Be more concerned with "exhausting your day" than with learning how to "trick yourself" into falling asleep at the end of the day. Many lucid dreamers focus only on the relaxing; slowing down your breathing, using various esoteric visualizations and these types of things (all good, by the way) in order to induce lucidity. But you can't just coast through day after day of mediocre effort and still expect to have big dreams. Let me riddle you this: How can you have big dreams at night if you don't chase big dreams during the day? The Dream Generation System (DGS) is fully activated as a response to daytime challenges and new experiences. The DGS is not activated by being lazy and then trying to get even more relaxed in-between days, at night. Exhausting your day means giving it all you have. Giving yourself a challenging To-Do list and crossing those boxes off. Talking to interesting people. Confronting your assumptions. Being The Boss of your own life.
|
Sleep in a cool room. Studies show that sleeping in a cool space actually enhances the density of REM sleep - total time spent in REM sleep as a ratio of total sleep and the quality, or depth of those REM epochs. You may have noticed that your temperature regulation is off kilter when you wake up from a dream. You will usually feel hot. The body stops maintaining your usual temperature homeostasis during REM-Sleep. Add to this the fact that most of us are under sheets, and that dis-regulation of temperature can result in a sweaty, uncomfortable time. And when are we designed to be asleep? That's right, at night. When it's cool. So keep it cool and not only will you have an easier time falling asleep, you will increase the time in and intenisty of your dreaming.
|
|
Sleep on a full stomach. Some people cannot sleep when their belly is full, so this doesn't apply to them. Know how your own individual body works and follow its lead. But for the most part, we need only look at nature and we can see plenty of hints about this whole sleeping thing. When does an animal sleep? When it is starving? No. Animals eat AND THEN sleep. Especially carnivores and omnivores who do not eat continuously during their entire waking period, as many herbivores do. This is the design: We are meant to hunt and/or forage (think exercise, in strong spurts), then gorge, and then sleep. Body hack tip: If using the Wake Back To Bed (WBTB) method in conjunction with the rest of your lucid dream induction protocol, eat during this time and make it easier to fall back asleep. Nutrition is a complicated area of discussion, but I think that the best general guideline is to fill most of your meals with even amounts of calories from fat, protein and carbs (1/3, 1/3, 1/3). We can argue about this later. But you know what foods make YOU sleepy. Eat those.
|
|
Become aware of The Territorial Imperative. When I was younger, a friend recommend a little-known book to me by this name, claiming it was his favorite. This book goes into depth about how animals - including humans - have a natural tendency toward being territorial. Such a basic idea, and yet humanity has seemed to miss it, for the most part. Our basic nature is not only social, but also to form in-groups and out-groups. And included in this tendency is to stake claim in land and defend it. Similarly, we have an ingrained conception that it is dangerous to be in others' territory. Just look at how all vocal animals "bark" at each other. Yes, even birds are essentially barking at one another (when not performing mating rituals, although these two activities are often inter-twined). In dreams, you have probably found yourself in a house or building and just "knew" that you had to get out of there. You may not know how you ended up there (it's a dream, you just ended up there), but you have the strong inclination to get out of there pronto. Well, this is a powerful dream sign, and you should make yourself aware of it.
|
|
|
You may have come across the Read-Look Away-Look Back technique of lucid dream state-testing. This is a classic method for practicing to test which state you are in (while awake), in the hope that you will remember to do this while in a dream. After reading some small text, looking away, and looking back to see if it has changed (and then doing this at least one more time), you will be sure to find that the text has altered if you are actually in a dream. Why this works so well is up for debate, but it works. Probably some combination of The Failure mechanism built into dreaming, combined with the Visual-Spatial-Sketchpad component of working-memory being less stable than the auditory-loop function of working-memory. Whatever, it gets more complicated than we need to go into here. The brain-hack/tweak I have in mind here is to use your phone for a similar purpose. Almost all of us have smart-phones by now, and use these things all day. Less and less for actual phone calls, and increasingly so for text-messaging and Googling and other things. Since machines almost always act funny in dreams, you are bound to encounter phone troubles once you begin your sojourn into lucid dream induction. Even if your phone sometimes gives you trouble in waking-life, it will be much worse when you use it in dreams. Become aware of this idea and look out for it.
|
Actually record your dreams in a dream journal! Did I say these tips were supposed to be unusual? Well, listen, if you don't do the single most important thing for lucid dream induction, you cannot complain that you aren't having success. And if you are going to do it, do it right and click this link so I can show you my time-tested way. While on the subject, do use the WBTB method (it increases your chances many-fold) and forget about binaural beats and anything that sounds too good to be true. |
Look into methods for inducing Out-Of-Body-Experiences (OOBE's). I, personally, see no reason to believe that we can really leave our body when asleep/in trance and travel around the physical world, BUT, I do think that the techniques that have been developed for this purpose carry-over well for the would-be lucid dreamer. Use good judgment and don't do anything too dangerous that you aren't comfortable with, whatever you end up finding. |
|
Have a plan for what to do once you BECOME lucid! How likely are you to become lucid if you do not have a good reason to become lucid? Not very. Think about it like this: How easy would it be to become financially wealthy if you had no idea what you were going to do with the money once you got it? Having goals helps to set the mind on a path. The old saying: When we have a strong enough WHY, we can always find a WAY. It's just as applicable here. Having a plan includes not only how to use induction techniques in combination, but also how to state-test in a dream (practice while awake), how to stabilize your lucidity at the beginning of the lucid dream (practice while awake), and what experiments or adventures to pursue once lucid (practice if you can while awake, or use dream-incubation methods). |
|
Practice "single-point" meditation. What this means is developing the ability to focus on one thing for extended periods of time. This will give you the capacity to return your focus back to an objective even amidst distractions. While dreaming, these distractions will be coming from the dream imagery itself, while when awake these distraction come from both "inside" and "outside." Either way, learning how to re-align your focus with your intended goals will be of benefit. What to meditate on? My favorite things are candle flames and your breath. Breathing is great, because you don't need any equipment to focus on your own air circulation. The idea is not to attempt to push-down unwanted thoughts. Rather, gently keep returning your "thought" to the single-point. How to do this properly, including finding a comfortable position, how to breathe, pitfalls to avoid, etc., deserve further discussion. |
Your brain is a chemical soup, a dynamic symphony of electro-chemical circuits and information-gates buzzing with billions of computational logic operations every moment. Everything you do, every thought, every piece of food you ingest, every desire, fear, and action you partake of alters that chemical inner-verse. There are vitamins and "drugs" that can increase your chances of becoming lucid. Whether you choose to go this path is up to you. Some people, especially those people who find it easy to become lucid, shun these aids. I say, when combined with other lucid dream induction techniques, chemical-augmentation can make all of the difference, especially in the beginning. There may be some dangers involved, and educating yourself on the pros and cons of what you do is always important.
|