Have you ever realized that you're dreaming in the middle of a dream? If so, you've had a lucid dream before! While lucid you can actually control your dream and do all kinds of fun and impossible things like fly around, use superpowers, and explore strange dream locations.

I discovered lucid dreaming many years ago while exploring the web. I joined communities and connected with others interested in it, and I've made many friends that are close to this very day.

I thought I'd share a bit about lucid dreaming here since it means so much to me!

Is This Real?

Lucid dreaming is often lumped together with a lot of spiritual/supernatural things like astral projection, out of body experiences, crystals, shared dreaming, etc. However, unlike those other things, Lucid Dreaming has actually been scientifically proven to exist.

As far as the science goes, Lucid Dreaming is not some magical thing. It's just realizing one is dreaming and being able to leverage that knowledge to influence our experience while asleep. Some people choose to find spritual meaning in their lucid and non-lucid dreams, and it's totally fine to do so, but I do want to emphasize that sleep science is real, and from the scientific perspective lucid dreaming is a known and studied thing!

How 2 Lucid Dream

This is not going to be a definitive guide on how to lucid dream, but I can definitely give you some tips to get started. :)

I will say that lucid dreaming does take some amount of effort. You have to take it seriously like you would with any new skill you're learning. So keep that in mind!

Step 1: Improve Your Dream Recall

Before you can reliably have a lucid dream, you need to improve your dream recall. What's the point in getting lucid if you cannot remember it? Focusing on dream recall also helps you get in a lucid mindset and can help you recognize patterns in your dreams that can help you get lucid.

To improve your recall, you have to keep a dream journal. Whenever you wake up, write down the dreams you had that night. Seriously. Even if you can only write down a few words, writing down anything will help you remember more dreams every night.

You should find that if you keep at this, you'll start remembering your dreams in more vivid detail more frequently. Not only will this short-term dream recall improve, but you'll also find that with a dream journal you should be able to remember dreams over a longer time period too. There are dreams I can still remember from over a decade ago because I wrote them down all those years ago!

Step 2: Reality Check!

Once you can start remembering your dreams, you want to start developing the habit of doing reality checks frequently. A reality check is something you can do to prove whether you are awake or in a dream right now.

Not to get too solipsistic, but how do you know you're not in a dream right now? You might think Surely I'm awake right now... I remember waking up this morning and doing all sorts of things! But how do you know those aren't part of the dream too? I've had plenty of dreams where I had false memories of things that happened earlier! So how do you know you're awake right now?

This is where reality checks come in. Dreams tend to be pretty unstable and based on our brains' assumptions and biases. We can take advantage of this by exploiting things that tend to break down or not work in dreams to test whether or not we are awake. This is one of the main ways to achieve lucidity in dreams; performing a reality check in a dream and realizing you're dreaming!

Here are some common reality checks to do:

• Pinch your nose and see if you can breathe through it - In dreams we tend to be able to breathe even when we shouldn't be able to, probably because our sleeping body can still breathe just fine. This is one of the most common reality checks to do.
• Close one eye and see if you can see your nose - The brain usually filters out our nose while we're out and about in the world... so you may find that in dreams it just isn't there!
• Count how many fingers are on your hand - You know how AI-generated images are bad at rendering hands? Well the dreaming brain is similar. Check your hands and see how many fingers are on each hand... you may find some extra or missing ones in your dreams!
• Check the time, look away, and then check again - Dreams are unstable and things like clocks don't tend to work properly. A lot of things tend to change when we look away and then look back at them, and clocks tend to be especially unstable in dreams. Look out for completely nonsensical times too!
• Try to read text closely - Text is also pretty unstable in dreams (...and AI slop images). Study text closely to see if it make sense, and try to see if it changes if you read it multiple times.

This is not a definitive list, but these are my favorites to try! Some people have developed their own unique reality checks based on patterns that exist in their dreams, but these ones are pretty standard. I tend to do all of these in a sequence at once if possible just to really make sure I'm awake/dreaming.

You want to make it a regular habit to do these. After a while, you may start doing them in your dreams. That's the goal!

My protip for reality checking is to go into them expecting them to show you're dreaming. Dreams are based on expectations, so if you pinch your nose and expect to not be able to breathe each time... you may find that if you do it in your dreams you won't be able to breathe there either!

A lot of the effectiveness in reality checking comes from the actual mindset itself. I take the whole "question whether I am awake or dreaming" thing pretty seriously. It can feel a bit silly to question reality when I remember waking up this morning... but you have to remember that the point is to activate the same mindset translates over to my dreams. And I tend to be pretty dumb in my dreams so I can't be subtle. :P

Step 3: ??? ...Profit?

That's about all you need to know to learn the basics of lucid dreaming! There's so much I've skipped here, but I find that these basics are some of the best things to focus on when learning how to lucid dream. I see a lot people get distracted by all the other lucid dreaming jargon and techniques when this is all you really need to know to lucid dream.

Most lucid dreams I've had come from the Dream Journaling + Reality Checking combo. It's a really reliable way to get them. So go on, have some fun dreams!

Can you do anything in a lucid dream?

You can do anything your mind can think of! You do need to worry about losing lucidity though. It's easy to get sucked into the dream's plot and forget that you're dreaming. So it can be difficult to do more complex things

...Can you even do... "18+ things" in lucid dreams???

... *sigh* yes you can. But here's some advice: it can be difficult to do and I promise you it's usually better while awake than it is while asleep.

Is lucid dreaming like that movie Inception?

no.

Lucid Dreaming Linkz

A site I've always loved that remains unchanged since I first discovered it over 15 years ago is the Lucid Crossroads! It's a wonderfully charming website that portrays a world you can try to venture to once you become lucid to help you stabilize your lucidity. I've never tried going to the lucid crossroads myself, but maybe I'll find my way there eventually...

The LD4all guide is another charming web classic! This guide was started in the 1990's and it's a really good lucid dreaming resource. I've been a member of the LD4all forums for many years at this point. <3

More coming soon?

I hope you enjoyed this little page on Lucid Dreaming! Perhaps I'll add more to it eventually or expand it into its own section? Anyways, see you in the dreamworld!