On lucid dreams and how we can induce them

What are lucid dreams?

A dream becomes lucid when we recognise within the dream that we are dreaming.

In a lucid dream, clarity increases and sensory perceptions can become hyper-realistic: colours seem more intense, spatial depth more pronounced, and taste, touch or smell can also be more vivid than in everyday life.

A whole world of possibilities opens up:

You can fly through your dream world.
Change the dream through the power of thought and switch scenes.
See old acquaintances again.
Explore images that otherwise appear only in dreams.
Meditate in the dream and see where it leads.

You do not have to take anyone’s word for the existence of lucid dreams – they are well documented and have been demonstrated in sleep laboratories. The best way to find out whether you experience one yourself is through practice.

Lucid dreams are not essential on the spiritual path

First of all: lucid dreams can be an interesting tool – but they can just as easily lead you off the path.

For me, the spiritual path is the path of inner peace, and it is not about achieving special experiences. If you start collecting states, you have practised collecting, not peace.

There is also this: practising can take more energy than it gives back. Sleep is not an unlimited resource.

Even so, lucid dreams are fascinating, and they can reveal quite a lot about how our experience is constructed.

Techniques for inducing lucid dreams

My first tip: your inner attitude should combine a genuine wish to experience a lucid dream with completely letting go of all expectations and fears. Be consistent – it can take several months the first time.

SSILD (Senses Initiated Lucid Dream)

SSILD is a simple, modern technique. Lie down in bed, relax and set the intention to experience a lucid dream. It works best together with WBTB (see below).

Continually shifting attention between sight, hearing and touch attunes the senses to the dream world. What comes afterwards is crucial: fall asleep as quickly as you can. Do not stay awake, do not wait for anything, do not expect anything. CosmicIron, who developed the technique, explicitly calls wanting to stay awake the most common beginner’s mistake – lucidity usually comes later in the night, often after briefly waking up.

The SSILD cycle:

Sight: Notice what you see with your eyes closed, without straining your eyes.
Hearing: Switch to hearing. What do you notice?
Touch: Switch to feeling. What do you sense?

Repeat the cycle quickly about six times, spending only a few seconds on each sense.

Then repeat it slowly about four times, spending at least 30 seconds on each sense.

Keep expectations out of it – they are more likely to distract you from the possible experience.

I had my first experiences with SSILD combined with WBTB. The technique was developed by CosmicIron in 2011 and first published on a Chinese forum; you can find the official English tutorial on Reddit.

WBTB (Wake Back to Bed)

WBTB is one of the most effective methods. You sleep for about four to five hours, then get up and occupy yourself for roughly an hour: go for a walk, read, meditate, look through your dream journal, brush your teeth. Then you lie down again and use your lucid dreaming technique, such as SSILD.

What the research says

WBTB takes advantage of REM periods becoming longer over the course of the night: early on, they last only a few minutes; towards morning, 30 to 45 minutes or more. If you briefly get up after four to five hours and fall asleep again, you spend the second half of the night with more REM sleep – and with a brain that is more alert than usual.

This does not put you straight into a dream. In the sleep laboratory, an average of 42 minutes passed between falling asleep again and the first REM period, and in about one in seven cases there was none at all.

As for the chances of success: in studies, WBTB is almost always combined with an induction technique and is regarded more as a favourable condition than as a method in its own right. Rates vary widely – in everyday life, about 10 to 20 per cent of nights, considerably more during a laboratory night. It is the best-studied approach, but not a reliable one.

This has nothing to do with a hormone ratio you could create – I previously wrote here that WBTB produced “the right ratio of waking and sleep hormones (melatonin)”. Melatonin follows darkness; turning on a light at night actually lowers it.

Sources: Erlacher & Stumbrys (2020), Wake Up, Work on Dreams, Back to Bed and Lucid Dream, Frontiers in Psychology 11:1383 · Tan & Fan (2023), A systematic review of lucid dream induction techniques, Journal of Sleep Research 32(3)

Setting an intention

We need a strong intention if we want to experience a lucid dream. But this intention should be free of expectation and attachment. Use affirmations you put together yourself for this.

WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dream)

A WILD is a lucid dream you enter directly from the waking state. You relax and allow your body to fall asleep while you remain awake. When the first dream images appear, you shape them into a dream and enter it.

Unlike SSILD, here you consciously stay awake – and for that very reason, a note: sleep paralysis and intense, sometimes frightening images and sounds can occur on the way in. This is harmless and passes on its own, but it can be frightening in the moment. If you tend to find this unsettling, it is better to stay with SSILD.

Guiding lucid dreams

You have entered your lucid dream – congratulations. What now?

Stabilising the lucid dream

If you become too excited, the dream becomes hazy and falls apart until you wake up. So keep calming yourself.

Finding your way back in when you wake up

If you wake up unexpectedly, you can calm yourself, use the SSILD technique and fall asleep again. There is a good chance you will find yourself back in a lucid dream.

Teleporting

Use a transition together with a wish to change location. For example: “When I close my eyes and open them again, I am on the moon.” Then you close your eyes – and sometimes it works. You can just as well use a door or another transition.

Meditating in the dream

Pause in the lucid dream and meditate. Find calm, and see what happens next.