Learning to Dream Consciously

by John D. Watt

If you get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night, you will spend about a third of your life asleep. Though it may seem like a strange skill to cultivate, lucid dreaming, or realizing you are dreaming while in a dream, can help you utilize some of this time without sacrificing your sleep quality. The ultimate guide to lucid dreaming is Dr. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold’s Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, which employs Dr. LaBerge’s extensive dream research to help individuals dream consciously. Lucid dreaming is hard; however, the book is packed with useful techniques and clear guidelines to help turn unconscious dreams into playgrounds and workspaces. Within a few months of reading the book, I learned the techniques to induce lucidity, began to explore my own dream worlds, and learned to control my dreams for leisure and productivity.

Why would a person want to master lucid dreaming? Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming gives several applications for harnessing this skill, many of which I have tried and found to benefit my life. Lucid dreams offer the perfect setting for wish fulfillment because dreaming offers a vivid 3D world where anything is possible. One of the first things I did when I induced a lucid dream was fly. I felt tremendous excitement soaring over the rooftops of my neighborhood. Moreover, lucid dreams offer excellent opportunities for skill rehearsal. I had an essay due in one of my classes, and during a lucid dream, I was able to brainstorm topic ideas. I even wrote an introductory paragraph for my essay while dreaming (most of which I used for the actual essay). Additionally, lucid dreams offer the opportunity to take control of nightmares and conquer your fears. Once, a monster was chasing me in a dream, and the environment was so strange I realized I was dreaming. As I turned around to face the monster, I reminded myself it was a dream. The monster transformed into a stuffed animal and fell limp on the floor. Ultimately, the possible applications for lucid dreaming are endless; Dr. LaBerge mentions that people use lucid dreaming to practice creativity, overcome fears, heal trauma, and even have transcendent spiritual experiences.

Dr. LaBerge and Howard Rheingold outline a number of techniques to induce lucidity while dreaming, however, these will not be effective unless you can remember your dreams. If you do not remember your dreams, you cannot benefit from the techniques because upon waking you will forget any dreams you had during the night (lucid or otherwise). Therefore, the first step in learning to lucid dream is to increase the number of dreams you can recall each night. Dr. LaBerge recommends getting eight hours of sleep each night to increase dream recall. On top of the health benefits, the majority of our dreams occur in the last two hours of our sleep cycle; thus, you are more likely to remember your dreams if you get enough sleep. Besides getting enough sleep, maintaining a dream journal is the best way to increase dream recall. I use a simple composition notebook, where I write a brief summary of each dream. In the beginning, it helped to write down as much detail as I could remember immediately upon waking. While this can be time consuming, it is extremely effective if you have trouble remembering any dreams at all. Later, once you are recalling at least one dream each night, you can reduce the detail to a single sentence summarizing the dream. Even a few words can suffice once your dream recall becomes sufficiently advanced.

Once you remember at least one vivid dream per night, you can begin to practice the techniques outlined in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. The following techniques are used to induce lucidity:

1) Critical State Testing: Throughout the day while awake, ask yourself “Am I dreaming?” and then perform an activity to test if you are dreaming. The classic cliché test is pinching yourself; however, this test does not work because you can experience pain in dreams. Instead, try one of the following:

a. Nose Plugging: Plug your nose and try to breathe in. Unlike in waking life, you will be able to breathe through your plugged nose when dreaming.

b. Counting Fingers: Look at your hands and count your fingers. For some reason, the mind has a hard time maintaining 10 fingers while dreaming.

Aim to test your state every hour while awake. The goal is to make it a habit that will transfer into your dreams. If you can breathe through your plugged nose or have more or less than 10 fingers, this means you have failed your state test and you are dreaming.

2) Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD): Before bed, set an intention to have a lucid dream. Then imagine yourself becoming conscious in a dream. Fall asleep like normal. I usually say, “Next time I am in a dream, I realize I am dreaming.” Setting this intention significantly increased the frequency of my lucid dreams.

3) Wake Back To Bed (WBTB): Before bed, set an alarm to go off four and half hours after you go to sleep. Once this alarm goes off, get up and do something for fifteen minutes (preferably something related to dreams). Repeat the MILD technique and then go back to sleep as normal. Then set alarms for every ninety minutes thereafter, except go back to sleep immediately after recording your dreams. This technique is designed to wake you up in the middle of the dreaming portion of your sleep cycle, which helps with dream recall. This worked for me immediately, doubling the number of dreams I could recall each night. Because it is crucial to sleep for a full eight hours, I suggest going to bed fifteen minutes earlier in anticipation of the sleep lost with this technique.

Once you can induce lucidity with these techniques, you will need to practice stabilizing your lucid dreams. The first few times I induced a lucid dream, I focused too much on remaining conscious and woke myself up. The reverse happened as well, where I became conscious in a dream but focused so much on the dream narrative that I forgot I was dreaming and lost lucidity. This balance between maintaining conscious awareness and maintaining the dream world is crucial to stabilizing lucid dreams. It takes practice to learn how much you should focus on the dream world versus reminding yourself you are in a dream to maintain consciousness. After inducing several lucid dreams and many trial-and-error attempts, I learned to achieve this balance. Now I can stay conscious in my dreams for prolonged periods of time without waking myself up or losing lucidity. Using these techniques from the book, I am now able to induce lucidity regularly and consciously maintain my dream world.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming gave me the necessary tools to dream consciously, and I have used the techniques with great success. It is easy to practice because sleep is a major part of how people spend their day. I look forward to improving my skills and finding new ways to enhance my life with lucid dreaming. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, so you too can learn to dream consciously.

References

LaBerge, S., & Rheingold, H. (1991). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

John D. Watt joined the Interactive Measurement Group in Summer 2019. He is majoring in psychology. He is currently a poster team leader, website assistant, and an Action Editor for the newsletter. After graduation, he hopes to pursue a doctorate in psychology and teach at the university level.