The Journey Technique

The Journey Tequnige is a method presented by Daniel Love in one of his articles. As the website on which the article was posted has a store for different products, I'm going to post the article as a quote instead of a direct link to avoid any violation of the forum rules, but you cand find the original article very easy on Google. On the DV Discord server, Lang was the first one to mention this technique, then I mentioned how I was practicing this technique in a less polished form for a few years already unaware of it. Lang was the one that asked me to post about it on the forum, so down below I'm going to post the original article.

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Introduction

The Journey Technique is Daniel Love's comprehensive mindfulness technique for the induction of lucid dreaming.
The technique is primarily designed to induce a Wake Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD), but can also lead to a Dream Initiated Lucid Dream (DILD) should continued awareness become broken.
It combines multiple proven stratergies designed to address various elements required for lucidity.
Daytime practice focuses on an increasing mindfulness, observation, prospective memory, and focus. Night practice builds upon the daytime practice to aid in visualization in order to transition into a WILD.

A comprehensive video tutorial can be found here.


The Technique


​1 - Establish a journey you take on a daily basis.

During your daily life, choose a journey you take often as the focal point for this technique, ideally this should be a daily journey or commute. This must be a journey you are very familiar with.
Examples include: walking to work/school, your jogging route, walking the dog, the journey between your house and a local shop, etc.

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2 - Choose your focal points.

The next time you take this journey, pick five stable points of interest, five personal landmarks on the journey.
Examples include: a well-established plant or tree, a building, a street sign, a crack in the pavement.
I recommend a variety of different focal points, some organic and more prone to change, others solid and unlikely to change. `


3 - Familiarize yourself with your chosen focal points.
When taking this daily journey, become familiar with your chosen focal points. Get to know them well. Be vigilant in your observations.
If you notice any changes from day to day, perform a reality check.

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4 - At night, visualise your journey.

If you wake during the night, especially in a period where returning to REM is likely, allow yourself to fall back into sleep while vividly imagining your daily journey, step by step, in as much detail as possible.
Engage the same level of observation and preparedness to reality check that you would employ during your waking journey.

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5 - Observe results and record

If successful your visualization will smoothly transition into a WILD, failing that, if consciousness is broken, a DILD.
If unsuccessful, attempt this technique whenever you wake again during the night.
As always, record whatever dreams you experience upon awakening.

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Author/Inventor: Daniel Love

Skill Level: Beginner/intermediate

Lucid Dream Type: WILD (possible DILD)

Effectiveness: Medium

Sense preference suited: Visual/All

Hints & Tips: Choose a variety of focal points, each with a differing levels of stability. Plants, for example, are more prone to change than buildings. So a combination of organic and non-organic focal points are best.

Become deeply familiar with your focal points. You should develop a level of familiarity that would allow you to describe them in exquisite detail.

Perform a reality check whenever a focal point changes in any way.

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I always found it funny to do a reality check while visualizing...

So, it seems this technique integrates two things that are independent: (1) reality checking and (2) visualization. I don't think there's any need to combine them into one technique, and I guess, I don't love the combination in this technique.

If you are already "reality checking / dream checking / reverse reality checking" throughout the day, you might already be checking the consistency of your commute. I, for one, never dream about my actual commute, but I do dream about waiting for buses, so I do a check while waiting for the bus. It would be quite a surprise to see any "focal point" from my journey to work in my dreams because turns out, my psyche seems to find those kind of irrelevant, I guess.

Second thing is, it's one thing to practice reality checking in waking life, I think it's another to reality check during visualization. It's just kind of dissonant to me, the idea that I imagine "myself pinching my nose and seeing if I can breathe or not"... you can definitely imagine any result depending on your imagination and dreams can copy them. (Yes, it's part of MILD, and yes, it's not about the actual nose pinch, let's be honest, we know we're dreaming before we do any nose pinching, and if not, we're likely to miss the result). Nevertheless, if I am going to practice "checking" during a "visualisation," I prefer to simply take a silent moment to lucidly examine my state of mind. If I am visualizing, I become aware that I am visualizing. No need, to falsely imagine that you are dreaming or are in waking life (they are both false results, and non-lucid results).

All in all, cool. I liked reading this technique. It reminded me of Mental Palace techniques (visualizing a sequential path traversing rooms (which are replaced with focal points in this exercise). I'm a big fan of Mental Palace techniques, hence my interest for this technique and my response. I just don't personally feel the need for the Mental Palace to be an exact replica of a monotonous daily journey. If visualizing is useful for WILD, is it really useful to put much energy in visualizing "exquisite" details or is it not better to be more passive with the exercise? That's why I like that the path is known, it might be more effortless to visualize it. I just don't see why it would be problematic to suddenly find yourself on a beach and then under the sea during your visualization journey, and to continue to take moments of mental quiet to gain some lucidity and evaluate your state of mind.

(btw in this last example, I'm sure that's the goal of the technique, for you to be on your journey and then, suddenly, oh! you're on the beach! Check! You might be dreaming! No, no, I meant, while you're clearly still not asleep, I don't think it will be harmful to intentionally allow the mind to stray off the path, as long as you continue the practice of "checking.")

I don't know, maybe it has it's advantage of being like counting sheep... but if it must be this way, I prefer conceiving a way more fantastical journey. I don't want to re-imagine my monotonous commute every night. I'd rather walk through a familiar mental palace.

Anyway, thank you for the technique, it got me thinking a bit

Thank you for posting! I really appreciate it. :D
I also want to add the video that goes with this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GSPQ71JeCY

I hope this helps!

~Lang.

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2 - Choose your focal points.

The next time you take this journey, pick five stable points of interest, five personal landmarks on the journey.
Examples include: a well-established plant or tree, a building, a street sign, a crack in the pavement.
I recommend a variety of different focal points, some organic and more prone to change, others solid and unlikely to change. `


3 - Familiarize yourself with your chosen focal points.
When taking this daily journey, become familiar with your chosen focal points. Get to know them well. Be vigilant in your observations.
If you notice any changes from day to day, perform a reality check.

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That is pretty easy for me, I can't remember everything like in photographic memory, but if I see a certain place, I can easily recreate it, like I'm right now there, but I can't remember people, when I recreate the place people doesn't exist, if I try to force them I still can see people around, but none of them have a Face, they are all blank, animals are okey though. So in my memories people doesn't exist on Earth, is that weird?

Just as an advice, Would it be better to do first a short journey or a little trip around the block by your place? or even closer, like walking in the yard and picking every memorable detail...

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Originally Posted by michael79

but I can't remember people, when I recreate the place people doesn't exist, if I try to force them I still can see people around, but none of them have a Face, they are all blank, animals are okey though. So in my memories people doesn't exist on Earth, is that weird?

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It's probably a matter of face having lots of details. Animal faces seem simpler to us. Also, people move around a lot, so if you saw someone on your commute to work but didn't inspect their face (which you would feel creepy if you were caught doing) it's only normal you can't remember all the details. But I'm sure you can do it.

Only visualize a face (drop the rest). If it's too hard, only visualize a nose. Then, only the eyes. Then. The face. Choose a face you know. If you can't look at a picture of a face, then visualize it. You'll get there.

But like you said, short of having photographic memory, it's fine to allow our visualization attempt to drop details


On the topic of the Journey Technique, I've started to build a little paracosm for taking a walk before falling asleep and encountering dream facts and dream goals and mantras and stuff like that. It's gonna take a few days or weeks to build but I started.