List Of All The Lucid Dreaming Acronyms Ever Explained For You

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🌙 Written by Stefan Zugor, international lucid dreaming expert and teacher. Learn how to lucid dream in 7 days or less.

What’s up guys, I thought it might be useful for you to collect ALL the shortened versions of words and phrases related to lucid dreams. This is all the lucid dreaming an acronyms I can think of, and what they mean.

Some of these I’ve included links to other articles I’ve written explaining more about them.

These links will open in a new tab for you so you won’t lose your place. Hopefully this will help you and make sure that you understand all of these words and phrases! Enjoy. These are not in any particular order.

Every lucid dreaming acronym ever!

Here is the long list. Remember, click the links to find out more about some of these, and bookmark this page so you can refer back to it when someone mentions one you haven’t heard of!

AP – Astral projection

Astral projection is the experience of separating your astral body from your physical body and travelling the astral realm. This is NOT the same as lucid dreaming and easily gets confused by beginners. 

AB – Astral body

The body you’re supposedly experiencing when you astral travel. This is separate from your physical body but connected to is when you astral travel using a ‘silver cord’.

DC – Dream character

A dream character is a person, animal or ‘living’ thing in your dreams. This is usually seen as a person. A person other than the body of yourself (the dream body) in your dreams is referred to as a dream character in your dream.

DJ/DD – Dream journal or dream diary

DD stands for dream diary, or a notebook or journal you write your dreams in. This is a building block for lucid dreaming and you should know what this one means! Dream journals are important.

DS – Dream sharing

The act of ‘sharing’ a dream with someone by becoming lucid and ‘finding’ their dream. This is a debated topic and it’s also as yet unproven. People believe they can share a dream with someone else.

DS – Can also mean ‘dream sign’

A dream sign is something that occurs in your dreams more than once. If you always dream about a red cat, the red cat would be your ‘dream sign’. You should write these in your dream journal and be on the look out for them so you can more easily recognise and remember when you’re dreaming.

FLD – False lucid dream

This is common among beginners. A false lucid dream is a dream where the person THINKS they’re lucid dreaming, but they’re actually not. It can feel like you are, but unless you’re AWARE of the fact you’re dreaming, and you can control what you do, you’re not.

SP – Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis is the perfectly normal process that happens to all of us every night (Except some people with certain sleep disorders) where your body stops your muscles being able to move as you pass into a dream.

IWL – In waking life

In waking life refers to things you do, say, or think in real, waking life. Who’s to say which world or life is more important though, right? This is sometimes also referred to as IRL or in real life.

LN – Lucid nightmare

A lucid nightmare is a scary dream that you’re half in control of, but not completely. It’s one of the more scary aspects of lucid dreaming and it can be a bit off-putting for beginners. Nothing in a nightmare can harm you though, remember.

SD – Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation is the experience of not getting enough sleep for your body to heal and regenerate it’s energy. Being sleep deprived can make you feel tired, angry, upset, depressed and unable to function properly.

SPD – Sleep paralysis demon

The sleep paralysis demon can also be called the old hag, the man with the hat, or the shadow man. It is a hallucination people sometimes see when experiencing sleep paralysis.

RC  Reality check

A reality check or test is the act of testing whether you’re dreaming or not. It’s a basic aspect of lucid dreaming and should be on and lucid dreamers mind during the day. Are you dreaming?

ND – Normal dream

A dream in which you’re not lucid. Boring!

SG – Spirit guide

A character or energy that can appear to guide you through a dream as if it were a separate person or dream character. They can help you find special areas of lucid dreams and special places.

REM – Rapid eye movement

The state of sleep during the early hours of the morning where your dreams are more vivid, you’re in deep sleep and your eyes move back and forwards rapidly under your eyelids, to at out the dreams you’re having.

NREM – Non rapid eye movement

The state of sleep where your eyes are NOT moving rapidly. This is every other part of sleep.

OBE – Out of body experience

An experience where your astral body appears to have left your physical body. This is another term for astral travel or astral projection.

LD – Lucid dream

Lucid dreaming is a dream in which you’re aware of the fact you’re dreaming. That’s what this site focuses on explaining! 

