Thread: Bharmo's Workbook

I wanted to share the approach to lucid dreaming I've personally committed for the next 9 months. I might fine tune it, but will not change to any other technique. I would like to make a thread about it in the future, just in case it helps other people, but I wanted to start with a draft, so here we are.
I'm going to bulletpoint the technique and explain the function I believe it performs (I'm re-ordering it and adding a few personal touches):

0- If our dream recall is not good, we should employ techniques to improve it. Obviously, dream recall is vital for lucid dreaming. The paper I have does not go into details, I think this step is very clear, and DV has lots of resources on this respect.

1- We must set an intention to test our state when we are in situations that are characteristic of dreams, like when something surprising or improbable happens, when we experience powerful emotions, when we find ourselves in (or think about) a situation that is recurrent in our dreams. This sets an intention to question reality that will eventually carry out to our dreams, and also strengthens prospective memory.

2- This step is split in the original technique, and I also find convenient to split it in three parst:
2a- Every time we find ourselves in those situations, we should ask ourselves if we are dreaming. We further train our awareness of our state of conciousness
2b- While we ask ourselves the critical question we should imagine that everything around us, even our body, is a dream. Imagining that everything is a dream can mean IMO imagining that everything is a creation of our mind, and therefore, that everything is affecting and affected by our mind. This step makes us more familiar with the fact that while we dream everything looks perfectly real and therefore we need to be very careful when trying to assess our state.
2c- At the same time we should remember recent occurrences, and see if they are unusual or if we have memory lapses. This is a very effective RC, and trains our memory, one of the lucid dreaming fundamentals. On the other hand, steps 2b and 2c are slightly similar to Sageous' self-awareness exercise (aka RRC) There is obviously some important differences, but I believe they might be a good training (even if not as good as the RRC) for developing self-awareness.
2d- I often include some affirmation at the end of step 2 in order, to strengthen my intention. I also include step 4 here sometimes.

3- We should go to sleep thinking that we will become aware that we are dreaming while we are dreaming. We should not apply effort of will. This step adds auto-suggestion to the mix, that's why we must avoid "effort of will". As LaBerge notes if we want to apply effort then we better resort to MILD which uses prospective memory rather than suggestion.

4- We should have a goal to perform when we get lucid. Even simple goals will do. This adds an extra element of intention, and having goals is a good way to keep motivation up. I often imagine myself achieving my current goal at the end of step 2.


TL;DR:
Skills trained or tapped by this technique:
0- Dream recall
1- Intention, Prospective memory
2- Awareness, Self-awareness, Memory
3- Auto-suggestion (can be substituted by MILD)
4- Intention, Motivation