Preface
Dreams are a wondrous phenomena that only become
more jaw dropping with the increase of knowledge and
awareness about the states of consciousness within them, such
as one can experience while lucid dreaming. This is a small
tutorial, a possible bedside handbook that gives you a glimpse
into the world of lucid dreaming and what it can do for you.
Everything here has been condensed and simplified as to not
overwhelm or bore anyone with too much information on any
given area. I strongly encourage everyone to seek out other
teachers, books, movies and any other educational sources on
lucid dreaming once they have decided they want to engrain
lucid dreaming into their lives. It’s truly a wild ride that leaves
ordinary waking life in a far placed second!
How do the supplements help?
The supplements help to “prime” the mind to be in the right
state for lucid dreaming to be present and possible. The bottled
supplements aid in increasing serotonin and acetylcholine levels
and put one into a deep-sleep faster - and an initial non-REM
sleep, which produces a REM rebound effect later on in the
night or early morning in which dreams are usually much more
vivid and longer with more mental clarity and easier waking
recollection. The combination of these types of ingredients and
the effects they deliver are a great platform for increasing the
likelihood of Lucid Dreaming!
What is lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming is simply enough, being aware that you
are dreaming while in a dream. Very occasionally some people
can just sporadically become lucid, which is quite lucky for
them because the art of lucid dreaming is one that usually
involves a lot of time and effort. The amount of awareness is not
a given, It can vary greatly from person to person and one
dream to the next. The supplements on LucidDreamShop.com
can give you a real edge on obtaining your first or thousandth
lucid dream as they work hand-in-hand with this handbook to
prime your mind for lucid dreaming.
Levels of consciousness
At the bottom of the Lucid dreaming totem pole is just
having a brief glimpse of self awareness in a dream which may
not last for longer than an instant before you wake up from
excitement or quickly and unintentionally slip back into the
dreams’ previous storyline. Somewhere in the middle of the
levels of lucid dreaming awareness is having the insight to know
that you are dreaming and be able to tell that things you are
experiencing in your dream are not actually real and you may
be able to alter certain aspects of the dream but it is not fully in
your control. At the highest point of consciousness and control
of lucid dreaming the “world” is your oyster; you can do
anything that YOU can possibly imagine even if it is completely
impossible in waking life. Your imagination, or lack thereof,
being the only thing that can hold you back from experiencing
the truest feeling of freedom ever felt. The concept of being
able to manipulate the inner workings of your self-conscious is a
momentous one, knowing that every person you interact with in
your dream is just a figment of your imagination and that you
are actually talking with yourself while talking with anyone else.
A person who possesses the ability to have complete control of
a lucid dream also usually encompasses the power to
“downgrade” their control and more or less go along with the
flow of the dream only to manipulate certain scenarios at will.
That being said, even the most experienced of lucid dreamers
will usually encounter scenarios in their dreams while being fully
lucid that they did not plan-out or create, being that even
when you think you have control of “everything” the
subconscious can and will throw you some curveballs to make
for a more interesting joint-creation dream experience.
Why have Lucid Dreams
There are innumerous reasons why one would want to
harness the ability to control their dreams. The sheer excitement
that awaits potential lucid dreamers before bed is enough to
keep them up while dreaming about going to sleep! It is hard to
comprehend the ability to do “anything possible” in your
dreams, mostly because this dreaming form of “anything
possible” is not the same as the waking life version that we all
have always known. Things such as seeing vibrant colors in a
dream you’ve never seen before in real life or even
experiencing tastes, smells and feelings you’ve never previously
encountered. Dreams are not held back by the laws of nature,
physics or society and have simply no bounds. The following are
just a handful of reasons to put forth the effort it takes to
become a seasoned lucid dreamer.
Action and adventure is a top priority for most new lucid
dreamers. The understanding that you are actually sleeping and
anything that you choose to do while dreaming will have no
actual consequences upon yourself leads many to experiment
with dangerous and risky behaviors that they normally wouldn’t.
