Lucid dreams are amazing experiences where you can do virtually anything you can imagine! However, before you go embarking on your next big adventure or shooting off into the sky, it's important that you remember to do three things as soon as you become lucid.
This is a free video from Week 1 of my Lucid Dreaming Training Video Course. You can get the accompanying Week 1 Coursebook by subscribing to my eNewsletter.
Video transcript:
1. Stay calm
The first thing you should do is remember to stay calm, because if you get too excited this can actually cause you to wake up. This is a common issue for beginners and it's extremely frustrating when you've spent a lot of time and effort learning to have lucid dreams, you finally become lucid and then two seconds later you've woken up. So, when you become lucid, remember to stay calm – there's no urgency.
2. Do a reality test
When you become lucid, the next thing to do is to do a reality test. Not only will this help you to confirm that you really are in a dream, it'll also help to build the habit of always doing a reality test anytime you think you might be dreaming. You'll also gain valuable experience of what it's like to do reality tests in a dream, so even if you're a hundred percent sure that you're dreaming, still just take the time to do a quick reality test.
3. Stabilise the dream
Once you've done that, the third thing to do is to stabilise the dream, which can further help you to avoid waking up too early. There's a very simple technique for doing this: you simply rub your hands together. You're probably wondering, “why is he rubbing his hands like that?” The reason we do that in a dream, is that flooding your brain with sensations coming from within the dream can prevent you from becoming conscious of sensations in your physical body laying asleep in bed. This prevents awakening and basically “locks” you into the dream.
What should you do next?
Now, once you've stayed calm, done a reality test, and stabilised the dream, you can basically do anything you want. However, for the first few weeks of this course I recommend that you focus on just exploring the dream passively and keeping it going for as long as possible. Later in the course I'll teach you techniques on how to control the dream and do things like fly, change locations, manifest objects, but for now it's more important to learn how to keep them going for longer and to become more familiar with the dream environment.
What if the dream starts to fade?
Anytime that you think the dream might be fading, do the stabilization technique straight away. Usually the first sign of a fading dream is that vision starts to go first. The whole world will become dark or shadowy, maybe a little bit blurry. After that, hearing can last longer but will then go. Sensations from the body are usually the last to go, which is another reason why rubbing your hands together is a good stabilisation technique.
Now, when you do this, there are a few things that can happen and it's important that you're prepared for them. One thing that can happen, ideally, is that the dream will become more stable again and you can just continue exploring the dream that you are having.
However, another common outcome is that the dream will continue to fade while you're doing the stabilisation technique. Things can go completely dark, and unfortunately many beginners make the mistake of assuming that they've actually woken up and that they're just lying in bed embarrassing themselves by rubbing their hands together.
If you think about it though, it's virtually impossible to go from rubbing your hands in a dream to doing it whilst awake. The reason for this is that your physical body is paralysed while you are dreaming, and furthermore, your hands are probably by your side or under the pillow or tangled up in the blankets.
So, as long as you feel like you're rubbing your hands together, it basically means that you're still dreaming. Just keep on doing it. Sometimes you have to do this for 10, 20, even 30 seconds or more before a new dream starts to form, so just keep on doing it for as long as you can feel the sensation.
Now, while you're doing this, it's important to keep in mind that the next thing you experience could be a new dream – otherwise you can actually forget what's going on! This caught me out only two nights ago. I had a lucid dream that went for about four or five minutes. It started to fade, and everything went dark, so I did the stabilisation technique right away. But what happened, is I had what's called a false awakening. This is where you dream about waking up, but you're actually still dreaming.
Even though I know that you can't go from doing the stabilisation technique in a dream to doing it whilst awake, in my dream two nights ago, I actually forgot. I had a false awakening, where I woke up lying on my side doing the stabilisation technique, but I was actually still dreaming. I didn't realise what was going on and then I continued having a non-lucid dream.
Rehearse your intentions before bed
This brings me to my last point. It goes to show that even experienced lucid dreamers can have a little bit of trouble remembering their intentions and thinking clearly while they're in a lucid dream. Not always, but sometimes. So for this reason, it's really valuable to rehearse what you're going to do just before you go to bed – that way, when you do become lucid you won't have to think about it, you will just do it automatically.
What I recommend, is just before bed, take a little bit of time to practice what you're going to do when you become lucid. That you're going to stay calm, do a reality test, and then stabilise the dream. That only takes about 15 seconds, so it doesn't take a lot of time out of your day. Not only will it help you know what to do when you become lucid, it can actually directly help you have lucid dreams, because by forming this intention before bed you might find that the same intention comes up later on when you're dreaming and this can cause you to become lucid.
To make this easier for you, I've included the instructions in your Coursebook. You can have a read of that before you go to bed, or you can just simply act out the three techniques like I did just then. If you're able to remember to stay calm, do a reality test, and stabilise the dream, you will be able to maximise the length of your dreams and get the most out of the experience!
If you've enjoyed this video and if you're interested in learning how to have lucid dreams, then I invite you to check out my Lucid Dreaming Training Course. My course is based on the latest scientific research, including my own International Lucid Dream Induction Study. The course is also based on my experience of teaching people all over the world how to have lucid dreams one-on-one via Skype. I’ll teach you my best tips and tricks for learning lucid dreaming, and at the end of the course I'll show you how to make your own personalised lucid dreaming training program based on the techniques that were most effective for you. If you'd like to find out more about the course, simply visit:
Thank you for watching!