The Dead Simple WBTB Lucid Dreaming Tutorial (Wake Back To Bed)

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

The wake back to bed lucid technique involves waking up very early and then letting yourself go back to sleep. The hormones in your system combined with the REM sleep allow you to Lucid Dream easily. Let’s explain a little bit.

How does it work?

REM sleep is the stage of sleep in which your brain is the most active. Most of your dreams happen during REM sleep, which happens when you’re just about to wake up, in the early hours of the morning.

You go through all the stages of sleep and then finally arrive at REM sleep, the holy grail for Lucid Dreaming. The problem is that in order to get to REM sleep, you need to have gone through all the other stages of sleep first, meaning you can’t be still awake in your mind.

The way around that is to simply wake up either just at the start of REM sleep, or during it, and then go back to bed, with your mind set on Lucid Dreaming. The problem is that REM sleep usually happens within the last 2-3 hours of your sleep.. At some ridiculously early time. That’s why the WBTB technique comes in to play.

 

How the WBTB method works

You’re basically going to interrupt your sleep with an alarm clock set for 2-3 hours before you usually wake up.

If you normally wake up at 8, set it for about 5-6. Now when the alarm goes off, don’t get out of bed, just turn the alarm off, and make sure your mind is awake, and that you are thinking clearly. Don’t move your body if you can help it, but make your mind wake up.

Think about lucid dreaming, and focus on the dream you want to have. Try and see it in your minds eye. The key here is to only move to turn the alarm off, and then go right back to your sleeping position. But you must stay focused and aware in your head. Let your body go to sleep and drift off, but keep yourself focused on the dreaming world.

The wake back to bed technique for lucid dreaming

You will enter a dream much faster than you would if you were doing it cold from being awake with the wake induced method.

Because you are targeting the REM stage of your sleep, it is much more likely that you’ll have a dream, and that it will be Lucid.

Steps to performing the WBTB

So now that we’ve covered how the method works and why it’s so effective, let’s look at how you can do it as well as some tips regarding the way you perform this technique. It’s important to realise that this technique is all about your sleep cycle and therefore the more natural your cycle, the more effective this will be.

If you don’t usually go to sleep until about 5 in the morning then of course setting your alarm for 6-7 won’t make a difference as you won’t have experienced deep sleep and won’t be ready for an REM stage. Hopefully this makes sense. REM sleep only comes after a few hours of good quality sleep, normally about 4-6 hours after going to bed. Here are the steps:

  • 1: Set your alarm for 3 hours before you’d normally wake up
  • 2: Don’t move a muscle!
  • 3: Relax and perform the WILD technique
  • 5: You’re in a lucid dream!

As you’re relaxing, you can also listen to brainwave entrainment as it will make the chances of you becoming lucid even HIGHER! You’ll also get more restful sleep as well by doing this.

Step 1: Set your alarm for about 2-3 hours before you normally wake

Set the alarm for the time that most accurately represents your normal wake up time. If you normally wake up at 9, set your alarm for 7 or half 6. This is different for everyone but it needs to be able to ‘catch’ you at the stage where you’re fairly tired, to the point where you could EASILY go back to sleep.

Step 2: When you wake up, don’t move anything!

Just turn your alarm off, get comfortable and then start thinking about lucid dreams. At this point, you’re able to combine the WBTB with the WILD technique, because it will be a LOT easier to perform a WILD in this state.

Your body and mind are still for all intensive purposes half asleep, therefore drifting off is very easy.

Another thing to consider about the WBTB technique is that at that early time 2 hours before you normally wake up, your body and mind have already STARTED waking up, but not to the point where you’re actually waking up. This might be a little confusing to grasp at first.. Imagine that your body is ‘warming your mind up’ for the day ahead. This means it’s slowly making you more and more ‘self aware’ before you wake up.

This means that by catching yourself during that process, you’re in the ‘sweet spot’ for being self aware, but also for being in a dream state. This should make sense by now but if not feel free to re-read the last few paragraphs.

Step 3: Either perform a WILD or just drift to sleep

At this point, you’re combining the technique with either the WILD or the MILD.

You have a choice to either drift to sleep and let your mind become lucid (you hope) on it’s own, OR you could just perform a WILD where you try to keep your mind awake.

