Not so long time ago I wrote a post on astral projection and lucid dreaming. It was a story of how these phenomena came into my life, and how they are some of the most wonderful and extraordinary things that we, as human beings, can experience. I explained the difference between the two concepts, and what impact they can have on our lives.
However, after finishing the post, I realized that I wrote almost nothing about the techniques of how to induce lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming, just like any other skill, is something that can be learned, improved and mastered with time. This is me talking from experience and from what I have seen in other people.
Below, I have listed the five things that you should do if you want to see what lucid dreaming feels like. There are many other techniques, of course, but these are what I found to be most effective. They do not guarantee instant results, but if you continue to practice them on a daily basis, sooner or later, you will learn how to induce lucid dreaming. And as soon as you do have your first lucid dream, be ready to start experiencing them more and more often. There is a snowball effect to it.
1. Dream journal
If you want to learn how to induce lucid dreaming, the first thing you must absolutely do is to get a dream journal.
Get a dream journal and have it lying right next to your bed. Every time you wake up during the night and in the morning, try to remember the last thing you dreamt of. And once you do, write it down in your journal. Then during the next day, you can recap what you wrote during the night.
Writing down your dreams and then recalling them plays a huge role in lucid dreaming. The whole point of this activity is to improve your dream memory.
The truth is that despite what anyone says, we have many dreams every single night. Some of us can usually remember a few dreams, some can remember only one, while some think they don’t dream at all because they can’t recall a single dream!
I remember once waking up, looking at the time and seeing that I had only two minutes left before my alarm clock would ring. Despite that, I fell asleep instantly. I then had a dream and even managed to become lucid in it. I explored the other world for what felt like 20 minutes. My alarm clock finally rang. All of this happened in ONLY TWO MINUTES.
So make sure you get a diary and write dreams down. The more you do this, the more dreams you will remember. This number will continue to increase with time. And if you stop noting the dreams down, your dream memory will begin to worsen again.
Just keep in mind that you may have a lucid dream tonight, but if you can’t recall that you had it, then there is no point in it, right?
Tips:
– If you find yourself failing to write something clear in the night, try recording your dream with an audio recorder. I used my mobile phone for this. And in the morning, make sure to get those recordings into your diary. Writing dreams down will refresh your memory, which is exactly what we need.
– When writing dreams down, make sure you add details. Notice the colors, the smells, the sounds you heard. Try to remember your dreams in as many details as possible.
Recommended read: 6 Real Reasons to Keep a Daily Journal – Living in Awareness
2. Make reality checks
Another action towards learning how to induce lucid dreaming is to question the reality around you.
Stop for a second to look around. Look at your hands, at the things around you. Touch something. What does it feel like? Who are the people around you? Where are you? What do you see, hear and smell? What are you currently doing? Does it make sense?
If all of it does make sense, then you can probably conclude that you are awake.
Do reality checks as much as possible. Do them every time it pops up into your mind. The more, the better.
The whole idea behind doing reality checks is that at some point you will make a reality check in your sleep as well. And when you do do it, you will notice that something is not right. At that point, you will become lucid.
Tips:
– Try to make reality checks something you do very frequently. This will maximize the chances of you randomly doing a reality check in your sleep as well.
When awake, your reality checks will always equal to a “yes, I am awake”. However, try to stay aware when you do them. Make sure you really do ask yourself the question “does it all make sense?”
The danger is that if you do the checks always in a very quick and passive way, you may realize that you did a reality check in your dream, but did not become lucid, simply because answering “yes, I am awake” has become an automatic response for you.
3. Anchoring
The third action towards learning how to induce lucid dreaming is to do anchoring.
Anchoring is basically the same as reality checking, except you do it at a specific moment. For example, think of something you do very often. Maybe you ride the elevator a lot. This action can become your anchor.
Every time you go into an elevator, make a reality check and ask yourself whether you are awake or not. As a result, at a certain point when you go inside of an elevator in your sleep, you will also do a reality check and realize that you are asleep.
4. Sleep patterns and alarm clocks
The fourth action towards learning how to induce lucid dreaming is related to sleep itself.
During the many years of practicing lucid dreaming, I have realized that most often it occurs somewhere towards the morning. The reason for this is that when you have just fallen asleep, you haven’t yet had much time to recharge, which means you are still quite tired. At this stage your sleep is deep and that also makes it hard to become lucid.
But the longer you sleep, the less deep your sleep becomes. And when that happens, becoming aware also turns into a much easier task.
