A Combination Method for Lucid Dreaming

LD Combination Protocol
I have been practicing lucid dreaming for a few years now after a 10 year hiatus when I spontaneously had some spectacular LDs as a young teen. I struggle with having to wake up on a cold night to do a WBTB and as I am doing resistance strength training, I need a good nights sleep for recovery. As a result of these constraints, I have had to combine several different methods together to take advantage of any available time and circumstance.

The techniques I have listed here are not new by any stretch of the information and as Newton said, *"If I have been able to see this far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"*. People like LaBerge, Morley, CosmicIron and a multiple millennia of mystic traditions like Tibetan Dream Yoga, shamanic projections etc have and will continue to break new ground on the path of oneironautics. To them I am eternally grateful for confirming the fact that I was not going absolutely mental when my first LDs started.

Ok, now to the meat and potatoes. At the very least, if you do NOTHING else, there are 2 things that I think are absolutely critical to achieving and sustaining the practice of lucid dreaming.

1) Keeping a Dream Journal
If you cannot remember that you had a lucid dream, is it even worth having it in the first place? There is a word in the occult, the psychic veil. When you wake up from a dream, it is often like a veil is being slowly draped across the memory of the dream. At first, it is clear like a movie and within minutes or hours, you can only remember fragments, then you remember only that you had a dream but not the contents and finally, you actually completely forget that you even had a dream. Write your dreams down, even if it’s a few words that can anchor the memory. As part of my strength training, I take ZMA which is a combination of zinc, magnesium and Vitamin B6. B6 really helps my dream recall. If you are struggling at the start, consider taking the recommended dose twice a week before you fall asleep.

2) All Day Awareness
Despite what the name says, I myself cannot sustain complete all day awareness. What I do try to do is to remember to have moments of introspection throughout the day. The eventual aim is of course to be completely aware but god damn it’s so tiring. I can actually feel my mental strength fade if I try to hold awareness for too long. It’s quite weird how much of a day we actually spend in a mindless stupor, in a day dream. Try to spend at least a few minutes per hour taking the time to bring your mind back into your body. Listening, not just hearing, seeing, not just looking, being, not just feeling. Ask yourself and really question, if this is reality, or even better, consider yourself already in a dream and try to prove otherwise.

If you can do just the two of these things, you are well on the way to practicing lucid dreaming.


Now, what I actually actively do to achieve a lucid dream. There are a few brilliant methods out there that I chose to focus on, in order of my success, DEILD, SSILD, DILD, FILD, WILD.

In my case, with my limited time and resources, there is one concept I have found to be absolutely integral to my practice and that is proper sleep interruption. I know I was preaching that I need a good night’s sleep but I can definitely spare a few minutes in the later hours of the night for my practice.


Sleep Interruption Protocol
Everyone (as far as I know) sleeps in cycles and we go through roughly 4 or 5 cycles a night with some fluctuation from person to person. Each cycle lasts between 90 minutes to 120 minutes and consists of us going from our Beta waking state to Alpha, then down to Theta (for a while I think) then down to Delta, then up to Theta for a longer period then back to Alpha.

So in this cycle, we go from our waking consciousness of Beta/Alpha, down to Theta for a short period of time, then down to Delta or Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) which is where a lot of regenerative processes occur in the body, and then back to Theta. It is in this 2nd Theta where our dreaming mainly occurs.

In the first few cycles of sleep, it is theorised that the regenerative Delta waves dominate but in the later cycles, closer towards dawn, Theta/REM cycles dominate. Whether we realise it or not, most of the time, at the end of each cycle, we have micro-arousals. We might gain alpha consciousness for a few seconds, might even open our eyes, move around, readjust our sleeping cycle and then immediately begin a new cycle. What we are doing in this protocol is leveraging the average predictability of a sleep cycle and more importantly, how we can interrupt it effectively.

The problem that most beginners face in practicing lucid dreaming is ironically the act of relaxation. Who would have thought that something as simple as doing nothing effectively could be so difficult. But lets face it, it is. The number of WILDs I have messed up by losing my relaxation is in the high 20s. What the sleep interruption protocol does is that it inserts you, the user, right in the middle of a deeply relaxed state ready to drop into a dream. This is very very similar to a DEILD where you re-enter a dream upon waking from it but the key lies in timing.

For the next few days or weeks, try to observe your arousal patterns. You might (and this seems to be a trend with a lot of people) wake up at 4am or something similar to have to go to pee. Whatever the case might be, track your arousals and remember the main times. I wake up once at 2am and once again around 4am. When you have these times down, what you want to do is to set an alarm to wake up about 30 to 45 minutes prior to this automatic arousal time. So if I wake up at 4am naturally, I set an alarm to wake me up at about 3.30am.

