least 20 minutes, but it depends. 6. If you still haven‘t entered sleep paralysis, do not give up; just do not move, swallow, or breathe irregularly. Stay alert and focused and try not to think anything (besides something that will keep you awake). 7. The physical sensation you will feel when you enter sleep paralysis will almost feel like a lead blanket being laid over you, from your feet up to your head (although some people could experience the wave a bit differently). When you feel this (although you do not always have to) you know for sure you are in sleep paralysis. If you can‘t tell if you are in sleep paralysis or not, you probably aren‘t. You may be in partial sleep paralysis, which means only a part of you is paralyzed or you are just about to be fully paralyzed. To get to full paralysis from here, relax as much as possible and make sure you are breathing deeply and slowly. Also, making small and gentle muscle twitches at separate point in your body may help you. Semi-paralysis happens because your body is not 100% sure

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whether you are asleep or not because you might have been making small movements, so it decides to just paralyze a part of you, or just paralyze slowly. 8. Once you do enter sleep paralysis, wait, and a dream will come soon. Do not forget to hold onto your lucidity, thinking ―I‘m dreaming‖ again and again. Eventually, you will most often find yourself almost ―popped‖ into a dream, and if you were aware and conscious, you will already be lucid. This is not the only way you can get into a dream, but it is the easiest. I will explain the rest with the WILD technique. Tips: 1. The best sleeping position for sleep paralysis is lying on your back, head and upper body elevated, hands by your side or gently resting on your abdomen, and legs and arms uncrossed. You may get the urge to cross your legs but you must ignore it. 2. Stay completely relaxed the whole time. 3. If you find yourself uncontrollably twitching or flinching, do not worry, this does not bring you away from sleep paralysis. As long as you didn‘t control it, it was part of a natural descent into sleep, and your muscles were just relaxing. This doesn‘t ―count‖ as a movement; it actually means you‘re getting closer. 4. If you find any hallucinations to be unbearable (not that they always will be), use an escape technique. If not, hold on tight and wait lucidly for the dream. 5. You will almost definitely feel a strong urge to roll over, swallow, or itch. Ignore all of these, because if you do move, your brain will realize that you are still awake and you will have to restart from the beginning. 6. If you find yourself constantly unable to do this, don‘t give up—it isn‘t normal for your brain and body to do this (it does just the opposite) so it can be very difficult, although rewarding in the end. 7. Keep your arms and legs fully extended and try not to bend them at all as this will hold muscle tension. 8. If you wake up into sleep paralysis and want to use it to have a lucid dream, adopt the same breathing pattern that you had when you first woke up, this breathing pattern is called ―Sleep Breathing.‖ 9. Throughout the day, your eyes move very slightly, even if you don‘t realize it. These are called ―micro-movements‖ and can be noticed if you close your eyes. Relax your eyes to prevent these by rolling them around a few times in both directions and then trying to forget about them completely, focusing instead on something like your breathing, heartbeat, or counting. 10. Throughout the whole process, it is very helpful, if not, necessary to refrain from thinking any thoughts. If you do unintentionally think of something, simply casually observe it without interaction and let go of it. Meditation and brainwave entrainment can help you with this. 11. If you ever wake up to find you are not breathing at all, this is not because of sleep paralysis. It is because of an existing medical health condition you have called ―Sleep

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Apnea,‖ or, otherwise, you have become too frightened to breathe and have temporarily forgotten to. ROLLOVER SIGNAL We all experience rollover signals when we are getting to sleep. They take on many forms, but they generally appear as a strong urge to roll over, swallow saliva, itch, extend an arm or leg, move a hand, or any other similar physical movement. This is actually the brain and the body communicating in their own unique language. If you understand this language, you will be able to understand sleep paralysis and several WILD method techniques much better. The mind does not always know what the body is doing (such as when we are dreaming) and the body does not always know what the mind is doing (such as when we are awake trying to induce sleep paralysis). This pair communicates through the rollover signal, which, in short, is an urge to move. The body does not know if the mind is yet asleep, so it sends a signal to the sleeper which generally takes the form of an urge to move. If the sleeper does move, the body knows that the mind is still awake and responding and sleep paralysis should not be induced. However, if the urge is not responded to, the body knows (or thinks) that the mind is asleep and initiates the paralysis. Using the WILD technique and inducing sleep paralysis means taking advantage of this and tricking your body into inducing sleep paralysis by staying still and not responding to any urges. When you refuse to respond to any urges, you will relatively quickly enter sleep paralysis, especially when you are very tired. However, this is easier said than done. The urge can vary in intensity and it can even be painful. You will feel at least a slight discomfort while trying to induce sleep paralysis, although it is usually much more than that. Remember that the rollover signal includes the urge to make any movement, not just rolling over. When trying to induce sleep paralysis, do not confuse the rollover signal with a discomfort in your body position. When you get ready to enter sleep paralysis you must be very relaxed and comfortable so you that will be able to ignore your body easily and have a WILD experience (no pun intended). Rollover signals will occur about 5 to 15 minutes from the time you started trying to induce sleep paralysis, but if you are just uncomfortable, you will feel it almost immediately. With discomfort, you will find an itching pain first and then an urge to roll/move out of it, while with the rollover signal you will feel the urge to roll over first, and then if you ignore this it will usually be followed by a pain or tingling feeling. If you want to get to sleep paralysis, you most often have to go through rollover signals. And by ―go through‖ I mean ignore. A good way to cope with these signals is to let your mind wander and pay no attention to anything your body is doing until you are sure you have entered sleep paralysis, but be sure to not become too attached to your wandering mind and rather let it do its own thing. To ignore the rollover signal you must take your focus off of your body as this will lessen the urge to move, but still do not become too submerged in your mind. If you think about how far you‘ve gotten, what you would do just to scratch that itch, or what your dream is going to be like, you will find the rollover signals getting much worse. In general, the more you focus on the rollover signals, the worse they get. Act as though you are an observer, not a

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participant. However, do not observe your body—mentally detach yourself from it. Be passive and do not try to affect any imagery you might be seeing around this time or during sleep paralysis as this can signal to your brain that you are awake. One of the most common forms of the rollover signal is a natural urge to swallow. This is known as ―the swallow reflex‖ and is one of the worst you will come across. It is annoying, but fortunately avoidable. There are several solutions to this problem and some may work better than others for you—everyone is different. It will help to practice several techniques of avoiding it at the same time. You should always remember to try to ignore saliva build-up as much as you can, focusing instead on your mind or another place on your body. The first technique is an attempt to have the saliva trickle down your throat, meaning you will never get the urge to swallow. This can be done by elevating your head and upper body using pillows to have gravity assist you. Some people will only need to sleep under a couple extra pillows for this to work, but some people have so many pillows that they are almost sitting up in their bed. A variation of this is to tilt your head to the side so that the saliva will go down the side of the inside of your mouth and not in the back of your throat. Another technique uses a direct drainage so that you are in a position that allows all of the saliva to just drain out of your mouth. In other words—drool. This may sound distasteful and gross, but whatever floats your boat. This is best done on one‘s side or with the head tilted far to the right or left, although always avoid uncomfortable positions. Some people even use tissue papers or towels stuffed in their mouth with this technique when they‘re really desperate, but you don‘t need to do that. In preparation for the WILD, do not eat much food before going to bed. Eating food makes you salivate, thus creating an extra buildup of saliva in your mouth. You can also limit saliva production by loosening your jaw, lifting your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, and pressing it to the back of your front teeth. Then, curve the tongue back slightly inwards as if you‘re trying to lick off peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth—but only curve the tongue back a little bit, not all the way. Sustain this position while you practice the WILD technique; if you are on your back, doing this will let saliva run down the throat unnoticed and make it become less of a distraction. This is actually adapted from a technique used in meditation that reduces the irritability of having to swallow. While using one or more of these techniques, make sure that you are still relaxed and in a comfortable position. A problem that arises from this is that to release all the tension in your jaw, it must be relaxed, which means opened at least slightly. This means you will be breathing air into your mouth, making your mouth and your throat dry, and if you close your mouth you will be sending the signal that you are still awake. The best way to avoid this is to prop your jaw closed. This can be done (while you are lying on your back) by folding a thin pillow in half and resting it on your chest, parallel to your body so that the top (or bottom) of it is under your jaw. You could do this with any other object as long as it is comfortable. You could also just ignore the dryness in your throat, but you will probably need to drink some water afterwards. If you do not swallow while trying to induce sleep paralysis, all that will really happen is a mouthful of saliva and a dry throat. If you do feel that you are in some physical danger after

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not swallowing, for example, if you feel you cannot breathe, then it is important to swallow, even if it means losing a chance to lucid dream. The swallow reflex is something that some people experience much less than others, and some people do not experience it at all. WILD When you can put your body into sleep paralysis while keeping your mind awake you will be able to enter a vivid dream in which you will have perfect dream recall because you‘ve never lost consciousness. This is called the WILD technique and its first step is getting into sleep paralysis, as explained in the previous few pages. This requires no dream signs, reality checks, or any other part of the DILD method. In the WILD technique, you enter the dream world fully aware that you are dreaming, which is really wild (pun intended). For this reason, it is sometimes called the Mind Awake/Body Asleep technique. Once you are in full sleep paralysis, you are ready to go into the dream and complete the WILD technique. As you fall into sleep paralysis and REM sleep, your body is getting ready for a dream, so you will likely find yourself simply ―popped‖ into a dream, pulled into a dream, falling into a dream, or floating out of your body into a dream. Like all dreams, this dream will be influenced by your thoughts and emotions that you had just before falling asleep, which makes it important to avoid focusing on any frightening sleep paralysis hallucinations as they could be incorporated into your dream. It helps to use affirmations to manifest the dream as a good one—tell yourself that you are entering a pleasant and fun dream to allow the idea to get implanted in your subconscious mind and therefore incorporated into your dream. A good time to try to have a WILD is in an afternoon nap, but the best time is at 4:00 to 5:30 AM after waking up because this is when you have optimal brain chemistry for lucid dreaming, as explained in the first chapter. You should also wake up at around 4 to 6 hours after you go to sleep, meaning you should go to sleep at around 10:00 to 11:30 PM, although going to bed earlier will not hinder the technique. You can do a WILD when you are first going to bed at around 9:00 to 11:30 PM but this is literally the hardest time to do it and it takes the longest—it is nowhere for a beginner to start; in fact, there is no good reason to try to attempt it at night unless waking up temporarily in the morning will totally ruin your day. You also will not enter directly into REM sleep at that time, meaning a successful WILD could be impossible or you could simply find yourself in a continued sleep paralysis state. When you wake up to have a WILD, remember that staying still immediately after waking and not making a move will bring on sleep paralysis faster, but it is easy to (mentally) fall back to sleep and lose a chance to have a WILD when you do this. It may help you to count or focus on your breathing to stay mentally awake. You could get up for 10 to 60 minutes (see what works best for you) but remember that a good rule of thumb as to when to go back to bed is when you start yawning. Getting up for 20 to 60 minutes means it will be harder to get your body to fall asleep, but easier to stay alert. If you choose to try having a WILD at night, be sure that you are relaxed and conscious. Once you are in sleep paralysis, there are a few ways that you can enter the dream. You shouldn‘t be too concerned about getting into the dream because it will happen naturally—the

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natural process will eventually end with a dream as long as you‘re not doing it when you first go to bed at night. However, not everyone likes to hang out in sleep paralysis in their free time, so here is how to get into a dream from sleep paralysis: 1. Wait (as explained above). After a minute or two, sleep paralysis will have died down a bit and you will start entering the dream. As I have said, you will usually suddenly ―pop‖ into a dream, but you could experience other sensations that will bring you into the dream. You could also dream that you woke up in your bedroom at this point; be careful not to confuse this with reality. 2. Visualize. In the paralysis, visualize a scene around you and experience it with all of your senses. For example, visualize that you are walking to the bathroom or visualize yourself at the beach. Close your eyes and visualize intensely and vividly, but stay relaxed. Be where you want to go, declare that you are there and that you are dreaming. Forget your body and embrace this dream scene. After you do this for a little while, you will find yourself in the dream, usually in the place that you were imagining. It helps to focus on sensations with which you are familiar. For example, if you are a musician, it may help to focus on auditory sensations, while if you are an athlete it might help to focus on tactile sensations. 3. Feel. Concentrate on the physical sensations of sleep paralysis and let them take you away; for example, if you feel like you are floating, go with that feeling and you could find yourself floating into a dream. Go with the sensation and accept it in a relaxed manner. 4. Practice the HIT (a technique that I‘ll cover next), although this is difficult in comparison to the others. You might find yourself in a false awakening after doing this in which you think you had just woken up and failed. To avoid this, always remember to do reality checks before concluding that you are awake. Recall that affirmations will help you manifest the dream you want. One way to check and be sure that you are dreaming without moving is to use the Apple Pie Technique. All you do is focus on the thought of an apple pie being right next to you and what that would smell like. Concentrate on being aware that you are dreaming, and if you do smell an apple pie, you have just manifested it in a dream. If you are having trouble getting into a dream, try this technique in the morning rather than at night. You could also be trying to practice these techniques too early; be sure that you are waiting for the proper signals and not trying to get into a dream prematurely. It is difficult to hold onto a passive state of awareness like you must in the WILD technique. However, it will get easier with practice. You may be able to successfully have a Wake Induced Lucid Dream on your first try, but for others it can take longer to get used to. As always, be patient with it. HIT The HIT (Hypnagogic Imagery Technique) is a slight variation of the WILD technique. This

