Sueños lucidos (ingles)

Becoming a Lucid Dreamer

Surveys have shown that about 50 percent of people (and in some cases more) have had at least one lucid dream in their lives. (See, for example, Blackmore 1982; Gackenbachand LaBerge 1988; Green 1968.) Of course surveys are unreliable in that many people may not understand the question. In particular, if you have never had a lucid dream, it is easy to misunderstandwhat is meant by the term. So overestimates might be expected. Beyond this, it does not seem that surveys can find out much. There are no very consistent differences between lucid dreamers and others interms of age, sex, education, and so on (Green 1968; Gackenbach and LaBerge 1988).

For many people, having lucid dreams is fun, and they want to learn how to have more or to induce them at will.One finding from early experimental work was that high levels of physical (and emotional) activity during the day tend to precede lucidity at night. Waking during the night and carrying out some kindof activity before falling asleep again can also encourage a lucid dream during the next REM period and is the basis of some induction techniques.

Many methods have been developed (Gackenbach andBosveld 1989; Tart 1988; Price and Cohen 1988). They roughly fall into three categories.

One of the best known is LaBerge’s MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming). This is done on waking in theearly morning from a dream. You should wake up fully, engage in some activity like reading or walking about, and then lie down to go to sleep again. Then you must imagine yourself asleep and dreaming,rehearse the dream from which you woke, and remind yourself, "Next time I dream this I want to remember I’m dreaming."

A second approach involves constantly reminding yourself to become lucidthroughout the day rather than the night. This is based on the idea that we spend most of our time in a kind of waking daze. If we could be more lucid in waking life, perhaps we could be more lucid...