The Art of Lucid Dreaming 💭 🦋
Techniques & Insights for Mindful Dreaming
My first lucid dream happened spontaneously.
At the time, this was just a fun experience — but since then, it’s become clear just how valuable lucid dreaming can be.
Today, I’ll explain what it means to lucid dream and offer some tips and tricks for making it happen yourself. Including some useful dream-inducing herbs you can use to help catalyze the process.
What, Exactly, is a Lucid Dream?
A lucid dream is any dream you’re consciously aware of.
Put simply: if you know you’re dreaming, you’re having a lucid dream.
Anybody can learn to lucid dream, but it takes some practice.
It took me about 2 months of recording my dreams every morning and establishing a habit of “reality checks” for it to happen. Some people begin lucid dreaming much quicker; others take more time and practice.
The important part is to stay consistent, keep practicing, and eventually, you’ll start to lucid dream on command.
Quick Links: Lucid Dreaming
Why Should I Learn How to Lucid Dream?
There are many reasons to lucid dream. Some do it because it’s fun; others do it to gain a better understanding of the depths of one's psyche.
Some Buddhist teachings suggest that we’re most “awake” during deep sleep and most “asleep” during waking consciousness. When we’re asleep, our ego no longer controls the way we view the world — learning to exist in this space helps us to see things as they really are.
In Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan — the shaman, Don Juan, promotes lucid dreaming as a critical component in the lifelong journey of becoming a shaman.
He teaches Castaneda how to use his dreams to “gain power” — that is — tidbits of spiritual knowledge he can use to reach a greater level of understanding about life, death, and the universe.
The psychologist Carl Jung believed learning to identify recurring symbolism in our dreams is critical for understanding why we think or behave the way we do. He believed that by understanding these unconscious processes we could work towards becoming a better person — he called this process individuation.
How to Lucid Dream: Baby Steps…
Lucid dreaming can happen spontaneously, but it’s very rare. By following one or more of the techniques below, you can dramatically increase your chances of “waking up” within a dream. With time, patience, and practice, you can start to lucid dream on command.
The basic formula for lucid dreaming involves 3 steps:
A) Practice “reality testing” during the day — this involves checking to see while you’re dreaming while you’re awake every day until you start to do it naturally. Eventually, this process will be so automatic you’ll start to do this check while you’re asleep. As soon as this happens, you’ll realize you’re in a dream.
B) Wake up about 2 hours before you normally wake up, and then go back to sleep — this increases conscious awareness during the longest REM cycles of the night (this is the type of sleep where most lucid dreams occur).
C) As you fall asleep, do something that keeps your conscious mind awake, but allows your body to fall back asleep — such as moving your fingers, repeating a mantra, or gazing down at your hands.
The methods outlined below offer different techniques for accomplishing this. All will work, but pick the one that makes the most sense to you. It can help to try a few different methods until you find one that works.
Start a Dream Journal to Improve “Dream Recall”
A key step to lucid dreaming is improving your ability to remember dreams after you wake up. This is referred to as “dream recall.”
The best way to improve this ability is to get in the habit of writing down or recording your dreams every morning after you wake up. The idea is that by writing them down, you’re working to establish your dreams as memories in your conscious mind.
There are 2 key benefits to dream journalling:
Improved dream recall — you’ll be able to remember more of your dreams the more often you write them down.
Pattern recognition — After a while, you’ll be able to recognize recurring patterns that pop up frequently in dreams. Knowing these patterns will help you notice when you’re in a dream (therefore inducing a lucid dream).
I prefer to write my dreams down, but recording your dreams on your phone will do the trick too.
Ultimately, you want to make this process as easy as possible. It’s difficult to find the motivation immediately upon waking up to write stuff down — but it’s critical to record your dreams immediately. You lose around 50% of your dream memory within the first 10–30 seconds of waking up and 90% after 10 minutes.
Speed is of the essence with this practice.
I keep a notebook and pen right beside my bed to make this as simple as possible.
→ Learn more about dream journalling & how to get started here
3 Lucid Dream Techniques
A few techniques have been tried and tested over the years to facilitate lucid dreaming. Most of these techniques use a core practice called “wake back to bed,” or WBTB for short.
The idea is to set an alarm to go off about 2 hours before your normal wakeup (when you’re most likely to be in a long REM sleep).
After you wake up, physically get up, walk around a little bit, then go back to bed.
Once in bed, you can try one of the following methods to attempt to keep your conscious mind awake while your body falls back to sleep.
My personal favorite is the modified Castaneda Technique. This works great for me, but everybody is different. I recommend trying a few methods out before deciding on the one that makes the most sense to you.
And be patient! It often takes many tries before it works.
Finger-induced lucid dreaming (FILN) method — Wake up and fall back asleep while tapping your fingers as though you’re playing a piano.
