Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)

Intro

Note from author (skyfall):

Hello everyone, Skyfall Blind Dreamer here. I discuss MILD all the time on the Dream Cafe Discord, and thought it high time I finally wrote my own guide on it to make my views more accessible and easy to find. Here I will lay out what MILD is, How I recommend doing it, and other information, such as how my MILD practice differs from some of the others out there. Theres a few core components that I believe are essential to any good MILD practice, but aside from that, you can be creative with your approach. I would like to thank everyone ahead of time for taking the time to give this a read. I hope you find this material of use to your own lucid dreaming practices. For those unsure about what constitutes a lucid dream, it is simply a dream in which you know you are dreaming. MILD and other techniques are designed to assist you in acquiring lucid dreams.

What is MILD?

MILD, or the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams, is a lucid dreaming technique first invented by Doctor Stephen LaBerge and referenced in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, Chapter Three, Waking Up in the Dream World. This is where you will find LaBerges original recommendations for what a MILD practice should look like, and the book itself is a great read for any prospective lucid dreamers. The purpose of the technique is to engage what is called prospective memory, or future memory. This is the brains system for remembering tasks and things of importance that you intend to do at a later time. A mnemonic by comparison is a memory aid that helps you to remember to perform a task that you intended to perform, thus aiding prospective memory. A good example of this is intending to go to the store and taking a shopping list. The shopping list is a mnemonic, as it helps you to remember what you are at the store to purchase.

MILD thus is about remembering to do something in the future, specifically, remembering to recognize that youre dreaming while you are dreaming. This is done by setting an intention and reinforcing that intention to make it important enough for your brain to remember, thus getting you lucid while you are in a dream. An intention is simply a present decision to perform a future action, or deciding now to do something later. Intentions are generally associated with a time, location, event, or other trigger. Thats it. With MILD, the intention is to recognize that you are dreaming, and you reinforce this by associating it with memories of previous dreams youve had.

The core components of MILD are thus your intention to lucid dream, imagining a previous dream you remember and going through it, imagining getting lucid in that prior dream, and repetition of the process. I will now outline my preferred practice for doing MILD in easy to follow steps.

My Recommeneded MILD Practice

Now, to the juicy parts. Here is where I will outline my preferred MILD practice and the one I use every night in a series of easy-to-follow steps.

Decide that you will know, recognize, or realize when you are dreaming. The verbiage does not matter. This is your primary intention for MILD and what you want to get out of the practice if your goal is lucid dreaming. This decision should be treated like something important that you plan to do and want to happen. You should keep this intention on your mind throughout the rest of the MILD process.
Imagine a previous dream you had. If you are struggling with dream recall, this step may be the hardest for you, but recent dreams are not needed, just any dreams you remember well. Dream recall is foundational for lucid dreaming in general, and its effect on MILD is that it associates your intention to know, recognize, or realize when you are dreaming with your dreams. The intended result is that when you are dreaming later, you will remember your intention by way of association, and as a result, you will get lucid.
An optional part for some added criticality, pick out any dream signs. A dream sign is anything anomalous, unusual, abnormal, or out of place in any way, shape, or form that you experience, irrespective of whether or not you experienced it in multiple dreams or multiple times.
If you chose to do step 3, with each dream sign, remind yourself of your intention, your decision to recognize when you are dreaming. The goal of this is to get your brain to recognize when something is out of place or not right, which also involves awareness and criticality. Being aware of what you are experiencing, and critical of your experiences with particular attention to whether or not you are dreaming.
Imagine getting lucid and knowing that you are dreaming, thus fulfilling your intention. Youve now gone through hopefully a dream full of weird things that were out of place and didnt make sense, so now its time to imagine getting lucid. You definitely know its a dream at this point, its easy to recognize when something is off. I personally find developing schemas like that have helped me, but that is based on personal experience not scientific data. If you have dream goals or things you wish to accomplish, now is the time to imagine doing them.
Repeat the practice. MILD works best with repetition. My recommendation is to do a few cycles before bed, around three to four or so, or approximately 15-20 minutes. The length of each cycle will generally be determined by the dream you choose, so cycle lengths can vary. If you wake up during the night, intentionally or accidentally, I recommend you do a couple cycles, 1-2, or for approximately 5-10 minutes.

In summary

Decide that you will know, recognize, or realize when you are dreaming. Keep this intention on your mind throughout the entire process

Imagine a previous dream as if you were back in it and imagine going through it.
(Optional for added criticality) Pick out any dream signs, or anything you notice in the dream that is out of place in any way.
Reaffirm your decision to know, recognize, or realize when you are dreaming with each dream sign if you chose to do the previous step.
Imagine getting lucid and knowing you are dreaming. If you have dream goals, now is the time to imagine doing them.
Repeat the process a few times before going to bed and a coupletimes during any wakings you may experience. Approximately 15-20 minutes before bed and 5-10 minutes if you wake up during the night is recommended.