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technique places an increased focus on the hypnagogic hallucinations occurring when your body enters sleep paralysis. The only difference in this technique is that when visual images do appear, you let them flow past while you casually observe them, but do not focus on just one of them. As you get deeper into sleep paralysis and closer toward a dream, these images will become more vivid and complex, making them similar to a dream scene. Eventually (if you wait long enough), these will become vivid dream scenes. While maintaining awareness and lucidity, allow yourself to be casually drawn into these dream scenes. Do not try too hard to do actively involve yourself in these dreams, but do not try too little also, because that will make it difficult to stay alert and lucid. This is a very difficult step, but if done successfully it can be used to induce a lucid dream. This is not a very good technique for beginners, but it is fun if you like to stare at the pretty colors. FILD A FILD (Finger Induced Lucid Dream) is very similar to the WILD technique. However, in the FILD technique you focus on two of your fingers while falling asleep and you do not need to wait a long time for sleep paralysis; in fact sometimes you will not experience sleep paralysis at all, and when you do it will be virtually unnoticeable. To use the FILD technique, first wake up after 4 to 6 hours of sleep and then slowly and separately twitch the middle and index fingers of your dominant hand. Your fingers give you something on which to focus, aiding you in maintaining consciousness into a dream. Alternate between the fingers and try not to think as this could take you off focus. It‘s important that you understand that you are not really supposed to move at all, but you do have to feel the movement. This is something you should practice on a flat surface before you try it for a lucid dream, but it is not that difficult. Remember that there should be no movement, but it is okay if your fingers are moving extremely slightly. This is often compared to playing piano keys, but just with one hand. You could also compare this to typing or playing guitar, but take note: you‘re not playing Beethoven‘s fifth symphony, typing out your essay at 11:00 PM the night before it‘s due, or killing a sweet Van Halen solo. The movements should be non-existent or so slight that you wouldn‘t be able to see them if you were looking right at your fingers. You need to feel them, but without moving them. Your hand and fingers should be relaxed while you do it (do not stretch your fingers out), and you need to focus on your fingers the whole time. FILDs need to be done after waking up early in the morning around the time of an REM cycle (4 to 6 hours after falling asleep). It works better the more tired you get. Once you wake up, it is best to not move at all and start doing the FILD exercise when you are sure you are about to fall back asleep. Once you have been doing it for about 30 seconds to a couple minutes (but don‘t actually count, just try to feel the time), do a reality check—preferably one with little movement. You may find that you are dreaming because the dream usually starts in your bed, so that you will think you are still trying to get into a lucid dream when you really are already in one. A variation of this FILD technique is when you push your two fingers together and then

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bring them apart, like you are flicking them together back and forth. This is the only difference, and you still are really not making any movements at all, just feeling them. You should be very careful with the reality check you use. If you sit up and try to count your fingers and it just so happens that you are really awake, you will have to start all over again at a later time. To avoid this, use a reality check with little or no movement. For example, try to close off the nasal passage at the back of your throat and see if you can still breathe through your nose. If you know you can, and you‘ve done it right, you are dreaming. The same muscle that stops you from breathing is the one that closes your nasal passage when you swallow, if that helps. Always remember to use multiple reality checks too. These are a few other reality checks that require little or no movement: 1. The blindfold test. Put on a blindfold before you go to bed. If you can see your room through the blindfold you know you‘re dreaming. Technically, you don‘t need the blindfold because sometimes you can see in the dream through your eyelids, but it isn‘t easy to tell if your eyes are closed or not. 2. Spoon bending. Go to bed or start the technique with a spoon in your hand. When you think you‘re in the dream, slowly squeeze the spoon and try to bend it. If it bends, you‘re either very strong or in a dream. Although this uses movement, it‘s only a little bit and shouldn‘t be enough to take you out of your trace if you are still awake. 3. Try to float, fall, and/or spin away by imagining yourself manipulating gravity. This sounds strange, but if you can do it you are definitely dreaming (or possibly having an OBE, which is very similar). Be sure to focus on willing yourself to move and convince yourself that you are dreaming, even if you aren‘t. 4. The Apple Pie Technique (explained earlier in the WILD technique). Imagine an apple pie sitting right next to you and concentrate on what it would smell like, all the while maintaining the feeling that you are possibly and probably in a dream. If you can smell the apple pie, you are dreaming. If the technique doesn‘t work for you and you are sure that you are not dreaming, go to sleep, wake up again a little later in the night, and try it again. Trying to do FILD again will not work as quickly or easily, so I recommend only trying the whole process (including going back to sleep and waking up again) three times and then going to sleep for the night so that you are not laying around all night twitching your fingers. You can still try MILD, WILD, or whatever else at this point. If you have continuous failures with this technique, try and increase the time you twitch your fingers before reality checking. The advantage of FILD is that it is quick and you do not always have to go through sleep paralysis, or you‘re just not aware of it when it happens. Sometimes you just go smoothly from the waking state to a dream without sleep paralysis and other times you will not even notice it because you are so focused on your fingers. When you do the FILD technique, you will only be awake for it for about 10 to 60 seconds when you will usually enter a dream—if you are not too awake. Remember that you do not necessarily start the FILD technique as soon as you wake up,

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but rather when you feel that you will soon fall asleep (which can be at the same time if you wake up without moving at all). This technique has very high success rates, making it highly recommended if you haven‘t been able to do any DILD techniques successfully. WHITE NOISE TECHNIQUE This technique is still obscure and not yet completely scientifically researched, but it can be successfully used to induce either a lucid dream or an OBE. It is based around the fact that you cannot fully mentally fall asleep in the middle of a thought. For example, if you are thinking, ―I‘m dreaming because I—‖ your thought will get cut off just before you fall asleep. All that you have do in this technique is repeat a phrase over and over again in your mind quietly while you fall asleep. You repeat it subtly and for such a long time that eventually your brain tunes out to it—like white noise—and assumes that you are not thinking and ready to fall asleep. Then, parts of the brain shut down for sleep while you remain conscious and aware. You can actually feel parts of your body and brain falling asleep. This can result in some strange hallucinations and experiences. A good phrase to repeat is ―mind awake; body asleep‖ to remember the point of the exercise, but virtually any phrase can work; for example, you can count ―one two three, one two three, one two three,‖ and so on or repeat ―roam groam.‖ The only known disadvantage of this is that it can cause sleep loss for that night. DEILD A Dream Exit Induced Lucid Dream (DEILD) or ―dream chaining‖ is a technique that can be used to have multiple lucid dreams each night. This technique can only be done after a few hours of sleep and is more like taking a break from sleep than awakening and going back to sleep. This technique requires little preparation and can be a very reliable lucid dream induction technique. Although you have to pass through sleep paralysis to use this technique and it can sometimes be difficult to stay conscious during it, the technique is very effective. To use this technique, first you have to go to sleep and wake up about five hours later. You might need to adjust this time a little bit to make sure you are waking up in your REM phase. You will know you have woken up from your REM sleep if you have the fresh memory of a dream that you just woke up from in your head, and, also, if you are a man you will almost always have an erection at this time (this is where the phenomenon of ―Morning Wood‖ comes from—when you wake up from your REM sleep in the morning). When you wake up, do not move a muscle. This can take practice, but you should get used to it. You won‘t be able to turn off your alarm clock, so you will just have to wait until it stops. When it does stop, lie still with your eyes closed (you should never have opened them or moved them) and stay mentally alert. If you have not moved, it will take about 10 to 30 seconds before you enter sleep paralysis. It is very hard to stay conscious and awake at this point, making it essential to focus on something external or repeat something in your head to keep you alert. Once you are in sleep paralysis, use one of the techniques in the WILD section of this chapter to turn it into a lucid dream. Just before you go back into the dream, you can either visualize the

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dream you were just in (if you don‘t remember, use a different dream you‘ve had) or just wait. The dream that you find yourself in will probably be more vivid and detailed than regular DILDs, and another advantage of this technique is that you can do it as many times as you want in the night if you keep waking up. You may notice that this technique is very similar to a WILD done after waking early in the morning, but the only difference is that a DEILD is done after waking with no movement at all while a WILD is done with at least a little movement, like adjusting your position to get more comfortable and in a position in which you are more likely to enter sleep paralysis. Also, WILD doesn‘t always have to be done after waking up; DEILD does. FILD is also similar to DEILD, but in FILD slight movements after waking up are acceptable and the fingers become the focus. SSILD The SSILD technique is one that is relatively new to the lucid dreaming community, whereas other techniques like MILD were introduced in the late 1980s and techniques like WILD have been around for thousands of years. It was first introduced in 2011 to help beginners learn to lucid dream in an easy and simple way. It was posted on a Chinese forum and the very first title given to it was ―A Very Mysterious Technique‖ which was certainly fitting, because at the time no one could understand how it worked; even to this day there is only a basic understanding of it. Despite this, the feedback for it was extremely positive, and within a few months hundreds of success stories were collected. The tutorial went through many revisions and was first introduced in English in 2012 with the new name ―Senses Induced Lucid Dream,‖ or SSILD. Its approach was very successful because it was as simple and easy as it could be and it usually showed results within the first few days. These achievements showed no signs of slowing, as many people were experiencing lucid dreams and even Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) every night using this technique, with very little effort. Although many techniques wear off over time, this technique seemed to always be effective. One of the best parts of this technique is that it has nothing to do with sleep paralysis, the rollover signal, the swallow reflex, or staying still. If you want to roll over or move around, the technique will not be disturbed, and the entire intention of SSILD is to let the mind fall asleep quickly, not the other way around. This is a large benefit if you are too frightened to go through sleep paralysis or if you do not have enough willpower to withstand the rollover signal. SSILD is designed with aspects taken from both DILD and WILD; it is like a hybrid, but I chose to include it in the WILD chapter because you will often not lose consciousness going into a dream, although you fall asleep normally. SSILD does not use difficult techniques like relaxation or visualization and removes the need for tedious mental challenges. It‘s so basic and simple that if you tried to use it with another technique (like MILD or WBTB) it is likely it wouldn‘t work, so it is best if you just follow the steps outlined here. THE “CYCLE” The foundation of the SSILD technique is called the cycle. It consists of three steps:

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1. Focus on your sight. Close your eyes and pay attention to the darkness behind your eyelids. Do not strain your eye muscles or try too hard to look for something; your eyeball should be relaxed. If you do not see anything, that is completely normal. Do not attempt to look at anything that you do see by moving your eyes around (you may see hypnagogic hallucinations). 2. Focus on your hearing. Relax your eyes and turn your attention to your ears and what you are hearing. You can listen to external sounds if they are loud enough, like dogs walking around, a television, or an air conditioner, or you can listen to the sound of your heartbeat or your breathing. 3. Focus on your touch. Now, direct your attention to your body. Feel your body and its sensations; try to look for unusual sensations such as spinning, heaviness, floating, tingling, or lightness. If you can‘t feel any of these, feel things like your heart beating, the weight of your blanket on you, the air temperature, etc. Pay attention to the head, hands, fingers, feet, toes, and abdomen the most. Constantly stimulating these sensations conditions our body and mind into a state that is optimal for natural lucid dreams by keeping you alert, but relaxed. While doing this, do not try too hard, just relax. You may feel like you want to see things, hear things, and feel things, but this will usually not happen; it is better to expect nothing to happen. WHAT TO DO Here are the steps of how to carry out the technique properly: 1. Go to sleep. Try do this at around 9:00 to 11:00 PM. You can‘t try SSILD as you are going to bed at your usual time because the technique relies on falling into REM sleep and when you sleep in the night you start with NREM sleep. You could do this during an afternoon nap, because you would immediately enter into REM sleep. 2. Wake up. You should do this at around 4 to 5 hours after you fell asleep, and, as always, see what works best for you. The goal is to wake up in or just before your REM cycle. 3. Get out of bed and stay up for 5 to 10 minutes. Walk around, visit the bathroom, and stretch out a little bit. Make sure you don‘t wake yourself up too much though. 4. Go back to bed and lie down in a comfortable position, but it should be one you‘re not used to, to prevent you from falling asleep too early. If you have a hard time doing this, you can use your usual position. 5. Quickly perform the cycle 4 to 6 times. Each step of the cycle should be short, only a few seconds long (but don‘t actually count). This is a warm-up for step 6. 6. Slowly perform the cycle 3 to 4 times. Be sure to not do this too many times, but a couple extra times is okay. Each step should be no fewer than 30 seconds, but the specific amount of time that you want to do it is up to you. Remember not to actually count to 30 seconds or any other time. This step very important and you should take extra time during each step of the cycles. You will most likely be relaxed at this point, and you may see lights, colors, or movements or hear sounds, but if this does not happen you are fine. If it

