I’m a Master of “Lucid Dreaming” (Freely Controlling Dreams) – Here’s How I Do It

Lucid dreaming refers to dreaming while being aware that you are dreaming. People who experience lucid dreams often report being able to change the dream’s situation according to their will.

[1] I’d been training in lucid dreaming pretty much since high school. But I stopped about a year ago because it started affecting my health.

• [2] Doesn’t trying to intentionally see dreams mess with your physical condition?

[3] >>2 It depends on how far you take it. If you really get deep into it, your health will definitely get worse.

• [5] I mean, they say you dream during light sleep, so trying to intentionally create light sleep would mess up your health, right?

[11] >>5 Ideally, you’d only control the dream when you happen to have one, but as you train, the frequency of dreaming clearly increases. You will mess up your health.

• [4] Please tell me how to do it.

[6] Keeping a dream journal is the best way, but you can do it without one. Personally, I got pretty far without writing them down.

• [7] Dream journals… don’t you forget everything when you wake up?

[8] Okay, first, there are stages. Stage 0: You hardly ever dream at all. Stage 1: You dream, but can barely remember anything. Stage 2: You very occasionally realize it’s a dream, but wake up the moment you do. Stage 3: You dream, and even if you realize it’s a dream, you don’t wake up, but you can’t control anything. Stage 4: Within the given environment of the dream you’re having, you have some degree of control. Stage 5: You can do pretty much anything, even changing the dream itself. By the way, I reached Stage 5.

[9] Stage 4 means, for example, let’s say you’re dreaming you’re at an amusement park with friends. Once you realize, “This is a dream!”, you can try punching the friend next to you, go on various other rides, or think, “Let’s try jumping off the Ferris wheel.” However, you can’t go so far as changing the fact that you’re at an amusement park or altering the people around you.

[10] And even within the same Stage 4, there are people who can only move freely within the bounds of realistic actions, and those who can do surreal things. For example, firing a Kamehameha, flying, or shooting destruction beams from their mouth.

[14] Apparently, some people can do it right from the start without any training. Among Todai (University of Tokyo) students, there are supposedly rare cases of people who can study in their dreams. I’ve also heard of incredible people who can even control the frequency of their dreams, but I can’t do that, so I can’t explain it.

• [15] Right. In the end, it’s for people who want to escape reality, isn’t it? When your real life becomes fulfilling, dreams become unimportant. Doesn’t being able to control dreams greatly enhance your imagination? Like controlling your subconscious.

[18] >>15 Well, the most important thing is getting solid sleep to make your real life fulfilling.

• [16] I can fly, but I’ve never managed to do a Kamehameha.

[22] >>16 If you master it, you’ll be able to.

• [20] Because if you get proper sleep, you stop being able to dream.

[24] By the way, there are individual differences, and some people apparently hit a plateau no matter how much they train. Well, if you want to try, give it a shot. First, you have to make an effort to remember your dreams. It’s a pain, but keep paper and a pen by your pillow.

[25] If you rarely dream, try setting multiple alarms to snooze and go back to sleep two or three times. Or take naps. That makes it easier to dream.

[26] If you have even the slightest memory of having dreamed, try really hard to recall the dream and jot it all down on paper.

[27] How you write it is important: write as much detail as vividly as possible. What kind of place was it? Who else was there? What sounds were there? Your emotions at the time, sensations, anything you can remember, anything you can write down, write it all (Important). Simply saying “I was playing with friends at an amusement park” isn’t enough.

• [28] I’m also at Stage 5, but the frequency is low. If there’s a way to increase the probability, please tell me.

[31] >>28 The only thing I can think of is intentionally going back to sleep (snoozing). But isn’t it a good thing if you’re at Stage 5 and the frequency is low? I dream every time, regardless of my intention, so my health is clearly suffering.

[29] Anyway, for now, just keep writing in your dream journal diligently. If you’re writing a dream journal but not progressing, you’re probably not writing enough detail. If you remembered being at an amusement park, write down how many other people were there, what clothes you were wearing, what rides there were, the colors of the rides, smells, the heat, the weather—write down everything.

[30] The next important step is to think, “At what point could I have realized this was a dream?” While recalling and writing in your dream journal, reflect on points where you think, “Ah, now that I think about it, this part was weird compared to reality.” Ask yourself, “Why didn’t I realize it was a dream here?”

[33] Well, I said I’d explain, but that’s pretty much all there is to the training. I only did the paper-writing part when moving from Stage 4 to Stage 5. Just intensely trying to remember gets you quite far.

[34] Also, once you’ve trained and become able to realize you’re dreaming, a trick is to try doing something weird that doesn’t fit the situation. If you realize you’re dreaming while studying at school, just thinking “Ah, this is a dream” isn’t enough. Once you realize, try something like, “Okay, let’s smash the window and jump outside!”

[35] I’ve explained the training, so next I’ll tell you about the physical changes that actually happen.

[36] First, the content of the dreams you see starts to resemble reality more often. Initially, you might have dreams where you’re clearly in a strange world, like a fantasy setting. But as you train, you increasingly end up in worlds very similar to the real one.

[37] Next, the frequency of dreaming clearly increases. If you keep training, it increases to the point where you dream every single time you sleep.

[38] And most strikingly, your senses become similar to reality. For example, touching someone feels almost exactly the same as in real life. But the terrifying part, though maybe it’s just me, is that I started feeling pain too. It was scary when I got stabbed with a knife and it hurt a lot.

[39] And when you reach the final stage, you start having trouble distinguishing between reality and dreams. This is what prompted me to stop keeping a dream journal.

[40] That’s it! The end.

• [42] I want to escape reality but I can’t even dream, stop messing with me.

[44] >>42 Keep training hard.

[45] You won’t realize it’s a dream every single time. The problem is when you don’t realize it’s a dream.

[47] By the way, I once had a dream where I furiously yelled “I quit!” at my senior colleague at work and stormed out. Woke up full of regret, called my colleague to apologize, and they were like, “Huh? What are you talking about?” Be careful, because if you overdo it, you really can lose track of what’s real. Goodbye.

• [48] Use that momentum to try astral projection.
• [46] Thanks for your hard work. I’ll use this as a reference.