Oneironaut: A Guide to Lucid Dreaming

Chapter Six: The Wake-Back-To-Bed Method

AKA The Best Method
The Wake-Back-To-Bed Method happens to be one of the best methods of achieving lucidity. This is especially true for beginners and this is the method I highly suggest you start with as you begin your journey. That is because through this method, you become more knowledgeable of when (lucid) vivid dreams occur the most.

The fact is that the most vivid dreams occur during REM sleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement and it is characterized by the deep sleep phase of the sleep cycle.

The first REM phase typically occurs about 90 minutes after you first fall asleep. The following phases happen roughly every 90 minutes afterwards.

The goal of the method is to wake up during one of these phases and go back to sleep to continue or jump straight into dream that you might have been having before you woke up.

The trouble with this is finding the right time to wake up, but that rarely is an issue. If it is, it would take a couple of test rounds to find how you sleep and when your phases come up, time exact. For this, you will need an alarm to bed.

It is important that you get more hours to sleep (more sleep time, more REM phases) in order to catch a better opportunity to dream during REM. To do this, you will have to stick to a daily sleep schedule.

First part is waking up in the middle of the night.

Let's say you sleep latest 11pm. Set the alarm to go off 4.5 hours from the time you sleep. This is most likely when you will find yourself in REM sleep. For more vivid dreams and a better chance, 6 or 7 hours will be better because the later REM phases are always the ones that are deeper. Add any minutes extra if you know it takes you a while to knock off for sure.

Next step is staying away for a short time.

Once awake, jump off the bed. Take about 30-45 minutes to either write about any dreams you may have had, make yourself a quick snack (good dream foods), or just read something that gets your mind running. Personally, I wake up to read about lucid dreaming or something scientific. I would avoid Facebook timeline or Twitter newsfeed as they may make you lose track of time and may not engage your mind much. You need that brain to make connections. It is important not to go under 30 or over 45 because you might risk losing the chance to go back into REM.

Last step is to go back to sleep.

Literally. There is nothing much to this except maybe remembering the last dream you were having before you woke up. You will find yourself almost instantly dreaming. Even if you don't remember any dream before you last woke up, it helps to think of something while you are knocking out. Maybe the last dream you did have a few nights ago or a dream you wish to have at the moment.

Often times, excitement will bring you close to waking up in real life so it is important not to freak out because of succeeding. Lucid dreaming is definitely exciting, but you don't want to lose it at the first opportunity of the night.

False awakenings is something that we often experience, and here is something of a tip that I forgot to bring in earlier but can be related to the topic of Wake-Back-To-Bed Method. When you wake up, it is important to try out a reality test for the reason that you might actually be sleeping. Get into the habit of trying to read a book anytime and as soon as you wake up so you can also detect it being a false awakening in case it is. If you find yourself dreaming again, because the text is jumbled up after the second glance over it, then you can definitely jump right into visualizing and getting into a lucid dream, instead of just getting into those confusing false awakening sessions.

One of the ways that Wake-Back-To-Bed Method serves really well involves nightmares. Usually, when we're having a really bad dream or a nightmare that is bad enough to want to wake up from, that happens to be the best time to use this method once awake.

Take this story for example: I used to often get nightmares about creatures always after me and often I would wake up with them capturing me. In order to better sleep for the rest of the night, I would use this method by staying up for 30 minutes and then going back to bed telling myself over and over again that I was going back to defeat it. Lo and behold, I managed to go back ready to destroy that which attacked me in the last dream. I managed to sleep well the rest of the night with a new sense of confidence.