We’ve looked at more than a dozen lucid dreaming techniques so far, but let’s now take some time to explore how nature’s best can bless our dream practice.
There are plenty of artificial chemicals and pills that claim to give you lucid dreams, but nothing beats the practice of effective techniques. Having said that, there are quite a few vitamins and minerals that have been scientifically verified to make your dreams more vivid, while also contributing to your overall health.
The vitamin with the strongest effect on our dreams seems to be vitamin B6. A study from New York City College in the USA revealed ‘a significant difference in dream vividness, bizarreness, emotionality, and colour between those given vitamin B6 and those given a placebo’1 The study subjects were given 250mg of B6, which is quite a hit, so I’d recommend a smaller, 100-mg dose with a pre-bed snack for most people.
B6 converts amino acids such as tryptophan into serotonin, which leads to cortical arousal during periods of REM dreaming sleep.2 It’s this arousal of the brain which makes the dreams more vivid. B6 has also been linked to improved memory so it seems that this magic vitamin may help you remember those vivid dreams better too.
A range of other B vitamins, such as choline and B5, have also been linked to more vivid dreams, due to their role in making the REM neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, so a general vitamin B complex with a good dose of B6 should do the trick. Taking B6 supplements in excess of 1,000 mg/ day can have adverse effects, though, so go easy.
No – if you can get it from food sources, all the better. Whole grains, liver and meat, eggs, beans, nuts and bananas all contain vitamin B6. Healthy adults need just 1.3mg of vitamin B6 each day for normal functioning and this can be achieved through a balanced diet. Although some researchers believe that you need to take a supplement to get enough B6 to affect your dreams significantly, they obviously haven’t tried one of my B-vitamin bonanza super-green shakes. Check the references for my personal recipe.3
Dream expert Rebecca Turner advises a middle path. She recommends eating foods containing tryptophan (the amino acid converted by B6) around the same time you take your B6 supplement, a few hours before bed. Three of the most tryptophan-rich foods are chicken and turkey, soybeans and hard cheese. So there really is something to be said about cheese and dreams.
For many people, restful sleep and bountiful dreaming can be as simple as altering their diet to include calcium-and magnesium-rich foods. Studies have shown that a deficiency in these minerals may lead to an inability to enter sleep smoothly and to stay asleep once there.
A study published in the European Neurology Journal reported that disturbances in sleep, especially the absence of REM and deep sleep, are often related to a calcium deficiency.4 Calcium helps the brain use tryptophan to manufacture the sleep-inducing substance melatonin and so the more calcium we have the more melatonin we can produce. So the traditional milk-before-bedtime seems to hold some weight – or at least it did, because although the calcium levels in unpasteurized milk are high, once the modern heat treatment of milk takes place much of this is lost.
The International Osteoporosis Foundation cites sardines and whitebait as two of the foods with the highest calcium levels, along with almonds, sesame seeds and hard cheeses like parmesan and cheddar.5
This mineral plays an important role in hydration, muscle relaxation, energy production and, crucially, the deactivation of adrenaline. Magnesium is vital for the function of certain brain receptors which need to switch off before sleep, and without this process occurring we may remain tense, our thoughts racing as we lie in bed staring at the ceiling.6 Research has shown magnesium can change people’s sleep patterns within days, and I use it regularly myself to unwind my body and mind when I’ve been training in martial arts till late in the evening.
Many people, be they meat-eaters or vegetarians, are short of magnesium simply because it’s found in such tiny doses in most foods nowadays, but if you eat enough dark leafy veggies, nuts and seeds (especially pumpkin seeds) and oily fish you’ll soon get your daily dose.
Those who prefer to take a supplement can often find magnesium and B vitamins in a combined tablet, which can be taken with a pre-bed snack. People with digestive issues may not absorb minerals so well and may instead prefer magnesium sprays, which are absorbed through the skin, or bathing in magnesium salts before bed.
Note: All of the vitamins and minerals mentioned above are safe in the correct doses, and are great for giving you more vivid dreams, but please be careful about getting into the habit of popping a pill to aid your lucid dream practice.
My fiancée is from Yorkshire in the north of England, and in honour of the cultural heritage of that region she likes to call her midday meal ‘dinner’ and to eat her evening meal at 5 p.m. As a Londoner, I find this far too early to eat in the evening, but it does have one big advantage. Eating early is great for your dream practice.