Flying, sexual escapades, racing, fighting, breathing
underwater, transporting, traveling, transforming one’s self or
surroundings and many other activities are all up for grabs for
those that have the skills necessary.
Practice and rehearsal is a lesser known advantage of
lucid dreaming but has so much more payoff in waking life than
just goofing around in fantasy land. I personally taught myself
how to do back flips, front flips and other acrobatic maneuvers
when I was about fifteen years old while lucid dreaming. During
this phase of my life, learning these skills were very important to
me for whatever reason, but I was too timid to try them in
waking life for fear of breaking my neck if I were to mess-up. So I
rehearsed them while Lucid dreaming night after night (when I
wasn’t flying around) and finally got them down solid enough
that I built up the courage to do them in real life; executed
flawlessly right off the bat. I’ve also used this skill to help lessen
my anxiety while public speaking by practicing in front of huge
dream-audiences or groups of people very important to me.
Lucid dreaming can be a problem-solving and life inspiration
incubator, anything that you would like to learn how to do or
get better acquainted with is at your fingertips with this built-in
practice system installed in your head. The tools are already
there, you just have to figure out how to use them!
Learning how to overcome fears and nightmares is an
invaluable tool in the lucid dreaming arsenal. Nightmares can
be held up to the light and seen for what they are really worth.
Once a nightmare or fear has been faced and addressed in the
dream world, it usually empowers the individual to overcome
whatever was frightening them and move on. This is actually
how lucid dreaming was first presented to me at the young age
of 6. I can remember it clear as day, as these constant identical
nightmares haunted me for years before then. Every morning
before I awoke, I would be falling through near darkness inside
of an eerie tornado-looking tunnel that would jolt me out of bed
frightened, sweating and screaming. One morning after having
this nightmare, I decided I’d had enough and when the next
one came I would know that it was a dream and it wouldn’t
scare me. Sure enough, the very next time it happened I
immediately became lucid for the first time ever and I crossed
my arms and fell and fell and laughed at my minds attempt to
scare me and how it just wasn’t going to work anymore. Not
only did I never have that nightmare again, I’ve rarely ever had
anymore nightmares hence forth as I usually have the tools to
realize it’s just a bad dream on the spot. This ability is also
partially from mental conditioning and dream cues in which I
taught myself to perform reality checks any time something
bad, unusual or fearful happens in waking life so that I am
accustomed to doing the same when it happens in a dream to
always see things for what they really are.
Another great use of lucid dreaming is to explore your
subconscious and learn about yourself from within to achieve a
new level of personal growth. I experienced this by “accident”,
while dreaming one night and it changed the way I looked at
lucid dreaming ever since. In the dream I was having a good
old time goofing around and running down a hallway in my
childhood house when I ran into an acquaintance of mine who
just didn’t belong there. I asked him what he was doing in my
house, in which he responded “I’m not actually here, you are
dreaming.” Needless to say this blew my mind and I
immediately became lucid and filled with excitement and
questions to ask this person who was obviously just a fabrication
of my own imagination. He informed me that everything he was
saying to me was actually my own subconscious speaking to
myself. He urged me to ask him deep, meaningful questions
about the world, religion, myself and his mission in my dream. I
asked him tons of question and was very intrigued with many of
his answers, half of which were in the form of a riddle of sorts. It’s
almost as if he was not allowed to tell me the answers directly
but I had to figure them out for myself, possibly at a later time.
This opened up my mind to the powers of the subconscious and
I now talk with anyone who shows up in my dreams while I’m
lucid to find out why they were put there and what they can tell
me.
How to have lucid dreams
There is no clear-cut answer to this question and different
techniques vary greatly from person to person and even time to
time. The supplements can help a lot but they are not the solve-
all for always lucid dreaming night after night, effort is also
needed on your behalf. Much of it depends simply on how
much you actually want to be able to lucid dream and the
effort you decide to put into it. Remembering to take a capsule
at night is huge in its own because not only do you have the
advantages of the supplement in itself but it is also obviously on
your mind because you remembered to take one before bed.
