The Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

I was sitting in my room when I asked myself, “Am I dreaming right now?”

I looked around at my surroundings and immediately noticed a large elephant standing in the middle of my room, hardly fitting in. In a brief moment of confusion, I tried to figure out how in the world it had managed to walk through the door, which was ten times smaller than it, and why no one else in the room seemed to notice it. Just then, I realised that I must be dreaming.

A lucid dream is one in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. It is often triggered by a sudden recognition of some strange characteristic of a dream. In a lucid dream, one has the opportunity to play with life-like events beyond the constraints of the waking world, such as rational thought, laws of physics, and lasting consequences.

The Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

While lucid dreams offer a playground for extraordinary experiences, from the fantastical to the profound, they also hold potential for personal growth and problem-solving, including nightmare treatment.

Lucid dreaming has also been linked to creativity in a number of studies. Dr. Clare Johnson, for example, explored the role of lucid dreaming in creative writing and found many benefits. Schädlich and Erlacher’s 2018 study suggests that musicians can improve their skills in lucid dreams and use them for creative purposes. Furthermore, they found that athletes engaging in lucid dreaming felt that they had improved their physical performance and flexibility as a result.

What Drew Me to Lucid Dreaming

During my undergraduate studies, my lecturer David Saunders was conducting an experiment in lucid dreaming. I asked him to teach me how to do it, as I was fascinated by the many spontaneous lucid dreams I'd had throughout my life. David gave me some instructions and a wristband that said Am I Dreaming?

I started to lucid dream on the second night. I used these dreams to heal from a personal trauma in a self-controlled environment. I also noticed that my creativity blossomed during this time. It seemed that the deeper my relationship with lucid dreaming got, the more authentic my relationship with creativity became.

That’s why I decided to test this theory on other creatives for my doctoral research years later. In a number of studies that included techniques similar to those David had taught me, combined with sleep laboratory experiments, I found that cultivating lucid dreaming indeed promotes creativity, both in immediate creative tasks and in developing a long-term creative mindset. My participants also experienced a positive shift in their nightmares and anxiety dreams, as well as in their day-to-day lives, such as feeling more mindful, grounded, and inspired.

What Lucid Dreaming Can Do for You

Cultivating this practice could thus help you heal, become more creative, and develop a more mindful approach to life. And the best thing? Anyone can learn how to induce lucid dreams, argues expert Stephen LaBerge in a book featuring his groundbreaking research on the topic.

Around half of the population experience at least one lucid dream in their life, but only around 20 percent experience them frequently. However, there are simple methods for inducing them that LaBerge developed, and which have since been further refined.

Below, I am presenting you with the mixed approach I used in my studies, in which 83 percent managed to achieve a lucid dream in just eight weeks.

Steps to Induce Lucid Dreams

Here are the four key methods to help achieve lucidity in your dreams:

1. Keep a Dream Diary

Documenting your dreams is the foundation of lucid dreaming. Every time you wake up, write down or audio record everything you can remember about your dreams. Even small fragments can spark greater recall over time.

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It is important to record your dreams as soon as you wake up—ideally while you’re still lingering in a sleepy, liminal state. This is because your waking mind will automatically try to reason with the dream, attempting to bypass its dream logic and make it make sense in the waking world, which may stop you from recording the dream exactly as it happened. The dream may not make sense when you read it back later—but it is in those "confusing" details that the symbolic messages from the subconscious often hide.

This practice has two primary benefits:

• It drastically improves dream recall. If you think you don’t remember much of the dream, just start writing it, and you’ll find that more of it will come back to you. You will also start remembering more of your dreams over the next few nights.
• It helps you identify recurring patterns or themes in your dreams, which can later serve as cues for lucidity. We call these “dream signs.”

As you continue this habit, you’ll notice themes and motifs that can act as triggers for realising you’re in a dream.

2. Practice Reality Testing

Reality testing involves questioning the nature of your environment during waking hours to train your mind to distinguish between reality and dreams. By making this a habit, you’ll start performing these checks during dreams as well, which will eventually lead to that wonderful realisation that “this is a dream.”

All those years ago, Dr. Saunders told me to ask myself “Am I dreaming right now?” and observe the environment carefully for anything out of place. Most of the time in dreams, you will notice something that’s just a bit off—like that elephant in my room—which will make you realise that this is a dream.

Some other common reality checks that you can try include:

• Pushing a finger through the palm of your other hand.
• Jumping to see if you can levitate.
• Pinching your nose closed and attempting to breathe.
• Looking at a clock or text, looking away, and then checking if it remains consistent.

The trick with these reality checks is to really try to do it in your waking life. If you try pushing your finger through your pam and conclude that it doesn’t work after one attempt (because you know that you’re awake), you will likely do the same in your dream, thus missing out on lucidity. I can’t tell you how many times this happened to me, and I’m far from being the only one!

I recommend giving it at least 10 seconds for an actual attempt—really try to push that finger through!—so that you carry the same habit into the dream.

3. Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)

MILD is a mental exercise performed as you fall asleep. The idea is to set an intention to become lucid in your dreams. Repeat affirmations like, “I will have a lucid dream,” or “I will know that I’m dreaming when I’m in a dream,” while visualising a recent dream in which you became lucid. Focus your thoughts solely on this intention to enhance the likelihood of achieving lucidity.

When you become a frequent lucid dreamer, you might try further developing this method and setting an intention to dream something specific. But to start, keep it simple, and don’t overwhelm your brain.

4. Wake Back to Bed (WBTB)

This technique takes advantage of the brain’s natural sleep cycle to increase the chances of entering REM sleep, where lucid dreams mainly occur. To practice WBTB:

• Set an alarm to wake yourself up after about six hours of sleep.
• Stay awake for 30-60 minutes. You can stay in bed, reflecting on the dreams you might have had during the night. Reflective journaling or free writing is also good during this time.
• Use the MILD technique as you go back to sleep.

By re-entering sleep during this late REM phase, which lasts much longer than the first REM phase of the night, you increase the likelihood of becoming lucid.

Each of these methods can be tailored to suit your personal routine, and combining them often yields the best results. Whether you’re aiming to explore your creativity, overcome personal challenges, or simply enjoy flying through dreamscapes, these techniques can help you experience your dreams in a whole new way.