How to Lucid Dream.

Step #4 - Total Relaxation

Today you're going to learn an essential lucid dreaming technique that you'll come to use in many different ways - including:

Dream-Induced Lucid DreamsWake-Induced Lucid DreamsOut-of-Body Experiences

You may already be very familiar with this skill. Or you may never have experienced it in your life. It's called total relaxation.

The kind of total relaxation I'm talking about isn't slouching on the couch watching TV. It's not lying in the dark going trying to go to sleep at night. It's not even getting an amazing back massage from your partner.

It's about complete physical and mental detachment (dissociation) from the real world. We'll use it to achieve deep states of meditation and conscious entry into the dream world.

Getting Started

When you feel like relaxing, lay down on your back in a dark, quiet room. Take some deep breaths in and out... and start to feel the tension drain away from your muscles.

1. Physical relaxation begins by systematically visualizing each muscle group and letting it relax into the bed / go invisible / float away. Use whichever metaphor works for you.

Start with your toes: let them drop out of reality first. Then your feet. Then your ankles. Focus your full attention on each body part and let it go before moving up... all the way to the top of your head. Remember to fully relax your face and jaw.

As you do this, sigh away the tension and allow your breathing to become gentle and rhythmic. Once a body part has "left reality" don't move it; it's gone. (If you must move to cough or scratch an itch, start over until you feel you're back to where you were before.)

This should take about 10 minutes, by which point you'll be feeling pretty darn relaxed. And this is only the beginning.

2. Mental relaxation can start with observing hypnagogic imagery, which looks like floating or swirling patterns forming against your closed eyelids. Let it take you away from your physical body... into a primitive yet hypnotic dream world.

If you don't see or sense any emerging hypnagogia, that's ok - we'll do some sensory visualization instead.

Imagine your arms or legs have completely disappeared. What does that feel like?

Now imagine you're floating a few feet above your body, or are trying to swing your awareness out. Feel the sensation, recalling the last time you were on a swing in a playground.

This classic "out-of-body" technique could lead to interesting results. While some people believe they are genuinely traveling out of their body at this point, scientific experiments suggest that it's all taking place in our heads - a spectacular lucid dream!

When Total Relaxation Leads to Lucid Dreams

After about another 10 minutes following your increasingly complex hypnagogia or visualizing yourself leaving your physical body, you should be deep in a state of total relaxation:

1. Your body is so relaxed, it sends few (if any) real sensory signals to your brain. This makes it easy for you to create false signals with your mind. Any physical sensation you imagine now can feel very real - and can even tip you into the lucid dream world quite easily.

2. Your mind is focused inwards, far away from the trivial stresses of waking life. You may keep your mind clear and open to spontaneous insights - or, if you prefer, visualize a simulated inner world which again can push your awareness into the lucid dream world in a matter of seconds.

Troubleshooting

The most common hurdle in total relaxation is just silencing your inner monologue. Most people just don't know how to switch off from reality.

Focusing on the systematic relaxation of your body is one way to distract your mind from thinking about school or work or other niggling issues of the day. Another simple focusing technique is to count slowly backwards (in your mind) in threes, starting from one hundred.

If you fall asleep while counting backwards, you're probably just too tired. The aim is to fall asleep physically (ie, shut down those sensory signals) but remain awake mentally (ie, stay lucid and conscious as you play with your dreamy hypnagogia and visualizations).

Final Thoughts

For the next few nights, go to bed a little earlier than usual and perform the total relaxation technique described here. Open yourself up to a blissful meditation experience - and maybe even some surprising insights and dream onset phenomena.