One trusted place to start is by studying and focusing on
the subject of lucid dreaming in general and especially putting
effort into dream recall while in everyday waking life. Just
reading this right now and actually taking the time to process
the information is helping your chances of having a lucid
dream. I’ve introduced many a friend and colleague to lucid
dreaming and after conversing back and forth about it for some
time most of them were able to have one of their first lucid
dreams shortly thereafter. It is because it interested them, they
were excited to hear about the possibilities and even more
eager to experience them, and it transcended over to their
dream world.
Learning Dream Recall
Dream recall is a great place to start because it is much
easier to see nearly instant nightly success as opposed to trying
to master lucid dreaming in the same short amount of time.
Being able to recall your dreams from the night before is a
monumental tool for stepping into the lucid dreaming arena. It
also starts with keeping dreams on your mind in waking life and
then taking the time to awake slowly every morning and think
hard about what happened in your dreams that night. It may
seem silly, and some may want to skip this part, but it makes
perfect sense that if you want to start lucid dreaming, you ought
to start by trying to remember more of your dreams, as all
dreams, even lucid ones can easily be forgotten once awake
and back in the daily grind. Start by getting a good night’s rest
and awake calmly out of your sleep, try not to move much, or
even open your eyes if you can and try to think backwards from
where your very last dream ended. If you can wake up to a
more peaceful sound than a blaring siren-esq alarm clock that
can help a great deal with dream recall as well. Practice not
thinking about what you have to do that day or what you’ll
wear or anything of that sort. Just spend a few minutes relaxing
and solely concentrating on your dreams. Think about how you
got to the last place in your dream that you can remember and
usually it will start to slowly come back to you. Many people
think that they just simply don’t have dreams, and as science
has proven this is just not the case, they just don’t remember
them. A method that has helped me obtain better dream recall
and occasional lucid dreams is to set an alarm a few hours
before I would normally wake or just at some point in the middle
of deep sleep. The idea is to have it wake you right out of a
current dream and therefore have a fresh recall and be able to
jot it down then go back to bed with dreams on the mind
again. This strengthens the ability to recall dreams at all waking
hours and is not required to be performed all the time for
dramatic dream recall unless you choose to do so. It is also
helpful to some to not just turn off the alarm but snooze it a few
times as this will bring you in and out of dreams repeatedly and
therefore increase your chances of realizing that you’re
dreaming or at least remembering a portion of a dream.
Consistent practice with dream recall can yield great results in a
very short amount of time; it is amazing what the brain can do
once it knows what it should be doing.
Dream Journal
With your newfound abilities to remember more and more
of your dreams it is very helpful to keep a dream journal. Did you
ever notice that once you wrote something down as to not
forget, you didn’t even have to look back at it to remember
what you had written? It is the same principle here, except
tenfold because dreams, unlike daily thoughts during waking-
life, are extremely fleeting. Try to immediately write down
dreams that you can remember even if it’s just small fragments
of many dreams or immense detail of a specific dream. This can
be done in the morning while gathering your thoughts on what
you dreamt about the night before or upon waking in the
middle of the night. It is good to note that you may wake at
night and remember a dream so well that you don’t write it
down because you are certain it will be retained upon waking,
but morning comes around and the only thing you can
remember is your very last dream. Many times the most present
dream memories replace older dream memories, so write it
down if you don’t want to lose it. If no dreams can be
remembered, its ok, happens to the best of us, just keep your
goals in mind and sometimes throughout the day, maybe in the
shower or driving in the car it will come back to you - just don’t
forget to eventually jot it down.