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does, do not get too excited—just stay relaxed. At this point, you might become distracted by random thoughts. This is good, as it means you are close to falling asleep. Accept these thoughts and let them gently wash over you. If you find you have lost your place in the exercise, it is no problem, just start from the beginning of a cycle and you will be fine. If you forget how many cycles you‘ve done, just do another one or two and move on to the next step. 7. Return to your most comfortable position and fall asleep as quickly as possible. The quicker you fall asleep the more likely it will work. Do not think about it too much, and do not worry if you think that it will not work or you cannot fall asleep right away. Do not try to add any MILD, mediation, breathing, visualization, or relaxation to this technique. You are free to try these once you have mastered the technique, but it will usually hinder beginner‘s progress. You could combine this with the WBTB technique, but I also recommend you wait to do this. Also remember that you can move, roll around, and itch yourself while doing this. You do not need to try to avoid the rollover signal and you need to be as comfortable as possible. If you spend a lot of time rolling and moving around, you can do another one or two extra cycles to compensate for it. It is okay if the mind falls asleep before the body—that is what is supposed to happen; just remember to do the cycles just before you drift to sleep. Also remember that the amount of seconds you should do each cycle and each part of the cycle for is just there for reference—do not count it in your head. Go through these steps relaxed and lazy—do not focus on them too much. Try to stay thoughtless, but when random thoughts do come, do not push them away, just go with the flow. WHAT WILL HAPPEN There are several possibilities of what could happen next. Among these are: 1. Hypnogogic hallucinations. You may feel various sensations, such as the feeling of falling, floating, flashing colors, loud sounds, and many more. When you have these sensations, you are likely in a dream or approaching one. This could also happen while you are awake doing the cycles. When you do find odd things happening, it is a good idea to do a reality check. 2. False awakening. The SSILD technique is known to cause many false awakenings, especially realistic ones. This can be annoying, but easily taken care of by getting in the habit of performing a reality check whenever you wake up, even if you are positive you are not dreaming. You could also find yourself immediately taken into a false awakening, so it seems as though you can‘t get to sleep, when really you already are asleep and dreaming. 3. DILD. When entering a dream, it is common for spontaneous lucid dreams to occur as you will have heightened awareness in the dream, allowing you to spot out oddities much more effectively and perform reality checks, therefore becoming lucid. 4. Real awakening. You wake up after trying this and find, after a reality check, that this is

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the real life. Do not get too concerned about this, and just relax, go back to the cycles, and try again. This time, you should do more of the longer cycles. If you relax your head and allow it to sink into the pillow, you could enter vibrations which could lead to an OBE, or you could fall asleep. 5. OBE (Out of Body Experience). You will know you are having an OBE if you feel wide awake and weightless and you can do strange things, like float or pass through walls. You could also wake up with vibrations or strange sensations which will lead you to an OBE if you hang onto them. WILD WITH DILD AND COMPARISON The DILD and WILD methods have one main difference: in the WILD method the lucid dream is initiated by staying conscious into sleep or by bringing on sleep paralysis, while in the DILD method the sleeper goes to sleep and becomes lucid after entering the dream unconsciously and (in most cases) observing some indication that he or she is dreaming. The DILD method usually takes longer but does not get involved in heavy stuff like sleep paralysis and hallucinations; the WILD method usually takes less time, but is more intense. Some people prefer to generally focus on one or the other. Everyone is different—some people are more patient than others and some people get scared easier than others. The DILD method might actually be more intense for you while the WILD method is easy. The DILD method provides four ways to become lucid: from a dream sign, from dream incubation (like MILD and VILD), from rationalizing something as evidence of a dream (this includes reality checks), or from spontaneous lucidity/dream character induced lucidity (CHILD). Disregarding the last one, these are all skills to develop. You need to be able to identify and look for dream signs, you need to be able to incubate and influence dreams before going to sleep, and you need to have a heightened awareness and do many reality checks. The WILD method provides a whole variety of other ways to become lucid with most relating to sleep paralysis. WILDs are usually much more vivid than DILDs and you tend to have a much better memory of them. They can also be done successfully relatively quickly, which is why they are good for beginners who don‘t mind the possibility of hallucinations (or who don‘t know about them). These two methods are not completely opposite—they actually work very well together; in fact, your chances of having a lucid dream are much higher if you use both at the same time. For example, using WILD with HILD or FILD with MILD. I‘m not sure if this is a good analogy, but it‘s kind of like cooking. You add certain spices and ingredients (techniques) together to get the meal (lucid dream). Also, if one spice doesn‘t work well for you, you can choose a different one, or use a backup spice. For example, if I wake up to do FILD and it ends up not working for me I will immediately start SSILD. Knowing all of these techniques is like having your own tool-belt to induce lucid dreams. The best way to go about using this tool-belt is to explore all of the induction techniques and see which ones work best for you. Meditation, Music, and Mental Exercises

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In this chapter, I will be exploring other means of boosting your chances of having a lucid dream through meditation, various mental exercises, apps and music. Similarly, in the next chapter I will discuss foods and (legal) drugs as well as habits and things in general that you can use to help you lucid dream. After that, I will move onto Part 2—what actually will happen once you do get into the lucid dream. So let‘s begin: MEDITATION Meditation is great in general. Physically and mentally, regularly meditating is very healthy. But its effect on lucid dreaming is just as positive. When one mediates, their body is completely relaxed, they are usually breathing deeply with a focus on their breathing, most of the time they are sitting straight up in a chair or on the ground in a cross-legged position with their eyes closed, and they are not thinking anything, keeping the mind clear and undisturbed. I will explain how to mediate a bit later but first understand what defines mediation: essentially, an absence of thoughts and a thorough relaxation. Although it may sound simple to just ―not think,‖ it is actually very difficult and takes some practice. Soon you may find yourself asking ―is this it?‖ or remember something that inspires an automatic thought, only to realize that you have broken the silence. The power to control one‘s thoughts can become very useful in certain lucid dreaming techniques; for example, sometimes you must repeat a mantra over and over again in your mind without straying and sometimes thought can interfere with the process of lucid dreaming, ruining the experience through subjective judgment. This is one reason why meditation is useful, but another is because of the state of mind that it puts you in. Meditation leaves you relaxed, but still awake and conscious. The relaxed alertness you experience is actually due to alpha waves (see Chapter 1, ―Understanding Brain Chemistry during Sleep‖ if you don‘t recall them) that you experience when focusing during meditation. As you go about your day, you are normally around the beta or alpha wave ranges. Beta waves are typical when you are trying to concentrate on something or working on something while alpha waves take on a form of less concentration but still alertness, yet relaxed alertness. Most meditation takes place in a lower alpha state, keeping you alert but relaxed, much like you need to be in your lucid dreams. Through your alertness, meditation also makes you more reflective and self-aware, another skill needed in lucid dreaming. A great amount of self-awareness can actually serve as a reality check by itself. Self-awareness helps you recognize the difference between reality and dreams in the dream world, making it easier to become lucid. In addition, meditation bridges the gap between your subconscious mind and conscious mind and helps you explore new altered states similar to lucid dreaming. In order to meditate, you must first find a quiet place in which you will not be disturbed for the next 10 to 40 minutes. Most people have 20 minute meditation sessions, but beginners typically start at around 10 minutes. Once you have found a place to meditate, either lie down, sit down on a chair with legs uncrossed in front of you, or sit down on the ground cross-legged. If you are sitting, keep your neck and back straight (you can lean up against a wall) with your arms placed loosely in your lap. Close your eyes gently (do not clench them shut) and relax all of your

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muscles, one at a time. While you do this, start to breathe deeply from your stomach (not your upper chest). If you can go from this state straight to thoughtlessness, then go ahead, but most people can‘t. In order to refocus your mind, count backwards from 100 to 0, then backwards from 30 to 0. While you do this, ignore any intruding thoughts and go on counting. If your mind isn‘t clear by then, you can count backwards again or focus on your deep breathing, hearing and feeling yourself inhale and exhale. If you have any thoughts, do not push them away or get upset with yourself for thinking them—simply turn away from them gently and let them wash away and dissolve in your inner silence. Do not try to forcibly suppress your thoughts or they will just return stronger than before. Remember to focus on your breathing. Your meditation will end whenever you want it to or whenever you have intruding thoughts that disrupt your flow of consciousness. It is best to meditate 40 minutes daily—20 minutes in the morning and 20 at night—but any amount of meditation is still good. Although it is not completely needed, you can use a mantra while meditating. Mantras can give you something on which to focus, or, like a mild form of self-hypnosis, suggest things to your subconscious mind. You can speak the mantra aloud or just think it while you are meditating. Two good mantras to use are:  

On the inhale: I am not the body. On the exhale: I am not even the mind. On the exhale: OMmmmmm… On the inhale: (silence)

The second mantra is actually an ancient Buddhist mantra, originally spelled as AUM_. The A represents the birth of the universe, the M represents the collapse, and the U represents everything in between. The silence at the end represents the nothingness in between universes. A variation of this is ―AHhhhhhhhhh‖ on the exhale (or inhale) and ―MMmmmmmm‖ on the inhale/exhale. You can also use a mantra relating more directly to lucid dreaming, like the MILD technique. It is best to meditate just before going to sleep if you are trying to lucid dream; this way the mantra and state of mind are fresh. Waking up at the beginning of a REM cycle an even better time to start meditating. If it helps you, you can also use a guided meditation recording. These can be found online (especially on YouTube) and in apps. They typically consist of relaxing music with someone talking to you about what you need to do in each step of the meditation. For example, they might focus your attention on your breathing every once in a while and remind you to let any thoughts drift away. These can keep some people on track while they‘re meditating but can also distract others. A different meditation technique focuses on reflection and is similar to the first one. It is used to improve one‘s memory, which makes it very good for dream recall. It follows the same first steps: start by relaxing and getting into a comfortable position and then go through your day completely and in as much detail as possible. Try to remember everything you did since you woke up in the morning, or back to last night‘s dreams if you want to go back that far. After you review your entire day, sit back and relax, then proceed to go to sleep or get up and do things.

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One other type of meditation focuses more on being aware of your senses and surroundings, like the All Day Awareness (ADA) technique. It is called Mindfulness Meditation. To meditate this way, get in a comfortable position and ask yourself questions about what physical sensations you are feeling. For example, how does your left arm feel resting on your right arm? Do you feel the pressure of it in your right arm? Is your neck relaxed and straight? Do your legs feel comfortable on the ground? Gradually move your awareness from one point in your body to another, putting all of your focus on one point at a time. MUSIC AND SOUND Although listening to music during and before sleep can improve your chances of having more vivid dreams by itself, there is a special kind of music specialized for lucid dreams and other states of consciousness; it is called brainwave entrainment and splits into two main types: binaural beats and isochronic tones. Brainwave entrainment is specialized for getting you into unusual states of mind. First, understand binaural beats, the older and more popular of the two. Binaural beats can be found on YouTube, bought online, or purchased in apps. Binaural beats were first discovered in 1839 and first used commonly in the 1930s. They have been refined and improved ever since. The way it works is as follows: the listener puts on headphones, and, for the music to be most effective, lies down (staying still), turns up the music, and closes their eyes. The music has to be listened to through headphones because on one earphone a tone is played and on the other earphone a slightly different tone is played—these tones cannot mix into the air or the effect will be lost. The two tones are typically not easy to hear, as they are drowned out by the relaxing music that is played with them, but the effect is still preserved. On the left earphone 300Hz may be played, while on the right 308Hz may be played. This difference is too small for the human ear to completely and consciously perceive, making it sound like a slow oscillating sound to the listener. The difference between the two tones, in this case 8Hz, is eventually replicated in the brain so that the brainwaves may be tuned to 8Hz (in the alpha range). Thus, through binaural beats, artificial brainwaves may be formed. In this way, binaural beats are used to alter brainwaves so that they can be optimized for lucid dreaming. Binaural beats have a wide range of uses in addition lucid dreaming. They can help with meditation, insomnia, OBEs, and boost confidence or happiness. Some binaural beat makers even claim that their music can recreate the feeling of certain drugs (LSD, ecstasy, and absinthe are among the drugs that have their own binaural beats). Although the music can get the listener in a general state of mind that parallels the drug, binaural beats are much milder than the actual drug, especially if you are not staying still with your eyes closed to focus on the sound. A similar type of brainwave entrainment is called monaural beats, which works the same way except that the two frequencies are combined in the recording before you listen to them. This means that instead of 300Hz playing in one ear and 308Hz playing in the other, 300Hz and 308Hz are playing together in both ears. This way, you do not need headphones, although this is a weaker form of brain entrainment. Isochronic tones, the other main type of brainwave entrainment, were discovered much more recently and not as much is known about them, but many claim that they are much more

