Lucid Dreaming Tips Thread
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Personally, I have a lot of luck when I intentionally daydream before sleep, and then continually staying aware of the day dream as I drift into sleep. As I start to fully enter sleep I typically lose track that I'm daydreaming and get swept away. However, sometimes I will snap back into the realization of being in a dream after my body has fallen asleep, thus making me lucid. This only works occasionally but has by far been my most consistent method.
What else you guys got?
Especially interested if anyone has had any better luck with supplements or medications.
I typically have more vivid dreams with Glycine for instance, but it doesn't seem to help with becoming lucid. -
@Master P5P gives intense dreams. Doxycycline is also known for it.
In terms of practice, you should remain try to remain aware with your consciousness as you fall asleep each night. Hypnagogic imagery and sleep paralysis sets in and then comes early dream imagery. At that point memory stops recording for a while and our imagination begins intermixing with sub-conscious emotionally-tinted memories and observations from during the day. These are intermittent and chaotic, and are greatly influenced by physical conditions like what you've eaten, tacticle bodily sensation received by your sleeping body, and noises in the room, all of which combine to determine the content of the dream-imagery. You can learn to trace dream content to their originary inluences by contemplating on them.
Lucid dreaming can accompany nightmares, as well. I've had lucid nightmares where I was 100% awake that I was dreaming yet experiencing the horror of being unable to wake up and was stuck experiencing the terror content of the dream. I was even self-aware that the terror in the nightmare was unreal yet the physical symptoms, like heart palpitation, was present regardless of my awareness that the manifest dream content was illusory.
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Once in a dream, if you sense that it’s fading spin your body in place and you will refresh the dream.
Using a very simple mantra throughout the day will allow you to remember a question from your waking life to ask in your dream. In your dream you can speak directly to your subconscious by asking to speak to it. For me, a typically humanoid representative appears and then I ask questions that I’ve had on my mind. I find that the subconscious speaks in riddle to a degree so you may have to interpret the message. Once I asked what was holding back my health and it replied “fear” this was somewhat confusing to me until I realize that fear is related to cortisol. I went to work lowering cortisol and leveled up my health considerably.
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I haven’t done this in a while but when I was a kid I heard that your brain has trouble processing hands in dreams, so in waking life I made a habit of frequently looking at my hands and verifying the correct number and length of digits. Eventually, the habit carried into dreams and I looked at my hands, I would see the fingers getting longer and shorter and say something like “whoa I’m dreaming”. The first time the realization woke me up almost immediately but it worked a few times before I lost the habit.
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@VirtueAgonist Yes this is a common tactic and one that has worked for me previously. But I find it's hard to get recurring lucid dreams with that method. Usually works once or twice then stops for me.
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@VirtueAgonist another similar technique is looking at text twice. In dreams text will often change and even appear as pictographs vs letters. A practice can be built around this to recognize dreams. Set five alarms for yourself at random times each day and when they go off, read something within eyeshot, close your eyes, open them, and read it again. The practice will carry over to dreams and you will notice that text will change the second time you read it, (and now you know you’re dreaming).
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@evan-hinkle There are many differences in dreams:
- Books don't have coherent text or are empty
- Clocks and watches don't move
- Mirrors don't reflect properly
- There isn't a sense of smell
- Electronics, TV, music, computers don't function
You can try to remind yourself during the day to be self-aware and then have that carry over into the dream. Look for these objects and then 'wake yourself up' in the dream upon seeing their unreality.
I've had lucid dreams where I was trying to test myself to jump down a flight of stairs. Because I knew it was a dream. But I chickened out because in my mind there was still a small doubt that it wasn't really a dream.
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Bump .........
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Mugwort tea, steeped properly is amazing for lucid/vivid dreaming.
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@lobotomize-me The most impactful things in dreams don't happen in dreams where we have a high degree of control, so it's not something to chase
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@random wdym?
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@lobotomize-me said in Lucid Dreaming Tips Thread:
@random wdym?
The best dreams, with the most enjoyable events and also the most impact on your body when you wake up, are not dreams where you feel in control of everything that happens, they are dreams where you have a high degree of clarity while being a spectator of the dream, you don't undergo the dream either, you just flow
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@random what does "you just flow" mean
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@lobotomize-me said in Lucid Dreaming Tips Thread:
@random what does "you just flow" mean
you can feel the events happening and your will are aligned, you don't feel a high degree of control
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@random but in a lucid dream you have the ability to access the subconscious. I have found that incredibly impactful personally.
One time I asked to speak to my subconscious, and I asked it what was holding me back. It replied fear. I pondered this for a while because I didn’t feel particularly fearful, and then I googled the hormone responsible for fear. I got cortisol as a search result. This led me to Ray Peat’s work and literally changed my entire life.
I’d call that impactful, YMMV…
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@evan-hinkle said in Lucid Dreaming Tips Thread:
@random but in a lucid dream you have the ability to access the subconscious. I have found that incredibly impactful personally.
One time I asked to speak to my subconscious, and I asked it what was holding me back. It replied fear. I pondered this for a while because I didn’t feel particularly fearful, and then I googled the hormone responsible for fear. I got cortisol as a search result. This led me to Ray Peat’s work and literally changed my entire life.
I’d call that impactful, YMMV…
Lucid you mean being aware that you are dreaming, or a high degree of control?
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@random both
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@random If you become aware that it's a dream, you gain control of it, That's lucidity. A real lucid dream is not just "a vivid dream", it's literally like the movie Inception where you are god in the dream world and you can make anything happen that you think of. Your mind moulds the dream world. Flying, making things appear and disappear, transforming the whole world around you.
It can take quite a bit of practice to not lose lucidity or wake up, because once you realize you're in a dream it can excite you and cause you to slip out.
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@Hearthfire said in Lucid Dreaming Tips Thread:
@random If you become aware that it's a dream, you gain control of it, That's lucidity. A real lucid dream is not just "a vivid dream", it's literally like the movie Inception where you are god in the dream world and you can make anything happen that you think of. Your mind moulds the dream world. Flying, making things appear and disappear, transforming the whole world around you.
It can take quite a bit of practice to not lose lucidity or wake up, because once you realize you're in a dream it can excite you and cause you to slip out.
You Can be aware you are dreaming with out having a high degree of control
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In my experience it's unlikely or impossible to be aware you're dreaming and not have control. Yes there are varying degrees of control though. I find I usually have great control of the dream unless I am slipping out of lucidity after becoming too excited, or after an extended period of having a lucid dream. Then it can start to morph into a regular dream state.
