MILD - Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams

**Zoth** · 05-16-2013 04:44 PM

Spoiler for Table of Contents:

MILD stands for Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams or "Mnemonically Induced Lucid Dream". This technique makes use of your ability to recall your intentions in the future (prospective memory), making you more likely to remember to question the dream or your intent of becoming lucid, or making a reality check. This can be done in several ways:

- By the use of mantras and reality checks;
- Visualization;
- Exercises that improve your prospective memory.

Because some people have an easier time remembering their intention than others, the time it takes to obtain a lucid dream may vary, which is why MILD tends to be such a reliable technique for some. Over time, as your prospective memory improves, you'll notice more consistent results, not only in achieving lucidity, but also in remembering actions and plans you have for your dream adventures, and even having an easier time remembering to wake up in the middle of the night if you're trying to WILD.

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Background

Dr. Steven LaBerge created this technique and wrote about it in his book, "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming." Since he first wrote about this technique lucid dreamers have developed several variations.

Preparation.

Dream Recall

Should you try to increase your chances to MILD by performing a WBTB, you want a decent recall in order to remember your last dream. The reason for this is because it's common among MILD users to visualize the last dream they had, but introducing a new element on it: lucidity. You'll want to take some time to recall your dream and imagining it with you lucid. And of course, you want to be able to remember your successful MILD!
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Reality Checking

Because the goal of a MILD might be to remember to RC in a dream, you need to be familiar with them. They are meant to help you develop the habit to do them, which will eventually make you "remember" to do one in a dream. Doing the reality check is not enough though: you want to include in it the intention of doing one while dreaming, or in the nearby future (this way, regardless of you thinking you are asleep or not, your brain will remember to do it, which is effective even if you are tricking into thinking you aren't in a dream).
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Using a Mantra for your Intention

A mantra is any word, phrase, or sentence that you repeat to yourself to help you focus on and remember your intent of becoming lucid. There are many good mantras for MILD. You should choose one that you think will work for you. You can always create your own or change one of these suggestions. Some ideas for MILD mantras include:

I will realize I am dreaming.
I am aware/I am lucid.
I question my reality.
Lucidity is my goal.

Ultimately, it's not the specific wording that will make you lucid, but it's the connection you establish with your mantra. This means that even a simple mantra like "I am aware", if clearly expressing and reminding you that you want to be "aware in a dream", can give you great results. Remember, it's all about focusing on your intention!

Making use of Visualization.

Visualization is another powerful tool to help you achieving a MILD. By recreating a scenario where you can visualize yourself while lucid and carrying on your intent of doing reality checks, questioning if you are dreaming, or even repeating your mantra, you're increasing your chances of incorporating these thoughts in your dreams. Your visualizations don't need to be at a perfect level, because just the fact that you're thinking about your intent is enough to provide results, since your brain will make use of this "memory" to remind himself later.

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Choosing a Dream Scene for Visualization

If you're practicing MILD by visualizing a past dream or a dream scenario, you should choose a dream that you remember vividly. Imagine what would have happened if you had noticed a dream sign or had wondered it was a dream and did reality checks. Another option is to imagine a dream scenario that includes you doing reality checks or a dream character telling you to perform them. Imagine what it will be like to realize you are dreaming. If you happen to wake up in the night while trying to MILD and remember a dream you just had you can use it instead. Just imagine that you are back in that dream and doing a reality check, like described above.

Improving your prospective memory

As you may have realized by now, the way of becoming lucid through MILD is by remembering to question your reality, do a reality check, among other things (some people use MILD to aid them remembering things they want to do in a dream!). This particular type of memory that allows you to remember something in the future is called prospective memory, and it's a very important aspect for every lucid dreamer, because it helps us in several techniques (not just MILD). So how can you improve it in order to increase your chances of remembering your intention of becoming lucid?

