Train Your Brain for Lucid Dreams, Have More Luck With WILDs
I just answered a question that someone PMd to me. As I spent the time writing it up I may as well share it (cut and paste). The topic was about hypnogogic hallucinations. I have developed methods for training the portion of my brain used in lucid dreams, by recreating and refining HHs while fully awake. I probably read something about this. Maybe it is an original technique I created, but most things have all ready been thought of by someone. Where ever I got it from, I have used it for 20+ years and it has massively improved every aspect of my lucid dream path.
There are many ways to go about this and I encourage you to come up with a few that suite you through experimentation. I will share my two favorites with you so you can get started.
This will make WILDing and DILDing much, much easier, I am actually suprised it does not get talked about on this forum too much. What it will do is give you an active way to develop the part of your brain that controls dreams. An activity you can do while awake to furthur your goal other than endless reality checks.
Here is the idea. Take sight for instance. In waking life, light energy in various wave lengths hit the rods and cones in your eye. That causes neurons to fire and the message goes to the brain creating your visual perception. In a dream there is no light energy. Something must stimulate the neurons, but what? You are going to learn how to stimulate the visual perception with out light energy. The untrained mind has only the limited random ability to do this, like in a random dream. You can hone in on the something that fires the neurons and develop it like a muscle, through repeated use. Every sense can be harnessed the same way. The sense of touch in waking life is from a object or heat/cold exciting a receptor that then sends a nerve inpulse. In a dream no object is needed. What then is the source of the nerve impulse? Again you can learn to hone in on that something, and develop it. The end result is that the parts of the brain used in dreaming become highly developed.
1) Visual. Lay in bed in the dark while fully awake and aware. Close your eyes. It is not really black is it? If you only see black, be patient, most people will start to see tiny specks of color or even blurs and dots of color. Perfectly normal at this point. I have only met one person who could not see some tiny flecks moving around. Step one: Just watch them for a couple nights. Become more aware that the colors are there. Step two: Try to cause one color to be more prevelant. Some colors will be more natural for you. If the most common random color is blue, start with blue, and so on. While watching the normal flecks, start thinking about things of that color. For blue maybe day dream about looking into the ocean. For red maybe day dream about looking into a glass of red wine. Watch the visual field as you do this. You should notice that the amount of that color will increase, maybe even appearing as whole sections of the visual field having that color of light shone on them. This may take awhile, or be very easy. Step three: Get to where you can increase the amount of two more colors, and try switching back and forth between them. Now more red, switch to visualizing blue and so on. Step four: Try to cover the entire visual field with mostly one color. Step five: Now picture common geometric shapes. For instance, two crossing lines, or a circle. At first any color randomly, then when you get that, the color you choose. Step six: Get to where you can create a shape of a chosen color on a back ground of a chosen color. After that make up more steps on your own.
2) Tactile (touch) Lay in bed fully awake. Step one: Try to feel your fingers without touching them. You are recieving impulses from every part of your body, but filter out most of it. Get to where you can preceive each of the fingers of you right hand with out moving them. Step two: Slowly open and close your right hand. Really pay attention to how it feels. Try to experience it in fine detail. Now stop actually doing the movement. Try to remember how it felt. Go back and forth between doing the movement and trying to recreate the feeling of doing it. Step three: after you can actually clearly picture how the motion should feel, try visualizing each finger moving one at a time. Go back and forth between really moving it and trying to recreate the feeling of moving it. Step four: Now do the same thing, but move your whole arm and hand. A simple waving motion or something like that. Go back and forth between actually making the motion, and trying to recreate the feeling. After you get that far, make up other similar moves on your own.
Be patient, some people will be able to do these things in as little as a week, while others may struggle with it for much longer. You are trying to exercise the portion of your brain that creates dreams. No matter how long it takes to get through the two exercises I just listed the whole process is actively developing the needed portion of your brain. When you get good at this stuff it can be practiced anywhere, when you have a queit moment.
