How To Lucid Dream Without Really Trying: Lucid Mind Hack

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

So, as most of you know a while back I decided to learn lucid dreaming (or as some call it phase experience, out of body experience or even astral projection). I wanted to learn the EASIEST way of lucid dreaming.

I read a ton of books which basically gave me lots of advice that was impossible to implement. Once you stripped the books down to their essentials, they basically (most of them, not all of them) said: “It’s hard to induce lucid dreams, but if you obsess over it enough, it might happen”. Sure, they tried to paint a pretty picture, but they did not actually give very useful, complete information.

I was left to figure things out for myself. This is what I managed to learn. You should be able to use this information to induce a lucid dream in 7 days or even less, not in a couple of months.

 

The easiest way to lucid dream (step by step)

Well, firstly, we have to discuss “the rollover signal”. This simply means that if you are relaxing into a lucid dream, you are likely to get an impulsive, strong desire to move. This is normally a warning signal from your body that it is about to enter sleep paralysis. If you give in to this desire and move, you will not enter sleep paralysis and you will not enter a dream. So don’t move.

Okay, we covered what not to do… but what do you need to actually do?

Step 1: Mnemonics mean easy lucid dreaming! (BUT it’s not the conventional mnemonic induction technique)

There are different specific ways to go about this, but here is a standard exercise to perform. Take a deck of cards and think of 13 separate images, one for each card. For example:

  • A – Flying white dove
  • 2 – Donald Duck
  • 3 – Sleeping Baby
  • 4 – Weights (for weightlifting)
  • 5 – Pistol
  • 6 – Backpack
  • 7 – Swastika
  • 8 – Snowman
  • 9 – Giraffe
  • 10 – Moon
  • Jack – Sword
  • Queen – Rose
  • King – Crown

These images are not necessarily the best, especially for you. Pick images you are comfortable visualizing with consistent, stable images (should be the same image every time). Then imagine a character from your favorite TV program, someone easy to picture in your mind. Imagine that person in a “portrait” pose, looking straight at you.

Pick a card from the deck. Say the first card is a Queen. You zoom into the character’s right eye (the one on your left) and imagine a rose inside the eye. Hold the image for 5 to 10 seconds.

Then you pick a second card. Say it is a King. You imagine a crown inside their left eye (the one on your right), hold the image for 5 to 10 seconds. The eye is kind of a tricky place, but it works.

You will basically be “placing” the cards in the character, from top to bottom, left to right. You are, in a sense, writing the order of cards on his or her body.

Use whatever places you feel most comfortable with, such as “behind left shoulder”, “right palm”, “left cheek”, “chest”, “belly”, “right side pocket”, etc. 4 places per person is enough but if you want to you could do 13. Do this with as many people as you have to in order to memorize the whole deck of cards.

Make the visualizations as vivid as possible. You want to memorize the entire deck of 52 cards but if can’t do that, it’s alright. Memorize as many cards as you can. You’ll need to review several times so make sure you keep the deck in order, or write the order down.

What do you do with this? I’ll explain in a little while. There is just one more thing we need to cover before we finish things up.

Step 2: Imagine Sensations (Energy)

You begin with slow, deliberate breathing. Try a 6 by 6 breath, which means you inhale for 6 seconds and exhale for 6 seconds. The important thing is not the exact count, it’s to get a slow, deep and deliberate breathing pattern. Once you get it going, you do not want to count while you are breathing. During the inhale, you imagine the sensations running up your body, from your toes to the crown of your head.

What do I mean by “sensations”?

Well, imagine the feeling of a hand stroking your body, or water, or anything really..

What you want is the feeling of touch, that’s all there is to it. Use your hand to stroke your body if you need a reminder. You do not want to flex your muscles, at all. It is as if energy was moving through your body.

During the exhale, imagine that energy (the sensations) focusing on a specific spot in the body, such as your hands. You can also imagine them focusing on a spot outside the body. Then repeat. If you are focusing on your hands, they should start tingling. This is normal. Just relax and continue. Do this before you go to bed, just so you get used to it.

Now let’s tie all of this together in a way that allows you to have a lucid dream (your first?) tonight. The key is:

Step 3: Putting it all together with an alarm

Before you read this, brace yourself. You’re about to have a lucid dream, which if you’ve never had one before is quite intense. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced so far, and it can be scary at times. Just prepare for something completely crazy..

A bit like if you tumbled into a wormhole:

One thing that can help a lot is to use an alarm to keep you from falling too far asleep. Set the alarm to ring every 20 minutes, preferably one you don’t have to manually turn off, then when the alarm wakes you up you start either recalling the information memorized previously (the deck of cards) or imagining sensations.

You do this without moving at all (not even your eyes), but if you need to reset the alarm, try to make sure it can be reset with small, slow movements of your fingers, instead of needing your whole arm or body to move.

You’ll quickly enter sleep paralysis and from there a lucid dream. I find a cell phone works well, as it vibrates as well as ring. You can now do what you want!

You might need to tie it to your hand or arm to keep it in constant contact while you sleep. This can also work as a good mnemonic device or a totem (the conventional technique) to cue you into a lucid dream. You can use the cell phone through the day, and when you feel the phone’s vibration you always stop to think “Is this a dream?” and raise your level of awareness. You can even set the alarm to ring regularly through the day for this.

It’s important to remember however, that early in the evening (when you go to bed) you feel tired. Your body will try to enter into a deep sleep, from which it is hard to wake up, making you miss the alarm completely. You’ll also have a hard time not falling asleep during the dream and the dream might suck.

You’re now lucid dreaming! Wasn’t that easy?

The best dreams happen during REM sleep, which is scarce in the first few hours after you go to bed. You want to try this at the ideal time, which is a couple of hours before you usually wake up. This is known as “wake back to bed”. Wake up about 2 hours before you usually do, stay awake for a few minutes (30 minutes is good) and then try this, it will give you the best results.

And that’s it. At this point, you’re VERY likely to have a lucid dream, and it will probably be quite vivid as well. If you want to make the experience even better, I’d suggest trying to take a Claridream pill(or DreamLeaf) before bed or in the early hours of the morning.