The purpose of lucid dreaming is to be identify a dream as such while it's happening. In order for this to happen, during the dream, you must be aware of what is happening at the present moment. All Night Awareness seeks incubate this lucid mindset by maintaining it during the entire night.
What to do
The technique of All Night Awareness is simple. During the entire night, dreaming or not, remain aware of what you are sensing or what is happening at the present moment. Watch what you are seeing, hear what you're hearing, or feel what you're feeling. You can focus on one sense or you could alternate between senses.
You can also remain aware of what is happening in your mind as long as you remain in the present moment. Just keep from focusing on the future or the past. For example, if you choose to count sheep, don't start thinking about when the dream is going to start or whether you're going to become lucid or not. Focus on the present.
Examples of what you can focus on:
- What you see with your eyes closed
- The ticking of a clock
- The feeling of your body
- Your breathing
- Something that you're imagining
- hypnagogia
- Any sort of meditation
As you can see, there are many possible things to focus on in the present moment. Finding the best thing for you to focus on is a matter of trial and error. When finding out what to focus on, your first priority should be falling asleep. You can't lucid dream if you don't fall asleep! You next priority is how this effects your dreaming. When trying out different things, notice how each thing affects your dream awareness. With all of this in mind, try to choose the best one.
Bringing it together
This can often cause false awakenings, so upon waking up, be sure to do a reality check upon waking up. Speaking of reality checks, being in the present moment during a dream won't guarantee lucidity unless the concept of dreaming comes across your mind in some way. Many times something in the dream will remind you of dreaming which will trigger lucidity. With experience, this will come naturally.
The most difficult part of all of this is that this can get boring and there will often be an urge to redirect your attention to something more interesting that is not related to what's happening at the present moment. This temptation must be avoided because when you fall to it, you're practicing non-lucidity, the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.
This technique practices the same principles as All Day Awareness and SSILD, but in a more efficient and direct way.