7 Lucid Dreaming Tricks You Didn't Know

NOTE: Everything in this article can be backed up with scientific research and reasoning. No guesswork is involved.

There are tons of useful and well-known methods to achieving lucid dreams, but what many people don’t know is that if you don’t live a healthy lifestyle these methods will never work to their full potential. Yes, I know you probably think you’ve heard it all, but if you give this article a chance I hope to surprise you with new useful tips that will give you a fresh perspective to the world of lucid dreaming. Whether you have years of experience or are a new aspiring dreamer, I guarantee this article will help you. Here are just a few of the benefits you’ll get:
-Dream recall will improve; dreams will become more vivid
-Falling asleep will become easier; helps with insomnia
-Lucid Living will come easily and naturally
-WILD will become easier
-Overall amount of LD’s will greatly increase
-Results in feeling healthier and revived during the day
-All methods are FREE
Before we begin I would like to start with a small amount of background research. Please do not skip over this section, as it is important to some of the tips in this article:

The Pineal Gland, Melatonin, and it’s Effect on Sleep
Deep inside the brain there is a tiny pine-shaped organ called the pineal gland. The pineal gland serves many purposes, one of which is to produce a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin works to communicate information about environmental lighting to different parts of the body. In other words, it acts as the body’s internal clock; it helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. It promotes awareness during the day and reduces the amount of time it takes to fall asleep during the night. It also affects the quality of dreams. High levels of melatonin lead to vivid dreams and high quality sleep, while lower levels lead to trouble sleeping, insomnia, poor quality dreams, and often even mood disorders due to the chemical imbalance.

Speaking in lucid dreaming terms, ‘vivid’ means more lifelike, easier to recall, and naturally the dreamer is more aware of the dream. The more vivid the dream is,the easier it is to obtain lucidity. Therefore one of the best ways to increase the chances of having lucid dreams is to increase the body’s melatonin levels.
Now that you have this handy piece of information, you will be able to understand how you can ultimately impact the success of your lucid dreaming life with a few simple easy steps. Without further ado, let’s begin!

1. Have a consistent sleep schedule. This is a pretty obvious one. Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time every day is what sets your ‘body clock’ (aka melatonin). You know how sometimes you wake up 5 minutes before your alarm rings? That’s your melatonin in action. But it cannot function if you do not have a consistent sleep schedule. This internal ‘clock’ is used in many lucid dreaming methods.

2. Sleep in complete darkness. Scientific research shows that your melatonin levels are the highest at night while sleeping in complete darkness, around the time that you dream. This promotes vivid dreams and better dream recall. In the ideal situation, there should be no difference in darkness when you open your eyes compared to when you close them. Sleeping with a light on decreases the quality of dreams and messes up your internal clock as it brings down the melatonin level in your body. Don’t let light pollution ruin your dreams for you!

3. Limit your time spent with electronics. The bright light of a computer can burn up your melatonin levels if you spend too much time in front of one. Don’t spend more than 5 hours on your computer each day. Also the electromagnetic fields of cell phones, televisions, and computers can burn up your melatonin levels. Limit your time on your phone and do not sleep with your computer or TV too close to you.

4. Recall earlier events from the day. This is a great and fun thing to do while lying in bed before you fall asleep. Think back to the very beginning of the day and recall as many details as you can. What colour was that car that was parked on the side of the road? Who was your cashier at the grocery store? What colour was his/her eyes? Were you paying attention or did you just worry about buying your food? Go through the entire day and remember as much as you can. Doing this every night will encourage you to subconsciously increase your awareness levels. Before you know it, you will be practicing lucid living with no effort at all!

5. Massage your scalp before you go to bed. I know this sounds like a weird one but it is actually very relaxing and is wonderful for your health and lucid dreaming. When you massage your scalp, you release endorphins and serotonin. The endorphins give you a relaxing sensation that will help you fall asleep faster. Serotonin is used to create melatonin, so naturally the more serotonin you produce the more melatonin you produce. Melatonin leads to more vivid dreams, which means a higher chance of becoming lucid. Scalp massages are great to do before WILD, during WBTB, and before you go to sleep at night.
If you Google scalp massaging techniques you should come up with a fair few. Here’s an example of an easy one: https://blackhair.about.com/od/basiccare/ht/howtomassageyourscalp.htm

6. Learn to recognize dream signs before they appear in your dreams. Yes, this is possible. The subconscious mind works based off of the conscious mind, so if you continuously feed in information about a certain topic there is a high chance it will appear in your dreams. Before it starts appearing in your dreams, there’s a good chance it will have appeared in your daydreams as well. Think really hard… Is there something you are incredibly passionate about that you think about very often? When you daydream, does a certain topic float into your mind frequently? When you relax and allow your mind to wander, how often does that topic effortlessly float in? If you can nail a specific topic, use it as a dream sign.