Another important thing is HOW your alarm works. You cannot use a normal alarm clock or app where you have to actually move to wake up. You want to stay as immobile and relaxed as possible. There are several Android and iPhone apps that have alarms that will deactivate after a few seconds, this is what you want. In my case, since I sleep beside my wife, I can't have an alarm blaring at 4 in the morning. I bought a cheap fitness tracker watch off eBay (MiBand2) that comes with an app. The app sends an alarm to the watch in the form of vibrations which are perfect cause its enough to wake me but not my wife. There are plenty of cheap fitness trackers such as this and I think there is functionality on apple watches too. Otherwise, just put your phone underneath your pillow on vibrate or something.




Ok so you've been woken up, now what? Now you begin the protocol.

1) DEILD
Ok you've been woken up mid sleep, if you timed it right, you were smack bang in the middle of a dream. You should remember fragments of the dream as you wake up which is exactly what you want. Wait for the alarm to finish if it hasn't already, keep your eyes closed, its ok if you've moved around a little but you have to keep your awareness. This is where the ADA pays dividends. The gravity of sleep is going to be immense and that is a good thing. You are going to want to fall asleep but stay conscious at the same time. Sounds contradictory but sleep and loss of consciousness are not the same thing. Focus on your breathing, focus on a thought, throw in a MILD affirmation, or even better, focus on re-entering the dream you just left. It might sound like a big waste of time, re-entering the dream you just left but this time, you are going to be re-entering it consciously. If this all works, you are now in your very own LD. Look up the DEILD protocol for clarification.

2) SSILD
If your DEILD fails and you are now slightly TOO awake, you move on to SSILD. This technique is brilliant. I don't know why it works, but it has been oddly effective for me. At the VERY worst, it triggers a whole bunch of False Awakenings which can be leveraged to go lucid. Look up the protocol, it has recently received a lot of attention and I don't think it is worthwhile to repeat the entire process here. The beauty of the technique is that it is actually beneficial if you fall asleep after you run the cycle, heck it even maintains its usefulness if you fall asleep mid cycle as I have so often. The key here is to remain aware for as long as possible. Keep doing the cycles till you absolutely can't fight off sleep, then just go to bed. Going to bed is your absolute worst case scenario in which case you pop into an LD sometime during the rest of your sleep. The best case is that you trigger a WILD during the SSILD cycle and voila, you're in a LD.

3) FILD
To be honest, I know FILDs work but I have had very little success with them. I use it here only becuase I know it works but by this time, if I have not had an LD, I am ready to throw in the towel for the night and FILD seems like a nice way to round if off with something productive. The FILD is simple, roll over into your normal most comfortable sleeping position. Following up from the SSILD, remember you want to fall asleep as fast as possible so don't let the FILD take too much of your time, if it works, it works, but the combination of SSILD and FILD at this point just makes sense. Tap
your index and middle finger lightly on the bed alternately.

4) The grand finale.
If by this point, you have not had an LD, its ok, it will take time but you are really maximising your chances by using all the techniques in the protocol. One absolutely KEY thing to do now is this. The next time you wake up, or the next time you see a person, humor yourself, do a reality check. Try to poke your finger through the palm of your other hand or try to breath through a pinched nose. I am not kidding you, but chances are, you are in a lucid dream.


Closing Notes
This protocol is by no means prescriptive. I think the DEILD and SSILD are in my opinion the most effective induction methods for this manner of working but if you have something that works better feel free to put it into the protocol and share your successes. The key things to this protocol are proper sleep interruption and maintenance of consciousness into the dream and of course, remembering that it actually happened. Feel free to ask any questions and I really hope that
this helps the busy working people out there that are trying to get lucid dreams. I do NOT do this every night as that would be way too taxing. Once or twice a week is good, maybe every weekend even. Once you start getting good at this protocol, you will find that you can use your natural arousals as an automatic entry point into dreams and it stops being so taxing. Every time you automatically wake up and find yourself having trouble sleeping, throw in a SSILD, its not difficult and at the very worse, you fall asleep.

A Plea
Once you manage to get into your LD and you get proficient at it, I have a request. At first you will be excited, copulate, fly, destroy worlds, create worlds whatever. In time, it will get boring. Then try to notice the actual dream around you. No sailor controls the sea. You may have thought that you were the be all and end all in your dream that you were the creator, but you merely provided the impetus. There is someone else there creating the details, controlling the flow, creating the physics of the world. You are being watched like a loving mother by your subconscious. It is a deep deep deep place. Get to know your subconscious, find out more about YOURSELF. Actually talk to your addictions, your phobias, your drives and motivations. You will come out a better person, a more powerful person.

Good luck oneironauts, see you on the inside.