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powerful than binaural beats. They work by pulsing a single tone separately at regular intervals. The tone can be pulsed faster or slower depending on the desired state of mind and you do not need headphones for this type of brain entrainment. Isochronic tones, like binaural beats, create brainwaves through sound. Although brainwave entrainment technology has existed for a long time, many people assert that it is unscientific, as an unsufficient amount of scientific research has been done into it. Others suggest that the success related to binaural beats is merely a demonstration of the placebo effect. I do not disagree with these claims, and believe that more research should be done, but I do not discourage the usage of brainwave entrainment, as, placebo or not, it has aided many lucid dreamers in their attempts to have lucid dreams. Binaural beats, monaural beats, and isochronic tones are all typically listened to with relaxing music playing that has been mixed into the tones, but it can be found ―pure‖—meaning it is just the tone(s) without any additional sound. In addition to brainwave entrainment, there are also other recordings specialized for sleep and lucid dreaming. Much like guided meditation recordings, there are also guided recording for lucid dreaming. These come in two forms: (1) for the WILD technique in which the speaker walks you through the process of getting into sleep paralysis and beyond, and (2) for when you are sleeping, in which the speaker repeats words or phrases that are programmed into your dream (used as an EILD). The first type can be especially useful if you have trouble ignoring the rollover signal as the recording gives you something else on which to focus. It can also help beginners who don‘t know what to expect. Usually, it is recorded with relaxing music and the speaker will occasionally tell you what should be happening at one point or another. The second type of lucid dream recordings can be used to implant something into your dream that you have already prepared yourself for so that you can reality check when you see it and become lucid, or it can be used to just have a generally pleasant non-lucid dream. The way it works is by repeating a phrase like ―beach‖ over and over again at a certain time so that you can incorporate the beach into your dreams. It knows when to repeat this either by predicting when your REM phase is by the time you entered as when you will fall asleep or by sensing when you are in that phase. It usually does this by detecting your movements after you place a sensor under your pillow. When you stay completely still (because of sleep paralysis), it will know you are in the REM phase. MENTAL EXERCISES Below is a compiled list of various mental exercises for strengthening skills related to lucid dreaming. Other exercises can be found elsewhere in this book, such as relaxation techniques or working memory practice in the MILD section. 

Lie down with your eyes closed and visualize the room around you in vivid detail. Once you can do this, visualize outside scenes as well. Then imagine yourself walking around these places and interacting with the objects around you. This sharpens your visualization skills.

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

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Watch a burning candle flame from three or four feet away, studying it meticulously. Do this for as long as you can, but not so long as to tire your eyes. When you‘ve finished, close your eyes and visualize the candle flame in your mind‘s eye. Open your eyes and see if your visualization was similar to the actual image. Repeat if necessary. Concentrate on a simple object, watching it closely and carefully until you‘ve soaked up the general image. Then, close your eyes and try to picture it until it fades away. Repeat this process several times, and, when you‘re ready, start to move the object around and manipulate it in your mind‘s eye. For example, make it rotate, become larger or smaller, or stretch out like a rubber band. A simple way of boosting awareness and dream recall is by remembering specific details about your day as you go to bed at night. For example, remember the color of the car that you saw when you parked at the grocery store or what your cashier looked like. Become more aware in waking life as well as in your dreams by paying closer attention to your senses. Habitually go through each sense several times a day. For example, focus on what you are hearing for a few seconds, then on what you are feeling, then on what you can see, etc. This can also help you with the SSILD technique, and is similar to doing ADA (All Day Awareness).

Lifestyle for Lucidity This chapter wraps up the first part with additional tips on lucid dreaming and other miscellaneous things. In general, this chapter suggests that lucid dreaming is fit for an entire lifestyle, not just a hobby. You will see it has more effect on us personally later in Part 3. DRUGS, FOOD, AND SUPLEMENTS Four drugs to always avoid when trying to lucid dream are cannabis, alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes. Cannabis and alcohol reduce or eliminate the REM stage of sleep, making lucid dreaming nearly impossible. Caffeine and cigarettes make you restless and will make it more difficult to get to sleep. Other prescription drugs could have a similar effect, so read the labels of any drugs you take and do research on them. There are actually some prescription drugs that could intensify REM dreams, which could help you lucid dream. Most lucid dreaming and dream recall herbs and supplements shouldn‘t be used by beginners, but some are harmless (like Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, or Choline Bitartrate). Before taking any herbs or supplements it is strongly recommended that you speak to your doctor about it. Be sure not to take these with any other prescription drugs before you do research on them. These are the most popular herbs and supplements lucid dreamers take, most taken in a pill or tea form: 

Calea Zacatechichi. Makes dreams a lot more vivid and improves dream recall. It has been used by Mexican shamans for millennia and is the best herb to start with for a

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

 

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beginner. Galantamine. Used in Alzheimer patients, it can increase intensity of dreams and memory. It also increases the amount of short awakenings in the night, which can cause more sleep paralysis. Galantamine has been used for centuries by the Chinese as a memory-enhancer. It can have mild side effects, but it is typically regarded as the best lucid dreaming supplement. Huperzine-A. Similar to Galantamine, it enhances REM cycles and can cause mild side effects, but less so than Galantamine. Choline Bitartrate. An essential nutrient found in in Vitamin B. Alone, it does not do anything, but combined with Galantamine it can intensify the effects. There are little to no side effects of taking Choline, as it occurs naturally in large numbers in the body. Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B5, tryptophan, or melatonin (see below for more details).

There are many foods that contain helpful vitamins to help you lucid dream. Steer toward foods with high levels of Vitamin B6 (also known as pyridoxine; produces serotonin which is used to produce melatonin) and B5 (an essential part of the reaction to make melatonin). You can also take pill supplements of these vitamins, but remember that if you take an excessive amount in just one night your chances of lucid dreaming will not be amplified—your body will just flush out most of the excess. You just need to make sure you have enough of these vitamins every day and possibly a bit more. Healthy adults need just 1.3 mg of Vitamin B6 each day. Some foods that contain melatonin, which can help you get to sleep and improve the overall quality of sleep, are:  White mustard (378 Nano-grams per teaspoon)  Black mustard (258 Nano-grams per teaspoon)  Almonds (39 Nano-grams per gram)  Sunflower seeds (29 Nano-grams per gram)  Cherries (15 Nano-grams per gram)  Flax seeds (12 Nano-grams per gram)  Oats (1.8 Nano-grams per gram)  Rice, red radishes, poppy seeds, tomatoes, bananas (0.5 to 1 Nano-grams per gram) Other foods that contain Vitamin B5 and tryptophan (used to make serotonin) are sweet potatoes, mushrooms, lentils, broccoli, yogurt, eggs, white rice, flour, and milk. Cheese is also known for its effect on dreams; even before it was known that cheese contains Vitamin B6 many people believed that eating cheese before bed will give you nightmares. This is not always true, but it will often intensify your dreams. Other foods that contain Vitamin B6 are carrots, oranges, spinach, chicken, beans, eggs, and various nuts. Spicy foods are known to intensify dreams as well. Although it is not very common among lucid dreamers, it is also possible to use essential oils for lucid dreaming, dream recall, and in general having more pleasant dreams. Rose oil is

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commonly used. To use it, place one drop of it into the palm of your hand and rub it around on the sole of the opposite foot. Repeat this twice more and then do the same for the other foot. You apply it to the sole of the foot because it is one of the most permeable surfaces in the body and therefore the oil can integrate into the bloodstream quickly. Other essential oils used for lucid dreaming and dream recall include helichrysum essential oil, sandalwood essential oil, palo santo essential oil, cedarwood essential oil, clove essential oil, lavender essential oil, anise essential oil, tangerine essential oil, and patchouli essential oil. You can also purchase aromatherapy kits to help you lucid dream using a combination of essential oils, which is a form of SILD (Smell Induced Lucid Dream—not to be confused with SSILD). HABITS AND PERSPECTIVE To amplify your chances of having a lucid dream, it is helpful to change your habits. Of course, it is always necessary to have a consistent sleep schedule. Going to bed and waking up at around the same time every day trains your body to know what to expect and therefore it can prepare you for sleeping and waking much more easily. You can see evidence of this when you wake up a few minutes before your alarm goes off. This has been explained before; it happens because your body knew when you would be woken up and started to get ready for your awakening naturally. It‘s also important to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep if you are an adult and around 8.5 if you are a teenager or young adult. You should also be sleeping in complete darkness, as this keeps your melatonin levels high, and melatonin can break down under light. Recall from the first chapter that melatonin helps you relax and get to and stay asleep. Although it has been explained previously, I should also mention spending time with electronics. Looking at bright things in general can reduce melatonin levels, but electronics can also interfere with your sleep through electromagnetic fields. You should always sleep without any electronics too close to you. For more tips on getting to sleep quicker, read the ―Get to Sleep Quicker‖ chapter. When going to sleep, remember to relax your muscles and find your natural sleeping position so you can get comfortable in it. You can tell what your natural sleeping position is by what position you wake up in. Also, going to sleep earlier is better for lucid dreaming and for health in general because it keeps you in tune with your natural alarm clock (called your circadian rhythm)—this is also linked to your serotonin and melatonin levels which are naturally influenced by the time of sunset and sunrise. What this means is that it is better to sleep from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM than it is to sleep from 1:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Another way to adapt your lifestyle for lucid dreaming is by doing something called lucid living. This is a philosophical way of looking at life as a whole. Lucid living means accepting and being open to the fact that life could be a dream—you would never know if it was a dream or not, so this theory is irrefutable, although still untenable. If you understand this, you will be more likely to question your reality in your dreams and in so doing have lucid dreams. You can practice this further by comparing reality to a dream very closely when doing a reality check and being attentive of what differentiates the two, as well as being generally skeptical and existential throughout your life. In this way it is similar to ADA (All Day Awareness) but more mental and

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spiritual. If you are not conscious, alert, and observant enough in your waking life, you certainly will not be in your dreams. Turn your senses outward and be more observant. PART 2—IN THE DREAM Understanding the Dream Of course, before you can control your dreams, you must first understand them. This is the purpose of this chapter, which serves as an introduction to Part 2, relating to what happens after you become lucid. If you haven‘t had at least one lucid dream by now, keep trying and review Part 1. Otherwise, learn more about your dreams and (later) how you can control them. THE FUNCTION OF SLEEP Ironically, scientists still do not know for sure why sleep occurs, despite one third of our lives being spent sleeping. As always, there are theories, but we do not yet know exactly what purpose sleep serves. However, we do know that sleep reorganizes the brain, provides our body and mind with rest, is essential for good health, and helps us learn through dreams. Leading theories point out these characteristics and claim that we need sleep to refresh our brain and store memories; indeed, a few days without sleep can cause forgetfulness and lack of concentration. From the perspective of dreams, we also learn from sleep by having dream experiences. Several studies have shown that when a test subject plays a certain game and then dreams about it he or she will experience improved skills in the game upon playing the next morning. This helps us in an evolutionary sense so that dangerous things that we encounter (like fire, wolves, or other humans) we can learn to face more effectively or see if avoidance is better in our own realistic simulations. Another recent theory suggests that we sleep to clean out our brain. It points to new research done that reveals that cerebral spinal fluid is pumped around the brain to wash away molecular waste that cells have put out during the day. The fundamental reason that we sleep may not be verified for years, but it will most likely turn out that it is a combination of all of these theories. WHAT CAUSES DREAMS Much like sleep, scientists are still unsure about why we dream and how dreaming works. Again, we know that sleep is essential, and we know that the REM cycle—which is almost always the cycle in which we dream—is essential for keeping a healthy, sane mind. As in the aforementioned theory, we may dream to learn new things about our environment and dangers. Another popular theory treats dreaming as a side effect. As we are busy organizing memories in one part of our brain, this part sends off electrical signals that can be picked up by other parts, which do not understand these signals and try to make a story out of them—especially because these parts of our brain do not have much else to do at this time. This process, according to the theory, is what creates dreams. An even more mysterious question is how dreams work. For example—why do our hands always look different in dreams? Who are the people in our dreams? Are dreams just formed by our subconscious mind? These questions are still quite unresolved, despite much research. Many

