Thread: Any practices prior to going to sleep that would increase the chance of lucid dreams?

Just wondering if there are any basic steps before going to bed that I can take to increase my probability of experiencing lucid dreams. Any dietary ideas or supplements? Or perhaps other "rituals?" I don't have time for any elaborate techniques at this point, with the responsibilities of college, life, etc. at this point. I have found that most of my lucid dreams occur when I wake up in the middle of the night and then struggle to fall back asleep. Once I finally do fall asleep, I usually have lucid dreams. However, I'm in a dry spell. I have not had any lucid dreams in around 1-2 months or so. ANy help would be appreciated. Thanks.

The quickest and the least tedious way that have worked for me are:

• I found visualizing the day quickly helps clear the day out from the memory consolidation process and it takes our mind off it.
  
• I visualize just walking around and engage all my senses in the visualization.
  
• Say to myself: while I'm dreaming I allow myself to look at my hands and I allow myself to become lucid. Then I let the thought go and try to fall asleep. I won't burden myself with "while I'm dreaming I will look at my hands and become lucid." - essentially by saying allow instead of will I'm not forcing myself.

These have helped me have some lucids even with my unstable sleep pattern. Even if you don't have time for dream journals, try to just do a voice recording on your smartphone of anything you can recall. It will help sharpen your dream recall even if you don't keep journals. It will become sharper if you have time to go over the recordings later and try to recall the dream.

Originally Posted by lucidbunnie

The quickest and the least tedious way that have worked for me are:

• I found visualizing the day quickly helps clear the day out from the memory consolidation process and it takes our mind off it.
  
• I visualize just walking around and engage all my senses in the visualization.
  
• Say to myself: while I'm dreaming I allow myself to look at my hands and I allow myself to become lucid. Then I let the thought go and try to fall asleep. I won't burden myself with "while I'm dreaming I will look at my hands and become lucid." - essentially by saying allow instead of will I'm not forcing myself.

These have helped me have some lucids even with my unstable sleep pattern. Even if you don't have time for dream journals, try to just do a voice recording on your smartphone of anything you can recall. It will help sharpen your dream recall even if you don't keep journals. It will become sharper if you have time to go over the recordings later and try to recall the dream.

Cool. Thanks!

Originally Posted by lucidbunnie

Say to myself: while I'm dreaming I allow myself to look at my hands and I allow myself to become lucid. Then I let the thought go and try to fall asleep. I won't burden myself with "while I'm dreaming I will look at my hands and become lucid." - essentially by saying allow instead of will I'm not forcing myself.

I like it! Nice way to frame it.

Some other things to do: review your DJ, read other people's DJs, review your dream goals, review your dream signs, (re)read selections from your favorite LDing books, do waking MILD (visualize recent dreams, and see yourself getting lucid and pursuing LD goals).

I'm on my longest dry spell to date, and this is what I'm doing to help myself gain lucidity.

I recently regained my hand-written dream journal, some people don't like it but for me it makes it feel more authentic. Apart from journaling my dreams, I find it helpful to sit up right before going to bed and write down worries or things from my day that I think might affect my dreams. This way it's like I'm doing a "reset" from my day and I prep my mind for sleep. After this, I also write down intentions for the night, as in, WBTB at 5am, or whatever. When I wake up for said WBTB, after journaling my dreams I go on to write how I'm feeling, the mantra I'll use and my specific dream goals. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but there's something about writing things down that really engages my mind.

I like my dream journal to be very visual for reviewing later or any day before bed, so I use a multi-colored pen and I use black ink for the journaling itself and blue ink for my notes.

Lucidbunnie...your suggestion about reviewing the day to clear out the normal mind consolidation intrigued me, as it seemed to actually make sense and is a relatively fun and easy practice, so I tried it. I had a lucid dream and a very vivid non-lucid. I will try this some more, as it may indeed help and certainly didnt hurt my efforts at the very least.

Lucidbunnie...your suggestion about reviewing the day to clear out the normal mind consolidation intrigued me, as it seemed to actually make sense and is a relatively fun and easy practice, so I tried it. I had a lucid dream and a very vivid non-lucid. I will try this some more, as it may indeed help and certainly didnt hurt my efforts at the very least.

Originally Posted by Rothgar

Lucidbunnie...your suggestion about reviewing the day to clear out the normal mind consolidation intrigued me, as it seemed to actually make sense and is a relatively fun and easy practice, so I tried it. I had a lucid dream and a very vivid non-lucid. I will try this some more, as it may indeed help and certainly didnt hurt my efforts at the very least.

Congrats on the lucid dream. Of course, each people are different, but I'm fairly certain it won't hurt our efforts. I have reached a stage where almost all of of my dreams are semi-lucids if not higher levels of lucididity. ^^