Having completed the 10 day workshop in Lucid dreaming, I can summarise techniques we explored :
Morning sessions woudl recap any lucid dream experiences amongst our international group of 20 explorers. This did not involve dream analysis as we are interested in heightening our awareness for dream state signifiers – prompts to get Lucid and to avoid near misses. This also involved ‘reality checking’ when something in our waking life could be a dream sign ( curious, naieve, surreal, unusual, flashing(!) or interacted with). Sounds rather basic, but it helps to open your mind in waking consciousness to all these potential opportunities to question “am I dreaming?”, if you want to maintain this mindstate in sleep.
Reality Testing Technique
As the name suggests, the Reality Testing Technique simply involves trying to determine whether you are awake or dreaming by examining the world around you to determine if it is real. There are essentially two components to this technique: being attentive to the world around you and watching for dream signs, and performing routine reality checks during the day. The idea is pretty simple: if you’re able to determine that something you’ve witnessed simply cannot be possible, then you are probably dreaming.
The first thing you should do is train yourself to be on the alert for dream signs during the waking hours, as you need to bring yourself into the habit of questioning the world around you and looking for anything out of the ordinary. This reconditioning of your acceptance of the world around you will hopefully not be constrained within the waking hours alone, but should follow you into the dream world as well. Thus, if you start scrutinising the world while awake, you’ll probably begin the same practice while asleep. Whenever something strange (or slightly out of the ordinary) happens, don’t simply dismiss it. Stop and really think about what happened and decide whether or not it was possible. Obviously the answer must be “yes” if you’re awake, but again the idea is to get in the habit of questioning the world around you so that you’ll do so while dreaming.
Dream journaling
Dream diary journaling also very useful, even when recall was low, we could score it 0-6 and frequency, time of awakening, somatic value, sensory detail, connectedness and so on – Ill add one of our dream rating forms here.
Preparation / Interruption
1. MILD – Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams
2. WILD – Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams
3. Napping
4. The 61 Point relaxation Technique
5. Hemisync CD of binaural beats or meditative soundscapes
6. Tibettan Budhism – Dream Yoga
The WILD process can be broken into five distinct phases:
Preparation, Awakening, Relaxation, Transition, Stabilisation
This link will take you to more information about these
Vitamins
Herbs and vitamin B6* can be utilised in dream recall experiments, as they assist with production of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter useful for memory and focus.
Nightlogs
We have forms to assist with evaluating the dream – here are 2 PDFs to view :
