What is CAT?
The Cycle Adjustment Technique was "popularized" by Daniel Love. I put popularized in quotations because very few people have actually spent the time or energy to test-out the efficacy of this approach to lucid dream induction.
You can Google for a more thorough explanation, but basically CAT comes down to this: 1. For one week, wake up an hour earlier than you normally would, and spend this hour practicing asking the critical question and testing (i.e., "Am I dreaming?"). 2. After this week of disrupted sleep, remain asleep for that hour. Of course, this is a very abbreviated explanation of what to do per Daniel Love's instructions, and the occasional return to disrupted sleep/critical questioning is thrown in. The idea is that your body/mind would adapt to the timing of asking the critical question and continue even though you are no longer awakening. Could be worth giving at a try. However, I see some obvious issues. For one, the body adapts to things like new sleep schedules very quickly. After a week of getting up an hour earlier, you may be hard pressed to fall asleep an hour later when the first phase is over. Second, asking the critical question when the mind is in one state (awake) is not the same as asking this question in another state (in a dream). Remember, memory is contextual. The context in which we remember something heavily influences our ability to later recall this information. Still, the idea is intriguing. Although, even if you tried it and it seemed successful, there are other variables which could be responsible for triggering lucidity. These include sleep disruption in general, focused intent, and expectation. If you give the CAT a try, let me know how it goes for you! |