Lucid Dreaming Practice

In this practice, you'll learn foundational techniques for inducing and sustaining lucid dreams, starting with intention-setting as you fall asleep that primes your mind to recognize when you're dreaming. Adding a specific goal, such as practicing a skill or seeking insight, can further enhance the experience. A helpful daytime tool involves "state checks," where you sincerely ask, "Am I dreaming?" and using reality testing methods to critically answer the question. Building this habit prepares your mind to spot the dream state, offering a gateway to lucid dreaming's boundless potential.

Transcript

There are many,

Many different techniques that exist for inducing lucid dreams.

For having this experience of a dream in which you know you're dreaming while you're dreaming.

It's beyond the scope of this lesson to go into all the different practices that would take too long.

So I'll just start off with a couple of foundational practices that could be useful for you in having a lucid dream and remaining in the lucid dream.

The first technique is leveraging this transition from wakefulness into sleep as we pass through this open,

Flexible,

Suggestive state of mind.

We can plant a seed of intentionality as we drift off into sleep.

So we can use an incubation phrase or a suggestion related to becoming lucid.

We use this intentionality to say something like,

Tonight I become lucid in my dreams.

Tonight I will have a lucid dream.

Tonight I will recognize that I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming.

Whatever the specific wording of the phrase that we come up with,

We repeat this phrase roughly 21 times as we drift off into sleep,

Planting this seed of intention.

We do this as we pass through the first stage of sleep,

The hypnagogic,

And we may find that this can really serve us in our journey toward having lucid dreams.

We can take this intentionality one step further because it's not quite enough to just have a lucid dream.

Because if you notice that you're dreaming and then become so excited that you wake up from it immediately,

You lose out on this opportunity to actually do something and engage in some activity while in the dream state,

Which is ultimately what we're trying to do.

So you can use this intention-setting step,

This incubation phrase,

For setting an intention for what you will do while lucid in the dream.

So if you're a person who suffers from nightmares,

For example,

You could use an incubation phrase along the lines of,

Tonight I will become lucid to receive healing from my nightmares.

Tonight I will become lucid to have a healing experience.

Tonight I will become lucid to understand the source of my nightmares.

Tonight I will become lucid to provide healing energy and love to my dreaming mind.

These are all possibilities.

Again,

The phrasing is up to you,

But planting this seed of intention along with an action can really support our lucid dreaming journey.

If we were to be using lucid dreaming to practice a sport,

For example,

You could say,

I will become lucid so that I can practice Jiu Jitsu.

Or tonight I will become lucid in order to practice my sport.

This is what we call a two-part intention.

Not only setting an intention of prospective memory to remember to become lucid within the dream,

But also setting an intention for what you hope to accomplish in the dream itself.

Again,

There are many other techniques that you can engage in to induce a lucid dream.

With this one,

I'll just add that this night time practice of intention setting as you fall asleep has been said by many very well practiced Tibetan lamas to be the only thing that you need.

It's a foundational practice and principle.

So give it a shot and see how it works for you.

And to supplement this night time practice of intention setting,

I'll present a tool for the daytime as well.

One daytime practice that we can cultivate is the habit of conducting state checks during the course of the day.

Now in a state check,

We're asking ourselves a question with sincerity,

Am I dreaming?

Ask yourself that question right now,

Am I dreaming?

You may say,

Of course I'm not dreaming.

It's never been more clear to me that I'm awake.

But how do you really know?

In a dream,

You'll find that we accept so many situations as totally normal and real and we completely miss the fact that we're dreaming.

I encounter a dragon on the street corner drinking a cup of coffee.

Or I see my grandfather who's been dead for 20 plus years.

In a dream,

I see this,

Okay,

That seems normal.

We accept it,

Because our rational mind,

Our prefrontal cortex,

Is typically offline during REM sleep and dreaming.

So we can use this,

This fact that weird things tend to happen in our dreams,

And then in daily life use weird things that happen to us as a reminder to check our state,

To again ask ourselves this question,

Am I dreaming?

I live in New York City,

So this is a fantastic environment to be employing this technique.

Just this morning I saw a do not walk sign that was broken and flipped upside down.

So it looked like this pedestrian on the side of the street was walking on the ceiling or walking in the sky.

It's just a brief moment of weirdness where I can ask myself this question,

If I'm dreaming.

Or sometimes there's actually this guy who rides through a nearby park with a city trash can balanced on his head.

It's really impressive,

Actually.

And always a great opportunity for me to do a quick state check,

To ask myself this question,

Am I dreaming?

And also incorporate this question with a test.

There are many different tests you can try.

One that works for me is to look at a piece of text,

Read it,

Look away,

And look back at the text,

And if the second time the text changes,

You know you're in a dream.

As I'm recording this,

I'm looking at the time on my clock.

I look away,

I look back,

And it's still 3.

14.

Clock is the same,

So I know that I am not dreaming.

In a dream,

Your dreamy mind has a hard time replicating this sort of thing exactly how it was.

So you would notice that the time has changed,

Or you would notice that the text had changed.

Now if you build this habit and do it enough times over the course of a day,

Over several days,

Eventually something strange may happen to you.

In a dream,

You'll see that dragon and say,

Hey,

That's weird,

I don't know any dragons,

I've never seen a dragon,

Am I dreaming?

You do the state check,

And you confirm the fact that you're dreaming,

And you are now in the dream and able to engage in whatever activity and harness the infinite possibilities that exist in this lucid dream state.

Now there may not always be a piece of text that one can read,

So a few other tests and techniques that I like to use,

One is to pull one of my fingers and attempt to extend it into a really long finger,

Which is fun when that works.

You have this one long pointy finger.

Or I like to plug my nose and attempt to breathe in,

Because in a dream you can still breathe even though your nose is plugged,

It's just a dream nose,

It's not actually breathing any air.

And so you find yourself breathing with your nose plugged,

Or you can breathe underwater or in outer space because it's a dream.

In some sense,

The important part is not necessarily the particular state test that you use,

It's really the sincerity with which you ask the question,

And really critically think and ask yourself,

Am I dreaming really?

Be very curious and skeptical.

You can think back if you remember what you had for breakfast,

Or if you can remember the progression of the day,

The things that you did that led up to this moment.

If you can remember these things,

There's a good chance that you're not dreaming,

Because again,

When you are in a normal dream,

Your prefrontal cortex is offline,

So you don't tend to have access to memory and to these sequences of events.

So have fun with this.

Try not to get frustrated when inevitably it happens to all of us.

Something crazy weird happens in a dream,

You ask yourself,

Am I dreaming?

And the answer to that is,

No,

I'm not dreaming,

And you wake up and you're like,

How did I miss that?

That was such an obvious sign that I was dreaming and I totally missed it.

That is okay.

It happens to all of us,

And there will be future opportunities.

Laugh at yourself,

Have fun with it,

Enjoy it.

This is a practice that is to be cultivated over the longterm.

There will be ups and downs in your practice.

So the more that you can have a playful attitude towards it,

Have a good time with it and laugh when it doesn't work,

With a little bit of a sense of humor.

If there are people that you can share that are also interested in this topic and might relate to your frustrations,

That's always helpful in your journey as well.

Soon enough,

You will find yourself asking this question,

Am I dreaming?

And confirm the result back that you are,

In fact,

Dreaming.

And that's really where the fun and the opportunity and the potential starts.

So good luck,

And I look forward to hearing how this practice goes for you.