Alright, this is the part you’ve been waiting for: actually inducing a lucid dream. Before attempting to dream lucidly, you should have improved your dream recall—being able to remember a couple dreams a night is sufficient. There are numerous techniques to induce lucid dreams and you’ll quite possibly come up with your own personal technique(s) eventually. I’m going to focus on one particular technique here since it is the most common, the easiest to understand, and the easiest to use and achieve success with. It is also a very flexible technique and can be fine-tuned for personal use. The tutorials section will present a few more techniques to induce lucid dreaming and users post new ideas and techniques in our message board all the time. The induction technique presented here is known as the Reality Testing Technique.
Reality Testing Technique
As the name suggests, the Reality Testing Technique simply involves trying to determine whether you are awake or dreaming by examining the world around you to determine if it is real. There are essentially two components to this technique: being attentive to the world around you and watching for dream signs, and performing routine reality checks during the day. The idea is pretty simple: if you’re able to determine that something you’ve witnessed simply cannot be possible, then you are probably dreaming.
The first thing you should do is train yourself to be on the alert for dream signs during the waking hours. Why during the waking hours, you ask? Well, quite simply, you need to bring yourself into the habit of questioning the world around you and looking for anything out of the ordinary. This reconditioning of your acceptance of the world around you will hopefully not be constrained within the waking hours alone, but should follow you into the dream world as well. Thus, if you start scrutinizing the world while awake, you’ll probably begin the same practice while asleep. Whenever something strange (or slightly out of the ordinary) happens, don’t simply dismiss it. Stop and really think about what happened and decide whether or not it was possible. Obviously the answer must be “yes” if you’re awake, but again the idea is to get in the habit of questioning the world around you so that you’ll do so while dreaming.
Device failure is a very common dream sign and is often overlooked. If you keep an active dream journal, go through and look for incidents when a device (a light switch, microwave, telephone, etc.) didn’t work properly or at all. You will probably find this happens quite a lot in dreams—in fact, more often than not when devices are concerned. When something stops working during the waking hours—even when a light bulb burns out—stop and really consider what just happened. Ask yourself whether it was really possible, and briefly examine the world around you and decide for yourself whether you’re awake or not.
Even if you’ve completely convinced yourself that whatever you’ve seen that is out of the ordinary is quite possible, perform one more unrelated test. Read some text, or glance at a digital clock or watch. Wait a few seconds and then do it again. If the text or time inexplicably changes, then you are in fact dreaming. Even if the time or text doesn’t change, try to focus on changing it for a moment. In dreams text often changes upon a second glance and we almost always accept it, even though clearly it is an alarming clue that we are dreaming.
What I’ve been describing is called a reality check. A reality check is a simple test to determine if what you’re seeing is real or not. As I alluded to above, reality checks can be performed upon seeing a dream sign, but also should be done routinely throughout the day without a dream sign as a preamble. A good idea is to assign certain times of the day to do reality checks, such as when you arrive home, or when you enter your bedroom, etc. If you diligently perform a quick reality test every time you come home or enter your room, chances are you will continue the same practice while dreaming. Hopefully, upon performing the reality check while dreaming, you’ll catch on to the fact that you’re not awake. You can also perform reality checks whenever you think about it during the day, or whenever something reminds you of your dreams—if you’ve familiarized yourself with your dream signs they can help trigger your memory and remind you to perform reality checks if you otherwise forget. The more consistent you are at performing reality checks, the better your chances are of being able to induce a lucid dream.
One simple method I have personally tried is wearing a digital watch that chimes every hour. The chime reminds me to perform a dream check, and the digital screen on the watch allows me to perform that dream check. This is great for reminding yourself to perform reality checks during the day, but in doing so you condition yourself to perform a reality check upon the presence of the chime. Without the presence of this stimulus, you’ll likely forget to perform reality checks. Therein lies the impediment of this method: you have to be someone who sleeps “light” enough to be aware of the chimes of your watch and allow them to enter your dreams from the real world. I personally achieved little success with this method. While I would regard myself as a light sleep—I often wake up during the night—I was unaware of my watch’s chimes while sleeping. Coupling this method with other methods (such as assigning reality check times during the day, watching for strange occurrences, etc.) will lead to the greatest success with lucid dreaming.
Although all that is needed to become lucid in a dream is the realization that you’re dreaming, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to become fully-lucid. As discussed on the dream signs page, we become easily distracted in our dreams. You may perform a reality check and discover you’re dreaming, but all of a sudden something catches your eye: “I must be drea…hey look! A purple cat!” and immediately lose your lucidity. Thus, a little mental discipline is necessary upon the realization of lucidity. It’s a good idea to stop everything you’re doing in your dream, clear your mind, and fully convince yourself that you’re dreaming—don’t just casually accept it, otherwise your realization will likely quickly fade.
Other Techniques
A couple other popular lucid dreaming induction methods are the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD) method, and the Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD) method. Both of these methods can be found in the tutorials section. You can also find new ideas and techniques in the Attaining Lucidity and General Discussion forums of our message board.
Before moving on to controlling your dreams, you should read the next section which provides help on staying lucid once you become lucid in your dreams.
