How I Got Into Lucid Dreaming

August 6th, 2007

Ben over at Dreaming Life recently posted an article about how he got into lucid dreaming and called on other dream enthusiasts to describe how they got into lucid dreaming as well.

My first lucid dream, or at least the first lucid dream I can recall, occurred when I was young, around eleven or twelve years old. I was living in Massachusetts in an old two-story house with my bedroom on the second floor, and I remember dreaming of walking to my bedroom window, lifting the sash, and flying out into our backyard. There was no screen on the window to keep insects out or little children in, which should have been my first clue that I was dreaming, but I didn't recognize it for a dream right away.

I soared into the sky, circled our house, and swooped low toward the ground. As I sped through the air only a few feet above the grass, I knew if I didn't pull up soon I'd have to maneuver carefully to fly through the swingset in our yard without becoming tangled in the swings. The moment that thought surfaced, it was quickly followed by surprise. I'm flying!

Wait a minute…I'm FLYING???

It suddenly occurred to me that I must be dreaming, yet somehow I'd realized I was dreaming. This was fantastic! I was dreaming but I knew I was dreaming, which meant I could do anything I wanted to do! Woohoo!

The excitement was so overwhelming, I promptly woke up.

After my brief brush with lucid dreaming, life went on as usual. I have very detailed memories of many of my dreams over the years, but I don't remember any other lucid dreams from my childhood, if indeed there were any. It wasn't until a decade later that my interest in lucid dreaming was rekindled. I'm an avid reader and go through so many books I'm not even certain anymore where I first encountered the phrase "lucid dreaming", but if I had to guess, it was most likely in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold, which I read sometime in the very early 90s.

I began studying the practice of lucid dreaming more actively around that time, testing different techniques and keeping notes in my dream journal. In the first few years, I read every book about dreaming I could get my hands on and practiced nearly every lucid dreaming technique I came across. Some of them were very simple, while others were unnecessarily complex. One technique required contorting yourself into a terribly uncomfortable position so the placement of your appendages would "cause your energy to align properly to trigger a lucid dream." I couldn't hold the position more than a few minutes, let alone fall asleep that way. In the end, the simplest techniques have always worked best for me — keeping a detailed dream journal, setting my intention before I go to sleep to have a lucid dream that night and remember it vividly the next morning, and using a wake-up interval.

By the time another decade had passed, I was actively researching other methods of mind enhancement as well and had started a company for that purpose, so it only seemed fitting that we devote some of the company's resources to researching lucid dreaming.

What I find most fascinating about lucid dreaming is the extent to which it proves we can't always trust our senses or our own mind, that we need to look deeper into ourselves and put reality to the test as much in our waking life as in our dreams.

There are so many other benefits — physical, mental, and emotional — that come with lucid dreaming, and I encourage everyone to give it a try. Lucid dreaming comes naturally to some people. For the rest of us it takes a bit of practice, but the results definitely make the practice worthwhile.