The lucid bicycle

Since I have started my lucid practice I have struggled to be able to reach lucidity consistently. Over the past couple of months I have been working on different techniques that will help me achieve lucidity on a regular basis, with my goal to be able to have a lucid dream 3-4 times a week.

What I have realised is that maintaining a regular practice is like learning to ride a bike. The skill required to ride a bike looks quite simple- you hop on the bike, peddle with your legs and away you go. However, for those starting out the process can be quite daunting- the balance required to stay on and not topple over takes some getting used to. You might only get a short distance before the machine wobbles and you crash. Eventually you get the knack and from that time you don’t look back.

There are a number of micro-skills that are needed to ride a bike. I’m not really sure what they are but there must be a subtle training and strengthening of various muscles, and a connection between mind and body that needs to take place before you are competent.

I began to think that lucidity might be the same. What if we could all ride lucidity like a bike. As we know, once you get the skill with a bike, you never lose it. Wouldn’t that be great with lucidity.

I think that lucidity might always be more fragile a skill than bike riding, but the principle of learning the knack might be the same.

And then this week I reached my goal of three lucid dreams in a week. And I reflected on what skills I had put together to make that happen. This is what I learnt:

• The first skill I need to maintain is that of mental focus. It is the ability to tune out all other thoughts and focus on the desire to be lucid. While I generally have pretty good focus, my monkey mind can be pretty intense and maintaining periods of singular focus and will is not always an easy feat. So I tuned up this focus with nighttime meditation before bed.
• The second skill was the discipline to record my dreams. I have discovered that if I do not write down one part of a dream a night then my ability to tune into the dream world diminished really fast. So even if it is only a fragment, this is essential to my lucid practice. Apparently my subconscious does not like me to skip even one night, its very strict.
• The third skill is to use the last stage of REM sleep to have lucid dreams. I have known about this for a long time but realise I need to wait for a certain restful feeling in my body for lucidity to come easily. This occurs after 6 hours of sleep and it seems that it doesn’t even have to be 6 hours of continuous sleep, although that is preferable of course.
• I then use the Wake Back to Bed technique. Wake Back to Bed involved waking up for a period of time in one of your last REM cycles and then returning the sleep with an intention to be lucid. The period of awakening does not have to be long I find for me, but about twenty minutes is enough to allow my brain to come into some level of alertness.
• But the final step seemed to put all of the previous steps together. I found that it is really valuable to lie on my back with my head slightly cocked to one side, generally the right side. I am usually a side sleeper, so this does not come naturally to me. But after 6 hours of sleep I am more relaxed and it easier to fall asleep this way. If I have achieved a good level of mindful relaxation I can enter lucidity directly from this position – the Wake Initiated Lucid Dream -WILD. However last night I entered lucidity from within the dream but was asleep in this position.

So it seems that all the above steps are needed for me to achieve lucidity on a regular basis. I believe – at least at this point- it is important to maintain all the skills and steps above in order to keep on the lucid bike.

For others developing a lucid practice, you might like to consider it like learning to ride. There are many techniques out there on how to become lucid but there is probably a unique combination for each person that will work for them. The key here is to keep experimenting, trying and failing just like those fumbling first times when you learnt to ride as a kid. Eventually you find the right set of skills and it clicks. By all means, use my techniques above as I’m sure there is some universality to lucid success. The techniques I use you can find in any book on lucid dreaming. But do not believe that just because I achieved it this particular way that it will necessarily work for you.

Find the combination that unlocks your potential.