7. Eat lucid foods. Yes, they do exist! There are certain foods that increase the production of melatonin, therefore making lucidity more attainable. Did you know that eating a teaspoon of mustard before bed actually does increase your chances of getting lucid? Making these foods a part of your everyday diet will help increase your chances of having a lucid dream. Below is a list of lucid foods and how much melatonin is in them (measured in nano grams).
Foods that Contain Melatonin
-White mustard (378 ng/tsp)
-Black mustard (258 ng/tsp)
-Almonds (39 ng/g)
-Sunflower seeds (29 ng/g)
-Cherries (15 ng/g)
-Flax seeds (12 ng/g)
-Oats (1.8 ng/g)
-Rice, red radishes, poppy seeds, tomatoes, bananas (0.5 to 1 ng/g)

Other lucid-friendly foods include milk, yogurt, eggs, fish (especially cod and tuna), broccoli, sweet potatoes, mushrooms and lentils. These foods not only contain vitamin B5 (a coenzyme acid that is essential for the synthesis of melatonin), they also contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is converted into serotonin, which is later converted into melatonin.

This concludes the 7 tricks. Using these methods does not guarantee instant lucid dreams every night, but I CAN promise you that you will definitely have a greater chance at becoming lucid and probably have lucid dreams more frequently than you did before. Plus, not only will these tips give you a larger chance of becoming lucid, they will also make you healthier and happier in your day-to-day life. I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new.

Happy dreaming!

Nice post. Will try these. :smile:

Me too. Thanks!

…Nice…will do…

Oddly enough, about half of my lucid dreams happened when I slept in relative brightness (aka. napping during daytime) during warm weather or when I was simply very warm in the bed.

Nice article, these are definitely things that help with lucid dreaming. I totally agree that living healthier helps with lucid dreaming and can vouch good sleeping patterns help with lucid dreaming a lot :happy:

but there were some things I noticed that kinda bugged me about it. You didn’t back up any of the stuff you said besides saying at the beginning everything can be backed up. I read " Also the electromagnetic fields of cell phones, televisions, and computers can burn up your melatonin levels." and wanted to read more about it but nothing :sad:.

I like your approach to it though, putting a lot of emphasis on melatonin. You might want to also look into the… not sure what the names is… but the part of the brain that controls your logical thinking. That shuts down when you go to sleep and I’m sure there are some nifty tricks you could do to modify that that would help with lucid dreaming (thinking more logical in dreams helps you realize its all craziness). I also read a book (small book) about lucid dreaming chemicals and foods that you might be interested in, I’ll see if I can find title hehe…

Nice topic, i’ll definitly try it. Thanks!

I think you’re just not looking in the right places. :content: A lot of the information I posted was relatively hard to dig up, but if you would like a list of the sites I used I can give them to you. In the case of the electromagnetic fields, that one was especially hard to find. Here are some of the websites:
https://drmurphree.blogspot.ca/2010/10/electromagnetic-fields-and-poor-sleep.html
https://www.feb.se/EMFguru/Research/emf-emr/EMR-Reduces-Melatonin.htm
https://voices.yahoo.com/how-electromagnetic-fields-affect-melatonin-production-7667418.html
Everything in my post can be scientifically backed up, but I didn’t want to go into too much detail in the explanations. As you can see the post is lengthy as it is. I gave a general description but did not want to bore readers with long unnecessary information. I believe most people are more interested in how these things affect lucid dreaming than they are in how the brain functions. But like I said, if you’re skeptical or even just plain interested I can post a good set of websites where you can read up on information. Or if you have any questions I will happily answer them. :smile:

I will definitely look into that. :smile:

I probably should have specified… When I said to sleep in complete darkness, I meant complete darkness at night. When you nap during the day, your melatonin (biological clock) is still telling your brain that it needs to be awake and active. Thus, you have a higher chance of gaining lucidity because that melatonin is saying “Hey! It’s still light out! Why are you sleeping???”. That is why you tend to have more lucid dreams when you nap during the day.

