Quote Originally Posted by MasterMind View Post
Since the part of the brain that governs critical thinking actually becomes inactive while we sleep, the most effective way to become more critical in our dreams, is actually to wake up and go back to sleep. This can be done either through WBTB or snoozing.

When I got the time I usually fall asleep and then have multiple alarms to wake me up over and over and I go back to sleep, what happens then is that I fall asleep and wake up and as I wake up I deprive my mind of REM sleep and at the same time activate the critical center of the brain (since I have woke up) and then I go back to sleep and achieve a REM-rebound which means that I instantly return to rem-sleep and dreams because the brain try to compensate for the loss of REM. Then I keep doing this over and over and what happens then is that I become more critical and more deeply into the dream each time. Until I just experience a dream and think "Well that is strange, this must be a dream." The same result is achieved through the traditional Wake back to bed, but what I described is kind of like turning those effects up a notch.

But this is all happening in the later night or early morning.

What I use to become more aware during the early stages of the night, is meditation. Meditation I believe is delaying the shutdown of critical system of the brain and therefore I can fall asleep and still experience higher degrees of critical thinking in the early REM. And meditation is also just practical and a peaceful state to be in, instead of the unconscious non-aware state.

So in short: For the early stages of the night: Meditation, later stages if you have time and want to be fancy: Rem-deprivation + Rem-Rebound (and manually activating the critical center).

Those are the two ways I can think of, but there are probably more.

Sweet critical dreams.
I can confirm that technique, as it has happened to me quite a few times (when I snooze about 5-6 times before work because I am lazy) but it never dawned on me to USE it strictly for the induction of lucid dreams. It's brilliant! I will surely be trying that out this week to see what kind of results I reap. Thanks for sharing that MasterMind