How Lucid Dreaming Changed My Life – Two Year Review14 min read

We spend a third of our lives asleep.

For 27 years, all I did was put my head on the pillow, experience blackness, and then wake up. So, nine years of my life disappeared.

What if there was a possibility of being productive while asleep without sacrificing sleep?

Sounds impossible, right? I thought so until I heard about Lucid Dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming is essentially being aware or lucid while dreaming, which has changed my life. When you level it up, you can control the dreamscape, meet and do things with whomever you want, and have superpowers.

I tried it for 30 days and I was hooked. I didn’t stop for the next 700 days…

1. Beginner Lucid Dreaming Guide

Initially, I was mostly excited by the fun stuff. I wanted to fly through space, enter the world of Harry Potter, and ask Galileo to explain gravity to me. 

I:

1. Kept a dream journal (recording what happens in your dreams).
2. Read one book, which to this day I think is the best book (​Stephan LaBerge’s​
3. Started reality checks (like counting my fingers because in dreams, you might have 6 or 7 or 8 fingers)

However, after a couple of days, nothing changed. I was amazed, though, that I was writing down two, three, or even four dreams in my journal every night. Later, I realized it was much easier to use voice-to-text on the notes app on my phone.

However, still no lucid dreaming. Still mostly blackness, then waking up.

I thought everyone on the internet and in the book was faking it. Maybe they were hallucinating or taking ayahuasca or something crazy.

However, around day 7, it happened. Here is a passage from my dream journal:

I was in my apartment, but it looked weird. The closet was in a weird place. I looked at my hands and instead of one hand being there, there were 5 hands! And, I realized this was a dream! I was having a lucid dream! I said, “This is a lucid dream! This is a lucid dream!” 

Suddenly, the dream became much less hazy. The colors were clearer, I was thinking more clearly, and people around me were looking at me confused, like, “Who is this guy?” But I was so excited that I jumped up into the air, and I floated, almost like gravity was 10% of what it normally should be. Then I woke up.

My first lucid dream lasted about 10 seconds, but I was amazed. It was so cool! For the rest of the month, my skills dramatically improved. I was flying, swimming at the bottom of the ocean, and encountering my subconscious.

The most crucial beginner techniques I used were:

• Dream Journal and Reality Checks (a base)
• Continued interest (reading a book about lucid dreaming)
• MILD (Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming)
  • When you wake up late at night, you remember and record your dream. Then, as you fall back asleep, you repeat to yourself, “Next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming; next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming.” All the while imagining what you would do when you remember you are dreaming. So, if I wanted to fly, I would picture myself in the dream I just woke up from, realizing I was dreaming and going off and flying into space.
• WBTB (Wake Back To Bed)
  • The WBTB method entails waking up 5 or 6 hours after falling asleep and then falling asleep consciously. The idea is that later in the night, your REM cycle is at its longest duration, and your REM cycle is when you dream. However, many Redditors and even LaBerge indicate this method isn’t for the weak of heart.

If you want to start lucid dreaming, I recommend doing it in the above order.

However, after this month, the excitement faded, and I stopped. Sadly but predictably, my Lucid Dreaming abilities disappeared.

2. Intermediate Lucid Dreaming Guide

I went from having 3-4 lucid dreams a week to having 0 dreams a week, but it made sense:

• I wasn’t keeping a journal
• I wasn’t doing reality checks
• I wasn’t doing WBTB or MILD
• I wasn’t learning or excited about lucid dreaming

I was busy with life and lost the reason I loved it so much: the ability to experience things you would likely never experience in real life.

I realized my body had missed it so much. Lucid dreaming gives you this amazing feeling of elation, happiness, and insight into yourself.

One theory on dreaming is that it is simply an exposure to every aspect of who you are. So, if you are having a nightmare, it is really just an aspect of yourself that you are maybe suppressing and fighting that you need to face—not face with anger or violence, but with love because it is just a part of you.

I, without realizing it, eliminated pretty much all nightmares from my life when I was around 13 years old because I was stumbled upon lucid dreaming. I used to have the recurring nightmare that a purple monster would attack me in my bed. One night, I built up my confidence and went up to the monster with the true intention of understanding and loving it. I hugged the monster and asked, “Why are you doing this?” He said, “To show you!” and it turned into a friendly old man with whom I proceeded to have a fun adventure in the jungle! What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t alone:

• Einstein famously lucid dreamed (or went into a dreamlike state) when he discovered the theory of relativity.
• James Cameron attributes the blockbuster movie Avatar to a particularly vivid Lucid Dream
• Richard Feynman, my favorite teacher of all time, would regularly lucid dream to observe how his brain processed sights, smells, and sounds.
• Tiger Woods would practice his golf swing during lucid dreams.

I reflected on these amazing people, and my experiences, I realized I needed to get back into it.

