How To Induce Lucid Dreams That Heal
A guide to achieving mindfulness and self-love in your sleep
Emily Giangiulio
Emily Giangiulio
10 hours ago·13 min read
Clouds in a picture frame.
Clouds in a picture frame.
Image credit: francescoch.

There are many ways to practice self-love and self-healing. Lucid dreaming is one of them. It can be uncomfortable and can feel strange at first. But it has worked for me more than I ever thought possible.

What I didn’t know, when I became aware of my own lucid dreaming, is that there have been quite a few studies on how lucid dreaming can be a tool for psychotherapy. Lucid dreams may be effective in reducing PTSD-related nightmares, relieving symptoms of depression, even assisting in the grieving process.

But what really matters about this practice is how you experience the dream, not how some scholarly article has rationalized it.

For me, lucid dreaming helped to realize just how desperately I wanted to feel in control of my life. In pursuit of that control, I talked down to myself. My inner voice questioned my every move, insulted my appearance, cringed at the things I said.

I have always been able to remember my dreams. As a child, I would make my mother write them down for me. Even now, at 23 years old, I can remember details from those prepubescent dreams: a labyrinthine mansion with false doors and claustrophobic spiral staircases, a green swamp stuffed with fat hippopotamuses, a cottage with albatross wings soaring high over mountaintops. I looked forward to sleeping because, like reading, I could transport myself to other worlds.

But the degree to which I was aware of and in control of my dreams varied. One moment, I could be fully conscious of the fact that I was flying over an ocean — able to sense the wind in my hair and the weightlessness in my stomach — and the next moment the imagined world would glitch around me and I’d lose my grip.

When I was in high school, I suffered from depression and feelings of guilt and self-deprecation. Looking back, my issues definitely called for some mental health intervention (read: seek a qualified therapist or mental health professional as a first resort). But at the time, I didn’t have the language to express that need. So I looked inward. I looked for escape.

Much of my own life felt out of my control, so I wanted jurisdiction over the one world that was all my own: my dreams.

On my path to achieving lucidity in my dreams, I found more than just escape. Confronting my subconscious required confronting the rusty parts of myself, the less whimsical parts, the true roots of my insecurities. And in order to hold onto consciousness in my dreams, I had to accept myself.
How Does Lucid Dreaming Work?

When friends have asked me what it is like to lucid dream, I usually say something akin to:

“It’s like you’ve lived the entirety of your life in a simulation, blissfully unaware, and then something in the environment cues you in to the fact that it is all fake. It could be a wonky clock on the wall or the way light warps in the sky. Then everything snaps into focus, and you can feel the ground beneath your feet for the first time, and the bleary world around you is textured and sharp.”

When the non-lucid dream becomes lucid, it is easy to become so overwhelmed by the sensory overload (smells, sounds, colors, goosebumps on your simulated skin) that you slip back into non-lucidity or wake up. The key to keeping yourself aware is to get past that initial shock of “Holy crap, I’m in a dream!” without losing your foothold on ‘reality.’

That moment of transition is well-recorded by sleep studies. In a 2009 study of both waking and non-lucid dreaming, sleep scientists found that there were significant changes in the electrophysiology of the brain in the frontal lobes when the sleepers entered a lucid dream, distinct from both non-lucid REM sleep and waking consciousness. Lucid dreaming is thus described as a “hybrid state of consciousness” — a unique phenomenon. Not just waking. Not just sleeping. Something in-between.

Once the lucid dream is secured, and you are fully immersed in your dream world, it’s a lot like playing the ultimate virtual reality video game — at least, it is for me. Imagine an RPG where you can decide how much control you have over the NPCs, what environments you stumble into, and how the dream “plot” progresses. As a teen who wanted nothing more than to tell stories and write books, it was the perfect playground to act out fictional scenarios in hyper-vivid detail.

For years, I used my dreams to test-run the scenes from my novels-in-progress. But it was not as simple as snapping my dream-fingers and coming face-to-face with my original characters.

To illustrate what I mean, here’s an example: a scene that takes place on a train.

I gain consciousness in a room with all white walls and white furniture. I ground myself in the moment, think firmly, this is a dream and I am lucid, this is a dream and I am lucid, until I am able to lift my heavy legs and walk towards the door. I feel every fragile movement. I think: when I turn the corner, I will step into the aisle of a train. And, as I maintain my concentration — just that happens. I step out the door into a busy train corridor. Seats are packed with faceless passengers wearing vaguely 18th-century clothing. I feel the locomotive rumble underfoot. I can hear the steam whistle. I hold onto these details, for they are the only things keeping me from slipping back into non-lucidity. I thread my way up the aisle to the door leading to the next car, where I know my characters will be waiting.

My point being: setting a deliberate scene in a dream takes a lot of focus. You have to make your way towards the outcome you want, rather than wait for events to happen to you.