LaBerge itself mentioned a type of exercise that is not only very simple, but also provides great results by making you more focused on your task to remember something later on. We'll take a quick look at how you can perform it:

Each morning, pick 3 elements. You want them to be some what common during your usual routine, since the goal will be spotting them every time they show up, but they can range from a simple object (Example:"red car", "your watch" and "text message in your cellphone"), to an action ("drinking water", "sneezing" or even "opening a door", or a person ("your sister, your cat, your best friend"), or even a specific location ("whenever you leaving a building" or "whenever you arrive at home or school/work"). You got pretty much an infinite number of options, which will be useful later, because you want to use 3 different elements every day!
Now that you picked your 3 elements, try to focus on them for a moment. You want to really state your intention of reminding yourself to questioning your reality and doing a reality check every time you see one of them. Be confident that you will remember to perform these actions whenever you spot one of your elements during the day!
When you reach the end of the day, try to recall what happened: did you do a reality check every time you spotted them? Did you forgot? How many times did you remember them? Next day, pick another 3 elements and repeat the exercise.
At first, you may spot one of them and forget to question reality or do a reality check, but it's okay. As you practice and your prospective memory improves, you'll realize that you're able to remember your intention much easily whenever you spot one of your chosen elements. This is a great thing, because you will have more chances of remembering your goal to becoming lucid. In the same way you train yourself to remember to do a reality check or question reality during the day with this exercise, your intention of doing it in a dream will also be more easily recalled, just state it firmly and watch the result of your daily practice.

How to MILD at night.

Relax. Use whatever relaxation technique you have found works for you. Do it for 5-10 minutes, or longer if you need it.
Once you are relaxed repeat the mantra you have chosen for your intention over and over to yourself in your head. Keep your mind focused on your goal while you do this. You should repeat this mantra as long as you can, but you don't want it to keep you awake. Try to make your last thought before falling asleep be about lucid dreaming.
If you wake up during the night lay still and try to remember any dreams you have had. Write down some notes about them immediately. If you haven't had a lucid dream yet you may repeat the MILD technique if you wish.
If you sleep through the night try to remember any dreams you had before you get out of bed. Hopefully you had a MILD during the night and will remember it now.

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Visualization

You can still make use of your mantra, but at some point before falling asleep, you want to move on to the visualization step.
Call up the dream memory or imagined dream scenario you have chosen. Add to it you doing a reality check and becoming lucid. Imagine it vividly. What emotions would you feel? Although it is important to visualize vividly you don't want it to keep you awake. If you can't fall asleep as you do this, visualize for a few minutes and then go back to the intention mantra. Try to make sure your last thought before falling asleep is about lucid dreaming.
If you wake up during the night lay still and try to remember any dreams you have had. Write down some notes about them immediately. If you haven't had a lucid dream yet you may repeat the MILD technique if you wish. Then visualize yourself in those dreams while being lucid, questioning your state or doing a reality check.

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Speeding up the process.

For even better chances that you will have a lucid dream you can also repeat mantra during the day when you have a chance, or even schedule a few occasions to perform visualization. The prospective memory exercise mentioned above will also help you taking notice of your improvements and be overall more focused on your intention of becoming lucid.
If the visualization always makes you too awake to fall asleep do it first, then do your mantra as you fall asleep.
If your mind starts to drift as you fall asleep and keeping up the mantra or visualization wakes you up it is okay. You just want your last thought to be about lucid dreaming.

Other Useful Links.

◦MILD - Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams - GestaltAlteration
Trying out MILD? This is how you become skilled at it. - Zoth

**Zoth** · 05-16-2013 04:46 PM

Please discuss this Dreamviews recommended MILD tutorial here in this thread. Please do not start new threads.

**xXxArtistxXx** · 05-21-2013 09:06 PM

Cool.

hmm... about how long would it take for someone to sucessfully MILD?

**Zoth** · 05-21-2013 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by xXxArtistxXx

Cool.

hmm... about how long would it take for someone to sucessfully MILD?

Occurrence of a lucid dream cannot be predicted like that. Some people take a few days, others take weeks. Even if you have better prospective memory than average, remember that your memory is conditioned to some degree, so it's not as easy to "guess" when lucidity will come

**xXxArtistxXx** · 05-21-2013 10:46 PM

okay, if i was going to bed relaxed, closed my eyes, and repeated in my mind "i am dreaming" and then fell asleep
do you think i will become lucid? what do you think are the chances??

and if i repeat that mantra in my head, will it keep me awake or will i fall asleep? ._.

**Sageous** · 05-21-2013 10:47 PM

The tutorial looks good, Zoth!

The only thing I would have added is the long-forgotten bit of trivia that MILD is the only actual technique, with WILD and DILD being descriptions of conscious events, and not techniques at all ... but that may just be me barking from a very lonely field.

I hope this helps both the profile and use of MILD, as its aspects really do represent the core of LD induction.

