Train Your Brain for Lucid Dreams, Have More Luck With WILDs

**Sivason** · 03-05-2012 10:06 AM

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.

**fOrceez** · 03-05-2012 11:00 AM

Hey- that's me!

**lilmacky8abug** · 03-05-2012 12:50 PM

I used to play with HH while fully awake all the time when I was little. I used to form shapes with those lights (like a rocking chair) and have them fly around my room. I don't really have the ability anymore but it's nice to hear someone bringing it up now

**Linkzelda** · 03-05-2012 03:58 PM

Thanks for the tip sivason. Just last night, when I was trying to do a WILD after 20 minutes of WBTB, when I closed my eyes, I saw a black void behind my eyes, and then everything started to get more fluid, as if I was watching a tiny part of outerspace (with the white dots and everything).

Will try this out when I do WILDs, since this seems would help testing if I'm in the dream state or not by feeling my dream body more (my WILDs usually end up with vibrations that end or me being pulled into the dream state and still resting on my bed, so I am often afraid to open my waking eyes most of the time and end up being non-lucid out of that fear).

**fOrceez** · 03-05-2012 07:29 PM

So for this method of looking at the colours behind your eyelids, what if I don't see colours and only lights? I've mucked around with it before and it's gotten me one (intentional lucid) and it was a very quick transition. Most of my WILDs occur before I even hit SP. Also, are your eyes moving while trying to focus on these lights and colours?

**Ctharlhie** · 03-05-2012 07:37 PM

Originally Posted by fOrceez

So for this method of looking at the colours behind your eyelids, what if I don't see colours and only lights? I've mucked around with it before and it's gotten me one (intentional lucid) and it was a very quick transition. Most of my WILDs occur before I even hit SP. Also, are your eyes moving while trying to focus on these lights and colours?

Phosphenes are superimposed on your vision, you can't move your eyes to look at different parts of your field of vision because the phosphenes will move with your eyes.

**fOrceez** · 03-05-2012 07:46 PM

Oh, I never knew the name for it, thanks! Will do some reading on

**Sivason** · 03-05-2012 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by fOrceez

So for this method of looking at the colours behind your eyelids, what if I don't see colours and only lights? I've mucked around with it before and it's gotten me one (intentional lucid) and it was a very quick transition. Most of my WILDs occur before I even hit SP. Also, are your eyes moving while trying to focus on these lights and colours?

If you don't see colors, but you can see something like light, start there. The concept is of course to develop these internalized dream senses. I assume every person will start with being better at one thing than another. If seeing color is difficult, but seeing light is easier you could skip color for now and work on making the lights form a circle and so on. When that portion of your brain is sitmulated to develop its self, all other HH manipulations will be easier. Maybe you work on it for a week and can make some basic shapes or whatever, then go back to color and see if you have developed enough skill to easily start that trick.
I use these tricks as to enter WILDs. After I reach SP I start to create the beginning of a dream whether my brain is ready or not. Commonly I hit SP then uses my tactile sense to create a feeling of my arm moving. Then I use visual skills to create two intersecting glowing lines with a thick end to represent looking down at my arm and hand. I try to sincronise both senses, so that I get a low grade lucid dream of my moving my arm and watching it. After that is easy, I develop the hand a little and recreate the experience of moving my hand and making basic jestures and can see this in low definition and really feel like I am in a weak LD. If I do this as a WBTB with at least 5 hours sleep, I have amazing luck with my WILDs. I don't like bragging, so just 1 sentence on it (I have had and journaled 20 LDs in 14 days.) Usually at this point I relax and watch for a minute and my brain is happy enough to start a basic LD such as vague images of a room or forest and me having a poorly defined dream body I can explore with. I start my lucid experience now, and every minute I am in the lucid the details will improve, so that after 2 or 3 minutes I am in a full blown LD.

Eyes moving? The natural tendency at first is to have your eyes react, but that is something you will overcome with time. The eyes actually have no function in this exercise at all. Eventually you can even switch you prespective such as feel like you are looking at things behind you. No harm if your eyes do move, but it is just a matter of your brain finally realizing these impulses are not coming from your eyes.

**Sivason** · 03-05-2012 11:16 PM

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Phosphenes are superimposed on your vision, you can't move your eyes to look at different parts of your field of vision because the phosphenes will move with your eyes.

That is not wrong at first. For instance if you look at a light bulb for about 30 seconds before shuting off the light you will see an image of the light bulb and it will move around with your eyes. That is not a bad way to get a feel for the experience. It will slowly fade and mutate in a blurry spot. That is the kind of thing Ctharlhie is describing. Try looking at the light, and then turn it off, but now as you watch the image try to warp it into a shape. That is not a bad mental exercise. However, the method I am talking about would work equally as well in someone who's eyes had been removed. If you get good at it, as I mentioned above the eyes may stay still, but you can shift your prespective. I even play with attempting to have a 360 feild of vision. That is still a little beyond me, but I get close.

**espsika** · 03-07-2012 05:34 AM

When i close my eyes and try looking at my forehead, what i see is blink of light (3 blinks at most) after which nothing happens. I don't do this more than a minute though.

**Sivason** · 03-07-2012 06:23 AM

Don't focus your eyes on a point. Try to forget about your eyes. Being in a dark room helps. It may take awhile the first few times to really start seeing the color flecks and spots.

**ebullere** · 03-09-2012 09:34 AM

I've been using something like this method for a while. When I close my eyes, it doesn't take long for blots of color to swirl around in my vision. Their primary color is bluish-purple for me. Indigo. This hypnotizes me into dreaming sleep. I don't think it's for a rods-and-cones type reason, though. For me, it's about distracting my mind enough to fall asleep while still maintaining a fragile hold on awareness.

