Dream Control and Lucid Dreaming Skills

Dream Incubation: Goal is to dream of specific, targeted content

*for more on dream hygiene and incubation, read about and participate in the collective dreaming artistic experiment: Dreaming the Phoenix.

Ask yourself: what do I want to dream about?
Whatever that answer is, make it a part of your life. If it's already a part of your life, create another way to channel what you want to dream about

Ex: I want to dream about the sphinx. I’ll start journaling about the sphinx before I go to bed. I will start incorporating the sphinx into my drawing and doodles. I’ll seek out books, TV, art, etc. that have depictions of the sphinx. I will try to think about the sphinx periodically throughout the day.

Tell yourself that you WILL have a dream about your topic
If you happen to become lucid in a dream, turn your dream into one about your topic, by conjuring it, or asking a character about it

Inducing a Lucid Dream

1. Set at least five alarms, each approximately one hour apart (or however long you feel it takes you to fall asleep)

2.Go to sleep

3. When an alarm goes off, stay awake for at least ten minutes, and at most twenty minutes

4. Go back to sleep

5. It is likely that during one of the times you go back to sleep after waking up you will have a lucid dream

*For more techniques developed by others, look up Finger Induced Lucid Dreaming (FILD) and Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD)

Maintaining Lucidity in a Dream:

Just because a lucid dream has been achieved, does not mean prolonged lucidity is guaranteed. Becoming too lucid will result in fully waking up or wakefulness inebriation. Allowing the focus that maintains a lucid state to slip away will result in no longer being lucid in the dream.

Grounding Techniques: Keep you focus on the dream world.

- Have as many "points of contact" as you can with the dream world. This means filling all of your senses with the dream.

- Eat something

- Smell the air

- Stomp on the ground

- Yell out your name, Yell out "I am Lucid!"

- Talk to a dream character

- Pay attention to your thoughts, keep them organized and focused

- If you feel like you are waking up, let go of this focus briefly (it will come very easily) and then resume the grounding techniques

Note: Grounding techniques take time to build up, at first it will seem difficult to find the balance, but if you keep doing it, it will get easier. Also, no matter how skilled you are, it is seemingly impossible to induce and maintain lucidity in every dream, for the whole dream; use your lucid time wisely!

Conjuring:

The most useful skill once you are able to maintain lucidity. A.K.A "willing things into existence", conjuring applies to objects, dreamscapes, living creatures, and quite literally anything you could imagine. An important aspect to note about conjuring in dreams is that you will not be able to specifically "design" anything. You brain is a "filling in the gaps" machine, so whatever pops up is what your brain assumed. Think of the things you conjure (as well as the dream itself) as your brain's own creative artwork.

To Conjure an Object:

Simply will it into existence. It will likely be helpful to perform some kind of motion that signifies the intention. Because of common associations with magic and books and T.V, mimicking a magic spell being cast is likely to work to create an object out of thin air.

To Conjure a Dreamscape:

This is significantly more difficult than conjuring a single object, but works the same way: Just will it to exist. The new dreamscape conjured will likely be quite different from the one you had in mind because there are many aspects to an entire environment that your brain will assume. One tip is to conjure a partial new dreamscape by conjuring big objects to fill the space. For example, a mountain, a building that you go inside, or changing the color of the sky or surrounding objects.

To Conjure a Living Creature:

Perhaps the most difficult and messy thing to conjure is something that is alive. To create a living creature, you must make sure all of it is created. Start by picturing footprints on the ground, whether that is human footprints, a snail trail, or a hopping bird print, imagine how this being would interact with the ground that already exists. If you are conjuring something in the air or in water, imagine how the water or air moves when the being moves within it. While doing this, you will start to see the footprint/water/air moving. When you notice this, conjure the being as you would any object, but make sure you imagine it from the footprint/bottom up. This will require more focus than just conjuring an object. Once the creature is existing, it will start moving and living on its own.

A small caution: With any dream content, there is nightmare content risk. If you are just beginning to practice conjuring living creatures, you might encounter some creations as not fully formed, or not fully alive. While this is true for conjuring objects as well, the risk for "disturbing" content is higher when dealing with living things. Remember: In your lucid dream, you are in control. If you conjured it into existence, then you can take it out of existence as well.

Interacting with Dream Characters:

While there is no correct way to interact with the people and other animals in your own dream, here are some tips for pleasant and productive interactions.

- Keep in mind how you interact with the people and animals in your waking life. How you dream characters act and respond to you will most often be a reflection of waking life interactions.

- If you are trying to get information from a dream character, keep it simple. If you are attempting to remember your interactions when you wake up, it will only be possible if you keep the information under or at five to seven pieces of information. If you are not attempting to remember any interactions, it will still be helpful to not get too complicated for risk of waking yourself up. If you feel yourself waking up, immediately start practicing the grounding techniques stated above.

- For a multitude of reasons, there might be hostile characters. If you sense any hostility, or anyone that feels "off" to you, simply stay away and put distance between yourself and that character. Leaving the situation before it develops is the best way to avoid unpleasant or scary interactions.

Waking yourself up:

This is an essential tool in the toolbox of dream skills. Maybe you are having a nightmare, maybe you sense the mood shifting to one you don't like, or maybe you are simply tired and done for now. While this technique is especially malleable and may differ from person to person, there are two main ways of going about ending your dream, and fully waking up.

- Becoming too awake - Part of the grounding technique for keeping the mental balance of lucid dreaming is keeping focused on the dream. To wake up, simply start thinking about your physical body and your waking life. Think about what tasks you have to do when you wake up, and this time, these thoughts should get as complicated as possible. You will begin to feel yourself fading out of the dream. When you do, mentally lean into this feeling, and very soon you will be awake.

- Shocking your system - If you have ever experienced being shocked awake as you were falling asleep because all of a sudden it felt like you were tripping or falling, then you know what its like to wake yourself up by shocking your system. The basic principle behind this is that if your body thinks you are in danger or dying, then it will give you a surge of cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, which will inevitably wake you up. Ways to achieve this while lucid dreaming are:

- Jumping off something suddenly or allowing yourself to fall to the ground

- Submerging your head in water and taking a deep breath (this might not work for everyone as you may find that you can breathe under water)

- Although it sounds morbid, actually "dying" in any way will in most cases wake you up

A final note on all techniques mentioned:

The specifics mentioned here are what I've found to work best for me, and any of these techniques could be altered to fit you. If you already have your own techniques that work for you, you don't have to fix what isn't broken. The reason it is useful to read this information is to get you started on developing the skills for yourself. Also, if after learning these techniques you attempt any of them, it will be more likely that they will work because I have just told you they will, and the placebo affect still works even if you know it's a placebo!