Dream stabilization

Once you are able to dream lucidly, you may find that it is difficult to stay in the dream; for example, you may wake instantly or the dream may start “fading” which is characterized by loss or degradation of any of the senses, especially vision. Alternatively, a new lucid dreamer could easily forget that they are in a dream, as a result of the shock of the sensation.

Don’t worry if you wake immediately after becoming lucid. As you gain more experience of becoming lucid, it will come as less of a shock and you’ll be less likely to wake up. Make sure you do a reality check to be sure you’re not still dreaming.

Remembering that you are dreaming will become easier as you continue to lucid dream.

You can avoid more gradual fadings by stimulating your senses. This means listening for sounds, feeling around with your hands, and paying attention to what you see and smell. The idea here is to load your senses with stimulation from the dream so that your senses cannot shift to the real world. If you close your eyes, you are removing a great deal of sensory information and might wake up. Staring at a single point can cause effectively the same problem if you stop seeing everything else in your peripheral vision, or don’t see enough movement. If you hear something loud in real life and are hearing nothing in the dream, your senses may shift to the real world, causing you to wake up.

Ideally you should be able to use the techniques below to stabilize your dream before it starts to fade (or “black out”). As always, prevention is better than treatment – and the more stable and vivid your dreams are, the more enjoyable they will be. However, if that doesn’t work you may be able to use stabilization techniques to stop the fading; the spinning technique is probably the most effective in this case.

If you still can’t stabilize your dream, you may decide to try and wake up with the aim of remembering your dream as accurately as possible while its still fresh in your mind.

 Hand rubbing

Rub your hands together and concentrate on the rubbing. You should feel the friction and the heat of your hands. If you can concentrate on the feelings that this action generates, your dream is likely to stabilize and become more vivid and detailed. You can also keep one hand on your arm while exploring the dream for a constant sense of stimulation. This technique is most effective when used in conjunction with the “Slowing it down” technique, by staring at your hands while rubbing them together.

Spinning

You spin around in your dream much as you would if you suddenly want to feel dizzy in real life. The sensation of movement is the key here to stabilizing the dream. Many people report success with this technique, but it also tends to cause a complete change of your dream scene (see Changing the dream environment below). If the dream scene disappears completely (e.g., becomes black), it is necessary to visualize the dreamscape to return to the dream.

Slowing it down

Some people like to stabilize the dream by “stopping to smell the roses” and slowly staring at a dream object until it becomes clear. The dreamer would then look around elsewhere, noticing how detailed everything is, thereby stimulating the visual portion of the dream. However, others find this can cause their lucid dream to end. If you focus on one object for too long to the exclusion of everything else, you will likely wake up or lose the dream. It works best to pay attention to everything in your vision, including your peripheral vision, not just the center of the object you’re staring at. If staring at a single object doesn’t work for you, try to let your eyes wander around instead.

Touching your dream

If you feel that your dream is too abstract and fear that it might be fading, you can prevent this by grabbing hold of a solid object in your dream and focus on how real the sensation is. A good tip is to find something you know is stuck, for instance a table nailed to the ground, and pull it with all your muscular power (no supernatural powers!), and you should feel how solid it is. The idea is that you convince yourself that the dream is solid and real — through tactile stimulation — and nothing abstract.

Regaining waking memory or skills

This is also likely to enhance your degree of lucidity. Try to remember facts from your waking life, such as your phone number, address, etc., or do some simple math. Or, start reciting the lyrics to your favorite song. Or perhaps try some sports practice you know well — this all depends on which senses / methods of thought process you tend to rely on most in your waking life.

False awakening

A couple of the users on the ld4all.com forums have had success with creating a false awakening to stabilize a dream. If the above techniques are failing and you find your dream still fading, and you really want to continue your lucid dream, do the following:

1. Expect to have a false awakening.
2. When you think you wake up, perform a reality check.

You will either have a false awakening, reality check, and then end up with an even more vivid lucid dream, or will really wake up, perform a reality check, and realize that you just woke up (bad luck!).

The most important part of this is the reality check. This is what will continue your lucid dream. You should be performing reality checks when you wake up. If you plan to induce false awakenings in order to stabilize a dream, the reality check that you perform as you wake up is as important as the one that got you lucid, if not more.

Perform every check in the book until you are positively, absolutely, and completely sure that you aren’t dreaming. A series of 10 reality checks is more likely to produce dream results in a dream, especially if you are expecting dream results. This technique is for those who are desperate!

If you have had a good experience with this technique, please go to the talk page and post your experiences, as there have not been many anecdotes of it working yet.

