Lucid dreaming: what it is and how to have a lucid dream

What is a lucid dream?

In most dreams you take whatever happens at face value. You fly, you chat with someone you haven't seen in years, you wander through a house that keeps rearranging itself, and none of it strikes you as odd. In a lucid dream, at some point you think "this is a dream", and the dream goes on. You're still asleep, but part of your mind has woken up to what's happening.

Lucidity comes in degrees. Sometimes it's a flicker that lasts a few seconds before you wake or get swept back into the story. Other times it's clear and steady: you can remember your waking life, decide where to go, or change something in the scene. Plenty of people have had at least one spontaneous lucid dream, often during a nightmare or just before waking.

Lucid dreams usually happen in REM sleep, the stage in which dreaming is at its most vivid and which grows longer toward morning. That's why several of the techniques below make use of the last few hours of the night.

Who studied it

For a long time lucid dreaming was treated as a curiosity nobody could verify. How could you tell that someone was aware inside a dream if they could only report it after waking? The answer turned out to be simple. During REM sleep nearly all the body's muscles are relaxed, but the eyes are still free to move.

In April 1975 the British psychologist Keith Hearne asked Alan Worsley, an experienced lucid dreamer, to signal the moment he realized he was dreaming by moving his eyes left and right several times, a pattern agreed in advance. The sleep-lab recordings showed those signals right in the middle of REM sleep: the first message ever sent from inside a dream. Hearne presented the work in his 1978 doctoral thesis at the University of Liverpool. Working independently, Stephen LaBerge ran similar experiments at Stanford University in the early 1980s and published them in scientific journals.

LaBerge went on to spend much of his career on the subject. He developed training techniques such as MILD, founded the Lucidity Institute and wrote popular books, including Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming with Howard Rheingold. Other labs have taken up the research since, and lucid dreaming is now studied as a genuine state of sleep, though plenty of questions remain open.

Step 1: a dream journal and your dream signs

It all starts with remembering. If you barely recall your dreams, it's hard to notice when you're in one. Keep your dream journal by the bed and, as soon as you wake, before you move much or reach for your phone, write down whatever you can, even a single image or a feeling. Over the days, dream recall usually gets better.

After a couple of weeks, read back through your notes and look for what repeats. Those are your dream signs: things that happen often when you dream and hardly ever when you're awake. Knowing them gives you something concrete to watch for, and the next time one appears it can be the clue that makes you think "I'm dreaming".

• Situations: running late, looking for a toilet, being back at your old school.
• People: someone who has died, or someone you haven't seen for ages.
• Impossible things: flying, breathing underwater, a door that opens onto another city.
• Things that don't work: lights that won't switch on, a phone that won't dial, words that keep changing.

Step 2: reality checks

A reality check is a small test to find out whether you're awake or dreaming. The idea is to make it a daytime habit so that sooner or later you do it inside a dream as well. What matters isn't the gesture so much as the attitude: really asking the question and looking around you, rather than going through the motions.

Do them several times a day, especially when something feels off or when one of your dream signs crops up. It helps to do two checks back to back, because a single one can fool you.

• Read some text or look at a clock, glance away, then look again. In dreams, letters and numbers tend to shift.
• Pinch your nose shut and try to breathe through it. If air still flows, you're probably dreaming.
• Look closely at your hands: in dreams they often look strange or have the wrong number of fingers.
• Ask yourself how you got where you are. In a dream, the route there rarely makes sense.

Step 3: MILD, the intention technique

MILD stands for mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. LaBerge developed it, and it relies on prospective memory, the kind you use to remember to do something later on. You practice it as you fall back asleep, ideally right after waking from a dream.

• When you wake from a dream, go back over it calmly until you remember it well.
• Repeat a clear phrase to yourself, such as: "Next time I'm dreaming, I'll recognize that I'm dreaming."
• Picture yourself back in that same dream and, at a specific moment, noticing a dream sign and becoming lucid.
• Hold that intention and that image until you drift off. If your mind wanders, bring it back without getting cross with yourself.

Step 4: WBTB, wake back to bed

Wake back to bed means waking yourself on purpose toward the end of the night, when REM periods are longest, staying up for a while and then going back to sleep. Combined with MILD, it's one of the most widely recommended techniques.

• Set an alarm for about five or six hours after you go to bed.
• Get up gently and stay awake for somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour: read about lucid dreaming or go over your journal. Steer clear of bright screens.
• Go back to bed and practice MILD as you fall asleep.
• Only do this on a few nights a week, when you can still get enough sleep.

How to stay lucid

It's very common for the excitement of realizing you're dreaming to wake you straight up, or for the scene to blur and fall apart. Don't be discouraged: it happens to nearly everyone at first. These are a few things many people use to stay in the dream.

• Stay calm. Breathe, and don't let the thrill carry you off: look around first.
• Rub your hands together in the dream. Paying attention to the dream body's sensations tends to steady the scene.
• Spin around on the spot if the dream starts to fade. LaBerge described this as a way to prolong the dream or move into a new scene.
• Touch things, look closely at nearby details, or say out loud that you want more clarity.

What to do in a lucid dream

You don't need a grand plan. The first few times, it's enough to look, touch and enjoy the clarity. With practice, some people use lucid dreams to fly, to explore, to rehearse something that makes them nervous, or simply to be curious about how the mind builds an entire world.

They can help with nightmares too. Knowing you're dreaming sometimes takes the sting out of fear: you can stop, turn to face whatever is chasing you, or ask it what it wants. If you have frequent nightmares, this may be one more tool, but it's not a substitute for help from a professional.

It's worth being realistic, though: you're never fully in control. Dreams have a logic of their own, and often the most interesting part is what the dream shows you once you stop steering.

When not to practice

Lucid dreaming techniques touch something delicate, which is your rest. Waking in the middle of the night or falling asleep with strong intent can break up your sleep, and sleeping well matters more than having a lucid dream.

• If you have insomnia or another sleep problem, talk to a health professional first.
• If you're short on sleep or going through a very tiring patch, leave wake back to bed for later.
• If you have, or have had, certain mental-health conditions, such as episodes of dissociation or psychosis, check with a professional who can support you before you start.
• If the practice is making you anxious or wary of going to sleep, take a break.

Be patient: results vary

Some people have their first lucid dream within days; others need weeks or months. Some have them often, others only now and then. It's not a contest, and it doesn't prove anything about you. Keep your journal, pick one or two techniques, and give it time.

Even if lucidity takes a while to arrive, the journey tends to leave you with something worthwhile: you remember more of your dreams and get to know them better. That alone makes it worth the effort.