The other day I was wandering around at the library, and I came across a book on self-hypnosis. I thought it looked interesting, so I checked it out, and read it. The main technique of self hypnosis is to enter a relaxed state, and then once there, to give yourself 'suggestions'. These suggestions, like 'I do not smoke' are repeated over and over again. At this level of mind, suggestions go past the normal filters, and are taken as true - thus they happen. One of the chapters was about how insomniacs could use suggestions like 'I can sleep easily' in order to control their ability to sleep. It mentioned when you are about to fall asleep, you are at the level of relaxation critical for self-hypnosis. As I was reading that, I made a connection. One of the ways to attain lucidity is to repeat to yourself 'I will lucid dream tonight' (or something along the lines of that) over and over again as you fall asleep (during which you are deeply relaxed). This is the same as any other command given at a deep level of relaxation. Whether it is conscious or not, I believe the 'suggestion technique' for lucid dreaming is really self-hypnosis.