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scientists will agree that dreams are formed out of our subconscious perceptions and expectations, and that is the general viewpoint I take in this book, but this explanation does not always hold well. For example, when I jump in a dream, I should subconsciously expect to fall down normally, just like I have always done in waking life. However, when I do jump in a dream, I will rarely ever land normally. Instead, I could float or even fly away, in spite of this theory‘s fundamental assertion. Although there are some aspects of waking life that our brain simply cannot reproduce in dreams (like writing), our brain should be able to structure a jump easily. This seems to almost hint at the dream world being a totally separate reality from the physical world, with its own laws of physics and nature—but that is getting into metaphysical territory and there is so far no solid evidence to support this. Whatever dreams may be, it seems we are free to decide for now. Although we cannot explain how dreams ―work,‖ we can explain the structure of the dream world. Everyone has had dreams, so you are already familiar with how dreams are structured. However, to lucid dream you need to understand some qualities of dreams that make them easy to manipulate. Firstly, dreams are influenced by our waking life—notably our longterm memories, perceptions, expectations, emotional states, desires, and memories from our day, called ―day residue.‖ Whatever dreams are caused by, they are models of our waking life world, and usually behave as such. For example, gravity, air, space, and humans all exist in our dreams because we have had experience with them and we expect them to be there. However, these qualities only exist because we expect them to exist. If we become lucid in our dreams, we understand that these qualities no longer have to exist and we can soon take over the dream and control it for ourselves, overcoming waking life expectations like gravity or physics. Our thoughts alone can control an entire environment in a dream. In a dream, if you think you can, you can. This statement is the foundation of dream control. THE SUBCONCIOUS MIND As I have previously explained, dream characters are elements of our subconscious mind and we can treat them as such. Our subconscious mind is much closer to whom it is that we really are than our conscious mind, making it a place to go for lucid dreamers trying to ―find‖ themselves. This is because we can receive wisdom and personal knowledge through our subconscious mind. I will provide a list of interesting questions to ask your subconscious mind that may or may not give you any results. You may be wondering how one asks their subconscious mind a question in a dream. This is really very simple as all you have to do is grab a dream character and ask them a question—the character is part of your subconscious mind. You can summon characters in your dream (a skill I will cover soon) to speak to, and while it may be interesting to arrange a meeting with your deceased great-grandfather, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, The Beatles, and the former president in your dream, do remember that these characters have not been brought back from the dead but rather recreated by your own subconscious mind. They will take on special characteristics due to your subconscious perception of them, but in general all dream characters have the same fundamental knowledge and personal qualities, although some knowledge may be

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displayed in certain dream characters more than others. You may request to the dream (by shouting out or by mentally ―feeling‖ the request) to speak directly to your subconscious through a dream character if you want. You may also communicate with your subconscious mind by pulling out a cell phone, dialing your own phone number (or just any phone number) and talking to whoever picks up. A somewhat similar technique is asking a question out loud to the dream and reaching into a pocket to pull out a slip of paper with (hopefully) the answer on it. Your subconscious mind will never lie to you, although it will sometimes ignore you or refuse to respond to the question clearly. Also remember that your subconscious mind is not some all-knowing entity but rather a wiser, more knowledgeable version of yourself. This is a list of things you could ask your subconscious mind:             

Ask it to give you lucid dreams every night. Ask it what career you should choose. Ask it to help you sense who is good and who is bad in waking life. Ask it why you liked your favorite book/movie so much. Ask it to show you forgotten memories. Ask it to pick up where you left off in each dream every night. Ask it to show you something that will make you very emotional. Ask it to help you hold a lucid state. Ask it to break a bad habit. Ask it if a certain friend or lover is really good for you. Ask it why you are stressed, angry, sad, etc. Ask it what your perfect significant other would look like. Ask it to tell you how to help someone else that is suffering.

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Ask it to get over an unrequited crush. Ask it to make you happier. Ask it to show you something random. Ask it to show you your past dreams. Ask it a deep and philosophical question. Ask it if you have already met the person that you should marry. Ask it why you love the person that you do. Ask it to make you laugh. Ask it what your greatest fear is. Ask it to help you understand something better. Ask it to make it seem like dreams happen over a longer period of time. Ask it what a good idea for a movie/book would be. Ask it to help you love yourself despite appearance. Tell it a joke and see how it responds.

When you are lucid dreaming, the characters in your dream are not there for your amusement—they are pieces of your own mind. There is no reason to harm them or treat them with disrespect or rudeness, and do not forget that you can learn things from all of them. Some lucid dreamers even call dream characters members of their ―higher self.‖ An interesting trick to use when you don‘t know how to do something in a lucid dream is ask a dream character. After you have finished reading the dream control section of this book, most

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of the information will be in your subconscious mind, even if you don‘t remember it consciously. Therefore, you should be able to ask someone in your dream how to do something like teleport to another location once you‘ve learned how. LAYERS OF LUCIDITY Lucid dreaming is not at all as black and white as you might think. Different types of lucid dreams have been noted as long as people have been able to lucid dream, but only relatively recently was the term ―Layers of Lucidity‖ coined to describe this by YouTube user Reece Jones. He describes five separate levels of lucidity, emphasizing that one is not inherently better than any other and that to be a lucid dreamer doesn‘t require you to get past Layer One. He also explains that you can move up or down layers within one dream. This system helps lucid dreamers understand which level of consciousness they have gotten to. To go along with each layer, there are also two variations of that layer: major and minor. These will be explained as well, but if they confuse you, you can disregard them as they are considered more advanced. 

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Layer 0: These can be very frustrating, past non-lucidity but not quite lucid. They happen when you get some kind of a hint in a dream that you are dreaming, but fail to actually become lucid. Anything past this layer is considered a lucid dream. a. Minor: When you see, hear of, think about, talk about, or engage in anything related to lucid dreaming but do not become lucid. b. Major: When you get an odd feeling that things aren‘t right, but usually just dismiss it. You have a strange feeling that your actions won‘t affect the future, yet you do not know why. Layer 1: You become aware that you‘re dreaming, but you snap out of it immediately and wake up or become non-lucid. a. Minor: You realize that you‘re dreaming but then wake yourself up within seconds, either intentionally or unintentionally. Remember that if you stay still after waking up you can easily slip back into sleep paralysis or reenter the dream. b. Major: When you realize that you‘re dreaming but then have a false awakening and carry on non-lucid, or the dream around you changes and you become non-lucid as a result. Layer 2: You become lucid and you stay in the dream, but you don‘t have total consciousness or control, not fully understanding what it means to be lucid. For example, you do not realize that you are really not in the dream but rather sleeping in a bed. a. Minor: The dream characters in this dream cannot be convinced that it is a dream. b. Major: You are still partially non-lucid, but the characters in the dream are fully aware that they are not real, even more lucid than you. This is a rare layer. Layer 3: You now have full or almost full lucidity and the dream becomes much less hazy and more vibrant as you understand what it really is. You still do not have full control over the dream. a. Minor: The dream characters do not know what they really are, but you know and are more lucid than they are.

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b. Major: Very similar to layer 3 Minor except now the dream characters realize that they are not real. Layer 4: The classic lucid dream. You have complete power and control. This is what most people want. a. Minor: Although you have full control, the dream characters are not aware of what they are. b. Major: The same as Layer 4 Major, but the dream characters understand that they are not real and accept this without a doubt.

There is a level of lucidity in dreams beyond Layer 4, but it is very rare. It occurs when the entire scene becomes overwhelmingly vibrant and you can feel and sense everything as if it was real. In fact, it will feel like the dream is realer than reality itself. At this point, you are extremely lucid and feel like you have complete, utter control over the dream world. I use the term ―Peak Lucidity‖ to describe this.

VARIATIONS OF NON-LUCIDITY Although non-lucidity is generally less important to note than lucidity, there are also levels of non-lucidity, also created by a YouTube user, Giz Edwards. These variations are not popularly used, but you can still use them if you want. They are called variations rather than layers of nonlucidity so that they will not be confused with the Layers of Lucidity, but perhaps we can look at variations of non-lucidity as negative Layers of Lucidity.    

Variation 1 (Layer -4): There is no dream recall at all—you do not remember any dreams. Variation 2 (Layer -3): You do not have input in the dream—you are watching it rather than experiencing it or participating in it. You do not make any important decisions. Variation 3 (Layer -2): You are a character in the dream and you react to situations in the dream as you normally would in waking life. Variation 4 (Layer -1): The same as Variation 3 but you have access to waking life memories.

DREAM INTERPRETATION Although I mentioned that I would not be covering dream interpretation, I think it‘s hard to get a thorough understanding of our dreams without trying to learn what they mean. Of course, this depends on your viewpoint. If you believe dreams are merely a byproduct of other night-time activity in the brain, then dream interpretation is meaningless. If you believe that some or all dreams are a result of your subconscious mind trying to teach you something, dream interpretation can be somewhat meaningful. If you believe that dreams come from a God or otherwise more sacred or spiritual source, then dream interpretation could also be meaningful. Personally, I believe that our subconscious mind occasionally will ―communicate‖ to us through dreams, but this is not the main purpose of dreams. As explained earlier, we will sometimes dream about stressful situations so that we can

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get used to them and learn to deal with them in waking life. After all, the most commonly reported emotion in dreams is anxiety, which suggests that we are getting prepared for something. We could use this information to interpret stressful dreams, along with a basic knowledge of how our subconscious mind works. For example, we could dream about making a speech or playing an instrument onstage in preparation for public speaking or a live performance that we are thinking about. We could also see strange things because of subconscious association. In this example, we could see large eyeballs in the audience to represent our subconscious association with eyes and the audience staring at us. This is a very superficial example, as it can get much more complicated than this due to deep subconscious links. Dreams can also be created by anxiety disorders we have; for instance, a dream about skydiving could be due to a phobia of heights. You may also notice recurring dreams; these can happen occasionally and usually take on the form of one dream repeating itself a few or more times with slight variations. This is a good way to get lucid and perhaps explore the dream a little bit, as a side note. These dreams most likely happen because dreams can be caused by emotions and you could be experiencing the same emotions in a similar situation during waking life. This could likely form the outline of the dream while your subconscious mind fills in the details and variations of it. Whatever the meaning of your dreams is, remember that dreams can be very random and nonsensical. Finding clarity in an unclear dream can be very difficult, so don‘t beat yourself up over being unable to understand them. Becoming Lucid and Stabilizing the Dream In their first lucid dream, many beginner lucid dreamers will lose control of the dream and unintentionally cause it to collapse. At this time, the brain realizes that you are now conscious by recognizing what areas of the brain are active and sometimes even tries to get you back into a regular dream because it is not used to lucidity. After much practice, your brain will eventually become accustomed to your lucidity and you can further prevent losing your lucid dreams by learning what to do in any unstable situation. You can become forced out of your lucidity in several differing respects: you might just wake up (this is especially common for beginners), the dream could fade and turn into another one in which you have forgotten that you are dreaming, you could have a false awakening in which you thought you just woke up but you‘re really just in another dream, or your lucidity could simply slip from your grasp while the same dreams continues. To stop any of this from happening, you must learn to stabilize and establish yourself in your dreams after you can have them. STABILIZATION Dreams are very picky and it can be frustrating trying to do something in a dream, only to get kicked out. However, with experience, you can learn the social etiquette and mindset of the dream world and manipulate it to your will. When a dream collapses, the first sense to go will almost always be visual. The dream

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can become fuzzy, spinning, dim, fading, or feel strange. A stable dream is almost always clear and realistic. As a lucid dreamer, you need to learn what stable and unstable dreams feel like and how to respond to them; this will become easier as you have more lucid dreams. The first step in stabilization is to relax and be calm. Especially for beginners, having a lucid dream can be a very exciting experience. This extreme excitement can sometimes cause the dream to collapse in on itself, so it is important to remain calm and relaxed at all times. Another mistake that beginners often make is trying to do everything at once. The brain is concerned enough about being lucid in the first place—flying, time-traveling, and conjuring up objects and people all at once will quickly collapse a dream. Of course, you can still do these things, just not in your first few lucid dreams. Maybe try a nice relaxing walk in the park on your first lucid dream just to feel what it‘s like to be aware in the dream-world. Secondly, after you are relaxed and calm, you need to establish your lucidity (unless the dream is already collapsing, in which case, tend to that). If you don‘t do this, you could easily lose your lucidity or be tricked by a false awakening. To do this, perform a reality check first— this is to remind you that you are still dreaming and give you solid proof, and then repeat to yourself ―I‘m dreaming, I‘m dreaming, I‘m dreaming…‖ or some other similar mantra. Beginners should do this frequently throughout the whole dream. This not only establishes your lucidity, but also gives you more ―power‖ to do more things without the dream ending, much like continued practice does. If the dream is collapsing already, or if you just want it to be more stable, use one or more of the following tricks to stabilize it. Note that almost all of the stabilization techniques engage you in the dream and often focus on non-visual senses. 