**gab** · 05-22-2013 02:21 AM

Originally Posted by Sageous

The only thing I would have added is the long-forgotten bit of trivia that MILD is the only actual technique, with WILD and DILD being descriptions of conscious events, and not techniques at all ... but that may just be me barking from a very lonely field.

Well, we decided to make these tutorials as short as possible. So I imagine some stuff got left out, for the sake of brevity. They are ment to get people started. We hope, that once a person gets into it and starts having LDs, he/she will look into it some more and discover all the nuances.

**Sageous** · 05-22-2013 02:35 AM

^^ Understood, and good point.

Very nice, BTW, to see you guys putting such effort into the basics; that stuff is so important!

**Xvaiuer** · 05-22-2013 02:48 AM

Originally Posted by xXxArtistxXx

and if i repeat that mantra in my head, will it keep me awake or will i fall asleep? ._.

If you're repeating that in your head, it may keep you awake if you're focusing on it a ton. Don't do it whenever you're first going to bed and not tired, wait until you feel relaxed and are well on your way to going to sleep, so that way it won't keep you awake.

**Zoth** · 05-22-2013 04:23 PM

what do you think are the chances??

Impossible to be determined by anyone

Lucid dreaming is a lot about uncertainty, which is in my opinion what makes it so exciting. You just have to keep going, and eventually...a lucid will show up!

**ringoyam** · 05-23-2013 07:26 AM

awesome tutorial, should help me out a ton thanks

**VashtaNerada** · 07-29-2013 04:15 PM

With this method I had 3 lucid dreams, thanks!

**gab** · 07-30-2013 12:35 AM

Zoth would be proud of you, good job, VashtaNerada.

**13WAR08T** · 01-06-2014 09:46 AM

great tutorial

I will try it a little differently tonight

**HemaL2** · 02-22-2014 12:43 AM

That's actually a way. Just hope you have one naturally.

**dopexxxxxisaiah** · 05-17-2015 04:06 AM

I've tried doing MILD but I haven't had much results I just keep falling asleep after repeating my mantra for a while. Any feedback?

**Allan** · 08-06-2015 04:32 AM

Those are all very interesting techniques. I have been practicing, with varying degrees of success, using a mind palace technique which seems to be giving me fairly consistent results. I would recommend it to anyone who's having difficulty in creative visualization, the system is designed to help to picture yourself being there.

**sallybrarian** · 08-12-2015 05:39 PM

@dopexxxxxisaiah
A bit late on the reply...I have had MILD help me probably 3-4 times now (out of my 6 total LD). During my wake back to bed after 3 REM cycles (about 4-5 hrs of sleep for me) I practice the MILD with a previous dream either from waking up for my WBTB or even a dream from another night that I revisit in my dream journal. Before I got to bed for the evening I kick in that prospective memory with the really strong intention that I will be aware in my dreams. Reality checks haven't helped me a ton yet, I'm usually just mindful of feelings of frustration/anger/etc and then I'm lucid.
The bit about visualizing. Not everyone is good at visualizing so I guess I do more like "play pretend" where I reenact the dream, I'm in it, I feel the excitement of recognizing a discrepancy, and also I always have a goal lined up so I play through achieving that goal. Even if you haven't tried MILD a lot, practicing in full during the day and not a high pressure time like right before bed can be helpful. Before fully learning MILD I had 2 LD in one year (kind of depressing). Since fully understanding it a few months ago I've had 4 LD (basically one a month) which is a lot better

One day I hope it will be more like 1 per week. Don't give up hope!!

**LucidUnivers** · 02-16-2016 03:34 PM

I've recently uploaded an article about the MILD method, which in my opinion is the best technique for beginners, After our last lesson about reality checks it’s about time to jump to setting a lucid dream intention by using the MILD-method. This technique was created by dr. Stephen LaBerge of the Lucidity Institute.

This is a simple technique for beginning lucid dreamers, it uses a simple form of self hypnosis. How do you bring the MILD to practice? Well first of all you’ll need a decent dream recall, you can learn how to improve your dream recall in one of my previous lessons. Other than this you have to perform reality checks to reach the best results.

If your dream recall is good and you perform enough reality checks every day, you can inmediately skip to the last 2 steps, which are lucid affirmations and dream visualization. Tonight when you’re lying in your bed about to go to sleep, go trough some affirmations, like: “I will have a lucid dream tonight.” or “The next scene will be a dream.” Close your eyes and repeat one of these or make up your own sentence, but you really have to mean this, put real feeling into your phrase while shouting it in your head.

