HOW TO HAVE MORE LUCID DREAMS

There are three main techniques that dream researchers recommend for increasing your odds of experiencing a lucid dream, which can either be used on their own or in combination

The first technique is ‘reality testing’ which involves making a regular habit during wakefulness of testing whether you are asleep or awake. For instance, several times a day you might check whether you can press the fingers of one hand through the palm of your opposite hand (a feat that is usually possible in dreamland, but obviously not while awake). This might sound odd, but the idea is that if you get into the habit of doing this while you’re awake, you’ll be more likely to try doing it while you’re dreaming, and if you ever do, you’ll realise that you’re dreaming and you’ll become lucid.

Another technique is called ‘Wake Back To Bed’ (WBTB) and involves setting an alarm for approximately two to three hours before you usually wake up. Upon waking, you then allow yourself to drift right off back to sleep, but with the renewed intention to lucid dream. The rationale here is that lucid dreaming occurs during REM sleep (the stage of sleep when narrative dreaming is most common) and so you’re waking yourself up at just the right time of night when you’re likely to be in the midst of REM sleep, and then diving right back into it with the active plan to lucid dream.

The final technique is called Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (or MILD for short), which involves repeating a mantra to yourself several times before you go to sleep, along the lines of “the next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming”. You can either try it when you first go to sleep at night , or you can combine it with WBTB in the early hours of the morning. Dave Green, the comedian turned luciddreaming artist, recommends the MILD technique: “I just repeat over and over again ‘Tonight I will have a lucid dream and create a drawing’,” he says.