The earlier you eat the easier it is for the body to be rested by the time you go to bed. If you drift off while your gut is still working on digesting your food, your body will be diverting energy to the gut that should be going to your brain to help power your dreams.
During the lucid dream retreats I run we just have soup and salad at 6 p.m., as a way to free up our bodies for the night of dreaming that lies ahead. Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns often don’t eat anything after midday, or if they do eat in the evening it’s usually something very light because from a Tibetan Buddhist point of view going to sleep on an empty stomach allows the internal energy to flow more freely through the subtle channels, which is seen as an aid to dream practice.
Although there are B vitamins in a pint of Guinness, alcohol is a big obstacle to dream practice. Booze is a depressant, so it zonks you out, makes you less likely to be bothered to do any lucid dreaming practice and sometimes makes you act like an idiot.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the USA, although it may feel as if you’re sleeping very deeply if you go to bed drunk, in fact ‘alcohol only helps people fall into light sleep, and it also robs them of REM and the deeper, more restorative stages of sleep’.
Cannabis is another drug that really messes with your dream periods and makes dreams harder to recall – and I speak from youthful experience. A weed habit is incompatible with a lucid dreaming practice.
Have you ever smelled a certain scent that instantly conjures up vivid memories of the past? Imagine if that memory could be used as a dream sign. Scent association is a lucid dreaming technique that was first documented by the nineteenth-century lucid dreaming pioneer the Marquis d’Hervey de Saint Denys.
The French nobleman wore a particular perfume every day during a visit to mountains in southern France and then stopped wearing it once he returned home. A few months later he told his servant to sprinkle a few drops of the perfume on his pillow on random nights while he slept. On those nights he found that he would dream of the mountains, this would act as a dream sign (because he was no longer in the mountains) and help him become lucid.
If you want to try a similar experiment, or simply want some help with your dream recall, I’d advise using the scent of rosemary because inhaling micro particles of this herb has been scientifically proven to help boost memory by inhibiting the enzymes which block normal brain functioning.7
But what about other scents that will send us to the land of lucidity?
Called nagadamni in Sanskrit, mugwort has been used in Ayurveda medicine for hundreds of years to treat cardiac conditions, as well as feelings of unease, anxiety and general malaise. It’s been employed for ages as a reliable dream-enhancing plant by many shamanic practitioners, who know that smudging with it (wafting the smoke around the body and allowing some to be inhaled too) before bed can lead to a marked increase in dream vividness and recall.
NB: Pregnant women should avoid prolonged exposure to mugwort.
This herb is often used in aromatherapy for relieving anxiety and fear, menstrual-related problems and insomnia. It’s also great for bringing on more vivid dreams. Although it doesn’t smell that nice I found that sprinkling a few drops of the oil onto a tissue and inhaling them as I fell asleep brought on intensely vivid dreams each night I used it.
NB: It’s best not to use clary sage if you’ve been drinking alcohol, as apparently this can lead to nightmares.8
Scary smells can lead to scary dreams. German researchers discovered that smells in your bedroom can significantly affect your dreams. They used specific smells with negative or positive connotations (such as rotten eggs or roses) to affect subjects during sleep. They discovered, unsurprisingly, that unpleasant smells often led to unpleasant dreams while rose-scented bedrooms led to rose-tinted dreams.9
At a Gateways of the Mind conference I met a woman called Mimi who told me that she was a shaman who’d spent seven years in the Amazon. She wanted me to try a new dream-enhancing essence that she’d made from the seeds of the camalonga tree – a teacher plant that works in the dream time to stimulate lucid and vivid dreaming.
I asked Mimi to tell me more about the essence and she said that traditionally, male and female camalonga seeds are macerated in sugar-cane alcohol by the shaman, along with male and female camphor. The brew is then ingested before bed. The camalonga spirits work on straightening a person’s energy while they’re dreaming, thus leading to lucid dreams. Mimi told me that the spirit energy of the plant is in the essence, and that it is this that affects the dreams.
I thought this all sounded great, but when I discovered that this essence was just a mix of brandy and water containing none of the active compounds found in the camalonga seeds – merely their ‘spirit’ – I was ready to forget the whole thing. And I did for a couple of weeks. Then one night I thought I’d give it a shot. After joking with my fiancée that the six drops of brandy water would at least help me fall asleep quickly I soon drifted off through a non-eventful hypnagogic state.
