Opening statement

Lucid dreaming is an awesome spiritual sport. One that I have been practicing and studying over the last nine years. For readers who are new to lucid dreaming: although in most dreams we are not aware of the fact that we are dreaming, a remarkable exception occurs in “lucid dreams” (the term is derived from Van Eeden, 1913) in which you as a dreamer attain awareness that you are in a dream while dreaming (LaBerge, 2000, 2007).

In this remarkable state, one can think and reason clearly, is able to access waking life memory and can intentionally act upon self-reflection while experiencing it all within a dreamworld that is often not distinguishable from the “real world” (Green, 1968; Kahan et al., 1997). Moreover, dream awareness in the dream state allows for deliberate dream control by which a lucid dreamer can manipulate or redirect the dream to anything he or she desires.

Phenomenologically viewed as being awake while dreaming, lucid dreams are physiologically defined as a form of dissociation in which one part of the brain is in the waking state while the other is in the dreaming state (Hobson, Pace-Schott & Stickgold, 2000; Voss, Holzmann, Tuin, & Hobson, 2009). Increasingly more researchers claim that lucid dreams can be used as test cases for theories of dreaming to investigate the nature of consciousness and/in dreaming (Hobson, Kahn, & Pace-Schott, 1994; Hobson, 2009; LaBerge, 2000).

The following technique is my contribution, in spirit and love of Lucidipedia.com and all of its friends, in gratitude of LD4all.com and the Lucidity Institute for introducing me to lucid dreaming, to make lucid dreaming more accessible to people around the world interested in exploring consciousness and/in dreaming. May we confront our darkest dreamscapes with the light of lucidity.

Lucid daydreaming technique (LDD) outline:
By daytime, notice a daydream (a vivid, spontaneous mind-wandering) while you are still in the actual daydream. Then, continue the daydream by responding IN the daydream scene that you have just become lucid (i.e. “This is a daydream!”, “I am daydreaming now”, etc.). Act out any desired lucid behavior in the daydream (by visualization), any activity that you like to engage in for tonight’s probable lucid dreams. Continue this lucid daydream until your desired activity is completed. Then stop the daydream. LDD shows also to be effective when applying WBTB: during the brief interruption of sleep, do as much LDD as you can before returning to sleep.

Please find below my hypothesized validation for this original lucid dream induction technique. The LDD technique has not been scientifically researched (yet?). I have been devising and practicing LDD myself the last few years, enjoying a significant increase of lucid dream frequency. We share LDD with our community to gather learning experiences of those who are willing and interested to give it a try. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AND SPREAD THE WORD FOR OTHERS TO TRY-OUT AND REPORT. ENJOY!

• Attend Tim’s online workshops to fully master LDD to try-out this original new technique to induce lucid dreams. Will be scheduled soon. Lucidipedia’s online classes

Learning lucid dreaming

Though lucid dreaming has only been scientifically researched since the early 1980′s, the state and practice of “conscious dreaming” was already known since the time of Aristotle around 400 B.C.. Valuable and pioneering lucid dream research conducted by Dr. Stephen LaBerge of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University has generated practical means by which today anyone can learn lucid dreaming, provided that the person is motivated and committed enough to the task (LaBerge, 1980a; LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000; LaBerge & Levitan, 1995; see also LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990).

Over the years, many other lucid dream authors, researchers and lucid dream enthusiasts have contributed by either promoting or elaborating on the key principles that LaBerge and his fellow researchers have proposed and studied to induce and control lucid dreams (e.g. Harary & Weintraub, 1989; Brooks & Vogelsong, 1999; Waggoner, 2009).

Traditional approaches

Currently there exist three strands of lucid dream induction approaches: a) auto-suggestion (i.e. reaffirming clear and strong intention to want to lucid dream), b) prospective remembering (i.e. predetermined cue-based recall to know that one is dreaming), and c) supplements (e.g. chemical, binaural beats, dream masks). LaBerge and Rheingold (1990) argue that the approach of prospective remembering yields the most promising and reliable results for inducing lucid dreams (see LaBerge, 1980a,b; LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000; LaBerge & Levitan, 1995).

Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)

Prospective remembering (in contrast to retrospective memory), specializes in recalling intentions that should be executed at the time of recognizing a predetermined signal sometime in the future (Einstein et al. 2005; LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). In context of lucid dreaming, this power of recognition is aimed towards recognizing typical anomalies or “incongruences” of the dream experience which are called ”dreamsigns” (e.g., pink flying elephant, being able to walk through walls, meeting your passed away grandmother on the streets, etc.). Once a dreamsign is recognized while dreaming, the dreamer by definition knows that he or she is in fact dreaming.

