I once had a dream where a name came to me out of the blue - Franz Natkin Gimke. After reading Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss, I decided to write down the question “who is Franz Natkin Gimke?” and put it under my pillow. Unfortunately, nothing happened but I still believe in its potential to work.
acuattly my bro and cousin claim they have hade lucid dreams and that when thinking of something when trying to go to sleep will give u a dream about what u were thinking.
that can be true for some people, but for the most this doesnt work i have talked to a lot of ppl bout this and about 1/10 people can do that
cheers
Richard
If you think that dream incubation is a waste of time, you may want to check out posts by Pedro, who created the VILD technique. He incubates dreams in which he is doing reality checks. He enters the dream using WILD and then does the reality check and becomes lucid. He has had a 100% success rate.
i’m not trying to take anything away from dream incubation, i see how it could be very useful for inducing LDs. maybe i’m missing something, but i don’t see how you can say that you want to communicate with your dream self when you are preoccupied with taking it over. that’s like saying “we can talk, but only about what i wanna talk about” which is hardly communication in my opinion.
if you were trying to understand your neighbor, would you always take him out to do what YOU wanted to do, or would you do what your neighbor wanted to do–let him share what he likes to do ???
I don’t use dream incubation but if I did this is what I would do:
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In the morning think about what type of dream I would want. Lets say visit planet X. I would spend 5 minutes thinking about this and try to visualize. Then get out of bed and go about my day.
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during the day do frequent reality checks. Once I proved I am not dreaming I would then say “next time I am dreaming I will realize I am dreaming”. Then say “tonight I will visit planet x in my dreams and I will realize it is a dream.
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At bed time: I would put myself into a deep relaxation. Then I would try to visualize visiting planet x. As I fall asleep tell myself that I will visit planet X in my dreams and I will realize I am dreaming over and over till I fall asleep.
This is just a quick out line. I hope it helps you.
The basic I idea is that you want to keep the idea in your thoughts throughout the day and again just before bed.
It probably would also be helpful to do a session of self-hypnosis every day. If you wanted the same dream to occur every night like with Pedro, then a regular practice of self-hypnosis in which you always command yourself to have the same dream would be very effective.
Self hypnosis might work very well for dream incubation.
I have always wanted to master the technique of controlling what I dream about. Even if its not a lucid dream, it would still be nice to control what the subconcious thinks up to dream about. I am familiar with MILD and it has given me roughly 90% of all the LDs I have had so far, but the same approach doesn’t work for me when trying to get myself to dream about something specific.
I would have a mantra like "I want to dream about ________ " and I would try to visualize it as much as possible. It just doesn’t seem to penetrate into my dreams though.
If anyone is skilled at this particilar dreaming skill, a few tips may help a bit.have same problem too 
I tryed to incubate my dream a lot, but failed. Only managed to dream my village once, but that’s all
I can’t seem to get it to work either 
But I can continue a dream if I wake up from one that I really want to see the end of, or if I want to change something in it. I don’t really know how I do it but it happens every now and then.
I think I just carry my intention back into the dream world and then I just start dreaming about what I wan’t to dream about. It’s hard to describe how it do it, it’s more like a feeling.
I’ve done it a couple of times when I didn’t mean too (i was just thinking about something, and carried on thinking about it until I was asleep).
One technique I’ve read about, but have never successfully used is to setup triggers.
-You decide what you want to dream about
-You think of all the keywords and triggers you might encounter in a regular dream
-Memorize them and associate them with your desired dream sequence
This should allow you to start your desired dream when you encounter a memorized trigger
Just like triggering a lucid dream you can trigger a desired regular dream. It was a technique people used who wanted to revisit old dreams, in a non LD environment.
Remember the more you think about something the more likely it is going to filter through to your dreams. Try to think about what you want to do in your dreams as much as you can during the day as well as when you go to sleep.
Personally, I found that I am more likely to have a specific dream during a LD than through dream incubation.
Good Luck and Happy Dreaming
I scanned for a couple a pages for this thread and couldn’t find it. so if you can find an original post of this go ahead and link it. Once again im lazy.
Since the beginning of my practicing of lucid dreaming i never reall gave dream incubation much thought but as of late i have. But i haven’t had the time lately to practice this, that or i just forget among other methods. I had an idea for my dream incubation, i have a book called “skyscrapers” which is a picture book of all the major skyscrapers around the world. I was thinking of researching and memorizing all i could about a particular skyscraper until i dreamt about it. I would use the same skyscraper until i had a dream for it. I picked skyscrapers because they are all unique and the book gives me a direct list of locations and the skyscraper seems to be a good center point for the visualization and incubation. When you incubate a dream to a neighborboor hood or a room you’ve got alot of scattered objects to visualize into their normal place. Visulaizing one big building seems clearer that is if you don’t mind the inconsistencies in the city around it which seem unimportant if you got the skyscraper. If that explanation seems vague as to why i chose skyscrapers then whatever. Just seems like a solid thing to incubate.
Does anybody here have their own little incubations to speak of?
I also would like to ask if anyone here thinks that the type or scene your incubating has anything to do with its effectiveness or is it all just personal preference? Also, how sucessful have you all been with this tech? Is it one of the better ones or poorer ones?
I’m pretty sure the scene you incubate is personal preferance. I don’t see why one would be better than the other. It all depends on how well you can visualise it, how often you visualise it (during real life), and if you believe it will work or not.
I’ve actually tried something real close to this a couple of months ago. I was trying to relive big events (things like the civil war, 9/11, etc…), and it worked pretty well. The 9/11 one was almost exactly what your doing. I pictured the twin towers from an outside view. The only thing different that I had done, is also picture the surroundings, but only vivid enough as I would see them in peripheral vision…which I’m sure I just completely misspelled that.
Anyways if you put effort in to this, you should get almost instant results. Let us know how it goes.
BTW, this is also a great way to induce lucid dreams, which I don’t know if that is what your trying to do or not. You could use a MILD mantra saying, the next time I see this skyscraper…yada yada yada. It’s almost like a variation of VILD.
and VILD is a variation of overall dream incubation. I was going to incubate a dream about a skyscraper in the near by city but i thought “well, there is a chance i could be there and real life and have been. so i might be more susceptible to rationalizing it somehow in a dream state”. So i decided on another skyscraper so the possiblitiy of thinking “i’m actually at this building not far from my house” goes away.
I’ve searched about dream incubation in the forum, and I didn’t find any useful information.
The “find your hands” technique and, as you said, the VILD technique are based upon dream incubation. Thus, it’s possible! 
If you find a good incubation method, I’m very interested. It would be a breakthrough in this domain… 
How would you go on about dream incubation- e.g. decision-making- and you want a dream that can clarify the issue?
I try to pick topics that aren’t too traumatic or all-important life questions, but still relevant for me to bother about it- e.g. I need to make a decision by a certain day? … But so far, I’m not having too much success.
Any tips?