Dream signs
Remembering and writing your dreams down helps you
become more familiar with your specific dream attributes and
patterns. This is crucial in learning to lucid dream because it will
strengthen your ability to detect a dream while it is happening
by noticing clues from your individual dreamsigns. A dreamsign
is anything that triggers a thought in your conscious mind -
whether in a dream or not, that alerts you to a possibility that
you are currently dreaming. Specific dreamsigns are unique to
each individual, although there are many dreamsigns that seem
to provide results for many people. Dreamsigns can change
from time to time for an individual or completely disappear only
to resurface again years later. It is an ongoing consciousness
you must maintain, to be as aware as possible to what your
specific dreamsigns are for that particular time in your life. Once
a dreamsign has been detected in a dream, reality checks are
performed to make certain if one is dreaming or not.
Reality checks
Reality checks are the bread and butter of lucid dreaming
and once you successfully perform one in a dream and
determine you are dreaming, it’s an adrenaline rush of shear
excitement so intense that it can immediately end your dream
and wake you up! When you first start lucid dreaming and
realize the limits are limitless and absolutely anything is possible,
you question; what’s going on, where will I go, what will I do?
Many other thoughts can race into your mind of all your hard
work and everything that you’ve studied and endured to get to
this point. You’ve now switched from the unaware subconscious
state of ordinary dreaming to using your conscious mind and It is
so powerful of a feeling for most novice to intermediate lucid
dreamers that it can knock them right out of the dream and
have them cursing at their awoken state, but we’ll cover how to
successfully combat that later.
Reality checks are a two-part skill that first involves
engraining reality checks into your waking life and then having
them cross over to the dream world where they will be applied
to obtain lucidity. The list can go on and on for the types of
reality checks that one can come up with and although there
are many that appear to be staples of success which will work
for most everybody, it can vary greatly for each individual. They
simply involve asking yourself if you are dreaming and then
following your query up with a reality test of your choice to
provide an educated answer. You may not always get the right
answer with one test, so try to learn a few of these and perform
them whenever you get a gut feeling that something is not as it
seems or just sporadically throughout the day. Many require
taking a look at something, analyzing, and then looking away
and back again to detect changes or inconsistencies. This is
very common with the things we see or use most in our life and
are very familiar with such as our hands, words, numbers and
simple laws of physics. Some common reality checks are as
follows:
Digital clocks and watches- Illegible or not constant with times
Text on paper or signs- Illegible or changing letters/numbers
Common sense- Why is there a dinosaur outside my window?
Patterns- Change or move while being viewed
Light Switches- Do not work, common with most electronics
Mirrors- Often does not show a true reflection
Holding your breath- No need for oxygen in dreams
Focusing on your hands- Can reveal major discrepancies
Trying to fly- Start with jumping as high as possible
Pushing through- Put your finger through solid objects
How did you get here?- You often can’t quite recall
Looking at the sky or ground- Look away and back again
- and analyze differences
A Simple Lucid Dream Example-
Let’s say you’ve been working with many of the
aforementioned methods for a while now and are making some
progress. You fall asleep one night and dream of being in
school, but you’re not actually in school anymore and nor have
you been for the past “x” years. You suddenly remember that
from practicing your dream recall abilities and jotting down the
commonalities of your dreams in your dream journal that
“school” is one of your dreamsigns, you always dream of being
in school. Now this could still be real life, right? It seems so real, I
mean right there’s Timmy with the missing front tooth sitting two
desks across from you.
It’s time to get to the bottom of this with a few reality
checks that you’ve been rehearsing in waking life. So you look
around for anything very out of the ordinary but nothing stands
out. Then you remember to try and read your digital watch and
it appears to be just LED-garble floating all around the display
and now you look over and tiny Timmy is your Aunt Heidi. Boom!
You’re dreaming, stay calm, collect your thoughts and think of
what you want to do with your newfound lucidity. Why not ask
someone why you always end up in this class while your
dreaming? Dream characters are absolutely fascinating to talk
to, knowing that everything they respond with came right out of
your subconscious mind since it’s all in your dream anyway.
