Is Lucid Dreaming Merely a Matter of Hitting Snooze?
Scientifically-backed techniques to enable conscious awareness while dreaming
In your dreams, you raise an army of the dead, raze cities to the ground, and then, growing weary of the ethereal domain of gods, the ouroboros of creation and destruction, you sate your more earthly pleasures.
Regrettably, you’re only along for the ride, and to add insult to injury, you’re likely to forget your nighttime exploits mere seconds after the sound of your alarm rips you from sleep’s sweet embrace. If only you were aware you were dreaming, then you’d be free to explore your surroundings and tweak them for maximum satisfaction. In short, you’d enjoy dreaming so much more if you were lucid.
Prevalence and propensity
You may already be a part of the approximately 55% of people who have experienced a lucid dream at some stage in their life. Given the appropriate guidance, under the right conditions, and with ample practice, you’ll be able to count yourself among the one-in-five people fortunate enough to experience lucid dreaming on a regular basis.
Perhaps you have a head start, being adept at mindful meditation, which, like lucid dreaming, requires the maintenance of a specific mental state—a mixture of detachment and simultaneous self-awareness. Long-term meditators report more frequent lucid dreaming as compared with the general population.
If you’re a gamer, the spatial and immersion skills you’ve developed will put you in good stead. Out of all subgroups investigated by Saunders and colleagues (2016), frequent video game players reported the highest prevalence of lucid dreaming (85%). After all, who else spends their days navigating virtual worlds?
A delicate balance
Lucid dreaming requires self-reflection, detachment, and a cognitive style characterised by double-dissociation—the ability to be “actor and observer simultaneously”. It’s a perfect union of the goal-directed, linear conscious mind and the freewheeling, unconstrained subconscious. When we are lucid, we simultaneously inhabit the dreaming and waking states; dream weavers and unravellers.
Neural correlates of lucid dreaming
Lucidity occurs mostly during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, at times of increased frontoparietal activation.
These regions of the brain are involved in higher-order cognition. Higher-order cognition refers to our ability to think flexibly and abstractly and plan the complex steps for goal-directed actions while exercising self-control and not losing sight of constraints, social and otherwise.
Resumed executive functioning puts you back in the driver’s seat. In particular, activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) allows for metacognition and insight during the dream state and is therefore essential for lucid dreaming.
Perhaps in the near future, we’ll be able to effect particular emotions and states of consciousness by creating a real-life Penfield Mood Organ. However, attempts to apply transcranial direct current stimulation to the DLPFC in order to induce lucid dreaming have thus far yielded poor results.
Fortunately, there are several ways to train yourself to achieve a lucid dream state while actively dreaming or on the cusp of sleep. Before attempting these techniques, first, you must become adept at recalling your dreams.
Keep a dream diary to improve recall
Neurobiological evidence suggests the process of encoding and recalling episodic memories is similar for dreams and real-world events. Likely, there is no especial barrier to recalling one’s dreams. Rather, it’s the oppressive rush of to-dos and workaday worries which flush all recollection of dreams from our minds.
Therefore, budding lucid dreamer, your new habit must be that you record your impressions of last night’s dream immediately after waking. Make sure to capture the events, characters, and emotions felt. Keeping a dream diary has been shown to be an effective way to improve dream recall.
Techniques for inducing lucid dreams
There are two types of cognitive* lucid dream induction methods, depending on whether you are awake or dreaming in the moments prior. I’ll cover three specific techniques and discuss supplementation with Galantamine.
DILD Dream induced lucid dreaming (Mnemonic; Reality testing)
WILD Wake induced lucid dreaming (Wake Back to Bed)
*By cognitive, I mean requiring no external stimulation or specialised equipment (e.g. light stimulation).
In your MILDest dreams
MILD stands for Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams, a scientifically verified method of dream-induced lucidity. This technique involves forming an intention to become lucid after a ‘dream sign’ alerts you that you’re inside a dream.
This technique requires a mindful focus on the following visualisation and recitation until you are claimed by sleep:
Recall last night’s dream (if this is not possible, select the last dream you can recall).
Identify an anomaly within that dream. This anomaly could be an absurdity such as a spinning top’s imperviousness to gravitational torque or an autobiographical contradiction such as your ring finger being bereft of its usual wedding band. Or, you know, things indefinitely less subtle than Inception’s “dream totems”.
Visualise a return to that dream with one key difference—this time, you’ll recognise this anomaly as a sign that you’re dreaming, regain consciousness inside your dream, and succeed in accomplishing a predetermined goal.
Here’s the mnemonic part: as you’re visualising “switching on” inside your dream, mentally recite: “The next time I’m dreaming, I want to remember to recognise that I’m dreaming”. (Feel free to substitute with less of a metaphorical mouthful.)
Reality Testing
Reality testing is another dream-induced technique, a sort of pared-down MILD without any bedtime recitation or visualisation rituals. This technique requires you to monitor your unique ‘dream signs’ while awake, cultivating a habit of reality testing that will hopefully persist into the dream state.
An example of a reality test is to see if you can inhale through your mouth while it’s closed. If you’re able to take a breath, you’re peacefully asleep and drawing in oxygen regardless of your dream self’s imagined pursed lips. Another reality test is the re-reading test; text tends to shift and alter in dream books.
