A red pill for the soul

First I want to state that I am not an expert, I practice lucid dreaming out of fun and because there’s nothing quite like it. Gaining awareness in a dream is an exciting experience, most of the time it’s brief with the sudden rush of adrenaline waking you up. What if you can learn to lucid dream, stabilize the experience so you can take more of it in? What if there was nothing more than a few simple steps to master, no drugs needed? Would you want to learn?

Relax

The first step is to relax, quiet the mind, tame your anxiety and unfocus. You want to start by laying flat on your back, don’t tense up, relax. You will experience some interesting sensations and urges, mostly the urge to scratch, move, swallow spit, cross your legs and muscle spasms as your body relaxes. The solution is easy, ignore them all and stay relaxed, the swallowing spit part isn’t as easy but if you press your tongue gently onto the roof of your mouth it’ll fix this problem. If you can hear your heart beat turn your head slightly to the right and muffle your right ear, this works for me, maybe the left side works for you.

Ritual

Make lucid dreaming a ritual full of sleep triggers your mind will pick up on with practice, this will become an autopilot of some sorts later on, don’t skip it. For me it’s simple, I do all of the above.

Falling

This one is overlooked but beneficial, the sensation of falling while asleep and jolting you awake is a key training tool. This falling sensation happens with sleep paralysis, and that’s where the key to lucid dreaming and out of body experiences lie. For now let’s practice falling. Do the above steps to reach a point where your body tricks your mind into believeing you’re asleep, if you do those steps right you will have unfocused thoughts, muscle spasms and the feeling of a heavy weighted blanket being placed on you. The pressure of the weight feels uncomfortable, your breathing will be erratic and adrenaline will win. If you’re lucky you might black out for a second and have a really vivid/lucid experience. Stick to practicing this whatever time of the day you can except right before sleep.

Eyes

You need to train your eyes to focus behind your eyelids, it should be relaxed and of into the distance. This will strain your eyes, but like any other muscle, working them makes them stronger. Keep your eyes still and quiet in a relaxed position do not force them into any position, just adjust the focus.