Now this was just an example to put the pieces together a
bit more for everyone. Things obviously don’t always happen
just like this or in this particular order and you might even lose
your glimpse of lucidity you almost had by being swept back
into the course of the dream. Contrarily, many experienced
lucid dreamers who notice one of their dreamsigns while in a
dream become immediately lucid and have no need for the
reality checks.
My personal go-to dreamsign is water, especially blue-
tinted, crystal-clear, deep water. Whenever I see water in
waking life I think of dreaming and reality checks - this familiarity
between the thoughts transcended over to my dreamworld
and has been the number one factor for me achieving lucidity
as I always seem to dream about water related activities. Most
of the time while dreaming I can just see the water, remember
to ponder about my state of consciousness and then upon
realization, immediately become lucid. Occasionally, the dream
does a very good job of hiding the truth and I don’t get the
“gut” feeling that I’m dreaming like I usually would and I have to
perform a few reality checks to decipher my state of
consciousness. Very few times has a reality check actually
fooled me into thinking a dream was reality, once I have the
inclination that I’m dreaming while in a dream, it usually doesn’t
take long for me to prove myself right.
Aside from that last sentence it is also important to note just
how forgiving we are of the dreamscapes design flaws and
obvious inconsistencies. Did you ever wake up from a dream
that was so bizarre that you wondered how in the world you
actually thought it was waking life? We are much less scrupulous
of the details in our dream world and could very easily go along
with whatever our mind throws at us while dreaming and this is
precisely why knowing your dreamsigns and using multiple
reality checks is sometimes absolutely necessary to figure out if
you truly are dreaming.
It is very important that you learn to combine all of the
aforementioned methods and information into one simple,
cohesive package which you can easily work on at any given
time throughout your days and nights. You should be keeping
lucid dreaming on your mind, taking the supplements, talking
with friends about it and delving deeper into the subject. You
need to be practicing your dream recall techniques and
consistently writing in your dream journal while paying close
attention to any oddities or patterns that may emerge which
could alert you to a new dreamsign specific to you at that point
in your life. Remember to do an occasional reality check every
so often especially around seeing your potential dreamsigns
and don’t be afraid to mix the tests up a bit. If you just take
home one thing from this paragraph let it be this; you must link
your reality checks to your own specific dreamsigns so that
when you stumble upon one of your dreamsigns you
immediately proceed to doing reality checks without hesitation
when you are dreaming as well as awake. This is a very simple
connection and when it is engrained into your mind you
eventually will dream of one of your dreamsigns that you
previously learned through dream recall techniques and dream
journals and therefore automatically do a reality check and
finally realize you are actually dreaming!
How to prevent waking up once lucid
Waking up immediately after becoming lucid is a common
problem for many dreamers. The culminated excitement of
finally becoming lucid after however long you’ve been working
towards the goal can easily jolt you right out of the dream and
awake in bed. Awaking from a lucid dream does not always
happen right away, some lucid dreams just begin to “fade out”
for no obvious reason, although some blame over-excitement.
There are a few methods used to combat waking-up that
usually involve using a repetitive motion of your body or hands
which helps your mind feel the sensation of movement even
though your visuals may have disappeared. One such
technique involves spinning in circles like a child to create this
sense of motion and avoid awakening until a new dream scene
has started and feels more secure. Many have reportedly had
success restoring their lucidity with these motion-based
techniques, but they can be difficult to perform for the novice
lucid dreamer. The supplements can help a lot with deeper
sleep and dream stability but remaining calm is usually the key
to preventing awakening before it ever starts to show signs. One
must learn to control their feelings and emotions especially at
times of heightened excitement or arousal. They must relax with
the dream and not let it take control of them, after all it is their
lucid dream and near-total control is always just a reach away.
