Thread: How to have your first Lucid Dream, Dry Spell Breaker Guide

This guide is for those people who are wanting to have their first lucid dream or are having a dry spell and really want another taste of lucid madness! I've thought of as many tips and techniques that work together in order to maximise the chance of you having a lucid dream.
A quick note, usually the best way to have a lucid dream is to try as many techniques as possible, each over the proper amount of time (2-3 weeks). Just to let you know why you may be having problems.

Updates
07/05/2012 added the natural WBTB method

The Recipe
Here are all the factors I think influence the chance of having a lucid dream. I'll explain how to use each to your advantage alittle lower.
Intent, Motivation
Dream Recall
Doing techniques properly
Good sleep patterns
Wake back to bed
*Luid Aids

Intent
It's very important to want to have a lucid dream, being excited about a lucid dream and thinking about it during the day will help increase the chance of a lucid dream. Motivated to carry out the techniques properly and to take time and effort to get the results is very important.
Dream Recall
You need to be able to remember the lucid dream if you want to count it as one worth having, I have litterally gone through half the day and realised I had a lucid because my recall was bad, it's probably one of the most important factors. How to make it better? Keep a Dream Journal, or you can do what I do if you are alittle too busy and just go over in your head the dream as you wake up. I remember most of my dreams in the shower! Aim to have about one dream a night, if not more and if you don't have one that night, think about not remembering it.
Doing techniques properly
There are so many techniques on this site and when everyone is telling you to find the one that suits you best you want to roll through them all in a week, this probably won't work, and you won't be able to use the technique properly. Aim to spend 2-3 weeks on each technique and if you aren't having any signs from that, then move on or try to see what you are doing wrong.
Good sleep patterns
The smallest things affect my sleep, if I go to bed one hour late or drink lots of caffine in the day my dream recall will suffer. If you go to bed at the same time each night and allow yourself to wind down before by taking a bath, keeping the light to a minimum you will find your recall will improve alot. I've heard that if you go to bed eariler than you normally do your recall increases dramatically.
Wake back to bed
This wakes you up just as you are starting an REM period, which is effectively dream time. As you will find out later this can be used to maximise the chance of the things you have been doing in the day to carry over into a dream. Typically this is 4.5 - 6 hours after going to bed, you can fine tune if you want, but I found those times to be very accurate. Adjust to the half hour to find the best time for you.
How do you know you are in REM? I find I don't feel very tired, but this might change for other people.
*Lucid Aids
Not going to put much about lucid aids, because I find they don't always work for people and for me it doesn't seem too important to help have a lucid dream, more information can be found in the lucid aids section of the forum.

The Technique
[spoiler]So we are going to combine all the factors mentioned above to maximse the chance of having a lucid dream. As long as you have Intent, Dream Recall and a good sleep pattern it's time to have a lucid!
During the day I'd like you to do reality checks whenever something strange happens, if something odd does happen really think about why you are doing a reality check. For me this involves looking around and questioning what I am doing here, looking at the texture of the couch I'm sitting on.
Tip: I find using the finger through palm the best Reality Check here, it's subtle enough to do in public and it doesn't tend affect stability like the nose plug does for me.
A note on awareness: I believe awareness techniques depend on your natural dream type, some people have dreams similar to real life and therefore awareness techniques can help to distinguish the differences between these similar situations, in that case All Day Awareness and Random (Sporadic) Awareness are also handy, paying more attention to your surroundings makes the chance of hightend awareness in dreams increase. If you are like me who has crazy non lucids, then perhaps awareness techniques aren't for you, they don't really work for me, but I'd definitely give them a try.
Remember: You do reality checks because you have questioned what is going on in a dream, hightened awareness.[/spoiler]

Bed time, half an hour before bed, relax and chill. You can go over in your head the fact that you are going to have a lucid dream, what you will do.
There is two different ways you can preform WBTB, natural and alarm, recently I've had more success with natural and it allows multiple attempts per night.
Natural Method - Your mantra also includes "I will realise when I wake up" or something similar
Alarm Method - Set your alarm for 4.5 or 6 hours after bed (or your prefered time).
MILD Before Bed - In bed close your eyes and picture a theme of the dream that will make you lucid. For example I use a open river, the first time I achieved this there was a big D in the middle of my imaginary lake, in the dream I was at the swimming pool. The second time it worked I was at a dock and I saw the water andrealised I was dreaming. Do this for about 5 - 15 mintues, you can use the autosuggestion mantra "I'm Dreaming" to help this.
Sleep- The awareness techniques, reality checks in the day and the MILD you have just done could carry over into into the dreams you are having.
Wake Back to Bed - Your alarm goes off and you wake up, get up and make yourself feel comfortable, go to the toilet if you want and have a drink.
WBTB MILDs - This is where the technique really kicks in, if you do a MILD just before you are about to have a dream it is much more effective in passing over. Do the mantra again, but try to drift off while doing it. This is how I had one of my first lucid dreams, I came across it by failing a WILD in which I was attempting to visualise a dream, I gave up and went to sleep to go on to having a lucid. So do the same as before, visualise whist doing a mantra.



Notes: I know I haven't gone on about Dream Control, it's because this is aimed to have your first lucid.
I haven't gone into the WILD or DEILD techniques because they are so different and I feel that this method applies to more people.
Credit goes to Puffin for creating the Sparodic Awareness Technique which I mentioned above. As well as the creators of the MILD technique.
Hope it works, please comment to give feedback and testimonials.

Visualisation, at first I thought I sucked at it, but don't worry everyones interpretation of the same thing is different. A better word for the process is conceptualisation, imagining what it would look like.