**Sivason** · 03-09-2012 11:33 PM

Originally Posted by ebullere

I've been using something like this method for a while. When I close my eyes, it doesn't take long for blots of color to swirl around in my vision. Their primary color is bluish-purple for me. Indigo. This hypnotizes me into dreaming sleep. I don't think it's for a rods-and-cones type reason, though. For me, it's about distracting my mind enough to fall asleep while still maintaining a fragile hold on awareness.

That is the best kind as far as I am concerned. People can learn to control the stuff imprinted on their eye, but it is better if the colors are 100% created by the method you are talking about, which is from the brain, not the eye.

**Marlowe** · 03-10-2012 01:37 AM

When I'm trying to create a new color or object, how is the best way of going about it? Just be thinking about it, or seeing it in your mind's eye?

**Sivason** · 03-10-2012 05:52 AM

Originally Posted by Marlowe

When I'm trying to create a new color or object, how is the best way of going about it? Just be thinking about it, or seeing it in your mind's eye?

When you first start you need to try to make up mental tricks that help you picture in your minds eye or imagination the color or shape. I used tricks like day dreaming about
colorful scenes or objects. If I wanted green I may picture emeralds of a field of mown grass. Then when I was ready for shapes I would daydream, while passively watching for anything to appear, I would daydream I was looking at a clock face or a ball or the moon, while expecting the shape of a circle to appear. At first the circle would just be a blob but the sides would try to round out, then eventually a round blob, later a image of a circle but so vague I thought maybe it is not really there,,,and eventually, after a few weeks for your brain to remodel and expand in the dream portion, a perfect round image of light floating and trying to swirl and dissolve.
Now for exercise you can try to get a specific shape of a specific color. A green triangle, day dream about a christmas tree. A yellow circle, day dream about the sun,, and so on.
This exercise should be given no less than 3 weeks of time, because when you exercise a new part of the brain it takes at least two weeks for the brain to re-wire the neurons. Make up your own methods as you go. You are developing a new skill and as you practice your brain becomes wired for this. In the end you will not need to daydream or try at all, your brain will have learned to show any basic image you desire.
Here is an example of how vivid and controlled you can become once the re-wiring is done. After about 2 years or however long it takes, you can close your eye in a classroom or at work, and in less than 1 minute create a clear glowing triangle or circle of yellow on a red background and switch back and forth with other shapes and colors. This takes time, at that point three or four combinations will be pretty easy, but not everything will work without much effort.
In the end, say 10 years of practice, you can close your eyes and instanly create a clear glowing image of a yellow triangle point down, over a blue triangle point up, on a red background, with vivid colors and well defined images. After 20+ years I can do even weirder stuff with little to no effort. You may get frustrated if nothing happens the first week, but after the second week it should start becoming pretty intense.

**cytotoxicT** · 03-14-2012 08:00 AM

So I have kind of a funny story....

I tried this technique the night after the thread was started, and I found it quite difficult. I had noticed speckles a million times previously but had trouble seeing them on command. I tried it like 3 more times since, as I was going to bed, and I could get some white flares every once and while. Tonight I was hanging out in my garage with a bunch of people. We smoked a few bowls and decided to kill all the lights and listen to music in the dark. We put on Dark Side of the Moon (cliche, I know) and I closed my eyes. It was crazy how much easier it was to see and interact with the images.

It usually started with a background of light specks with a dark spot where my eyes were focused. I would move my eyes a bit and the pattern would dance for awhile. I could change color hues fairly easily. The pattern would slowly evolve into something more concrete, like scrolling bars or waves. I even got some 3D effects. It was a blast! Eventually, it would calm back down.

I generally used my eyes to initiate a pattern and then take the back seat. I didn't know if that was a good idea since your eyes move during REM. It seemed like a start. I'll keep working on it until I can get past that. But all in all, this seems like a nice meditation technique. I felt very focused and recovered afterward. I highly (pun) recommend trying this with music; it is quite the experience.

On a side note, Terrapin Station....also fantastic.

**hermine_hesse** · 03-14-2012 01:14 PM

I tried the visual technique for the first time yesterday and had some interesting effects. I have been having a bit of a lucid dry spell, I haven't had more than a semi-lucid in over a month, but was actually able to LD last night, using the technique as a DILD.

I tried the visual technique first while taking an afternoon nap. I noticed I don't really have colors, but instead coalescing patterns made of greenish light energy. As I focused more, I was surprised to see a bright rainbow dot appear. I focus on this and more started to flicker in and out. Soon after this my girlfriend arrived home and woke me up from my nap.

As I fell asleep at night, I practiced this technique again. I do a WBTB every two hours to record my dreams from each sleep cycle, and would do this every time I fell back asleep. After several times of doing this, I find myself in a non-lucid dream.

In my dream, I am lying in bed, watching the colors in the back of my eyelids. I am surprised to realize I can create an arm and hand made of light like Sivason describes with ease. Movement also comes naturally, and I simply step out of my body and start forming a dream around me. At that point I know it is a dream and become fully lucid!

Thanks for posting this, Sivason!

**Ctharlhie** · 03-14-2012 05:18 PM

I have experimented with this kind of thing a few times in the past, one time I felt like my field of vision was expanding behind my closed lids, leading almost to a sense of vertigo. It was weird but awesome.

**Sageous** · 03-14-2012 06:54 PM

Sivason:

Thank you for taking the time to describe and answer questions about this excellent technique. Since vIsualization is a core aspect of dreaming and LD'ing, I've always wondered why it, much less techniques that develop it, are so rarely discussed here.

I've been using a technique similar to yours for years, though I'm really bad at it -- maybe I'll shift over to your geometric shape generation during that "quiet time" before sleep, and see if that, and much time, will desire my remarkably stubborn neurons!

Thanks again for sharing!