A widely known and practiced technique devised by LaBerge’s team, called Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD), employs prospective memory with directed intention to recognize future (“prospective”) dreamsigns in the dream state (LaBerge, 1980a,b; LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000; LaBerge & Levitan, 1995). LaBerge, Phillips and Levitan (1994) additionally learned that interrupting morning naps with a brief period of wakefulness makes lucidity even more likely to occur. The impact of different lengths of wakefulness were studied (i.e., varying from 10, 30 to 60 minutes) and showed that subjects were significantly more likely to have a lucid dream after 30 or 60 minutes of wakefulness rather than after 10 minutes of being awake. Applying the MILD-technique during a brief interrupted period of wakefulness in morning sleep, is currently viewed as the most effective means for inducing lucid dreams (LaBerge, 2004; LaBerge, Phillips & Levitan, 1994).

However, many still struggle…

For many practitioners however, lucid dreams are still challenging to induce, even while having acquired knowledge of these kinds of lucid dream induction approaches (Paulsson & Parker, 2006). Anyone who has taken the time to browse through just a few popular lucid dream forums on the web, knows that countless users are unable to induce lucid dreams or succeed after even months of repetitive trials.

Despite personal factors such as motivation and discipline, providing students thorough explanation of MILD and the use of napping does not seem to be enough for most to enjoy lucid dreams as frequent as they would like to (e.g. 1 lucid dream each week, opposed to just 1 each month). Chances are that you are likely to feel part of that group, aren’t you? I was a member myself as well. It took me over a year to reach beyond the average (intentionally induced) lucid dream frequency.

So I wondered, what might be the problem?

The problem of the traditional approach

Almost all popular techniques to induce lucid dreams rely on the application of prospective memory of the student to recognize ‘prospective’ dreamsigns in tonight’s dreams for becoming aware that one is in fact dreaming. The argument that prospective memory is key (and for that matter reliable) for becoming lucid seems to be well grounded and to a large extent, obvious.

An encoding-retrieval problem

Vital for succeeding in prospective remembering though, is knowing beforehand on what “cue” you need to recall something particular. This is where the phenomenon of “encoding retrieval specificity” plays an important role, to ensure consistency between the context and cue by which a prospective task is encoded (programmed, rehearsed, learned) and the context and cue by which that prospective intention will be retrieved (the actual target circumstance by which a particular action should be recalled). The idea is that prospective remembering is most successful when the encoding and retrieval contexts and cues are exactly similar.

• Imagine the following scenario in which a prospective memory task gets a lot more challenging when you, for example, are required to bring the garbage outside the next time you leave your home. You program yourself that once you step out of your front door, you will remember to bring the garbage outside as well. However once you cycle away on your bike to campus, already thinking about the remaining day, you suddenly remember that you forgot to bring the garbage outside! What happened? You left home through the back door of the house instead of through the front door (because you left your bicycle in the garage). The problem: you programmed yourself using a cue that did not occur and so you failed to accomplish the task even though you left your home.
• Or in context of lucid dreaming: imagine programming yourself to remember that you are dreaming when you meet your deceased grandmother in living person, but then actually dreaming that you see her on television rather than in person in the dream. This would most probably result in a failure of recognizing her as your target (encoded!) dreamsign, simply because she does not appear in the context as you have programmed yourself to meet her. And so you fail to become lucid. In theory of prospective memory, picking more general cues then would just be as counter-productive (distinctive and specific cues are much easily recognized).

These kinds of classical encoding-retrieval errors are very common to student lucid dreamers and very much prone to the inherent instable and highly creative nature of dreams. When we program ourselves to execute a task in prospect of a dreamsign, we perform very poorly when we are then confronted with an ambiguous dreamsign that only partly resembles the target (encoded) dreamsign or dreamsign context. And this is exactly what goes wrong with the promise of MILD. It is a classical encoding and retrieval problem.

Dream content is inherently unpredictable

Opposed to waking reality, dreams are highly instable and creative. Dreams morph smoothly from one moment to the next, introduce original dream characters and environments, often inconsistently, in most cases unpredictably.