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Rub your hands together. Not like you‘re washing them with soap, but like you‘re trying to warm up. Do this rapidly. This and other techniques work because they stimulate the conscious mind and anchor you to the dream with physical sensation. Spin around in circles like you‘re trying to get dizzy. This will often lead you to a new dream scene as well. Feeling yourself move in general can stabilize the dream. This has been known to be very successful, however it can cause false awakenings. Do math/spelling. Although mathematics in a dream sounds more like a nightmare, it stimulates the logical portion of the brain when you spell something out or solve an easy math equation. Focus on wanting to be in the dream. This is only a little effective by itself, but it can be easily combined with others to make it more effective. Focus on your hands, specifically the palms. Anchor your awareness and attention to your hands and keep the intention of wanting to be in the dream. Sense the world around you in an intimate and close way. For example, lick the floor. Yes, kneel down and lick the floor. There aren‘t germs in the dream world, so there‘s nothing to be afraid of. Alternatively, you could walk around and feel as many things as possible to hold you into the dream or speak to dream characters around you. Trick the dream without tricking yourself. This is difficult, but it works well. Go along

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with the dream as it was unfolding before you became lucid, following its plot and staying in its non-lucid boundaries as if nothing had ever happened. Unless you are totally concentrated, this could easily get you back to a non-lucid state. Take command. Command the dream to do something for you. For example, shout out ―increase lucidity!‖ or ―clarity now!‖ or try to convince the dream that you will remain lucid and the dream will be stable by some other mystical means such as drinking a potion. This can also be used to keep the dream vivid and clear. Focus on a random object in the dream scene. This can be the floor, a building, a flower pot, or anything else you see. Focus on the object until the dream feels stable. You can also do this with hearing or smell, if that applies in the particular situation. Fall backwards flat on the ground and/or hold on. This can work for some people, but not others. I recommend focusing on the dream intently as well. Remember details from waking life. This is best done while doing a physical stabilization technique. Remember not to focus on your physical body, just your memories. Repeat ―the next scene will be a dream‖ as you try to stabilize the dream. This doesn‘t help you to keep yourself from waking up but it stops you from becoming non-lucid due to false awakenings or new dream scenes.

The above list is indispensable for a beginner lucid dreamer, but keep in mind that dream stabilization is a personal experience and that not all techniques will work for you. Also, remember that the more you have lucid dreams, the more stable they will become and the easier it will be to stabilize them. In general, dream stabilization is based upon being subtle in your entry to lucidity and not making any radical changes until you have achieved stability. If your dream does collapse before you can do anything to stop it, when you wake up, stay completely still. This way, sleep paralysis can return very quickly and you may soon find yourself having a WILD. If you are having trouble with dream stabilization, remember that it will become easier and that all dreams have to end eventually. With practice, your dreams will become increasingly more vivid and easier to control. The spinning unstable sensation that you get when you become lucid will only last a few seconds to a minute and after enough experience it will not be even present. FALSE AWAKENINGS As mentioned several times before, a false awakening (FA) occurs in a dream as a means of tricking you into a non-lucid state. It is when you are off having a lucid dream when suddenly it seems like you‘ve just woken up, but really the dream has created your dream bedroom around you to try to make you think that you‘re in reality again. This way, you return to being non-lucid and move on in whichever way the dream directs you. For example, you wake up one morning to do the FILD technique. You do everything you‘re supposed to, but when you open your eyes and get up it turns out you‘re still awake and haven‘t dreamt a bit. Rats! If you had done a reality check instead, you probably would‘ve noticed that you were

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actually dreaming. This is a false awakening and is common in certain lucid dreaming techniques like FILD or SSILD. This may sound complicated, but it is actually quite possible to have four or five of these in a row—which really takes an iron-strong lucidity to overcome each time. It is important to realize just what false awakenings are. They are not a new dream, but rather when you are put in your bedroom in the same dream. Unlike the motion picture Inception, false awakenings are not a ―dream within a dream,‖ as much as they seem to be. They are simply a continuation of the same dream that has very realistically replicated waking life. False awakenings can be even more extensive than just waking up, perhaps making you get up, brush your teeth, and eat breakfast. False awakenings like these usually correspond to lucid dreaming, but everyone has false awakenings from time to time—most people just don‘t remember them. There is no known method of completely preventing them from happening, as they are a natural process of dreams, but you can stop them from taking away time to lucid dream by keeping habits and learning to question your reality. I previously mentioned Lucid Living, and don‘t forget to do a reality check every morning as soon as you wake up so that this habit will be carried over into your false awakenings. You can also get lucid from false awakenings if you have many in a row. For example, if you have a few false awakenings in a row, in the second one you have you might be a bit more suspicious, and the next one you will be even more doubtful because you have just experienced two false awakenings in a row. Once you do become lucid after a false awakening, do not try to do any heavy lucid dreaming things just yet like flying or transformation as this can easily put you back into another false awakening. One way to get out of a loop of false awakenings is to change the dream scene, especially to a very abnormal dream scene. This may be difficult for a beginner, but it can be done easily at times. For example, try spinning and you might find yourself in a new location. The only problem with doing this is that if it is not done subtly you could find yourself in another false awakening. If you‘re really sick of having false awakenings, you can even try to wake up from the dream into waking life, but this may result in another false awakening (I‘ll explain how you can wake up from dreams in the ―Nightmares‖ section). Controlling the Dream For a lucid dreamer, a dream is no more than a canvas on which he or she can paint their emotions, ideas, and perceptions. It is a place to experiment with the dream reality and to have fun. For many people, this is the reason that lucid dreaming is interesting. It takes time and practice, but eventually you can develop a kind of superpower in the dream that will allow you to sculpt the dream to your will. There are several concepts that reappear in dream control. Several means of manipulating the dream will not be covered because they are usually self-explanatory and can be understood using these concepts. These concepts are: visualization, using objects creatively to help you, ―feeling‖ the dream, simply willing something to be done, setting an intention, belief, and focus (but not too much).

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TRANSFORMATION There are two types of transformation: internal and external. Internal focuses on transforming the dreamer‘s perception of the dream without actually changing the dream itself while external transformation focuses on changing the dream environment. Both types require a high level of stability and lucidity, so make sure that you have stabilized the dream before trying them. For internal transformation, you need to take control of your senses. I have already alluded to making the dream more vivid and clear by commanding ―clarity now!‖ to the dream, but before you get further into internal transformation you need to feel yourself in the dream. Focus on what you‘re experiencing—what does it feel like? What can you see, hear, smell, etc.? What emotion(s) are you feeling? Once you can feel yourself in the dream and gain a sense of awareness, you can then start changing your senses and outward appearance. For example, make yourself see farther or clearer. There isn‘t really a step-by-step guide for this—you‘ve just got to feel it yourself. It will help you to try to feel the intention of the transformation, and don‘t forget that there are no rules in a dream other than your preconceived notions of reality. You can also change your body in a dream; this qualifies as internal transformation. Hold your hands out in front of you and try to morph them into something else. Maybe you could grow long fingernails or turn your skin green. You can do this by visualizing what your hands would look like this way or try to form it with your other hand. Similarly, you can also change your whole body using a mirror (be careful because you can see frightening images in mirrors). First, find a mirror or create one (I‘ll explain how to create one in this chapter). Set the intention to change your appearance as you look at yourself in the mirror and visualize what you would look like. It might help to have a mental image prepared beforehand so you can imagine what you want to look like quickly and easily (remember that you don‘t have to look like a human). Remember that dreams are controlled by our own subconscious perceptions, meaning that if we can perceive ourselves to be one way or another, we will be that way. Be careful when doing this kind of transformation as it requires stability. External transformation is similar, but it can be difficult—you have to visualize your surroundings changing into what you are imagining; this is most easily done with one small detail at a time. You can change scenes or just small objects by slowly morphing them—it may help to close your eyes briefly during this process and don‘t forget to fully expect it to happen. It may be easier to start with simple objects. For example, change a candle into a rose. First you would want to focus on the candle and visualize it forming into a rose—this sounds like a very vague description but you need to feel it for yourself. If you have never experienced what it is like to just imagine something and see it there in a dream then you will not understand this. In a lucid dream, do not be bound by your waking life sense of reality. In a dream, anything is possible. TELEPORTATION Previously, I mentioned spinning in the dream as a means of teleporting to another location as well as stabilizing the dream. If you want to go somewhere specific, visualize this place as you spin. You can do this with eyes closed or not, but be careful closing your eyes because it could

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make you wake up if done for more than a couple of seconds. Alternatively, you could also start flying and imagine the destination that you want to arrive at in the direction in which you are flying. This is typically easier than willing yourself to the destination that you are seeking. I should mention now that teleportation in a dream does not actually mean that you‘re going to a different place in the dream, and that is not what I mean by ―destination,‖ because all that teleportation really means is restructuring the dream around you. Technically, you don‘t move in a dream; the dream moves relative to you. Another technique uses doors or portals in dreams rather than spinning or flying. First you must find or create something to walk through and then focus on getting to where it is that you want to go as you prepare to walk through it. This is based more on expectation than visualization. Once you walk through the door or portal, you could find yourself in a place that you didn‘t mean to go to, but if your intention was strong enough you should have gotten to the place that you imagined. It may help you in teleportation techniques to introduce and create one sense at a time as you are going there; for example, see it, smell it, feel it, etc. When you become more experienced at teleporting in dreams, you will be able to teleport just by thinking about it. FLYING Flying in a lucid dream is generally easy. Most of the time, all you have to do is jump up with the intention to fly and soar through the sky. However, you can have problems with flying because of waking life associations of flying with falling. If this happens to you, there are several ways of overcoming it. Because I like lists (you should know this by now) this is a short list of them: 

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Trick your brain into forgetting about gravity. Take your focus off of objects on the ground and shift your attention up to the sky, clouds, or other objects high above you. Try to push yourself up using this new perspective. Use objects. If you convince yourself that certain objects can help you fly or gain other special powers in a lucid dream, they can. For example, drink a potion that you believe will allow you to fly or ride on a broomstick or flying carpet. Similarly, you could sprout wings from your back or heels. Swim in the air. Anyway you like, you can simply float around in the air as if you were underwater. Alternatively, you could flap your arms like a bird, although this is a lame way of getting around. Remove subconscious burdens. Emotions can psychologically pull you down in waking life, much like they can in a dream. If you are having trouble getting off of the ground, it may be because you are feeling a certain emotion in general or in the dream that limits you. Although this perspective doesn‘t seem very scientific, recall that subconscious thoughts and emotions are literally what form most, if not all of your dreams. To overcome this, do what you think you can do in the dream or in waking life to rid yourself of this emotion. Be sure that you are not over-thinking or fearing anything in the dream.

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Run and jump. This could subconsciously prepare you for flight, although it is not needed. You could just take off like a bullet if it suits you. Start sprinting very quickly. Turn your steps into bounds, and make these bounds progressively larger until they become vast leaps. Then, start to suspend yourself in the air in these bounds until you are able to fly without having to touch the ground. Superman Style. Just take off from the ground and use your arms, outstretched in front of you, to guide you through the air.

You can jump off of a tall building or cliff to help you practice flying if you are having trouble starting at the ground. Like many other skills that you can develop in a lucid dream, the more conscious and focused you are in a lucid dream, the better you will be able to fly. CREATION/MANIFESTATION Creation in a lucid dream simply means creating something yourself or making something appear, whether it is an object or a person. It is similar to transformation in this way, but creation can take more practice to get used to because you essentially have to create something using your mind alone instead of changing something already created. In a dream, everything or nearly everything is caused by your subconscious mind (sometimes things can be caused by external sensations during sleep). This means that your mind can easily create the dream with belief alone. For example, if you were walking down a dark alley in a dream and you thought you heard a noise, you might become afraid of a potential attacker. Although the dream had not originally ―planned‖ this, an attacker could appear in the dark alley just because of your fearful belief that you would be attacked. In this way, you already know how to create things merely by belief, however you have probably never done this consciously. Learning to do this consciously is a more advanced way of creating things for most people, but there are easier techniques. One that works well is called the ―Behind-This-Door Technique.‖ You start by finding a door or willing it into existence through belief and visualization (done through the technique explained above. Yes, you might have to use the hard technique to use the easy one, but a door is relatively easy to create). After that, decide what you want to create. For this example, I‘ll use a person—Abraham Lincoln (although you could always create an object). Note that people are generally harder to create than objects in a dream. After you‘ve got a door, start repeating ―behind this door is Abraham Lincoln‖ out loud in the dream or in your mind. After you‘ve done this for a few moments, start to visualize Abraham Lincoln behind the door—what does he look like? Is he wearing a suit? Does he have a top hat? Continue visualizing and repeating this until you feel like you‘re ready to open the door. If Lincoln is there, congratulations. If he isn‘t, or if something else is replacing him, remember that this is a difficult skill to master, and you should be patient. Another technique you can use specialized for spawning dream characters is in three steps. First, you think about who you want to spawn into your dream before the dream in waking life and in the dream as well if you want to. Then, you attach an emotion to that person. For

