Do you want to learn how to lucid dream? How can you optimize your sleep? What is reality checking?
In a lucid dream, you realize you’re dreaming, and you can consciously influence the dream and change any aspect of it. However, lucid dreaming takes time and effort to learn.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to lucid dream for beginners.
The 4 Steps for Lucid Dreaming
Want to know how to lucid dream for beginners? There are many ways you can become lucid while dreaming. No matter which technique you experiment with, the authors recommend you stay connected to your enthusiasm and that you cultivate an optimistic mindset, as motivation and a positive attitude are key to success. Learning to lucid dream can take time and effort—experiment with the following techniques from the authors, and don’t give up.
1. Optimize Your Sleep
Recall that lucid dreams, like all dreams, happen during REM cycles. The first thing you can do to set yourself up for successful lucid dream exploration is to optimize your sleep schedule so you go through more REM cycles each night. The authors explain that you have more REM cycles in the second half of the night than in the first—lucid dreams often occur right before people wake up in the morning. Therefore, the later you sleep in, the greater the chance you’ll have a lucid dream.
If you can, sleep later to give yourself more time in REM sleep. However, if your schedule doesn’t allow for sleeping in, you can wake yourself up early, stay awake for an hour or more, and then go back to sleep to catch up on your missed sleep. You’ll have more REM sleep during the second period and a higher likelihood of lucid dreaming.
2. Set Your Intention
You can have lucid dreams simply by setting an intention before you fall asleep to recognize your dream clues and, therefore, the dream state. The authors recommend you follow these steps to set your intention successfully:
- As you’re preparing to fall asleep in bed, confidently decide to recognize the dream state that night.
- Select a few dream clues and, with your eyes closed, visualize yourself having a dream. Imagine seeing those dream clues and realizing that you’re dreaming. The authors recommend that you imagine seeing action dream clues, like flying or falling, for example, because they’re the most potent clues.
- If it doesn’t work after a few nights, move on to other techniques.
3. Reality-Check
One way to realize that you’re dreaming is to ask yourself whether you’re dreaming or awake during a dream. When you ask this question and can answer it correctly, you’ll become lucid. We’ll call this method reality-checking.
To get yourself to reality-check in dreams, you must habitually ask yourself the same question while you’re awake. The authors say the patterns of our daytime thoughts, behaviors, and responses carry over into our dreams. Therefore, if you’re in the habit of reality-checking while awake, you’ll likely begin to ask yourself the same question while dreaming.
To reality-check successfully, follow these recommendations from the authors:
- Ask yourself, “Am I dreaming or awake?” five to ten times a day. Don’t just automatically answer with, “Of course, I’m awake.” Instead, really try to determine what the answer is based on the evidence around you. If you answer automatically that you’re awake, you’ll likely answer the same way in dreams.
- Reality-check during times in your day that seem dreamlike—moments or events that feel surprising, unlikely, or strange, or when you’re having strong emotions. These types of things happen all the time in dreams, so if you’re in the habit of reality-checking when they happen while awake, you’ll increase the likelihood that they trigger reality-checking in dreams.
4. Fall Asleep Consciously
Another lucid dream method is to fall asleep without losing your lucidity from being awake. This way, you can transition directly into lucid dreaming instead of trying to become conscious after a dream has begun. Typically, we are not aware of the exact moment when we fall asleep, and we stay unaware that we’re sleeping until we wake up. The authors describe this method as feeling like you’re falling asleep without losing awareness of yourself.
Falling asleep consciously doesn’t work well at the beginning of the night because you must cycle through several stages of non-REM sleep before falling into REM. Therefore, these methods work best if you awake late at night or in the early hours of the morning and then go back to sleep.
Practice the following techniques to fall asleep consciously and slip directly into lucid dreaming.
Technique #1: Pay attention to images
- Relax completely by breathing slowly, progressively loosening up each part of your body, and letting your concerns fade away.
- With your eyes closed, focus on the images that appear in your mind’s eye—what science calls hypnagogic imagery. Often, these are shifting colors and images and flashes of light. Watch them calmly, without trying to control them.
- Observe as these images get more vivid and form into a dream. Attempt to stay aware of the images and yourself, and let yourself be drawn passively into the dream, fully lucid.
Technique #2: Count yourself into a dream
- Relax completely, as described in step 1 of technique #1.
- Count to yourself, saying, “One, I am dreaming…Two, I am dreaming,” and so on.
- Eventually, you’ll find that you are saying, “I am dreaming” inside a dream and consequently become lucid.
