I am going to explain the lucid dream methods that
work best for me. I will note that it will be significantly more
difficult for people who have normal sleep schedules.
In my opinion the first step to lucid dreaming is simply to be aware and thinking about them. The first time I had
any
sort of lucid dream experience was when I was about 12. I had heard of lucid dreaming by this point. Eventually just
by
being aware of it, I had a few short-lived lucid dreams. I didn’t do much in these, maybe try to experiment a bit,
but
they were very short and random. I did not have these again till much later.
I believe the next thing you need to do is to have vivid dreams. My most vivid dreams occur after being woken up in
the
morning, and returning to a deep sleep. One way someone can do this is by setting an alarm early in the morning
around
6am, staying up for about 15 minutes and going back to sleep. The truth is that the more time you have to do this,
the
more success you will have. My sophomore year of college I had more lucid dreams than ever because of my schedule. I
had
one class at 9am, then nothing for a long while. I would wake up around 8:30 – go to class 9:00-9:50. Go home and
eat
after class and go back to sleep around 10:30. Often times it took very long to fall asleep since I was awake for so
long and I would become discouraged. I found that these times where I struggled to fall asleep, would generally turn
into the strongest of dreams. After a while, I would eventually fall asleep and have very vivid dreams almost every
time
and with large amount of them, I would remember everything and become lucid. Much of the time when falling asleep I
would become excited realizing that it was about to happen, then I would awaken again. These times were frustrating,
but
again, when I was able to fall asleep during these moments, I had the most success. As I attempted to fall asleep
during
this time, I would only think about lucid dreaming. I would tell myself that as soon as I fall asleep, I will
control my
dream.
It has been about 2 years since this peak of lucid dreaming but since I had them so often, I still become lucid
occasionally without trying. The first lucid dream is the hardest to achieve, but the more you have them, the easier
the
next one be.