And then the dreams came…
I had some of the biggest, most powerful lucid dreams, nightmares and false awakenings that I’d had in a long time! In the four nights I used the camalonga seed essence I had six long, lucid dreams and several big ‘clarity’ dreams of archetypal significance. After a break of a few days, during which time I had suitably normal dreams, I started taking it again and the rash of lucid energy that had entered my dreams previously came once again. This stuff worked. It seemed like the spirit of the camalonga seeds really was in the essence and it took my scepticism as a perfect opportunity to show its true power.
Visit www.sacredtreeessences.com for more information on Mimi’s infusions.
Many Buddhists love full moons, and there are always special practices to be done on full-moon days. Why such love for a fat moon? Well, pretty much every important event in the historical Buddha’s life is said to have happened on a full-moon day: his birth, his enlightenment and even his death.
Consequently it’s said that the power of our meditation practice is amplified on full-moon days (and nights), and so we find various practices that are done especially at this time. In fact, at some Tibetan Buddhist centres there are even all-night compassion meditations that are done from 6 p.m. till 6 a.m. over the night of the full moon.
In ancient Indian tradition it’s believed that the moon is the controller of the water, and it’s said that the moon, like the other planets, exerts a considerable degree of influence over human beings. But do these beliefs have any science to back them up? Although most modern scientific studies exploring the moon’s effects have negated this there are a couple that have found some interesting correlations.
A 2013 study published in the journal Current Biology proved that full moons really do affect our sleep. The research revealed that subjects took five minutes longer to fall asleep on the three or four nights surrounding a full moon and that, on average, they slept for 20 fewer minutes. In addition, EEG activity related to deep sleep fell by 30 per cent, and levels of the sleep hormone melatonin were lower.10
Much of this is great news for our lucid dreaming, because by falling asleep more slowly we float through the hypnagogic for longer and the decreased time we spend in deep sleep may mean more access to REM dreaming periods. If we combine these findings with the Buddhist view of spiritual practice being amplified through full moons, then we can see that scheduling a night of lucid dreaming on a full moon is a great idea!
Although there’s no scientific backing to the long-held belief that changes in the moon can lead to a higher incidence of mental health issues, a study referred to in Time magazine concluded that there’s a lunar link to the electrochemistry in the brain of epileptic patients, which changes in the few days surrounding a new moon, making seizures more likely.11
But enough about the moon, let’s get back to learning how to shine bright at night with our final toolbox of techniques.
TOOLBOX 6: NOW THAT YOU’RE LUCIDWe now have five toolboxes full of techniques to help us have lucid dreams, so let’s have a look at what to do in those lucid dreams once we have them. Once lucid you can do pretty much anything you want to (as long as your unconscious agrees to let you do it, that is), but rather than just having sex with movie stars and flying about let’s spend some time planning for a more beneficial lucid dream experience.
Planning a lucid dream is a lucidity technique in itself, because when we set a strong intention to do something in our next lucid dream, we not only start to attract the causes and conditions needed to make that dream manifest, but we also create an expectation of becoming lucid.
On my workshops I teach three main stages to lucid dream planning: writing a dream plan, drawing a dream plan (the dreaming mind works in images, so this helps) and creating a sankalpa (a Sanskrit term which means ‘will or purpose’) – or statement of intent. But before we get to that, let me check through my personal dream diary to tell you about some of the things that I’ve been doing in my lucid dreams recently which might help to inspire your dream plans.
Feel free to try out any of these dream plans yourself, or, even better, why not create your own personal ones? Let me tell you how.
I once asked my teacher Lama Yeshe Rinpoche why I’d sometimes become lucid without much effort and at other times it felt as if it was a real struggle. He replied in his broken Tibetan-English: ‘Like an airplane, we need full tank of fuel to fly high. Same with lucid dreams. We need full tank.’
A full tank of what, though? A full tank of lucidity.
As lucid dreamers our job is to work out what fills up our lucidity tank and what depletes it. The level of our lucidity tank is not measured by our physical energy levels (although it’s true that being too fatigued at bedtime can make lucid dreaming more difficult) but by our chi levels. Chi is a Chinese word for ‘life force’ – a bit like the concept of prana (internal wind energy) in Buddhism – and it’s often our level of chi energy that determines how easy it will be to become lucid.