I feel the glaring flaw in DILD techniques is that they require the integration of autobiographical memories (reality tests, goals and intentions), which are often only available after one has achieved a lucid dream state. However, if the double-dissociation theory holds, these techniques may be effective because they help us zero in on some nascent level of awareness lurking just beneath the surface.
Why not test if you’re dreaming right now? Ask someone to pinch you. If you can’t much feel it, it will be because your brain typically mutes self-generated sensations (including simulated ones while asleep). However, it knows to amplify self-generated pleasure.
If no one is on hand to pinch you, jump off the top floor of a skyscraper. If your dream narrative continues after impact, or you’re jolted awake before hitting the pavement, you’ll know it wasn’t real. (I got this idea after watching the witch trial scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) [Author’s note: Knowledge is Power, France is Bacon takes no responsibility for any damages, injuries, or death that could arise as a result of following this advice.]
Wake Back to Bed
They—and by “they” I mean judgemental killjoys—say hitting snooze is a bad habit. However, falling back asleep after a brief period of wakefulness dramatically increases the chances of a lucid dream. People who make habitual use of their alarm clock’s snooze function are more likely to experience lucid dreams.
The diagram below illustrates that the duration of REM sleep increases during the course of the night. Therefore, awakening toward the tail end of the sleep phase cycle means you’ll enter REM sleep more quickly than usual.
In the Wake Back to Bed method, inducing a lucid dream is merely a matter of good timing. The process is simple: sleep for five to six hours, wake up briefly, and then slip back into REM sleep. It’s recommended you remain awake for ten minutes to an hour. You’ll have to play around with the sleep latency which works best for you.
This technique requires conscious awareness while simultaneously relaxing and going with the flow. The lucid dreaming state is a liminal experience, so you must strike a delicate balance between a dreamy and analytical mindset, making WILD techniques trickier to master for novice oneironauts.
However, an advantage of Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) is that you can combine it with MILD. Upon waking up from five to six hours of sleep, begin reciting your mnemonic/mantra (“I will realise I’m dreaming”). With your intentions fresh in your mind, you’ll hopefully increase your chances of retaining a degree of proactiveness and self-awareness in the bout of REM sleep which follows.
[Author’s note: It will take some experimentation to figure out which technique or combination of techniques works best for you. For example, I’ve had great success with WBTB—not to mention spontaneous lucid dreaming—and no luck at all with mnemonic induction or reality testing.]
Pulling out the big guns with Galantamine
If you’d like to give your brain a boost, there is the option of supplementation. Galantamine is a nootropic (mental performance enhancer) that improves dream recall and increases the frequency and complexity of lucid dreams. It also lengthens the duration of REM sleep, theoretically enabling more time spent inside a lucid dream.
REM sleep is characterised by the abundance of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Galantamine inhibits the reuptake of acetylcholine, leading to the effects mentioned above and greater mental clarity when awake.
Galantamine can trigger depressive episodes if acting on an imbalance of the cholinergic and serotonergic systems. If you suffer from depression, you may want to steer clear. This nootropic also tends to trap one in long, hyperrealistic dreams—you may find this disquieting ad exhausting.
At a dosage of 4mg or 8mg, side effects are experienced by approximately one-in-eight. Typically these are confined to mild discomfort: “mild gastrointestinal upset, insomnia and next-day fatigue”. At these doses, 27% and 42% of participants, respectively, reported experiencing lucidity compared with 14% of the placebo control group.
“…the integrated method of taking galantamine in the last third of the night with at least 30 minutes of sleep interruption and with an appropriately focused mental set is one of the most effective methods for inducing lucid dreams available today”
Stabilising lucid dreams
Your lucid dream may dissolve and dissipate if you become too excited—so keep your cool. Don’t fixate on control, either. Maintain detachment from the outcome. If you tip the scales too far in the direction of “actor” rather than “observer”, you’ll soon find yourself awake and fantasising hard behind closed eyelids. Don’t let the conscious mind dominate. Interact with your subconscious; don't attempt to overwrite all of its offerings.
Based on personal experience, looking at (or thinking of looking at) your hands grounds you in the dream world when it starts to fizzle out. (Some people have luck with spinning instead.)
Don’t treat dream characters as though you’re their god—these shards and splitters of your mind are self-possessed. If their lack of cooperation displeases you, or if you dislike the environs your subconscious generated, ask it to try again. Wait patiently, with your ardent desires and expectations kept at the back of your mind where your subconscious can rifle through them for inspiration.
In the dream world, there are infinite do-overs; entropy can be reversed, and everything is mutable. So go with the flow and see what opportunities present themselves. Happy dreaming!
Further depths to plumb
This article was just the tippy top of the iceberg. Keep turning in for more monographs on sleep-related (but hopefully not soporific!) topics. If you missed A Factor Model of Dreams Reveals Universal Themes or You Should Be Sleeping Naked, check those out.
Lastly, please consider buyingmeacoffee or becoming a paid subscriber.
Recording dreams is an excellent start to dream interpretation and analysis. Lucid dreams for you!