FA – False awakening

False awakenings are dreaming about waking up. Lots of people have these, the most common one is dreaming that you’ve woken up, and gone about your morning routine, and maybe even left to go to work and then you wake up and have to do it all over again.

Lucid technique acronyms

Some lucid dreaming technique acronyms. Bare in mind with this that where it says ‘induced lucid dream’ it can also mean ‘initiated lucid dream’. So for example, the ‘wake induced lucid dream’ is THE SAME THING as the ‘wake INITIATED lucid dream’, it’s just another way of saying it.

WBTB – Wake back to bed

The wake back to bed technique involves setting your alarm for 2 hours before you’d normally wake up, to target your Rem sleep. You then perform a WILD during this time, where you’re most likely to become lucid.

FILD – Finger induced lucid dream

Very similar to the WBTB, the Finger initiated lucid dream involves doing the WBTB but as you’re going back to sleep and into the lucid dream you slowly move two fingers back and forth, to distract your mind from the process of falling asleep and allowing you to slip into a lucid dream faster.

WILD – Wake induced lucid dream

The wake initiated lucid dream involves keeping your mind awake while your body falls asleep and becomes paralysed.

VILD – Visually induced lucid dream

The visually induced lucid dream involves creating and manipulating a dream scene. This is the best way of designing a dream level or having a really specific dream. 

MILD – Mnemonic induced lucid dream

The mnemonic induced lucid dream involve focusing on a mantra and repeating it to yourself again and again so that you believe it for sure, and you force yourself to lucid dream.

DILD – Dream induced lucid dream

The DILD is the technique whereby you tell the dream to give you a lucid dream. It involves doing reality checks all day and hoping that you’ll naturally have a lucid dream. It does work though despite how difficult it sounds.

DEILD – Dream exit induced lucid dream

Much the same as the DILD.

SSILD – Senses induced lucid dream

The Senses induced lucid dream involves focusing on all of your senses as you fall asleep.

CALD – Character assisted lucid dreaming

This involves asking the dream itself to help you become lucid next time. So in one lucid dream on Monday for example, you’d ask the dream (assuming you’re lucid) ‘please help me become lucid tomorrow night as well’ and most times, it does. It’s like you’re telling your subconscious mind what to do.

WrILD – Writing induced lucid dream

The writing initiated lucid dream is a fairly advanced one, and doesn’t always work. This is essentially writing ‘I will lucid dream’ over and over until you believe it. Very similar to the MILD.

CAT – Cycle adjustment technique

The cycle adjustment technique involves slowly changing the sleep cycle so you’re more likely to lucid dream during the early hours of the morning.

PILD – Punishment induced lucid dream

The punishment induced lucid dream is all about setting up small yet noticeable punishments for yourself every morning you DON’T lucid dream. This eventually tells your mind ‘give him/her lucid dreams or we’ll get the punishment again!’

RILD – Reward induced lucid dream

The reward induced lucid dream involves the opposite of the punishment one. You just give yourself small treats in the morning, like a cookie or a cuddle fro your partner or something, so that you re enforce the habit every time you lucid dream.

TILD – Totem induced lucid dream

The totem induced lucid dream is much like in Inception, where they use objets to tell if they’re dreaming or not. You can use a spinning top, dice, or anything small and that has a specific MOVEMENT or action it can do.

ThILD – Thirst induced lucid dream

This is a sort of accidental technique but when you go to bed thirsty, sometimes you’ll dream about being thirsty and/or drinking to quench your thirst, and as a result you’ll think ‘Oh I knew I should I have drunk before going to bed, OH WAIT! I’m drinking now, and I must be asleep.. Maybe I’m dreaming?!’

This is probably not all of them, as there are always new ones when people start talking about a new idea, or come up with a new method. Do me a favor, and share this list and link people to it when they need to read it! It’s hopefully very useful as a resource for you guys.

Let me know if I’ve missed anything!

Getting started

Although you’ve no doubt heard me mention these things before, here is a list of the most useful articles. This is how I would suggest starting to lucid dream and learn about lucid dreaming.