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example, imagine the emotion you feel when someone you love makes you laugh or someone you hate makes you annoyed. Finally, imagine them in a specific environment and visualize what they are doing in that environment. Hopefully, they will appear in front of you. Another technique used to spawn an object or a person is to imagine it around the corner or behind you, expect it to be there, and see if it has appeared. You can also find a large television screen, change the channels with the intent to see a certain scene appear, and then jump into the television when you do see that scene. If you‘re more of a traveler you can even ask dream characters where one thing or another is. CONTROLLING TIME Once again, this can be split up into internal control and external control. Internal time-control means that you are changing your perception of time in the dream, making it seem longer in most cases, while external can be seen as time-traveling or pausing time within the dream. From our perspective, time passes generally the same way in a dream as it does in real life. You may feel like time has been slowed down or sped up in a dream (especially when nonlucid), but time usually only feels as long as the dream cycle. Understand that time in waking life can seem to go by slowly or quickly too, as in the difference between working on a Monday morning and relaxing with friends on a Saturday night. Also, understand that by prolonging your dreams you will not be put in any sort of a coma. All dreams have to end eventually as the dream cycle ends or if you are woken up; internal time control simply means making the dreamer perceive that time is passing slowly. Still, your dream does have to end, even if it feels like it will not. The first step in making your dream seem longer is making sure it doesn‘t end prematurely. Review the techniques of maintaining stability in dreams. After that, a good technique for beginners to use is to take advantage of objects in the dream. You should have noticed by now that using objects in dreams can often help you achieve something. The goal of this technique is to let this object control your perception of time, much like riding a broomstick can help you learn to fly. You can use basically any object for this, but it is best to choose one with which you associate time, like a clock or wristwatch. Then, make the object stop or slow time by pressing a button on it, holding the hands of a clock, programming into it how long the dream should last, or anything else that involves the manipulation of the object. Once again, you have to believe and set the intention that this will work. After this, keep the item with you, perhaps in your pocket or on your wrist. Once you‘ve done this, simply remember the object and hope that it works; in fact, convince yourself that it will work. Other than using the above technique, you can also try to change your perception of the dream by commanding your subconscious mind, perhaps saying ―longer dreams now!‖ External time control can either mean traveling to the future, the past, or pausing time. When traveling to the past or future in a dream, you may end up in a different place, earlier in the dream (not that likely), or in your perception of what the past or future was/will be like. This is not true time-traveling, but it can still allow you access to new places to explore, so it is worth mentioning. To do this, create a time-traveling machine, whatever it may look like—a tiny room

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or a DeLorean—and get in it. You can tell by now what the rest will be—visualize your surroundings after time travel, imagine what you want to see, believe it, etc. All of the dream world is governed by its own sense of physics based on belief and intention. In one of my first lucid dreams, I was sitting around a Christmas tree with a group of people and time would periodically pause itself, leaving just me and one other dream character un-paused while everyone else was temporarily frozen. After a few moments, I slowly became lucid after sensing something a bit odd about the pausing dream, then stopped the dream from pausing and teleported away. As soon as I teleported I started losing my lucidity, most likely as a result of trying to pause time and teleport all at once. I didn‘t use any objects to control time in the dream, just a strong concentration. In this way, pausing time is similar in philosophy to other dream control techniques. You can find an object to help you or just ―will‖ time to pause. EXPIRIMENTATION Our dreams are inherently fascinating. They possess a vibrant quality of realism, a unique sense of nature and physics, and an environment in which thought can manifest into reality. It is the lucid dreamer‘s calling to experiment with this dream world with curious adventure. I have left out many skills to develop in the dream world because you should understand now that the same concepts often repeat in dream control. Some of the disciplines that I have left out include: breathing underwater, super strength, telekinesis, mind control, walking through walls, and, because you can‘t avoid mentioning it: sex (lucid dream orgasms are actually possible and the dreamer orgasms in real life, although this can make the dream unstable). As a lucid dreamer, or an oneironaut—someone who sets out to explore their dreams (pronounced oh-NIGH-row-naught)—you will be able to and should experiment with lucid dreaming. For example, find out what happens when you jump through a mirror or see if you can create your own reality checks. In dreams is a whole new world, a whole new life, an entire reality, and if that doesn‘t make you curious, I don‘t know what will. Nightmares Obviously, nightmares can be regarded from a new perspective when one learns and masters lucid dreaming. Simply, if you can become lucid in a nightmare, you can change the dream or end it. Fear is your worst enemy in nightmares, and lucid dreaming can eradicate much or all of that fear. However, nightmares can often be more complicated and deep than this, so I feel I need to explore them more. They can happen randomly or be caused by a lack of sleep, strange diet or lifestyle, stress, drugs, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or other sleep and/or emotional disorders. I have organized nightmares into two separate types for convenience. They are: passive nightmares in which you feel like you are being watched, stalked, humiliated, or you have an anxious feeling, and active nightmares in which you‘re in a direct conflict, running from or fighting something. Although the techniques used to escape and prevent them are the same, it provides an easier reference to them.

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ESCAPE There are several techniques used to escape nightmares if you find yourself lucid in them. Even in a non-lucid state you may be able to escape a nightmare by remembering how (this qualifies as a Layer 0 Major lucid dream and can happen at times). After you do become lucid in a nightmare, remember to tell yourself that you are only dreaming and that the dream can‘t hurt you. This should diminish any feelings of fear or anxiety and sometimes it can completely reverse the nightmare, but for the times that you still are left afraid or needing to get out, this is how you can wake up or end the nightmare:  

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Shut your eyes hard. This works for many people. A similar technique uses rapid blinking. Collapse the dream. This may be your easiest option because the stability of the dream is already weakened due to your lucidity. To further weaken it, you can try to take control of the dream while still holding onto your lucidity. Leave the scene. To preserve the lucid dream but end the nightmare, you obviously can fly, swim, jump, or teleport away. Defeat the dream. This can help you overcome recurring nightmares. It involves facing the nightmare and fighting it or directly challenging it. Focus on your body in bed. Ignore the dream and put your focus on where your physical body is. This should collapse the dream quickly. Yell out. This doesn‘t work as well but you can shout ―wake up!‖ or something similar while trying something else to help you. The purpose of this is not to actually yell out in waking life but to focus your mind on waking up. Breathe deeply and irregularly. Much like sleep paralysis, this can cause you to wake up because you‘re actually breathing in the same manner that you are in a dream. Call out to someone in waking life. This shifts your focus away from the dream, even if they can‘t hear you. Go to sleep in the dream. This will almost always get you out of the current dream scene, although it can cause false awakenings.

Of course, these techniques will not work in the nightmare if you are completely non-lucid, but you may find yourself lucid or at least somewhat aware, which will allow you to use these tips. PREVENTION There isn‘t much of a method to prevent random nightmares other than to have a regular sleep schedule. If you have frequent nightmares, you should speak to your doctor, but do not forget that recurring nightmares can be stopped with lucid dreaming. Recurring nightmares themselves can be a dream sign. This can be very helpful in stopping them because a lucid nightmare can be easily manipulated and controlled when the dreamer is lucid enough. If you want to stop recurring nightmares, or if you find yourself in any

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nightmares at all, it is best to not try to escape it using the techniques above but rather try and understand it and control it. You cannot conquer nightmares from a waking state—you need to face them in their own territory. Once you are lucid, there is truly no need to escape, either from a dream character pursuing you or from the dream itself. Upon reaching lucidity in a nightmare, face the dream and honestly try to understand it. Although it may help to attack dream characters (lions, monsters, or other people are all dream characters), you would really be attacking and trying to disown a part of yourself. What works often is to speak to dream characters, treating them as an equal, but firmly taking control. Ask them questions like ―who are you?‖, ―why are you here?‖, ―why are you acting that way?‖, ―can I help you?‖, ―what do you have to tell me?‖, or ―what do you want from me?‖ Be open to the dream characters, but not defenseless. Do not act under-confident or run from them either. Mere acknowledgement of the dream characters can sometimes stop them. When constantly thinking about a nightmare and trying to avoid it, we can often become so engulfed in it that it repeats itself frequently throughout our dreams. In this way, the first step to stop recurring nightmares is to place less attention on them, if possible. If, after using the techniques above, you saw no resolution in your nightmares, you may need to repeat the exercise again or use a different technique. To do this, you can wait for your next nightmare or induce it yourself through a process called dream reentry. This is a form of dream incubation and is done by reimagining any dream you want to dream again in waking life (especially before going to sleep) and then thinking of alternative ways to end the dream. It may also help to write about the dream (with its new ending) as if it had actually happened. This can be used to re-experience pleasant dreams as well as nightmares. This can create the dream that you wish to change, giving you the opportunity to change it, but by simply confronting the fear in waking life you may have resolved some emotional problems related to the dream. Many lucid dreamers make their reentry into the dream smoother by imagining themselves spinning into the dream. Nightmares are very much of a psychological nature and should be treated accordingly. To escape a dream—to run from your problems—will do you no good, but to face them, understand them, and resolve them would most likely stop the nightmare. Remember that the only thing to fear in dreams is fear itself. PART 3—IN SUMMARY Negative Effects For the most part, lucid dreaming is completely harmless and even can be used for selfimprovement, self-exploration, and learning (explained in the next chapter). However, there are still three main negative effects of lucid dreaming. Two of them only are present using the WILD method while the third one seems to be only caused by extensive lucid dreaming. NIGHTMARES Lucid dreaming by itself will not give you nightmares. However, if you are using techniques like WILD, FILD, or DEILD you could disturb your sleep cycle enough to cause a nightmare. Also, if you take a lucid dreaming supplement you could experience a heightened possibility of

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nightmares, depending on the supplement. To review the difference between the WILD method and the DILD method, the WILD method involves staying conscious while falling asleep and usually takes place after waking in the morning and then going back to sleep. This sleep disturbance is what can cause nightmares. The DILD method typically involves practices done before going to sleep, but does not often involve waking up in the morning. It has been said that nightmares are to the WILD technique and similar techniques as injuries are to sports—they can happen occasionally and they‘re usually a terrible experience, but would you avoid an entire sport just to avoid the possibility of an injury? Even if you are too afraid to have nightmares, you can still have lucid dreams using the DILD method and WILD method techniques that do not interfere with sleep. Lucid dreaming helps you overcome nightmares, so even if you do experience nightmares as a result of the WILD techniques you will have a higher chance of becoming lucid in them and therefore overcoming them. In this way, lucid dreaming prevents nightmares more than causes them, but it is still important to recognize that there is a chance of nightmares. SLEEP PARALYSIS If you know enough about lucid dreaming, this is obvious, and clearly avoidable by using the DILD method and some WILD techniques. To review, sleep paralysis is when your body paralyzes itself while you dream so that you do not act out your dreams. It happens around 5 times every night and without it you would sleepwalk and move around in your sleep. This makes sleep paralysis very useful. However, if you are in sleep paralysis while you are mentally awake and conscious, you will be completely paralyzed and you will often experience hallucinations such as a shadowy figure or loud footsteps. This is because you are still half-dreaming and the hallucinations are projections of your dreams. When you fall asleep consciously, you will experience sleep paralysis, which is why it is emblematic of the WILD method which involves falling asleep and entering a dream consciously. But remember that the DILD method does not use sleep paralysis. Although sleep paralysis is often used as the gateway to lucid dreams, it is not required that you must experience it. Lucid dreaming can actually teach you to see sleep paralysis as an opportunity to lucid dream rather than a frightening phenomenon. Furthermore, through practice having WILDs you can become nearly fearless of sleep paralysis. FALSE MEMORIES Although this still hasn‘t been researched at length, lucid dreaming is known for causing false memories, especially childhood memories. These seem to take on the form of random fragments of memory, such as a fight you had in kindergarten that you can remember vividly, but never happened. This is probably due to memories activated by stimulation in the brain during lucid dreaming, which is different from regular dreaming in which the rational part of the brain is not active.