If you didn’t do any of these, your best option is probably to try to wake up. That way, you will remember more of the dream.

The general rule of dream-stabilization is to stimulate the senses. If you listen for sounds, feel around with your hands, and pay attention to what you see and smell, you will stimulate your senses. The idea here is to load your senses with stimulation from the dream so that your senses cannot shift to the real world. If you close your eyes, you are removing a great deal of sensory information and might wake up. Staring at a single point can cause effectively the same problem if you stop seeing everything else in your peripheral vision, or don’t see enough movement. If you hear something loud in real life and are hearing nothing in the dream, your senses may shift to the real world, causing you to wake up.

 Recovering from lost visuals

There are a few things you can try to do if you lose your vision. Most of these are less likely to help prolong your dream than the above techniques.

You can also try these if you have just woken up and are lying in your bed. You may be able to return to your dream.

Autosuggestion

You can repeat over and over a phrase similar to “I can see my dream,” or otherwise enforce in your mind that you can see a dreamscape. (See Autosuggestion)

Visualising

You can visualise the scene as it would be if you could see it. You could take this as an opportunity to change the dreamscape by visualising a different environment from the previous one in the dream. This can be made easier by spinning as you visualize. (See Changing the dream environment below)

Altering the dream

Changing the dream environment

You can change the dreamscape by visualising a different environment from the previous one in the dream. This can be made easier by spinning as you visualize. Another technique is to summon a television remote from your pocket, and then simply “change the channel”, imagining the place will change to where you want it to. Note that the more specific of a place you choose, the easier it will be to get there. If you say, “I want to be at the Superbowl,” you should choose where you want to be sitting, standing, or playing, not just that you want to be inside the stadium.

Summoning objects into your dream

Sometimes you would like something to eat with in a lucid dream, or someone to talk with. There are many ways to generate any object you choose in a lucid dream, but each method takes practice and persistence, as well as a good deal of confidence and concentration. Remember, it’s your dream, anything you want to happen will happen.

In the dream world, your expectations are as good as facts. You have probably noticed how everything you think about instantly takes form in the dream (classic example: “Uh oh, I hope there’s not a monster behind that corner” and you instantly see the monster coming at you). Use this to your advantage, and “entice” your brain to create what you want.

Here are some methods to help you summon objects:

• You can grab for objects that are not within your field of vision. For example, you can say to yourself, “When I reach into my pocket there will be a box of mints in there,” and attempt to take a box of mints out of your pocket. There are variations of this, such as reaching behind you or reaching through a mirror in hopes of getting hold of what you want.
• You could say aloud or in your head in a lucid dream, “When I turn around, so-and-so will be in front of me,” “When I walk through this mirror, I will see . . . ,” or “In a few moments, so-and-so will walk through that door (or around that corner).”
• Stare at a point in empty space and think or say aloud that whatever object you want will materialize before your eyes. You will probably have to really concentrate for this one. Here’s an example:

  “I am lucid in my backyard, and the scene is nighttime, and pretty dark. I don’t like the dark in my lucid dreams because I’m more likely to wake up, plus there could be a monster lurking at every corner. I look at the horizon, and concentrate on the sun rising out from below it. It doesn’t happen at first, but I keep going and eventually I see a little light, and then the sun comes out. Strangely enough, the sun is white, but the surrounding sky is still black. I see a sky-blue ring around the white sun, and, in a quick motion, I point my hand to it and shout, ‘Blue!’. While this seems stupid now, my command actually got the blue light to spread around the sky, creating a daytime effect.”

• Some people have also had success by closing their eyes and just imagining the object they desire in front of them, and when they open their eyes . . .
• Try using technology such as a nearby lightswitch or button (when i press this button X will appear)

Remember to not doubt your control — as explained all over this wikibook, your dreams are affected by the placebo effect. If you believe you can attempt extremely hard things in a dream, and have them occur and not wake up, you will have an easier time performing that action!

 What you can do

This final section should see you off with a few ideas of what to do in a dream.

It is advised to have a clear purpose for your lucid dreams whenever you go to sleep. In other words, every night you consider what you want to do when you have a lucid dream, and select one thing, or perhaps two or three if you are skilled. Avoid this:

“What am I gonna do what am I gonna do? I wanna fly, walk through walls, eat until my stomach explodes, spy on my neighbours, drive in a car real fast, woooeeey I’m gonna . . .”

You will either end up doing none of these things in your dream or getting overexcited and waking up.

Now that that’s clear, here’s a list of possible things you could do, ordered in difficulty. Remember that you might find some things unusually hard (or easy) compared to most lucid dreamers, this is perfectly normal! This is a very rough guide — if you’ve managed something in the Easy section, don’t be scared to try for something from the Medium section.