Either one should work fairly well most of the time at this stage, because you’ve caught yourself in the sweet spot for Lucid Dreaming and OBEs. Hopefully we’ve covered the basics of the wake back to bed technique and remember, if you’ve had a good (or bad) experience with this, we’d love to hear your experience!

Warnings about the WBTB technique

There are a few things we don’t like about the WBTB technique, and why we don’t think this is the way to go when you’re just starting out. Firstly, it involves interrupting your sleep cycle. You must intervene with your sleep cycle, by waking up early and then going back to sleep you interfere with your natural body clock and natural rhythm.

That’s not good, or at least, it wouldn’t be healthy if you did it all the time. We’re not saying never to do it, because you can achieve very profound dreams this way, but it’s not good to make a habit of it. There are other ways to lucid dream which don’t leave you feeling tired and groggy all day, but instead energize and motivate you. The Mnemonic induced lucid dreaming technique is a good one.

This technique is good for entering a dream, and you probably will achieve lucidity with it, but it’s not a healthy habit to get into. By all means try it out, but we firmly believe that you should try and learn how to induce dreams without needing to alter your sleep cycle in this way.

Tips and common questions about the WBTB

The WBTB astral projection method

It’s commonly known that you can use the wake back to bed for astral travel. This is something that would make sense, as the technique involves relaxing and letting your mind drift into another place. Whether or not astral projection is real and can be used with this however, is another matter entirely.

Some useful tips for the WBTB

There are some little things that can make a big difference in whether this method works for you or not. Here are the most useful:

  • Make sure you’re tired enough during the day to naturally fall asleep
  • Keep your dream diary near, you won’t want to miss out on writing the dream down!
  • Combine it with the mnemonic lucid method
  • Use a relaxing pillow spray
  • Make sure the rooms a comfortable temperature

Doing it faster

I have created a technique which is very effective, brand new for 2019 actually. It’s called the 90ILD technique and it let’s you lucid dream in 5 minutes or less. Check it out!

Useful tools for the WBTB

Here are some tools you can use to get better results with the WBTB.

Don’t forget to write your dreams down and make notes of what worked best for you, so you can go back to those techniques later. Our custom lucid journal is good for this, as it has a section where you can write down which technique you used to become lucid (or not). This lets you easily look back and see what worked for you and what didn’t!

Here are some other lucid dreaming techniques you might want to try: 

If you’re really serious about learning to control your dreams and you REALLY want it to happen, you need to build up the HABITS you’ll need to lucid dream. These are very important, and learning the wrong things will mean you’ll waste HOURS. 

I created a highly effective step by step Lucid Dreaming BOOTCAMP course that FORCES you to lucid dream. If you don’t lucid dream within 2 weeks, you can get your money back.

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  • Exactly what to practice, which techniques, reality checks, exercises and ideas you should do on specific days for 30 days (and how to do them) so you can just save loads of time
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  • Learn why lots of people read lucid dreaming books but can’t ACTUALLY have a lucid dream because they don’t build up the habits they need in the right way. They practice the wrong things that actually stop them being able to lucid dream! (Plus a lot of common lucid dreaming books teach stuff that doesn’t work, you’d be surprised)
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  • The strange but powerful meditation technique you can do to have more lucid dreams every week (and it only takes 30 seconds)
  • The most common reality checks and how to do them so you can test whether you’re awake and naturally lucid dream most nights (Even when you’re not putting in much effort, or haven’t been practicing)
  • The weird ‘island visualisation’ technique I created to help you drift into a lucid dream much faster than normal, and stay in your lucid dreams for much longer than most people!
  • Specific lucid dreaming induction techniques and the BEST way to practice them (This includes the Wake back to bed, The Wake induced lucid dream, the Mnemonic induced lucid dream and lots more, but with my unique TWIST to make them more effective!)
  • A way of talking to yourself that will give you lucid dreams and ensures that you KEEP having lucid dreams. It’s almost like you’re training your own brain to have MORE of the experiences you want!
  • Exactly WHEN to practice each specific thing! I’ll tell you on each specific day, what techniques, ideas and methods you need to practice or think about on that day to lucid dream. It’s like I’m personally coaching you and making SURE you have a lucid dream!
  • And remember, you can do these exercises and techniques in as little as 3-5 minutes per day (Of course, you could spend longer if you want, it’s up to you and how much free time you have, but it can and will work with just 3 minutes per day)

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