Intro

Message from author (Liamchoux):

This guide assumes you have already read the Beginner’s handbook

Starting lucid dreaming can be overwhelming

This guide is made for beginners and intermediates alike. Setting efficient milestones, And goals to reach is a key to start lucid dreaming with a good mindset. It is also aimed at people who have tried for a long time without success, generally from poor information quality or lack of guidance. Keep in mind that lucid dreaming is a long-term activity and that results do not come instantly.

Dream recall

Remembering dreams is a fundamental of lucid dreaming for many different reasons. It is a key to starting your lucid dreaming journey efficiently. It is even theorized that better dream recall directly impacts your chances of getting lucid dreams. Dream recall comes from connecting with and thinking about your dreams. There are many ways you can do this, and each will help you, some more than others.

To start working on dream recall, it is almost essential to have a dream journal. It can be an app on your phone or on your computer, or on paper. Write down as many details as you remember. Everything, from the colors of the buildings, to the architecture styles, characters, emotions, sensations. It will help you in turn to remember more details from more dreams and establish Dream Signs. It is important to journal as soon as possible after you wake up (or after dream delving) . After just a few minutes, you will likely forget most of what you dreamt about.

Dream delving can be a very efficient tool to remember more dreams upon waking up. Before reaching for your journal, simply stay still and try to work backwards from what you remember. You may just remember one scene but continue until you get fragments, and in turn, a full-fledged dream. Proceed to write down as much detail as you remember in your dream journal.

Tagging can also be a useful way of dream journaling, especially during wakings (we will cover micro awakenings / natural WBTB later on Write little phrases that describe your dreams, they can be very short but they must be descriptive, and later use them, when you have the time, to reconstruct a dream from those short sentences (it can be very easy if you choose the right wording) Tagging is simply a way to remember the dream existed, so you don’t completely forget it by the morning. It’s very helpful for dreams earlier in the night, since upon waking, you will often forget these completely.

Good examples of tags:

• “I was in the graveyard and there was a cute cat”
• “My house was on fire”
• “I was on an airplane heading to Mars”

Bad examples of tags:

• “I was walking”
• “I was in this weird place”
• “The people were acting normal”

Try to stay descriptive of what happened instead of thinking you’ll remember everything perfectly 4, 5, 6 hours from now.

A good dream recall is anywhere from 3-6 dreams recalled per night. 5 and up can be considered very good / perfect, it also depends on the length of the dreams. Some dreams you may only recall fragments, while others can be very long As you get better dream recall, you will start to see your dreams becoming clearer and more realistic, as well as recalling more detail from them.

A good goal when you are starting is to recall 1 or 2 more dreams than you usually recall (of course if you remember 6 a night you’re good but if you usually have poor recall try this) try to reach the goal consistently for a week to increase the difficulty of the goal.

Night-time wakings (WBTB and natural WBTB)

Part of the natural sleep cycle is to wake up during the night. On average, during a full night of sleep, one wakes up 10+ times, these are called micro-awakenings, basically, you wake up for a brief period (from less than a second up to around 5 minutes) and then fall back to sleep, so you usually won’t remember ever waking up at all, it is possible to recognize these awakenings by setting an intention, making something unusual about your environment (such as leaving your door open, or putting stuff out of place, wearing more or less clothing than usual or rolling up sleeves etc), or drinking lots of water before bed. (this one may not work for some people, also we’re not responsible for the potential bed wetting that may ensue from this advice)

WBTB(Wake Back To Bed) uses these wakings (it can also be done by waking up from one or multiple alarms) to enhance lucid dreaming techniques (common misinformation states that it can be used alone, this is not the case), it is practically mandatory to use WBTB when using techniques such as WILD, SSILD, MILD, and all of their respective anchors / variants, more on those later.

WBTB helps you do a technique closer to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the state of sleep that’s most favorable for dreaming, and recalling dreams. This is handy for reinforcing any intentions for lucid dreaming, and helping with prospective memory. If you are using only one alarm for WBTB the best time is around 4-6 hours, as after 7 or 8 hours you are less likely to fall back asleep. After waking up, it is recommended to stay awake for about 10 minutes or more (or just 1 or 2 minutes it’s not mandatory) but beware that you may find it more difficult to return to sleep the longer you stay up.

A good goal you could have would be to recognize 1 awakening a night for a week, or if you use an alarm is to have motivation and to do the techniques during the awakening for a week. You will then be able to move on to other goals.

Choosing a night-time technique.

At this point we must address the elephant in the room, techniques of induction, they come in all forms, from falling asleep into a dream, to incubating a lucid dream, to memory techniques to remember to realize you are dreaming.

In this section we will help you choose which technique you want to start with, its pros and cons, and additional information on the technique.

These techniques are designed to be used during the night-time wakings described in the last section.

All of them are trustworthy and work differently, some people may have more success with one over the others, some may not get any lucid dreams from one technique but lots from another. It is recommended to try a technique for a month (of consistent practice) before switching to another, switching techniques a lot is detrimental to lucid dreaming progress.

MILD

The most popular lucid dreaming technique, using dreams themselves as a mnemonic reminder for you to become lucid by way of association. We strongly recommend using it as its success rate is high, and big improvements are pretty much guaranteed. Link to MILD || Very Popular MILD Variant This variant made by Skyfall is a shortened version of MILD that is still effective (slightly less effective according to him) but still an amazing technique to start with, very straightforward.

SSILD

An effective and simple lucid dreaming technique to learn, but harder to get a hold of the fundamentals of lucid dreaming. This works in cycles, focusing in sight, hearing and touch. We also recommend using it. It can induce both DILD and WILD lucid dreams. Link to SSILD

WILD

A more subjective technique. It certainly is a very interesting way to initiate lucid dreams. But it may not work well for everybody. It is a way to transition from waking to sleeping without losing consciousness, generally using an anchor. Link to WILD

DEILD / DCIM

These techniques are quite situational and rely on noticing your wakings very quickly, and returning back into the dream consciously. It’s not recommended to use these on their own, but it’s handy to have in your toolkit in case the opportunity arises. Link to DEILD || Link to DCIM (disclaimer : DCIM uses another set of acronyms for most things, is formatted in a more scholarly manner and may be related to Astral Projection pseudoscience)

A good goal would be to do the technique every night for a week.

Choosing a day-time technique

Daytime techniques are a great way to induce lucid dreams, when paired with night-time techniques, they make an excellent combo.

SAT

Technique relying on sporadic moments of high criticality throughout the day. Again, we recommend pairing it with a night time technique such as MILD. Link to SAT

DILD HOOKING

Functions similarly to SAT, but giving it a “hook”, something common in your dreams and real life. For example every time you see a car you become highly critical Link to DILD Hooking

What to do with this information?

Firstly, set up a good dream recall, we cannot understate it. Dream recall is extremely important. Use the methods described in the first part to efficiently start recalling more dreams. You can use techniques of induction as well if you want.

Once you get a good recall your lucid dreaming techniques can truly shine, although you must use the wakings described in the second part to take advantage of night-time techniques to their fullest extent.

We also very, very strongly recommend reading Explore The World Of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge. It is pretty much an essential step in the way of learning lucid dreaming, allowing for a basis to rely on as you gain deeper understanding of the subject.

Then, it is important that you find the technique that works for you. Through Trial and error. We recommend trying a technique for at least 30 days before concluding it is not for you and moving on to another. Lucid dreaming takes time. Don’t be discouraged though, it is worth the investment.

Other Credits

Image was taken by Juean Davila

The image can be found here