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Again, extensive research has not been done into this, but it seems that avid lucid dreamers are confirming this, saying that they have a few childhood memories that they remembered clearly, but family members or friends dismissed as untrue. It is sensible that only experienced lucid dreamers would experience this as they have had many more lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming has never been noted as erasing memories, but rather forming new ones. Still, it is uncomfortable to think that some of your vivid memories are false. You can decide if this concerns you, but personally, I would say that all of the benefits of lucid dreaming are well worth it. Positive Effects and Usage Besides using lucid dreaming for self-exploration through your subconscious mind or purely to have fun, you can also use it in various ways to improve your waking life. Lucid dreaming generally appeals to people for its superficially interesting qualities—like flying or dream sex. However, lucid dreaming can be used for much more after you have fun flying around. OVERCOMING FEAR AND ANXIETY Before I present the method for using lucid dreaming to overcome fear and anxiety, you must first understand how therapeutic desensitization normally works: You have a small part of your brain called the amygdala that controls your fight-or-flight response and decides what is dangerous in your mind. For example, if you get burned by a hot stove your amygdala will associate hot stoves with danger and therefore stop you from getting burned on a hot stove again. The amygdala is what makes you feel distressed or anxious about things like giving a speech or performing in front of a crowd. However, this part of the brain can sometimes associate things with danger that aren‘t dangerous at all, as in the case of phobias. To solve this problem, therapy puts you in the situation in which you feel uncomfortable, gradually increasing its intensity, until your amygdala realizes that there is no harm in this given situation. For example, a fear of heights could be conquered by first standing on a tall ladder and gradually making your way up to the top of a skyscraper, and afterwards you realize that there is no harm done and more or less drop the fear. However, this process is easier said than done. The last thing you want to do when you have a phobia is embrace the thing that frightens you—this is a survival instinct caused by the amygdala. It can take decades for a person to completely overcome an anxiety disorder because the brain will not reprogram itself easily. It is extremely difficult to fight back against an anxiety disorder by embracing it when your palms are sweaty, your heart is beating quickly, you‘re scanning around for a way out, and you would just give anything to have it all over with. If you can‘t imagine yourself in a situation like that, if you can‘t feel that raw fear sensation, imagine giving a speech publicly in front of a large audience or asking out the girl or guy of your dreams. You probably couldn‘t even bring yourself to think about doing things like these unless you are extremely confident. This same sensation is what keeps people with phobias and anxiety disorders from living comfortably and doing what they want to do. But, of course,

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lucid dreaming can help. In a lucid or non-lucid dream, your brain (amygdala included) can‘t completely tell that you are not in reality. If it could, you would always be lucid and nightmares would never be frightening. Remember also that your brain reprograms itself to let go of fears and anxieties by using desensitization—gradually exposing yourself to the situation that makes you uncomfortable. So if you practice desensitization in a lucid dream, you will be able to desensitize and stop the amygdala from holding onto irrational fears just like you would be able to in waking life, except with no conscious fear at all. This works because your amygdala sees that you are doing the thing that it thinks will result in harm, but there is no harm caused in the real-life dream simulation. The best aspect about this is that there are no repercussions at all because it is merely a dream that you will wake up from in a matter of minutes, making desensitization a completely fearless experience instead of a fearful and dreadful experience in which there could be real social consequences—this makes desensitization both quicker and easier. Eventually, your amygdala will see that no harm is done in what it perceives as reality, so it will realize that there is nothing dangerous and as a result it will hopefully reprogram itself. Of course, this still requires practice, but it is much easier and faster than going to a therapist and putting yourself in conditions that are naturally uncomfortable for you. This can be used for common fears like asking for a promotion or dancing in front of others to intense fears like social anxiety. An example of how you would conquer this fear is as follows: you have a fear of drowning. In a lucid dream, you first submerge yourself in a kiddie pool and swim around until you are comfortable, then in a small swimming pool, then in a larger swimming pool, then in a lake, and then you drop yourself deep in the middle of the ocean and every time you are able to swim out without breaking a sweat. Your amygdala senses this and you get a rewarding sensation having overcome a phobia, eventually losing the fear of drowning. PRACTICE AND REHEARSAL When we practice something, from an instrument to a sport, neurological pathways light up in our brains as we move and think about moving. Interestingly, these same pathways light up when we dream about doing the same thing; indeed, the only thing stopping us from actually acting it out is sleep paralysis. As we strengthen these neurological pathways either through practice in waking life or practice in dreams, we get better at what we are doing. In this way, once a skill is more or less understood, it can be perfected in lucid dreams through practice, with no repercussions such as injuries or losing in a sports game. Lucid dreaming also provides an incredible environment in which to practice and rehearse. For example, if you are a basketball player, you could play on any court you wanted to with any amount of people and even make the game easier or harder by manipulating the environment. To practice your sport or skill, think about the skills you need to practice during the day, set the intention to practice them in your dreams at night, and induce a lucid dream in which you can practice these skills. You can even try advanced skills. Once you can do this, you can try

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performing in front of an audience in your dreams, but remember to let go of any fear or anxiety and welcome the audience. If you are having trouble performing in front of a dream audience, gradually fill it with trustworthy people that you are comfortable with, like friends or family. You can also practice your future way of life in a lucid dream. By visualizing yourself happy in your future you are more likely to behave in a way to increase the likelihood of that future possibility coming true. For example, if you visualize yourself as rich you will be more likely to accumulate wealth, or if you can see yourself free from addiction you will be more likely to quit smoking. In a lucid dream you can intensify this visualization by making it into a simulation of real life. For example, if you wish to lose weight, see yourself in a lucid dream as thin and feel what it feels like to have lost weight. LEARNING I previously mentioned how dreams reinforced learning in a study in which people could perform in a game better when they had dreamed about it non-lucidly. Other studies have shown that you can imagine practicing a skill and you will initially improve at that skill at the same rate as if you were actually doing it. This is because when you first start learning something you have to think about it more than you actually do it so that neurological pathways can be strengthened and ready to actually build the skill. In this way, the first stage of learning is all in the brain. Obviously, a dream is filled with your imagination and much more vivid than a waking life visualization. For example, if you imagine a pear in front of you, you can ―see‖ it, you can smell it and taste it, but you would have no trouble differentiating an imagined pear from a real pear. However, in a dream, a pear tastes, looks, and smells as if it is real and in a non-lucid dream you would never doubt that the pear actually is real. So, as you might expect, lucid dreaming can be used to learn something new in the same way that waking life imagination can, except it will be intensified to the point where it is less of an imagination and rather a simulation as close to reality as it can get. This is similar to practicing in a lucid dream; all that you need to do is set up an environment to learn in the dream and carry out your learning or studying. THE ARTS AND LUCID DREAMING The famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali would fall asleep in a chair holding a metal spoon with a metal platter on the floor so that when he drifted into sleep the spoon would fall out of his grasp and clash on the platter, waking him up. He would then write down or draw his surrealistic dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations, providing inspiration for his artwork. (You can do something similar by propping your arm up against a wall as you fall asleep in a position so that it will fall down and slap your face when you drift into sleep). In this way, images in dreams can be used for visual arts, but that‘s not all. Musicians can also hear, practice, and play music in dreams (lucid dreams especially) and writers can experience and live through fantastical worlds or breathtaking events, providing inspiration for novels or short stories. Dreams, as well as lucid dreams, have provided inspiration for countless artists, scientists, musicians, and writers due to their ability to create and form art out of the subconscious mind, rather than focusing on the conscious mind. This is another advantage

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to having a good dream recall, keeping a dream journal, and lucid dreaming. Final Notes This is the final chapter of the book, with the exception of the Extended Learning and Practice section. In this chapter I will provide the last helpful information and reflections on the content of the book. LUCID DREAMING IN THE FUTURE The art, skill, and practice of lucid dreaming has been around since the dream yogis thousands of years ago and has been evolving ever since. The most recent landmark was a surge of lucid dreaming in pop culture online in forums, YouTube, and elsewhere on the internet. This revival was probably at least partly due to the motion picture Inception, although the phenomenon of lucid dreaming—of simply being aware of the dream—is influential by itself. Just a couple of decades ago talking about lucid dreaming was odd and emblematic of an outcast, and just three or four decades ago lucid dreaming was unproven completely and regarded by most scientists as completely impossible due to the nature of dreams. Now, it is recognized as a real phenomenon and fully accepted by scientists as well as the general public. It is hard to say where lucid dreaming will go from here, but it is surely getting more popular and explored. Brainwave entrainment and EILD devices are undergoing improvements every few years while new techniques for lucid dreaming continue to be created. More and more people are learning to lucid dream and sharing their experiences online as more and more people teach others how to lucid dream. Never has there been such a prosperous time for lucid dreaming. Some may even theorize that we are moving toward a ―perfect‖ technique for lucid dreaming that works for everyone all of the time. I, like most lucid dreamers, would say that is impossible due to physiological and psychological differences between all of us. However, there is an abundance of lucid dreaming techniques, and all of them can be tweaked to one‘s personal preferences, making lucid dreaming possible for everyone. It can be difficult, and it can take time, but if you keep trying you will have lucid dreams. If you need somewhere to start, try one of the following techniques: FILD, SSILD, WBTB with MILD, or DEILD. All of them have been noted as being particularly effective, although these will by no means work for everyone all of the time. IF YOU NEED MOTIVATION Many people lose the motivation to learn to lucid dream after a few failed attempts, which can ultimately cause them to abandon the subject for years. If you have reached this point, or fear that you will soon, you must take action immediately if you still have a desire to lucid dream. First, you should read and think about lucid dreaming often. It might help you to skim through this book and reread sections or go online and read stories of lucid dreamers— sometimes hearing what other people can do motivates you to get up and try it yourself. Set a specific intention to have lucid dreams and try to accomplish this goal.

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If you are going to attempt an induction technique, set the intention throughout the day to do this as well. Make yourself believe that you will practice the technique so that you are expecting it, not merely hoping to do it. An example of how you do this normally is as follows: in the near future, you may be expecting to go to a party or interesting event. However, when this event is cancelled you will be disappointed because you mentally set an intention to go to that party. You thought that it would happen, not that it might happen. This is what you need to apply to lucid dreaming when attempting to gain motivation for an induction technique: expect it to happen as if it is not a choice. A more external means of stimulating your motivation is by telling a family member or friend about lucid dreaming and what you plan to do with it in the near future. For example, tell your husband or wife that you will try to lucid dream tonight using the FILD technique and you‘ll tell them how it goes tomorrow. This can motivate you because when you have to report back to them you will have let them down by saying that you were too lazy and didn‘t want to go through with it. If none of these tricks work to improve your motivation, you may want to attempt an easy or simple lucid dreaming technique if you are focusing on the more complex ones. For example, try MILD, SSILD, or simply reality checking. IF YOU STILL CAN’T LUCID DREAM Many people give up at lucid dreaming after trying intensely for a couple weeks, expecting lucid dreams fast. This is the wrong approach; if you try to take on too much at once you will most likely give up because you‘ve bit off more than you can chew. If you‘re having problems with lucid dreaming, take a break and return to the basics. First, you need a consistent sleep schedule and at least eight hours every night. Work on that for a week or two and then move onto your dream recall, writing your dreams down every morning. After about 2 or 3 weeks of that, move onto reality checks and dream signs. Progress slowly and in small steps like this. It is understandable that you would want to have lucid dreams as soon as possible, but you will most likely have more lucid dreams if you take it slowly. Although goal setting helps, don‘t take on large goals so quickly. Instead, set one large goal for the year and split the steps up into the months. For example, if you want to have 50 lucid dreams in a year, work on getting 4 or 5 each month, or you could focus on your dream recall for a month, try the DILD method for 6 months, and move onto the WILD method for the remaining 5 months. Set very specific goals by specific dates and be sure that your goals are difficult but realistic. Remember that lucid dreaming is a challenge, but don‘t overwhelm yourself thinking that it is too difficult because this could be a mental block for you. The most important thing for you to remember when learning to lucid dream is simply, don‘t give up. Much like you wouldn‘t walk away from a bicycle you couldn‘t learn to ride right away, you shouldn‘t abandon lucid dreaming because you feel like you can‘t do it. Don‘t give up and keep trying. ARE DREAMS REAL?

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As a final note on lucid dreaming, I‘d like to argue that dreams deserve more credit than we give them. Many people will wake up from a nightmare and say things like ―thank God that was only a dream‖ much like a parent would assure their child that dreams aren‘t real and are only part of one‘s imagination. However, dreams can be very real, especially while they last. If you had a nightmare in which you were being chased by some terrifying unearthly creature, would your fear not be real? Would the creature not be real in your mind? Would your sweat and anxiety not be real after waking up? As the psychologist Havelock Ellis put it, ―dreams are real while they last, can we say more of life?‖ If real is what you can feel, taste, see, and touch then ―real‖ is only electrical signals interpreted by your brain, easily simulated in a dream. If real is what can be observed or experienced objectively, then I should point out that scientists are working on recording dreams so that they may be played back and watched again. In fact, this has been done before, only with very blurry video formed by a computer from thousands of collected videos online. So the next time you or someone you know wakes up from a frightening nightmare, don‘t dismiss it as ―only a dream,‖ but rather take a minute to appreciate the second reality your mind has created on its own for you and your certainty that it was real. It may be comforting to think that you dreams are a separate part of yourself, as unreal as your own imaginations, but this view is hardly realistic. Extended Learning and Practice Below is a list that I have provided of other sources of learning lucid dreaming as well as aids to help you practice. BOOKS Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming – Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming – Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Ziezel, Thomas Peisel Are You Dreaming? Exploring Lucid Dreams: A Comprehensive Guide – Daniel Love Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self – Robert Waggoner Counting Sheep – Paul Martin Sleep Paralysis – Ryan Hurd Advanced Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Supplements – Thomas Yuschak YOUTUBE CHANNELS GizEdwards LucidDreamTricks ReeceJones87 Lucidipedia WEBSITES, BLOGS, AND FORUMS LD4All.com DreamViews.com

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Lucidology.com World-of-lucid-dreaming.com Lucidity.com Lucidipedia.com APPS I-Doser (Brainwave Entrainment) Yocto Clock Sigmund Brainwave Dream Inducer DreamZ Dreamer – Lucid Dreaming Journal & Dream Diary