How to lucid dream: a step-by-step method

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The last sovereign territory. You enter through the plants, through silence, through a return to the dreams of the elders.

Short answer. A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming. It can be learned: the review by Stumbrys and colleagues (2012, 35 studies) describes it as a skill you can train. The best-studied method comes down to four habits: write down your dreams every morning, question reality during the day, wake up five hours after going to bed, then fall back asleep intending to recognise the dream (Stephen LaBerge's MILD technique). In 2017, among 169 people followed for a week, this protocol reached a 17% success rate (Aspy et al.).

What a lucid dream is, and what science has shown

In a lucid dream, you realise, in the middle of the dream, that you are dreaming. The dream goes on; you are present in it differently. Some people act as they wish; others simply watch.

For a long time, accounts of lucidity could not be checked. In 1975, at the University of Hull, Keith Hearne recorded for the first time pre-agreed eye movements sent by Alan Worsley from inside a lucid dream. At Stanford, Stephen LaBerge and his colleagues published the same demonstration in 1981: trained dreamers signalled their lucidity with a left-right sequence of eye movements, in the middle of REM sleep (LaBerge et al., 1981). In 2009, Ursula Voss measured frontal brain activity in lucid dreams closer to waking than in ordinary dreams. In 2021, four laboratories (Evanston, Paris, Osnabrück, Nijmegen) asked questions of 36 sleepers: lucid dreamers answered with their eyes or facial muscles, 29 times correctly, including simple sums (Konkoly et al., 2021).

How common is it? A meta-analysis of fifty years of research estimates that 55% of people have had at least one lucid dream in their life, and 23% have one at least once a month (Saunders et al., 2016).

The five techniques at a glance

1. The dream journal: where everything starts

The first step is remembering. A notebook and pencil by the bed; on waking, before moving, a few still seconds while an image comes back, a colour, a face. Everything goes down, even a fragment. Recall grows night after night.

The journal also shows you your dream signs: what keeps coming back for you and would be impossible or odd in waking life. A childhood home with the wrong shape, someone who has died, flying. LaBerge sorts them into four families: inner sensations, actions, forms, contexts. Reread after two or three weeks, the notebook shows the two or three signs that return most often: those are your doors.

In Aspy's international study (2020, 355 participants), good dream recall was among the strongest predictors of success.

2. Reality checks: asking whether you are dreaming

Several times a day, and whenever one of your dream signs appears, stop and ask yourself: "Am I dreaming?" Then check:

• Reread a text: in a dream, it often changes between two readings.
• Look at a clock twice: the numbers in a dream rarely stay put.
• Pinch your nose and try to breathe: in a dream, air often flows anyway.
• Look at your hands: in a dream, their shape or the number of fingers sometimes shifts.

A habit built by day ends up repeating itself at night, and a check made inside a dream can spark lucidity. On their own, reality checks have given uneven results from one study to the next (Stumbrys et al., 2012); they come into their own combined with MILD.

3. MILD: the intention to remember you are dreaming

MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) was described by Stephen LaBerge in 1980. It relies on prospective memory, the kind that makes you remember to post a letter as you walk past the postbox.

1. When you wake in the night, recall the dream you have just left and write it down.
2. Set the intention by repeating it slowly: "Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming."
3. Visualise that same dream, seeing yourself notice one of your signs and realise you are dreaming.
4. Fall back asleep with that image and intention present, until you drift off.

In both of Aspy's studies, MILD was the core technique. In 2020, a more sensory variant, SSILD (you move your attention through sight, hearing, then body sensations before falling back asleep), gave comparable results. One point matters more than any other: falling back asleep quickly. In 2017, among those who fell asleep within five minutes of MILD, nearly 46% of attempts led to a lucid dream.

4. Wake back to bed (WBTB)

The longest dreams gather in the second half of the night. Wake Back To Bed makes use of that moment.

1. Set a gentle alarm five hours after going to bed (the timing used in Aspy's studies).
2. Stay awake for a short while: write down your dream, reread your dream signs, practise MILD.
3. Go back to bed and let yourself slide into sleep.

The alarm splits the night in two. Keep it to two or three nights a week, and never before a day that needs all your alertness.

5. Entering the dream from wakefulness (WILD)

In this technique, the Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream, you pass from waking into dreaming without losing awareness. Lying still, often after waking in the night, you let the body fall asleep while keeping your attention on the images of falling asleep, which slowly become a dream setting. It is the most direct path, and the least studied.

During this passage, sounds, vibrations or the feeling of being unable to move may appear: this is sleep paralysis, described below. It comes more easily once the first four techniques feel familiar.

A first week

1. Tonight: a notebook by the bed, a simple intention before sleep.
2. Every morning: write, even one line.
3. Every day: five to ten reality checks.
4. Two or three nights in the week: alarm five hours after going to bed, MILD, back to bed.
5. At the end of the week: reread the notebook, underline your dream signs.