And that was the first lesson I learned from lucid dreaming: there can be no passivity when you are walking through your subconscious. Every little move is a choice, and it is yours to make.
Learning Self-Love From Your Subconscious

When I first made an effort to lucid dream more, my intention was to escape anxiety and to have a stage to self-workshop my fiction. More than anything, I disliked the “time” I felt like I was losing by sleeping eight hours a night. If I wasn’t being productive, what was my value? That was my thinking.

But there was one dream that changed all of that.

I remember it clearly: I slipped into lucidity smoothly that night. In my waking life, college admissions odds and feelings of imposter syndrome were piling on the stress. All I wanted was to sink into myself, fly over some mountains, and call it a night.

But I did something I didn’t expect in that dream. As I was about to take off and explore the dreamscape from the air, I felt utterly, completely, depressingly alone. I knew I was in a dream, so any dream-characters I would conjure would just be projections of my subconscious. It would be like hanging out with myself. So I skipped the façade and called out my name.

There I was. Exactly my face, mirrored back at me. My height, my hair, my body, my clothes. When she opened her mouth, she had my voice.

OK, yes, it was super weird at first. But remember: I was in complete control of this dream.

“Do you want to talk?” she (who was me) asked.

It’s a trope in a lot of Disney films, the plot device of many-a-character arc. The hero looks down at their reflection in a pond and is forced to confront some part of themselves they don’t recognize or like. They dramatically splash the water, projecting ripples over their mirrored image, because they’re not yet ready to face themselves until Act III.

But here, in this lucid dream… this was me. Wanting to talk with myself.

I’ll spare you the details (nobody likes hearing about other people’s dreams, right?), but I will say that I took myself up on that offer. We talked and talked and talked.

I woke up feeling an indescribable lightness in my chest. It was as if that dream-self had not returned to the dark recesses of my mind come morning. She was still flickering inside me. That projection of my subconscious was not some character my mind conjured from nothingness; that was me. I wanted to cry because I knew in that moment how cruelly I had been treating myself.

I would never talk to anyone the way I talked to myself.

Which was why, when faced with myself in such physical terms in that dream, it clicked: I had been horrible to myself. How could I look at this person and hate her? Here was a young girl with my face and my voice who was just doing her best to get by. She did not deserve to be punished for that.

I was 18 when I had that dream. Five years later, I am still lucid dreaming and still working on my relationship with myself. But the mindfulness that comes with lucidity means that every dream allows me to check in with myself and practice that self-love.
How You Can Induce Lucid Dreams

A lot has been written about the different methods for inducing lucid dreams. While some seem to be able to slip into lucidity hands-free, most dreamers have their own tried-and-true “triggers.”

So if none of the following methods work for you: don’t panic. With lucid dreaming, consistency is key. The more you practice, the more likely it is that you will find yourself in a lucid dream one night. And while one technique might not suit you, there’s bound to be a trick that vibes with your subconscious out there. I firmly believe that everyone is capable of lucid dreaming.
The numbers game

I’ll admit: I’m biased. I think this is the easiest method because it was the one that launched my first intentional lucid dream. I use it to this day. Essentially, the parts of your brain that are activated during deep REM sleep cannot process numbers (or text) the same way you do when awake.

In my experience, counting is almost impossible in a dreamscape. If you hold your dream-hand up in front of your face and attempt to count your fingers, there will not be five clear digits. The number will change from six to three to 12, or the fingers will look strange and distorted, like sea cucumbers or melting clocks straight out of a Dalí painting. Trippy, right?

Essentially, this “glitch” in the matrix is supposed to “wake” you up to the fact that you are in a dream. It can apply to any form of counting when you already know the number is assured — a hand has five fingers, a clock has 12 hours, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have four members. I just find counting your fingers to be the simplest because 1) they belong to you so 2) you should be more familiar with your own body than any other object.

But how do you even get to the point where you are counting your fingers in a not-yet-lucid dream?
Reality checks

A form of mental training, performing daily reality checks in your waking life will increase your metacognition. Having greater metacognition during the day will correlate with greater metacognition at night during your dreams.

Several times a day (I like to do it every time I take breaks from work or go on walks), study your hands. Count your fingers. Five digits on each hand? Great, you’re awake. What might seem like a silly, redundant exercise will train your mind to repeat reality checks even when you are dreaming. It worked for me. My non-lucid dream-self went to automatically count my fingers, and voila — upon noticing that I had many more fingers than what was natural, the lucid dream was induced.
Reality checks in the form of self-affirmations

If you take anything away from this article, let it be that reality checks are fundamental. On top of being a solid method of cluing you into a lucid dream, it’s just a good, mindful habit to cultivate. Checking in on yourself, taking a moment to breathe and feel the solid table beneath your fingertips, appreciating the things that make you whole and human.

A non-physical reality check that I use from time to time takes the form of a question. I ask myself, “Am I dreaming?”