REM sleep
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is the fast paced movement of
the eyes behind closed eyelids while dreaming. The eyes are
the only part of the skeletal muscular system that are not shut
down by the dream states’ temporary paralyzation. This is
actually how lucid dreaming was scientifically proven factual
using memorized horizontal eye movements (i.e Right-Right-Left-
Left-Right-Left-Right) acted out by participants while lucid
dreaming with EEG brain activity machines proving they were
actually asleep in a controlled lab environment. REM sleep is
known to be the most abundant period of sleep for lucid
dreaming. The supplements help to increase REM sleep later on
in the night or early morning when it is most common for lucid
dreams to occur.
MILD
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams, also known as MILD
is a simple technique used to help dreamers become lucid by
carrying your awareness of lucidity back into your REM sleep
after awakening and hopefully start out lucid or become lucid
shortly after induction of sleep. It involves waking after a dream
(or at least sleep), and focusing your mind on going back to the
dream you just left (or of a recent dream), but this time
imagining that you are lucid in the dream. While drifting into
sleep you should imagine yourself shortly becoming lucid and
keep your mind set on obtaining lucidity while telling yourself
“next time I am dreaming, I will remember I am dreaming” or
any other mantra that conveys the same message. The object is
to carry your most current thoughts right into your next dream as
to make it much easier to notice you are dreaming once
asleep. If you find yourself thinking of something else,
immediately switch back to the technique as to have it be the
very last thing on your mind before you drift over to the other
side. WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dream), is very similar to a
combination of MILD and WBTB and therefore will be omitted.
WBTB
Wake-Back-To-Bed is a very successful technique used to
induce lucid dreaming and it is quite similar to MILD and WILD
with a few small changes. You simply fall asleep as usual and set
an alarm clock to go off (with a pleasant tone) about 4-6 hours
after falling asleep. After awakening from your slumber, stay up
for 30 to 60 minutes with your mind set on lucid dreaming then
go back to bed using the MILD technique described earlier. This
is said to be the best time to have lucid dreams as REM sleep is
most abundant right before awakening and with the addition of
the MILD technique, success is greatly enhanced.
With that said, there is another time when REM sleep is very
easily achieved and the possibility of lucid dreaming more
feasible. Napping at any time in the day always yields me
amazing dreams and sometimes I find lucidity with very little
time and effort. Many lucid dreamers find that after awakening
in the morning and staying up for a few hours, that a small nap
mid-morning is a good time to have a lucid dream. I agree, but
find that naps always work for me at any point in the day as
long as you have your objectives at hand with becoming lucid
and hopefully practice MILD directly before falling asleep.
“Dream Enhancer” is a good supplement to try here instead of
“Lucid Dreams” because of the shorter duration of sleep you will
be having.
Binaural and Isochronic beats
Binaural and isochronic beats are digitally produced beats
that are used to induce lucid dreaming by theoretically
changing brain frequencies to those seen during dreaming.
There is some controversy as to whether or not they are
effective for expeditious brain frequency modification and if
they can actually induce lucid dreaming. While they may or
may not, they do allow most to enter a relaxed, meditative
state much easier than without. Meditation is very closely
associated with lucid dreaming and can greatly enhance the
ability to be more aware and conscious while awake which can
help lead to more lucid dreams while sleeping. They have beats
for relaxation, enhanced clarity, migraine relief, sedation,
dreaming, energy and many others. Overall they cannot hurt to
allow them a try and most are very intriguing when given a
listen.
Conclusion
With the combination of the lucid dreaming supplements
and the methodologies previously described, success for
attaining a lucid dream is GREATLY increased. Make sure to take
the supplements as close to going to sleep as possible (with
water) and always have lucid dreaming on your mind before
finally drifting off. If you can’t get even a glimpse of a lucid
dream while trying everything offered here - then you probably
aren’t trying hard enough. Be honest with yourself about the
actual amount of time and mental space you are allotting for
lucid dreaming. Try the “Dream Enhancer” if you selected
“Lucid Dreams” or vice versa – they are both oriented towards
the same goal but formulated with different ingredients as
everyone can respond more to one than the other. Most of all
don’t give up and have some fun with it, Lucid Dreaming IS
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, and it will change your life for the better.