Once you are lucid

Staying in the dream. The first lucid moment often wakes people up with excitement. LaBerge and Rheingold (1990) suggest staying calm, rubbing your hands together or spinning around inside the dream to anchor it.

What you can do there. Watch, ask a dream character a question, stay with a fear to hear what it has to say. Lucidity is a form of attention: what you do with it is yours.

Leaving. A lucid dream ends like any other, with waking or a slide back into ordinary dreaming. To leave it, many dreamers close their dream eyes or focus on the wish to wake up.

Plants and tradition

Many peoples have linked plants to dreaming, and these plants are INFUSE's passion.

• Calea: the Chontal of Oaxaca drink or smoke it to receive divinatory dreams (Díaz, 1979). In 1986, a double-blind study measured more dream reports under Calea during a nap (Mayagoitia et al.); it did not measure lucidity. At the House, Calea awakens the Dreamer inside of us.
• Blue lotus: the sacred flower of ancient Egypt. At the House, we say her power also reaches beyond the waking state, gifting conscious and lucid dreams.
• Mugwort: renowned for its powers over dreams, a herb of prophecy and shamanic journeys, as the House says; the pillow and the light evening infusion come from 20th-century herbalists.
• Undlela Ziimlophe: the root of the "white path" of Xhosa diviners; at the House, the name speaks of the clarity and lucidity this root brings into the dream state. Among our dreamers, it gathers, with Calea, the most accounts of lucid dreams.

At INFUSE, out of 1,928 reviews left on our dream herbs, 174 describe a night: 89 speak of more vivid dreams, 26 of better recall, 16 of a lucid dream, and 26 noticed nothing. Every plant, its lineage and its precautions: our guide to the best herbs for lucid dreaming and the herbs for lucid dreaming page.

Precautions

Sleep paralysis. As you fall asleep or wake up, you may find yourself aware but unable to move, sometimes with a sense of a presence. A review of 35 studies estimates that 7.6% of the general population, 28.3% of students and 31.9% of psychiatric patients have experienced it at least once (Sharpless and Barber, 2011). The episode is usually brief and ends on its own; breathing slowly and moving a finger often helps. If it keeps returning or worries you, talk to a doctor.

Fragmented sleep. Waking on purpose in the night breaks up sleep; researchers warn about this cost when the practice becomes nightly (Vallat and Ruby, 2019). In Aspy's study (2020), nights when the technique worked did not lower sleep quality. With insomnia, night shifts or lasting fatigue, the notebook and the intention are enough, without an alarm.

Mental health conditions. Often seeking to blur the line between dream and reality can unsettle people who are vulnerable to it (Soffer-Dudek, 2020). With a psychotic, dissociative or bipolar condition, or recent trauma, hold off or talk to your doctor first. If the practice leaves you confused between what you dreamed and what you lived, stop.

Sources

• Stumbrys T., Erlacher D., Schädlich M., Schredl M. (2012). Induction of lucid dreams: a systematic review of evidence. Consciousness and Cognition 21(3):1456-1475. PMID 22841958.
• Aspy D.J., Delfabbro P., Proeve M., Mohr P. (2017). Reality testing and the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams: findings from the national Australian lucid dream induction study. Dreaming 27(3):206-231.
• Aspy D.J. (2020). Findings from the International Lucid Dream Induction Study. Frontiers in Psychology 11:1746. PMID 32765385.
• LaBerge S. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: a case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills 51:1039-1042.
• LaBerge S., Nagel L., Dement W., Zarcone V. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills 52:727-732.
• LaBerge S., Rheingold H. (1990). Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Ballantine.
• Voss U., Holzmann R., Tuin I., Hobson J.A. (2009). Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep 32(9):1191-1200. PMID 19750924.
• Konkoly K.R. et al. (2021). Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. Current Biology 31(7):1417-1427. PMID 33607035.
• Saunders D.T., Roe C.A., Smith G., Clegg H. (2016). Lucid dreaming incidence: a quality effects meta-analysis of 50 years of research. Consciousness and Cognition 43:197-215. PMID 27337287.
• Sharpless B.A., Barber J.P. (2011). Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: a systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews 15(5):311-315. PMID 21571556.
• Vallat R., Ruby P.M. (2019). Is it a good idea to cultivate lucid dreaming? Frontiers in Psychology 10:2585. PMID 31803118.
• Soffer-Dudek N. (2020). Are lucid dreams good for us? Are we asking the right question? A call for caution in lucid dream research. Frontiers in Neuroscience 13:1423. PMID 32038133.
• Mayagoitia L., Díaz J.L., Contreras C.M. (1986). Psychopharmacologic analysis of an alleged oneirogenic plant: Calea zacatechichi. J Ethnopharmacol 18:229-243. PMID 3821139.
• Díaz J.L. (1979). Ethnopharmacology and taxonomy of Mexican psychodysleptic plants. J Psychedelic Drugs 11:71-101.

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