Swimmer technique

lucid dreamingr tries to imagine the process of swimming in as much detail as possible, trying to feel all of the physical sensations of the process and even feel the water surrounding his body. Any swimming style may be used. (Best technique of 2010 and 2011 at School of Out-of-Body Travel seminars)

Rope technique

lucid dreamingr imagines that a rope is dangling above him, and that he is climbing up it. Meanwhile, one should try to feel one’s own arm movements, the touch of the rope, and the sensation of height. Visualization of the process may occasionally be added in.

Technique of visualizing the hands

lucid dreamingr tries to feel that he is rubbing his hands together, as if trying to warm them. Meanwhile, it’s important to try to feel the movement of your hands, the feeling of them coming into contact, the sound of rubbing, and also try to see the whole process in front of you. The imagined hands should be rubbed at a distance of no more than 6 inches from your eyes.

Sensory-motor visualization technique

lucid dreamingr should try to imagine as fixedly and actively as possible that he has already separated from his body and is employing a technique for deepening lucid dreaming, including the intensification of every sensation possible. He should imagine that he is walking inside a room, scrutinizing everything from a close distance, touching something, and so on. That is, he should immediately deepen lucid dreaming without using techniques to create the state or separate.

Conscious awakening is waking up with a particular thought in mind; ideally, a thought about indirect techniques. In order to start using indirect techniques upon awakening, it is not sufficient to have a cursory knowledge of the techniques to be used when waking. Due to the peculiarities of the human mind and its habits, it is not always easy when waking to recall any particular motive or idea. The goal of conscious awakening is to practice instant action without being idle after waking up.

Interesting Fact!

There exists a belief that the phenomenon of out-of-body travel is practically unattainable, and is accessible only to an elect few through practices that require secret knowledge. However, the greatest difficulty when trying to experience out-of-body travel in a short period of time lies only in immediately remembering about the techniques upon awakening without moving. This is all simple and straightforward. But it is precisely this trifle that is the largest stumbling block when trying to experience such an uncommon phenomenon.

This is not difficult at all for approximately 75% of the population. However, for the other one-quarter of the population, this is a difficult barrier to entry that can even seem insurmountable. If such thoughts arise, one should simply understand that this cannot be so, and that persistent attempts and training are the key solution.

The reasons why people are unable to remember practicing lucid dreaming upon awakening are: not being in the habit of immediately doing anything upon awakening, a desire to sleep longer, a desire to go to the bathroom, being thirsty, a desire to suddenly start solving day-to-day problems, and so on.

Conscious awakening with the intent of attempting an indirect technique should be a practitioner’s primary goal, which should be pursued at every cost. The speed at which lucid dreaming is learned and experienced depends on this.

There are several effective tricks to learning conscious awakening:

Moscow, Russia

My first entry happened at night. I was lying in bed and thinking about lucid dreaming, as I had been unable to fall asleep for a while. I dozed off for a moment and then awoke again, this time already in the proper state, and then easily rolled out (more or less unconsciously and reflexively). I went deeper by means of touching and then falling headfirst. It is a pity that I’ve already forgotten a lot of the experience, but I do remember that after deepening I fell right down onto the yard of my grandmother’s house, but then lost consciousness, and so I returned into my body and rolled out of it several times (M.R.: no plan of action). I was unable to sharpen all my senses: When I deepened one sense (touch, for example), another (i.e. sight) would fade away. After that, I have a gap in my memory concerning my travels (consciousness and lucidity were weak, and I fell asleep and “resurfaced” several times), but I remember having been to a lot of places.

Here’s how the episode ended: I dove headfirst into water from a high board (after first having deepened a bit), and then my sense of touch grew sharper: I felt “water” and hit my head against a very soft “bottom.” I resumed the interrupted fall through willpower, but then it occurred to me that my grandmother wanted to wake me up. My level of awareness was not quite adequate, as it did not occur to me that I was actually sleeping in a dormitory, and not at my grandmother’s house. That’s why I decided that I needed to return to my body. A sharp fall occurred right after that thought, and was followed by sensations similar to those one experiences when hung-over.

The simplest way to supplement the practice is establishing a reminder that prompts conscious awakening and subsequent indirect techniques. This may be accomplished by blindfolding the eyes or tying a cord taut around an arm or leg. The idea is that the reminder is immediately felt when the practitioner wakes, prompting the attempt of indirect techniques. In actuality, mind-machines work using the same principle since these are most effective as cues that arouse an intention to perform a specific action.

A more sophisticated example of a reminder is when a practitioner dozes off in a position meant to cause numbness to a certain body part. While awakening, the practitioner will take the physical numbness as a cue to practice indirect techniques. A secondary benefit to this method of physiological signaling is that the numb body part may easily be used to perform phantom wiggling. Falling asleep while lying on the back with an arm behind the head, or by lying directly on an arm are effective examples. These and other postures will impede circulation, cause numbness, and promote awakening. Naturally, the numbness should not be excessive.

Diverse experiments that exploit physiological needs are especially popular for inducing conscious awakening or becoming conscious while dreaming. For example, a practitioner may forgo water over the course of the day before attempting to enter lucid dreaming. The effect is an acute thirst while dreaming, which may be used to communicate that the dream state has taken over. Or, thirst causes repeated awakenings, during which the practice of indirect techniques may commence. An alternative to depriving the body of water is including more salt in foods consumed before going to sleep.

Another method is to drink a lot of water before sleep, causing the practitioner to awaken, naturally producing an opportunity to perform indirect techniques. Using this has been known to result in dream consciousness.

Another popular method helps with direct techniques. It works by falling asleep while keeping the forearm propped up at the elbow. When the practitioner falls asleep, the forearm falls to the bed as the body shuts down. Feeling the arm fall signals a lapse of consciousness, after which direct techniques may be attempted. If this method fails to produce results on the first try, it may be repeated by raising the forearm before falling asleep again. This method helps some, but rarely on the first try. It should not be counted on as panacea.

Like all other non-autonomous methods, practicing lucid dreaming entrance using physiological signals should not be done on a regular basis. There are more pleasant, autonomous techniques that only require natural willpower and healthy desire.

The projection of the Astral Body (1929)

A few mornings ago, I awoke at about six o’clock and lay awake for about twenty minutes. Then I dozed off to sleep again, and dreamed that I was standing on the same spot which I occupied in the metronome dreams-in the instances I told you about before.

I dreamed that my mother was sitting in a rocking chair, and she said to me: "Do you know you’re dreaming?" I replied: "By gosh, I am, aren’t I?" That ended the dream, and it seemed that I had no sooner said" By gosh, I am" than I awoke in the physical body, in bed. I was conscious, but unable to move; I could not utter a sound, could not move my eyelids. This condition prevailed for about three minutes, and all the time my entire body kept twitching, especially the limbs . Then I suddenly became normal.

About two seconds later a loud rap sounded-as if some one had struck the iron of the bed a blow with a heavy mallet. The noise was so loud that I "ducked," as it rather frightened me… Remember, I was perfectly conscious for about two seconds before this rap sounded. No one was anywhere near, and this occurred in full light. These physical manifestations are certainly interesting to me, at least-as I never before have experienced such things. But then, neither have I ever tried; these things came about by themselves…