Therefore, make sure you get enough sleep. If you sleep daily for only five hours and are tired most of the time, forget about lucid dreaming. Your body will be too tired to allow you to become lucid during the five hours.
On the other hand, if you can sleep for long on the weekends, that is the perfect scenario to practice lucid dreaming. You can try putting an alarm clock to wake you up an hour or two before the time you actually should get up. Falling asleep once again after having been woken up by the alarm clock will decrease the deepness of your sleep, which maximizes the chances of you becoming lucid.
Caution: Make sure you get enough sleep before your alarm clock rings, or else your practice may end up wearing you out, physically and mentally.
Tips:
– Try having a nap during the day with the idea that as soon as you fall asleep, you will experience lucid dreaming. Daytime naps sometimes lack any deepness whatsoever, which makes them a perfect time to go for lucid dream explorations.
I often experience lucid dreams when sleeping in a moving car or a tent. Can you guess why? Correct, because it is an uncomfortable sleep and therefore not deep at all.
5. Motivation
The last but not least tip on learning how to induce lucid dreaming is related to motivation.
Motivation in itself is a very powerful tool. If you are extremely motivated and eager to lucid dream, you may end up having your first experience already tonight without even ever trying out any of the mentioned above techniques. This happens all the time to people.
To be really motivated, read books on lucid dreaming, talk to people that have done it, watch videos, get inspired and think about it as much as you can.
Sometimes, I feel very tired and just want to have a good night sleep. But because I watched something about lucid dreaming right before going to bed, I end up having an experience anyway. This is great because I put no extra effort into making it happen.
Some literature on lucid dreaming and astral projection:
1. The Phase: Shattering the Illusion of Reality by Michael Raduga
2. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge
3. Journeys Out of the Body: The Classic Work on Out-of-Body Experience by Robert A. Monroe
4. The Ultimate Journey by Robert A. Monroe
5. Astral Dynamics: The Complete Book of Out-of-Body Experiences by Robert Bruce
6. Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner
Hopefully, you now know how to induce lucid dreaming and will be able to integrate these five actions into your life. It’s not much work actually, and the results are totally worth it. Just remember to be persistent and to enjoy the process. Try to always enjoy the process of reaching for your dreams. No pun intended. 🙂
Feel free to ask questions in the comment section below.
Thank you for stopping by and good luck!
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February 18, 2018 at 16:07
Very interesting post and detailed tips on lucid dreaming. Will have to check out your other post to learn more about the benefits.
February 18, 2018 at 16:15
Thank you, Dorit, for visiting the blog. 🙂
February 18, 2018 at 18:47
This is a really interesting post, I have often wondered about lucid dreaming, I may have to give these tips a go and see how it works for me.
February 18, 2018 at 18:51
If you succeed, you’ll definitely love it. It’s such an amazing bonus to life. 😉 Thanks for stopping by!
February 18, 2018 at 18:52
Dreams can sometimes be super interesting. The only thing more interesting than that is to be able to control them 🙂 Thank you for the comment!
February 19, 2018 at 03:17
Thanks for sharing the steps on Lucid Dreaming. I have heard of the concept but did not give it much thought, now your article is prompting me to give it a try. Thanks for the guidance.
February 19, 2018 at 07:15
Great to hear that you can find it beneficial. Thank you for the comment.
February 19, 2018 at 07:43
I have heard of lucid dreaming before and think I was able to do it once. I might follow your instructions and try again.
February 19, 2018 at 08:23
There is a common belief that we all experience lucid dreaming every now and then, but most of us don’t remember it. This is the reason why it’s beneficial to have a dream diary in order to improve our dream memory… which actually also increases the chances of lucid dreaming. I wish you success! 🙂
February 19, 2018 at 16:53
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing your steps to Lucid Dreaming. May read more about it since I find it interesting.
February 19, 2018 at 17:52
You are welcome, Erin!
February 19, 2018 at 21:54
Wow this is fascinating – never heard of lucid dreaming before! Thanks for enlightening me!
February 20, 2018 at 08:37
Thanks for stopping by!
February 21, 2018 at 17:40
My brother is all about this. He has this technique where he writes an A on his hand. Then he tries to look at it throughout the day. He does it so much that the A shows up in his dreams.
February 21, 2018 at 18:21
That’s an interesting technique, haven’t heard of it before! Need to give this a try one day, thanks for sharing. 🙂