Easy

• Fly

  Most people enjoy flying around in dreams. There are different styles of flight that people use, each with a varied level of success for each individual. Methods such as “swimming through the air”, “Superman style” (one arm outstretched), “Neo style” (both arms at your side), and “Airplane style” (both arms out) ,”eagle style” (gliding through the air currents, using your fingered wings to navigate altitudes) are often used. There are a few methods of getting up into the air, such as simply jumping (you can jump really high in dreams if you believe it) or imagining a great force pushing you from your feet or walking up on air as though it is a staircase. Some people summon jetpacks and slip them on to fly. Be creative and dream up your own methods.

• Explore your dream world

  Be warned, you are quite likely to forget you are dreaming when exploring! Doing reality checks often and muttering to yourself about how real everything seems can help to avoid this. You can also ask a dream character to tag along with you and remind you when you forget that you’re dreaming.

• Walk through a mirror or wall

  You can pass through dream objects such as walls, glass, trees, and everything else. Confidence is really the key here. Some variations on going through stuff can be going in slowly, wiggling your finger in first, or running quickly into the object and telling yourself you would go through it. Some people particularly like to go through mirrors because of the unpredictable effects this action produces. However, if you tell yourself you will end up at a certain location before passing through a mirror, you can change the dream scene quickly. Be warned, some people experience nothing and wake up after passing through. You may want to hold your arm to keep yourself in the dream.

• Look at the sky

  People often report amazing skies in lucid dreams. You can also shout colors at it and paint some sunrises.

• Show off to your friends (“Hey guys; I can go through this wall!”)
• Do plenty of sports (trampolining, skiing, swimming, dancing, etc.)
• Use various power such as Telekinesis and magic (a shortcut if you are having problems would be to summon a magic wand/staff or other device)
• Try to read a book that you have never read and remember the content
• Try to browse the Internet and visit sites that you’ve never visited
• Use things that you have never used
• Last but not least: Edit Wikipedia/Wikibooks articles (see question 90 of the Wikipediholic Test) and see if the changes remain when you awake!

Medium

• Eat until you’re near bursting!
• Teleport
• Create some dream characters (possibly from a book or film)
• Try to find your spirit guide
• Experiments (in fact, researchers will often want people of various skills)
• Body swapping/possession (where you enter a different body)
• Morph
• Take some drugs (this is more realistic if you’ve done so in real life)

  Many people have also experienced realistic effects when trying drugs in dreams that they have never taken in real life.

• Drive a vehicle (This is especially fun if you haven’t ever driven in real life)
• Fight

  Nobody can tell you what you should and should not do in your dreams; the choice remains up to you.

  • Use weapons

    It is usually more interesting to use melee weapons (knives, swords, brass knuckles) than projectile weapons. Machine guns and pistols often run out of ammo and summoning it can be difficult. Misfires and jamming is also common. However this can be overcome by using Directed Energy Weapons (Lasers, Plasma/pulse rifles).

  • “Beat up” your enemies

Hard

• Have sex

  The excitement, or closing your eyes, can cause you to wake up. An additional reason for waking up may be fixing your eyes on your partner, as holding a gaze for long is also known to cause waking up. Also, it is hard to get a partner in the first place.

• More morphing like 360 degree vision, sonar vision, etc.
• Create false memories, etc. False memories can be made by having a lucid dream, but scripting it so you will think it is real, e.g. you think what happened in your dream happened in real life. This is hard because you will have to forget it is a dream while staying lucid (knowing it is a dream).
• Compose music or poems (or request them from your subconscious)
• Build a fantasy dream world! (some people build a dream world naturally)
  • Lucid Crossroads
  • Astral Pulse Island
  • H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands
• Have precognition (your subconscious can be very good at predicting the future with relationships and career)
• Experience death. This could be a very harsh experience, and depending on your religious or philosophical beliefs may summon you into a different world or nothingness.
• Ask the dream to show you your worst fears/deepest traumas/etc. (be prepared for some bad stuff to surface)
• Build/use impossible objects, such as hypercubes, Klein bottles, etc.

 Conclusion

With all the techniques in this book, you may feel overwhelmed and uncertain of what to do next. Don’t worry — just choose a few techniques to “map your way to lucidity”, decide on a few things you will want to do from this page, and start!

If you are still unsure of what to do, don’t worry — you might happen to have a lucid dream tonight!

If you are beginning to feel a compulsive thirst for more information about dreams, head over to the Further Reading section for the sites to satisfy your cravings. Remember to come back occasionally and help make the wikibook grow!