One final note:

I often switch dreams when I do cycles of MILD, mainly because I generally recall at least 3 per night, but it is optional whether you repeat the practice with the same dream or use other dreams. When starting out, Id probably recommend using the same dream, but its up to you how to proceed.

A Sample MILD Exercise

Hopefully you have read how I recommend doing a MILD, but I figured that giving you an example of how I do the practice would be helpful.

The following will be an adaptation based on an actual dream that I had on July 12th, 2021. The material provided is for training purposes only.

So, my intention from the start is to recognize when Im dreaming, so I simply decide to recognize when Im dreaming. I personally vocalize my individual practice, so I just say that to myself once and move on, but keep that intention on my mind as I go through the rest of the practice.

Now, the previous dream. Im at a location that is based on my previous university but with some weird additions. First dream sign, I shouldnt even be here, it makes no sense for me to be here. Im standing at a set of train tracks, though theyre more like street car tracks, and its for an automated train. No safety walls, no separation, no warning strips, and to summon a train when it was in on demand mode, you had to stand on the tracks. Several dream signs here, of course reaffirming my decision to recognize when Im dreaming with each, but they include my old university having a train system of any kind, the fact that it was automated with no safety systems, and standing on the tracks as the means of summoning a train. Next, I died, a dream sign in itself, but a bigger one was talking to other people later about how I died. Then I’m standing next to the tracks with some people from my old high school, havent talked to them in years and got no names from the dream, 2 more dream signs. It was here that I recognized I was dreaming and this dream became my 176th lucid dream. I started floating off the ground, dream sign. I grabbed a couple people and flew away with them, another dream sign. I landed in a hotel parking lot in a city Ive never been to, another dream sign.

Doing this as a MILD practice, since this dream was a lucid dream, Ive effectively already imagined getting lucid as I actually did get lucid in that dream. When MILDing with non-lucids as is the norm, just imagining getting lucid in any way is fine. I have dream goals of mastering flight and teleportation, and since Im already flying in this dream, lets try teleporting somewhere. So, Id imagine a location I want to visit, and the preferred mode of teleportation for this exercise will be hyperspace gates, just making a door that I fly through that lands me where I want to go. I just imagine that Im flying through a hyperspace gate and landing on the deck of a starship, then start walking around said ship.

Then just repeat all that with that dream or the same technique with another. Thats a sample of how I MILD.

Comparing Practices

If youve made it this far, thank you for reading. Basically, as my practice goes, it has a heavy emphasis on dream signs. Note that the core MILD elements are present; These include intention to recognize that youre dreaming, imagining a previous dream, imagining getting lucid in the previous dream, and repetition. My technique differs from a traditional LaBergean practice in a few ways. First, LaBerges practice recommends doing MILD only with WBTB, whereas I advocate doing it before going to bed and with WBTB. Wake back to bed definitely helps any technique its used with, so would strongly recommend doing it if you are able, just do not do it without using a technique with it. Another key difference I have with LaBergean MILD is the level of repetition. While it is true that if your MILD exercise and intention to recognize you are dreaming is the last thing on your mind as you fall asleep, that can and will help you, but it can be difficult to maintain that level of effort. That is why I simply recommend doing say, three repetitions for each session.

Other exercises emphasize the intention in different ways, but my exercise is a dream sign centered approach. My goal with MILD is to recognize when something is out of place, remember to do so, and thus remember to recognize that I am dreaming. Remember that MILD works by associating your intention with your dreams, so that you remember your intention when you are dreaming and thus get lucid. I add criticality to the way I do mine to give me added ways of becoming lucid.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have learned a lot about MILD after reading this guide. One great thing about lucid dreaming techniques is that theyre not about rigidly following a specific set of steps, but about setting your intention or developing a specific mindset or raising awareness, etc. Feel free to experiment and create your own exercises. Ive personally done so with the creation and constant refining of my intentions, goals, priorities exercise that I started working on back in November, and its been fun to tinker with a bit. The goal should be to find some practice that works well for you and leads to lucidity. I want to thank you once more for reading this guide on MILD and hearing what I had to say on the matter. There is a glossary appended to this article that may help you with some of the terminology I used.

If you are looking for some communities of lucid dreamers with tutorials and resources based on accurate information and helpful groups of lucid dreamers who can help you develop a practice, Id recommend checking out the Dream Cafe and Omnilucid Discord servers if you are not already a member. Both servers are groups of like-minded lucid dreamers whose goal is to help other people learn to lucid dream. Visit the Dream Cafe here and Omnilucid here.

SPECIAL THANKS TO SKYFALL FOR THIS GUIDE

You can find his guide here

Other Credtis

Image was taken by Tim Stief

The image can be found here