We can most readily raise our chi levels by engaging in energy work like chi gong, yoga or some energy-based martial arts, but we can also raise them by being creative, boosting our body awareness through dance or play and even by raising our oxytocin levels through laughter and acts of kindness.
Everybody’s lucidity tank will be filled up and depleted in a totally unique way, so start to become aware of the way your own lucidity tank operates. For me personally, dance, meditation and energy work, kindness and laughter are all surefire ways to boost my lucidity levels, during both day and night. In fact I’ve even been known to watch 10 minutes of laugh-out-loud YouTube videos before bedtime as a way to fill up my lucidity tank before sleep!
Conversely I’ve found that reading work emails before bedtime, watching mindless TV and reading tabloid media are like putting a hole in my lucidity tank and leaking out all my chi energy.
So let’s find out what fills up your lucidity tank.
I want to end our final toolbox with a look at where we can take our practice from here – how we can further our lucidity training and what more we can do to develop our skills.
So many lucid dream techniques are dependent on holding our mind in check and maintaining our awareness so, if you’re serious about lucid dreaming, it makes sense to learn meditation. I would personally recommend mindfulness meditation in particular if you want to develop a stabilized lucid dreaming practice. Mindfulness can be practised by people of all faiths and is based on the simple aspiration to ‘know what’s happening, as it is happening, without judgement or preference’.
Lucid dreaming isn’t just analogous to mindfulness meditation, it is mindfulness meditation – ‘knowing that we’re dreaming as we’re dreaming’ (hopefully without judgement) – so it’s the perfect practice for lucid dreamers. I recommend the Mindfulness Association (www.mindfulnessassociation.net) for courses around the UK and Europe, or, for courses in the USA, try Jon Kabat-Zinn’s organisation www.umassmed.edu/cfm
Napping is one of the most beneficial things that you can do for both your psychological and physiological health. It charges your body with potential, and whatever activities you engage in after a nap will be executed more easily and tackled more creatively. It’s also great for lucid dreaming! During an afternoon nap, we tend to enter REM dreaming sleep straight away and to stay there for most of the nap without much entry into delta-wave deep sleep, which means we get direct access to the dream state. To get the greatest benefits, nap for between 20 and 60 minutes.
This is an introductory book which simply lays the foundations of your lucid dream training but there are loads more techniques to explore and dozens of other great books out there to help further your learning, so get reading! Robert Waggoner’s book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self is my personal favourite, and then of course there is my own Dreams of Awakening, for those of you who are interested in using lucid dream training on the spiritual path.
As a hypnopompic enthusiast it pains me that we’ve not had space within this book to fully explore this amazing state of consciousness, but let me at least plant the seed. As I touched on earlier, the hypnopompic state is the transitional state of mind that lies between sleep and full wakefulness. It’s the state that we experience just before our mind has woken fully from sleep and when our eyes are still usually closed.
It’s characterized by a soft clarity of mind, so you might like to hang out there if you can, resting in what’s one of the most refined levels of consciousness. To do this, either wake yourself up slowly and gradually while keeping your eyes closed or hit the snooze button on the alarm and allow yourself to rest in the broad, panoramic awareness that characterizes the hypnopompic for an extra 10 minutes or so.
The hypnopompic can be a great place to access the lucid dream state too, by allowing yourself to slip back into the dream state through the back door. This is a favourite technique of my fiancée, Jade, who rests in the hypnopompic each morning while I’m clattering around the bedroom. In one of the lulls in my noisy activity she can allow herself to slip back into a dream with full lucidity. Give it a try yourself.
Just as you’d schedule in your weekly exercise training, be sure to do the same with your lucidity training. Dream diaries and the Weird technique need to be done every day, but doing wake, back to bed every morning or having three alarms set to practise multiple wake-ups each night simply isn’t practical for most people.
So the best thing to do is to schedule in at least one night a week for your lucid dream training, preferably on a night when you don’t have to wake up too early the next morning. Choose the techniques you’re going to practise, and when, and then stick to the schedule with discipline.
Schedule and discipline are great but the easiest way to stop having lucid dreams is to get too uptight and rigid about the practice. Some people get so worried about having or not having lucid dreams that they can’t even get to sleep from thinking about it. Of course we do need to make sure that we’re doing the practices properly, but at the same time try and keep a sense of light-heartedness around the whole thing. And don’t forget to have fun!
