5 Step Guide to Lucid Dreaming for Beginners
[toc]In the beginning lucid dreaming is an incredibly mysterious and exciting affair. I can tell you from experience that this feeling doesn’t go away if you continue to explore deeply. Lucid dreaming is incredible in this way, it only goes deeper and deeper.
So what is the first step in the guide to lucid dreaming?
1. Improve Your Dream Recall
The first step when you want to build a house is to do what? Build a foundation. When you are building your lucid dreaming house you don’t want to start with the roof and go right into doing the induction techniques without achieving a certain proficiency in your dream recall. If you do go straight to induction techniques you could even have success early, but in my experience it is often not sustainable success. When it drops off for a bit, people have nothing to fall back on. To improve your dream recall it is very simple: buy a dream journal and write down your dreams in the morning.
2. Improve Your Prospective Memory
Prospective memory is the ability to remember something at the proper time once you have decided to do so. For example, when you have to make it to work on time in the morning but don’t have an alarm clock you decide you need to wake up at a certain time. When you wake up in the morning at that time you are using your prospective memory. When you have a strong prospective memory all the techniques of lucid dream induction become much simpler. Out of the 5 steps in this guide to lucid dreaming, this type of memory can probably be most useful in numerous other parts of your life as well as in learning to dream consciously.
3. Perform Reality Checks
Reality checks are what help you determine whether you are in waking life or the dream world. They become an integral part of a lucid dreamers arsenal, because one must know the reality they are in. There are many types of different reality checks, some work well and others simply are not worth the time. When you do these reality checks every day they move into your dreams and you naturally start to have lucid dreams.
4. Use Lucid Dreaming Induction Techniques
Once your foundation has been built, you are remembering your dreams at night, your prospective memory is strong, and you are performing reality checks, then you can move on the the crowning jewel of lucid dreaming: the induction techniques. The induction technique you choose will be the roof on your lucid
Practice makes perfect
dreaming house. The technique I recommend most for this guide to lucid dreaming for beginners is MILD. It stands for Mnemonic Induction of a Lucid Dream. This technique won’t mess up your sleep schedule, is relatively easy to perform, and often gives quick success for beginners.
5. Practice Consistently
If someone came up to me and asked “What is the single most important thing I need to know in order to have success with lucid dreaming?” I would reply in a heartbeat: practice consistently. Practice consistently! So many people just want a quick gain out of lucid dreaming. They only give it a week, 2 weeks, a month, then stop. Approach this as if you will be learning an incredibly valuable skill for the rest of your life. To have success with this valuable life-long skill, practicing consistently is the key.
