6 Steps to Enhance Lucid Dream Skills

1. Increase dream recall. Do this by starting a dream journal and writing in it daily, immediately upon waking. Talk with your friends about your dreams. Honor them by acting them out or following their directions. Give your dreams your awareness and you will be more likely to gain awareness within them.
2. Identify the time when you seem to experience the most dream activity. When is your most memorable period of REM sleep? For most it is just before waking in the morning, or during afternoon naps. Using your intentions, target this time as the time when you will have a lucid dream.
3. Set your alarm to wake you up early, before your last REM cycle of the night. Depending on your particular sleep schedule, this will usually be between 5-7 am. Get up at this time. Walk around, read some dream literature, wake up. Then once your conscious awareness seems like it has let go of the grogginess of the night, go back to bed.
4. Set your intention before slipping back into the dream world. Use clear, direct language like, “I will have a lucid dream”. Or “I will become aware in my dream”.
5. Develop a reality test that works for you. There are many reality tests. Carlos Castaneda suggests looking at your hands. The lucidity institute recommends the text re-reading method (read text in your dreams, look away, return to the text to read again and it will be different if you are dreaming). The movie Waking Life suggests that light switches in your dreams don’t work and the numbers on digital clocks will swim. I like to try to put my hand through solid objects. Whatever reality test, or bundle of reality tests, you choose to employ, get into a habit of acting them out in your waking world too. The more you question, “Am I dreaming right now?” while awake, the more likely you will pose the question while in a dream.
6. Once you become lucid there are three things to remind yourself of:
   1. There is absolutely nothing to fear. No harm can come to you. You are therefore free to do whatever you like, including confronting scary images or jumping from high heights.
   2. Modulate your emotions. Don’t get too excited or you will wake yourself up. Stay calm. Act like you’ve been here before.
   3. Know that the possibilities of things to do and places to go is infinite. Your lucid dream activity is only confined by your imagination. Have fun!!!

~ by jonahhaas on August 10, 2010.