The activation-synthesis model forwarded by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley and first published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (1977), describes a physiological model by which the dream generation process is hypothesized. Dreams appear to be governed by a subconscious neurochemical mechanism in the brain that generates seemingly random brainwaves (PGO-waves) that by itself stimulates many areas of the cortex. So doing, randomly generating dream images, emotions, auditory and other sensory experiences that will appear in the dream. As we all know, dreams are not experienced as just a compilation of random dream images and sensory experiences: dreams are whole experiences that feel quite integrated. This is because the other part of the dream generation process involves a cortical (and personal) psychological synthesis of this random brainwave activity. It is this latter part that makes our dreams truly integrated experiences. The psychological synthesis of the physiological dream stimulation, falls within the grasp of lucid dreamers to control. By expecting different outcomes in our dreams, we influence the dream synthesis process and so doing influence the way our dreams unfold, even though dreams are physiologically initiated by random (creative) brain activity. As such, the dream generation process is currently described by both physiological and psychological processes.

One could therefore conclude that any recurrent dreamsign or dream element for that matter (i.e. environments, dream characters, emotions, plots, etc.) should (to our current scientific knowledge!) be grounded in the psychological rather than the physiological ground upon which dreams are co-created in the human brain. After all, the physiological part of dreams appears to be random. Recurrence of specific dream elements would only be possible by mere chance. Which is rare (recurrent nightmares are a fascinating topic in this respect, though this might also be explained by psychological processes).

Though we occasionally see recurrent dreamsigns and recurrent themes in our dreams, most show such a large variations that one dreamsign (context included) in the first dream is not the same dreamsign in the next dream; let alone across several nights. Many times MILD does proof to be successful when we do enjoy recurrent dream elements for a few days. But they are rare. Sometimes MILD appears to be successful when we encounter highly focal dream bizarreness, but to me it often seems in these cases to be independent of recognizing any pre-determined dreamsign, as such not relying on any prospective memory other than a mere proneness for considering lucidity.

This morning’s dreamsign that you aim to recognize in tonight’s dreams (encoded), is very likely not to be anywhere close to resemble the actual prospective dreamsign in tonight’s dreams (retrieval). Also very rarely do we encounter highly focal bizarre dreamsigns in our dreams. Most “dream bizarreness” is found in silly contexts, which are very hard to notice (opposed to being able to fly or confronted with your deceased grandmother for that matter). The “trying to hold on to recurrent and bizarre dream content” approach seems to be doomed to fail before one even starts trying. As we see this reported throughout numerous lucid dream forums by many practitioners.

Incubate a specific dreamsign?

Einstein et al. (2005) propose three key recommendations for prospective cues to be effective in context of prospective remembering. In context of lucid dreaming, a dreamsign should be: a) focal, b) distinctive, and c) meaningfully related to the intended action.

It seems that LaBerge’s team was knowledgeable of MILD’s weakness and decided to explore whether a specific dreamsign could be artificially induced into the dream experience as to improve one’s chances of recognizing this specific dreamsign and so doing improve one’s chances to turn lucid. It ensures that the encoded dreamsign (in practice and encoding time) will likely to be similar to the actual dreamsign in tonight’s dreams. Their invention? An ingenious dream mask.

NovaDreamer is a computerized sleep mask produced by the Lucidity Institute that generates light signals during the night at the onset of REM, which will be incorporated by the eyes into the user’s own dream experience, contributing to more consistent, predictable and typical dreamsigns (i.e., dream events that are specifically related to light: bright sunrise, reflection of bright light, explosions with bright light, etc.). Unfortunately, too little research has been conducted to conclude that this innovative method of inducing dreamsigns is truly effective for having significantly more lucid dreams. After all, those emitting light signals do not seem to be that focally incorporated into the user’s dream experience: to such an extent that the user still has much trouble in recognizing the incorporated light signals as “hidden” dreamsign features in the dream (i.e. not focal, not distinctive enough).

