Dream Diary ~ Well its impossible not to dream but its quite common not to remember your dreams. What we all need to do is improve our dream recall and make our dreams more vivid and real. The way to do this is to make a dream diary, make it the first thing you do when the alarm wakes you, don't go back to sleep for 5 minutes write down the last dream you were having, try to recall all the details you can. As your getting up and getting ready for the day go over the dream, the places and people in that dream and how you felt in the dream itself. If you do this everyday your dreams will become more real rich and interesting Just keeping a dream diary and knowing that lucidity exists can make you pop into a lucid state whilst asleep.

Dream signs ~ You work in the day as a bank clerk but when you dream you always seem to become a trapeze artist, wake up! Look for the odd things in dreams, some of the classics can be that electric devices can not work (but sometimes they can). Light switches are a classic example. You'll find it very difficult to read in a dream, and the same when you're lucid. That is because language is processed in the left part of your brain and dreaming is a right brain activity. When you look away and look back at an object/person or scene does it change when you look back again?

You might have noticed the flaw in this reasoning: "Most things are odd in dreams". what you need to do is force yourself to test yourself when dreaming, in which case you need REALITY CHECKS.

Reality checks are the starter motor of lucid dreaming, if you can't question the reality of what's happening around you in your dreams then you'll never get lucid. But how do you remember to check reality when you're dreaming? Well, most lucid dreamers use techniques like looking at their hands during the day then asking the question (out loud or in your head), "Am I dreaming?" The theory is, if you do this enough during the day, when you dream, you will glance at your hands and then the phrase "am I dreaming?" will pop into your head! Bingo. You get lucid.

I now seem to question my dreams alot more and just spring into lucidity about 3-4 times a month (I've been too busy to keep a dream diary but I get more with its help).

Read all about lucidity or watch a film ~ Just reading this site will get your mind excited enough about lucid dreaming to have one and saving one of the images onto your desktop or printing them out will remind your brain when you see it (I will have a Lucid Dojo download section soon). In fact reading all you can about lucidity, really saturating yourself will put you on the right track. There are some good movies around to do with lucid dreaming at the moment, "Waking Life" and "Vanilla Sky", I think I must have been the last lucid dreaming in the world to have finally viewed them but Waking Life in particular is worth the watch.

What's it like when you first become lucid? I had some lucid dreams as a kid but of course back then I could never name them.After that I don't remember having a lucid till much later, in fact it was only after I started karate that they started to happen spontaneously like when I was a child (I believe its the controlled breathing in certain set form etc).

When it first happened after I knew what it was in my adult life it was like being hit by a bolt of lightning. I was normally dreaming about an old house I use to live in when I was a kid, the dream was vivid but I wasn't yet lucid. I was in my sisters room and noticed that it layout was different to my memory and that when it hit me. "I WAS DREAMING" bam it felt like I was rushing though my own body and then I'm there in the room as real and as life like as you could ever imagine, absolutely amazing.

In a lucid dream a few days ago I slowed down the process of entering the dream to see if I could find out about the border area. I was creeping up behind a sentry in a jungle and as I got nearer I realized I was unarmed and I'd have to break his neck. This was the thing that broke up my usual acceptance of the dream as even the thought of doing that to someone is disturbing and breaks my waking morals. I realized I was dreaming but instead of instantly zapping into the scene I held back viewing the image like a projection in a movie theater. The detail was astounding, the sentry was smoking a cigarette and I casually watched the trail of smoke drift into the air from behind him. To enter a scene like this, relax and then focus on the detail and sort of reach out with your dream hands to grab either a person of a piece of the dream image.

Getting the really high lucid dreams

You may enter a lucid dream and it automatically be high its hard to tell the difference till you had a low one and then you'll notice a big split between the two. In a low level lucid your waking mind can act very sleepy and unconnected. Think of it like being woken up in the night, your mind takes a little time to remember who you are, what your doing etc etc. You do realize your dreaming but you might find it difficult to access your memories and you tend to just accept what's going on in your dream and walk around and act in a very unquestioning way. You can easily slip back into your normal dreaming state from a low lucid

In a high level lucid your waking mind can recall everything about yourself, you feel fully alert, the environment that looked a bit dislocated from your dream senses now looks real and solid. All your senses are available to you, touch, taste, smell sight and hearing but some you have to tune in to notice them. I always awake in my bed after a high lucid instead of slipping back into dream.

Look at your hands and rub them together ~ Bring your hands upto your face and look closely at the detail you can see there, now rub both of your hands together vigorously. (practice this in your waking life)

Press a nerve point ~ Press the acupressure point beneath your nose by running one of your hands up your arm, over your shoulder and to the point under the nose. Now press firmly against the point, this works in real life to stimulate mental alertness (try it) and it will help your become switched on in the dream world.

Spin around on the spot ~ The act of stimulating the centers of motion and balance in the brain will make your mind more alert (another good reason to do martial practice). Spin around on the spot in a bit of a comical wonder woman way but don't hold your arms stiffly out, let centripetal force of your spin carry them up and out.

Ask for Increased lucidity ~ Try not to speak too much in a lucid dream as I find your real lips can move and may wake you. Speaking isn't really necessary as all people in your dream can read your thoughts, so try that.

Try shouting the phrase "Increase lucidity, Now!" or "Higher lucidity, Now!" etc. If you can try to combine it with the feeling you might get before you perform a set piece of your art or before you fight an opponent. For those that believe in it, let the ki/chi/prana wash over your body spreading down from the head to the limbs by slowly breathing out.. Your eyes should be wide, your mind in an extremely focused state but a focus that is not about thought but about emptiness. The eyes should feel like they are fixed on a spot miles into the distance and if there is an object in the way it becomes as if its almost not there, it should feel like you could melt lead with that stare. If you can cultivate this in real life it will really help your lucid state, you'll noticed its happened by the washing electric feeling and the fact every hair on your body will be stood on end even in warm sun.

Keeping the high lucid ~ After doing at least one of the above you should recall your dream intention (what you want to do in your lucid dream this time). If you don't have a dream intention you tend to wander around a bit and try to think of what you want to do. "Thinking" is a real killer, try to have an empty Zen type mind at all times, you should have thought about exactly what you want to do when lucid when you were awake (Like get to the Lucid Dojo and practice).