Once you’re drifting to sleep, this feeling will be pretty obvious to detect, you’ll start to lucidwander into a deeper state of relaxation, you can continue with the fourth and final step. In this final step we’ll start visualizing the desired dream, you can use a dream you recently had or you can concoct a location and situation. Imagine walking around, feel the sensations of your surroundings and search for a dream sign. A dream sign is anything that might make you question your reality, this can be a person or something that happens. Once you have found a dream sign you can perform a reality check and conclude you are in fact dreaming, even tough you are not dreaming, you’re just manipulating your hypnagogia.

Hypnagogia is visual content crafted behind your closed eyelids when you’re close to the dream state, just continue exploring your daydream environment and eventually fall asleep. If you fall asleep while you were exploring the dream scene you created in your mind, your last thoughts were about lucid dreaming & that’s exactly what we’d like to accomplish. You can also have an alarm wake you up after 4.5-6 hours after you went to bed and perform the MILD-technique again, you’ll fall directly into REM-sleep (this is the sleep state in which you dream) and this way your MILD-attempt can turn into a WILD.

READ FURTHER ON SKILLWEB.BE

**Elaineylane** · 04-26-2016 08:45 PM

For me I think its always better when you simplify what you are doing. Here's my technique. When you see something with color & a moving part of some kind, let's say a fan. I say out loud, "Black fan spins" & then I use a visualization in my head of the fan spinning after I look at it. It helps you notice the object itself, the color & it's motion. If it's a Stop light. I'd say "Stop light is Green which means go, Yellow means slow down & red means stop. You would be surprised about how many things you can apply a motion to in some way. This for me was a very useful tool from the very first day. Another good technique is to envision you flying somewhere. Close your eyes & think of some place you go very often. For me I use my husbands job. I used to work there too so I envision myself flying from my house all the way into his work area. Street by street, house by house (or at least the ones that stand out to you), over stop lights, past stop signs, through doors. Anything that's in your way, envision how you go through it or over it. Did you open the door of your house before you left? or Did you fly through it effortlessly. Make it fun, not like a chore or you won't want to do it again. Good luck, I hope that helps. I recommend doing that last one right before you go to bed with whatever else you are using for techniques. It actually relaxes you.

**ALEKSANDR** · 05-15-2018 08:59 AM

Prospective memory is a memory of intentions and planned actions in the future.
Thus, the prospective memory associated with the event is distinguished, and the prospective memory associated with the time.
The scheme of training this memory is as follows: "if I meet the stimulus X, I will do the action Y".
Here, this MILD is presented as follows:
1. Get ready for remembering sleep
2. Remember your dream
3. Concentrate on your intentions: do not forget, in a dream realize that you are sleeping.
Tell yourself: "I want to remember that I sleep after I fall asleep."
4. Imagine yourself aware of the state of sleep from which you just woke up, but now you understand that you are asleep.
5. Repeat
What will be the incentive for "X" here? Maybe a dream that has reappeared or some kind of sign of it. For example, flight?
Then the formula will look like this: If I dream a flight, then I will regain consciousness.
Or if I dream a flight, then I realize myself in a dream.

**MisakaMikoto** · 05-20-2018 02:07 AM

Originally Posted by ALEKSANDR

Prospective memory is a memory of intentions and planned actions in the future.
Thus, the prospective memory associated with the event is distinguished, and the prospective memory associated with the time.
The scheme of training this memory is as follows: "if I meet the stimulus X, I will do the action Y".
Here, this MILD is presented as follows:
1. Get ready for remembering sleep
2. Remember your dream
3. Concentrate on your intentions: do not forget, in a dream realize that you are sleeping.
Tell yourself: "I want to remember that I sleep after I fall asleep."
4. Imagine yourself aware of the state of sleep from which you just woke up, but now you understand that you are asleep.
5. Repeat
What will be the incentive for "X" here? Maybe a dream that has reappeared or some kind of sign of it. For example, flight?
Then the formula will look like this: If I dream a flight, then I will regain consciousness.
Or if I dream a flight, then I realize myself in a dream.

That's exactly what I myself did!
Traditional MILD never worked for me.
What worked for me was specific stimulus and action, just like you said!

Mantra I use is "Next time I see someone I will remember to do RC"