Of course, you could use light at night time while you sleep to achieve lucidity. However it is extremely unhealthy because you won’t get a proper night’s sleep, you’ll most likely awake feeling groggy and miserable instead of refreshed, and your melatonin levels will drop. Besides, the more you use that technique the quicker your biological clock will adjust and eventually it will stop working. I would not suggest trying as it upsets your sleep schedule and since light brings [/i]down your melatonin levels, your dreams won’t be that great anyways.

Nice hints. Might try some (too bad I hate mustard :confused: )

Yup, valid and great info. Good post too, lays it out in a nice orderly fashion.

Thanks!!

I’m testing this, now i’m using 1,2,4,6 and sometimes 7 and i got two very vivid and long dreams, and i almost did DILD, but i woke up and fell asleep into another ND, but it’s still good progress :smile:

maybe it’s placebo, who knows…

oh btw, look what i found:
news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=3074

Great post, I specially like the fact that everything can be backed-up scientifically :smile:

Of all your tips I mostly do #1 and #2. I’ve tried not spending too much on my computer before going to bed, but i usually end up doing many things and then it gets late and I have to go straight to bed. I’m really trying to change that though, it’s definitely messing up with my sleep schedule!

Ah God, but I hate massages… WORTH A SHOT!

Excellent post! It was packed with information and very easy to read. It seems legitimate and believable without any additional research on my part.

I just feel like #3 is a bit one sided, but either way - Thank you for the post :smile:

How so? Just asking out of curiosity, since this is the only side I’ve ever heard. I’ve never heard anything that states that an excess electromagnetic fields or electronics is actually good for you. However if you have any information on that I’d love to hear it. :smile:

Nice read. I wonder where yellow mustard fits in for #7.

As for what Nevermore said, I can only say that it would seem one-sided to me as I use my computer for an extreme amount of time (that will only increase… future job is in programming), and yet I have pretty decent recall now and then.

I’ve noticed I have more lucid dreams in a relatively sun lighted room.

Also: This helps me the MOST.
Use the power of suggestion. Simply command what your intentions are.

An excess in anything has the potential to be bad for you, wouldn’t you agree?

Just lower the brightness of your screen?

The reason a person would spend more than 5 hours on a computer every single day is because of work. You cannot ask someone to stop working so that they can have more vivid dreams.

It may burn up melatonin levels, but I am not convinced that this effect is anything other than miniscule. I would actually like to know if the amount of melatonin it burns is big enough to make a measurable difference. But even if this difference is measurable, limiting your time with electronics feels like the least effective way to prevent or restore melatonin. Increasing the vividness of your dreams isn’t a good enough reason to limit your time with electronics (if limiting ones time with electronics is even possible)

This concludes the reason why I said number 3 feels a bit one sided, every single thing I said is based solely on my personal opinion and is not backed up by any research what so ever :tongue: feel free to criticize.

Speaking from personal experience, living a healthier life certainly does improve the quality of dreams!
Infact, these past two months have been terrible for my recall. A result of nutrients not being absorbed well because of some sickness (Yeast syndrome, which I’m still dealing with). Changing my diet (drastically) seemed to return things back to normal.

As for the electronics, I can’t honestly say they’ve had any effect on my dreams. I’ve had days where I’ve been online 8 hour+, and days with 3 hours with no noticeable changes whatsoever. I also sleep beside my cellphone every night.
If anything, spending more time outside makes a difference, but that may be due to other factors.

^^ To all who posted about the electronics :smile:

From my personal knowledge I know that for certain electronics make a difference in melatonin levels; however, by how much I’m not sure. It may possibly only impact it subtly but all the same a number of subtle changes do add up and make a difference. I’m not saying that electronics will for sure make all your dreams less vivid. What I am saying is that limiting your time has a good chance of making them more vivid… like an added bonus.

You must also remember that your initial melatonin levels make all the difference. If someone already has low melatonin levels then spending a lot of time around electronics will make a noticeable impact. In contrast, if somebody already has very high melatonin levels, spending a lot of time around electronics may make a dent but probably isn’t enough to make a drastic change in their dream quality. So for those who have to work long hours at a computer, as long as you make sure you are doing other things to keep your melatonin levels up you’ll be alright.