Mnemonic-induced lucid dreaming (MILD) method — Wake up and fall back asleep while repeatedly chanting a mnemonic phrase. Common mantras include “I will know when I’m dreaming,” or more simply, “I know I’m dreaming.”
Castaneda Technique — Before you fall back asleep, look at your hands as a reality check to “setup dreaming.” Look at your hands, then the background, then back at your hands. Now fall back asleep.
→ Check out our recent Twitter thread on 6 lucid dreaming techniques
Oneirogens: Herbs That Can Induce Lucid Dreams
While you don’t need anything to induce a lucid dream, sometimes our plant allies can give us a hand to get started. Once you’ve experienced lucid dreaming once, it gets easier to do it again. And again. And again.
I’ve found all five of the following herbs can be helpful for inducing dreams — and each one seems to induce it’s own “style” or “flavor” of dream.
→ Full list of dream-inducing (oneirogenic) herbs
1. Calea (Calea zacatechichi)
This herb is the most reliable in my opinion. It’s easy to use (you can either smoke it or prepare a tea), and tends to produce dreams that are more cohesive than other members on this list.
Calea is used to improve dream recall and helps dreamers identify symbolism or patterns in their dreams more effectively.
The only problem with this herb is you tend to feel a bit groggy the next morning. This is a herb I recommend taking every once in a while to help you dream but refrain from taking it too often.
→ Learn more about the Mexican dream herb.
2. African Dream Root (Silene undulata)
This herb comes to us from the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It’s used to facilitate communication with “the other side.”
But be careful what you wish for.
This herb is reliable for inducing dreams, but they aren’t always pleasant. Traditionally, this herb is mixed with other guiding herbs to reduce the chances of the dreamer having nightmares. I’d start with a low dose for this one and only use it on days where you’re in a good place, mentally.
3. Blue Lotus Flower (Nymphaea caerulea)
This herb was a favorite of the ancient Egyptians — a culture notorious for their so-called “dream beds” — sanctuaries specifically designed to increase the chances of lucid dreaming. It was believed that herbs that induced dreams, such as the blue lotus, could help leaders gain access to secret knowledge that helped them make better decisions.
What makes blue lotus unique is that it has a tendency of easing you into a lucid dream. You don’t need to “wake up” in the dream like you do with other methods.
4. Damiana (Turnera diffusa)
Damiana isn’t as useful for inducing lucid dreams, but it will certainly make them more vivid — and tends to add a bit of sensuality to them.
Damiana comes from Mexico, where it was widely used as an aphrodisiac and mild psychotropic herb. It can be smoked or consumed as tea — both of which have a pleasant and distinct flavor.
5. Fly Agaric Mushroom (Amanita muscaria)
The amanita mushroom is perhaps the most ubiquitous mushroom on Earth 🍄. I always associate it with the Mario mushroom, but there are plenty of other mentions of it in pop culture.
This mushroom just so happens to be psychedelic — but the effects are distinct from conventional psilocybin-containing mushrooms.
The effects of this mushroom are best described as “lucid” — it feels like you’re in a waking dream. Time and distances are distorted, and at times you’ll forget you took anything at all.
The real trip comes when it comes time to go to sleep. Amanita dreams are simply bizarre, which can make it hard to derive any meaning, or even remember most of them the following morning.
→ Learn More About the Amanita Mushroom
Terms & Definitions: Dream Edition
👁️ Oneiromancy — the practice of dream interpretation for the purpose of telling the future.
🦅 Oneironautics — the practice of consciously traveling through dreams.
🔬 Oneirology — the scientific study of dreams.
🏔️ Zen Wisdom: Dreaming
The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly 🦋
He fluttered between flowers, drinking the delicious nectar
In the dream, he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was merely a butterfly
Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again
He thought to himself — "was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
Lucid Dreaming in Pop Culture
Here are three interesting examples of lucid dreaming from pop culture to get you thinking.
Adventure Time: Are Dreams Real?
In this episode, Finn falls asleep in a pillow fort and becomes trapped in the dream. He spends his life unable to find the exit to the real world, but eventually settles down and has a family.
The scene starts as he’s lying on his deathbed. When he dies, he wakes up and quickly forgets the entire experience.
Alice in Wonderland: When You Realize You’re Dreaming, You Can Wake Up
Alice’s infamous adventure in wonderland eventually comes to an end when she commands herself to wake up.
Rick & Morty: Was Roy Real?
This one isn't exactly a lucid dream, but the premise is similar. Roy is a video game with a simulated persona. It feels entirely real until the moment you die — at which point the game ends and you wake up back in the arcade you started in.
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Credits & Shoutouts
Article by Justin Cooke
Artwork by Dikigiyat