Then, I look around at my environment, think back on how I woke up that morning, and focus on my breathing. In just a few seconds, I can confirm whether or not I am dreaming.

Another self-affirmation that has had success for me is saying to myself, “I am lucid. I am awake. I am lucid.”

Like with the numbers game, this is only successful if it is done repeatedly during the waking day. Try setting a reminder on your phone to check in on yourself every three hours. It will allow you to break from the stresses of your day and reflect on what matters (that you are living, breathing, lucid). Then, in your dreams, you might find yourself asking those same questions.
Wake-initiated lucid dreaming

Now, stick with me on this one. Wake-initiated lucid dreaming (WILD) is the process by which a person attempts to remain conscious while transitioning from the waking state to the dream state.

While drifting to sleep, have you ever experienced a falling sensation that causes you to jerk awake? That’s a hypnagogic hallucination, and it’s a feature of the state of consciousness that occurs during the onset of sleep. These hallucinations can be visual, auditory, or tactile and, though bizarre, are completely normal.

The trick with WILD is to not lose consciousness before the hypnagogic hallucination, as is typical in most people’s sleep patterns. Essentially: you need to keep your mind awake while your body falls asleep.

This one isn’t easy. I’ve only had success with WILD a handful of times, and it requires that you are totally relaxed (read: un-caffeinated, de-sugared, and cozy as can be) and lying still on your back. I imagine that I am melting into my mattress and pay careful attention as each finger, toe, and limb loses sensation. I try to keep my inner thoughts as quiet as possible and focus on my now “paralyzed” body.

If I make it that far without losing consciousness, I listen for hypnagogic sounds (for me, these are usually echoes of music or footsteps). I take them in, accept that they are hallucinations, and remind myself that I am lucid. In this half-dream state, there may be visual anomalies like colors or forms vaguely shaped like recognizable people, buildings, objects. I focus on the hypnagogia and allow them to, in effect, “hypnotize” me.

Eventually, if all goes well, the hypnagogia will coalesce into a more solidified dreamscape. The most difficult part of WILD is “stepping into” this dreamscape without losing control. It can be a slow process that takes a lot of concentration. But the end result is spectacular lucidity without ever having to enter the “darkness” before the dream.
Write down your dreams

Cue groans and eye rolls from those who remember the days of middle school English teachers assigning a “dream journal” to keep by your bedside. But cast those preconceptions aside. Writing down your dreams as soon as you wake up has many benefits besides the oft-ridiculed “dream interpretation” intent. It can increase your likelihood of having lucid dreams.

When I started jotting down a few notes about my dreams in the morning, I noticed that I was remembering longer portions of my dreams in more vivid detail. As I felt like my memory was improving, I realized that I was more easily able to recognize the signs of being in a dream. Being able to cue into the subtle and strange differences in sensation between dream and reality made it easier to induce lucidity.

Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to write paragraphs every morning (unless that’s your thing). I keep a small journal within reach of my bed. Before I even peel off the covers, I jot down a few bullet points. It could be sensory details, a brief synopsis of the dream “plot,” or lingering emotions. After writing, I like to read over some old dreams and see how clearly I can remember them. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes, and then it’s off to coffee.
Reflecting on Your Dreams

We all know that getting a good night’s rest is critical because it is the only time that your brain can reorganize and recharge itself after accumulating new stimuli and byproducts throughout the day. While you are dreaming, your brain is hard at work protecting itself and preparing for a new day full of new experiences.

So even if you struggle to get started lucid dreaming, or can’t make heads-nor-tails of the contents of your dreams, your body is still doing what it’s meant to be doing. You’re still a functioning human.

My advice would be to approach your lucid dreams with a healing mindset. You’re not there to self-critique or to discover “what’s been wrong with you.” You’re not there to confront one specific vice and then ba-da-bing, you’re fixed. If you’re truly battling with mental health issues, seek qualified therapy and use lucid dreaming as a supplement.

Take each dream as it comes. Don’t over-interpret the contents. The brain is a weird organ and your subconscious sometimes shows you things that are, on the whole, nonsense. Trust yourself to be safe in your own head.

Celebrate the little victories. You were lucid for a moment but then lost the dream? That’s progress! Being able to induce frequent lucid dreams doesn’t happen overnight — it’s been a five-year journey for me.

Reflect on what you did in your dream. Was your instinct just to walk around and observe? Appreciate the world you created in your head. Give yourself credit for your creativity. Get used to being up close and personal with yourself. Accept that having yourself for company is valid.

Because that’s the takeaway I always come back to when considering what lucid dreaming has done for me (besides having a lot of fun in my sleep): you need to be your own friend first.
Medium
Me: I go to sleep dreaming about a s***** experience I had years ago, it was the best experience ever and the female I had that s** with and my dreams are always loving dreams and something I look forward to nightly