Another strategy involves one of Paul Tholey’s Reality Testing: doing as much Reality Testing (i.e. questioning whether one is currently dreaming) by daytime as possible, with the aim that this might form a habit that will be “picked up” and incorporated/incubated in tonight’s dreams. Fascinating research by Nielsen et al. (2004) concerning the dream-lag effect and day-residue effect, describes what and in what time frame particular daytime experiences are reflected in tonight’s dreams. For example, if I would go fishing today, would I dream about fishing tonight? Nielsen’s team found that there actually exists a 7 to 9 day “dream-lag” by which particular daytime experiences are incorporated into tonight’s dreams. So in case of the fishing example, I would probably dream about fishing in about 7 to 9 days. Or the other way around; tonight I will dream about experiences I had about 7 or 9 days ago (though actual dream experiences are in most cases much more original and symbolic). Intriguing. No one knows yet why this lag is necessary for the dreaming brain to process/consolidate daytime experiences in memory. More importantly in context of Reality Testing and inducing lucidity, would then a day of continuos Reality Testing be incorporated in our dreams in about 7 to 9 days as well; resulting in direct lucidity? Unfortunately, it seems not. Dreams seem to be much more interested in incorporating emotionally and mentally relevant daytime experiences, rather than a mere Reality Test. Reality Tests do not seem to be prone to be “picked up” by our dreams as relevant experiences (lol). I have tried it myself, together with some friends (which I do not claim as being proof, in any case): sadly no Reality Test popped up in my dreams nor in my friends’ dreams.

A new approach to induce lucidity

Again, the argument that prospective memory is key (and for that matter reliable) for becoming lucid seems to be well grounded and to a large extent, obvious. The problem however that I have tried to propose above is that dream content is inherently unstable and to an important extent, unpredictable and inconsistent. This means that focusing on recognizing recurrent dream content is most challenging and therefore in many cases unsuccessful.

Moving from ‘content’ to ‘form’

A few years ago, this reasoning led me to consider a new way of practicing lucid dreaming. Building upon the same foundations of prospective remembering as being key for recognizing dream-like features of dreams, I came up with a small but vital twist: since dream content seems to be so inconsistent and creative, why not focus on the “form” of dreams, rather than its “contents”. I considered Reality Testing not externalized events or circumstances that seemed bizarre or dream-like (like LaBerge recommends), but to rather Reality Test the “mentation” of dreaming during daytime: daydreaming.

Rather than assigning “externalized” cues as target dreamsigns (content), I switched to assigning “internalized” cues as my target dreamsign (form). Would daydreaming show epistemological similarities with the mentation of night dreaming (if not on a physiological but psychological basis)? I reasoned that though dream content is highly variable in night dreams, its mentation in every dream is always the same, recurrent. Would “lucid” daydreaming by daytime enable me to practice recognizing the same mentation as in night dreams, so doing improving my chances of becoming lucid? Yes, it seems it did.

And so I started to devise the Lucid daydreaming technique (LDD) and have practiced and perfected it over the last years. Please read the “Considerations” chapter below for discussion.

Lucid daydreaming technique (LDD)

By daytime, notice a daydream (a vivid, spontaneous mind-wandering) while you are still in the actual daydream. Then, continue the daydream by responding IN the daydream scene that you have just become lucid (i.e. “This is a daydream!”, “I am daydreaming now”, etc.). Act out any desired lucid behavior in the daydream (by visualization), any activity that you like to engage in for tonight’s probable lucid dreams. Continue this lucid daydream until your desired activity is completed. Then stop the daydream. LDD shows also to be effective when applying WBTB: during the brief interruption of sleep, do as much LDD as you can before returning to sleep.

LDD comes close to what Tibetan Buddhists in ancient times practiced as Dream Yoga, to continuously think that everything is a dream (so doing intending to incorporate this mentality into the dream state). A quite fanatic and demanding (impossible?) task, I must admit. Rather than to continuously think that all life is a dream, LDD proposes to only Reality Test daydreams during the day, as they (might) show to be prone for being incorporated by tonight’s (or next week’s) dreams and also show similarity with the mentation of night dreams for being effective dreamsigns to recognize.

Considerations

• Self-confirmation bias: the most obvious consideration that any critical reader might have in mind is that LDD’s seemingly successful results are generated by only one person which is also the very person who has coined the technique (me). In the world of lucid dreams, expectation is a crucial factor to control for when experimenting with new techniques. But ey, you need to start somewhere, right? It means that only a proper experimental study investigating the effectiveness of LDD can make grounded claims. I would love to set up and conduct one!
• Skill bias: LDD increased my lucid dream frequency, but as being an experienced lucid dreamer and not a novice lucid dreamer.
• Conceptual validity: obviously a lot more needs to be said to make it conceptually plausible that daydreams do show epistemological similarities or other connections with night dreams.
• Idea: LDD might promote nREM lucidity, since daydreams and mind-wanderings might show more similarities in mentation with nREM (thought-like) dreaming than with night dreams [had a few, at least, to my best understanding].

References

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