My favorite TV episode of all time is when Finn, from Adventure Time, goes into a pillow fort and is trapped there. He finds a pillow wife and pillow kids and eventually has a pillow death. We flash to him flying through space before appearing back outside the pillow fort, seemingly with no time having passed between him going in and coming out. Jake asks him, “What did you dream about?” and Finn says, “I have no idea.”

The creators of Adventure Time are 100% lucid dreamers, and there are so many references to them. But the point is, the fantastic world I was transported to while watching this episode (which I’ve watched over 20 times) is the same that can happen while in dreams! I had to restart.

I took the same approach as I did before with a few upgrades:

• Dream Journal – except I used the notes app on an old iPhone and exclusively used speech-to-text
• Reality Checks – I only used the one that worked for me, which was holding my nose every time I got up or sat down
• Reading – Reading – ​Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (again)​, ​Are You Dreaming (Daniel Love)​, ​A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming​ by Dylan Tuccilo, and​ Lucid Dreaming ​by Robert Waggoner, that I would read before bed
• Only MILD – I didn’t want to wake up early in the morning and stay awake, I value my sleep too much. No WBTB for me.

I faced the same startup challenges.

After three nights of nothing, it was hard for me to get back up to speed with recording my dreams. I wasn’t recording them for YouTube videos, so I didn’t feel the external pressure, and I fell out of it again.

Without the instant gratification of a lucid dream, I just stopped reading the books. I stopped practicing, stopped everything.

3. Consistency

About six months after my initial experiment, I was on vacation in Buenos Aires and had a unique, otherworldly experience one night out with friends. It was some combination of sleep deprivation, being in a new environment, and speaking a different language (Spanish).

I was watching the sunrise over the city, somewhat falling asleep, when I began to float over the city. I watched a mother wake up with their children and prepare breakfast, a city worker sweeping the streets, and, the best part, I floated to this beautiful Japanese garden and saw the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen reading a book on a bench.

I woke up with my heart pounding.

What was that! It wasn’t real, right? A dream?

Maybe this was confirmation bias, but as I woke up and walked out of my Air BNB to get my morning Cafe, I saw the mother walking with her kid – the face was the same as the dream experience. I just stared at her for 1 minute and didn’t know what to do. I pinched my nose and looked at my hands. Yes, it was real life. The realist in me realizes that it was likely just a lady I had seen frequently on my morning walks and sequestered away in my subconscious, but what about that girl from the garden? Where is a Japanese garden in Buenos Aires, Argentina?

So, what did I do? Well, I Googled Japanese gardens. And, low and behold, there was a world-famous Japanese Garden in Buenos Aires. I went there immediately, and it was beautiful, but the girl wasn’t there.

However, at this moment, I realized how much I was missing out on Lucid Dreaming. It had changed my life when I tried it six months ago; why had I stopped?

Oh, you know, life, being busy, and other important things. But 15 minutes of work a day could equate to life-changing experiences overnight. Why did I stop?!

I pulled out my Kindle and immediately re-downloaded all the books I had bought before. I read Stephan LaBerge’s book in one day. I committed to reality checks every time I stood up or sat down.

That night, though, nothing. The next night, however, this happened:

I was bicycling around my childhood neighborhood and remember feeling very happy. However, my childhood body seemed strangely out of place. Also, I noticed the color of the world was Sepia, like one of those old fashioned photos. That still, for some reason, wasn’t strange to me, but what was strange was how slow I was going. I suddenly knew I was dreaming! Strangely, one of my childhood friends appeared next to me and the world pulsed as my lucid dreams normally do, changing back to normal color and sights and sounds becoming more vivid and clear.

I told my old friend, “I am dreaming!” and he said, “what do you mean, am I not real?” I said, “We are dreaming!” but he still looked at me confused. My lucidity faded and we continued to bike around the neighborhood. I woke up a little later feeling a feeling of joy and contentment that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Later that day, I called my friend and learned he was, amazingly, moving to Boston like I was! I met him for coffee a few months later, and we are still in contact today.

What followed was the biggest and most groundbreaking revival of my lucid dreaming practice ever. I was consistent for the next six months. Some things I did:

• Learn physics from Richard Feynman
• Talk to my deceased grandpa
• Ask my subconscious the meaning of life (it annoyingly answered, “Whatever you think it is,” before jolting me awake).
• I watched the pyramids being built, visited holocaust camps (not for the faint of heart), and watched the Big Bang
• Solved countless challenging problems with the fantastic technique of falling asleep with a problem + MILD
• Praticed and eliminated my fear of certain things like leaving medicine, meeting new people, and death.

It really was a muscle. If I didn’t practice for a week, record my dreams, or occasionally do reality checks, my lucid dreaming would inevitably fade. However, when I returned to it, I needed to have a purpose, or I wouldn’t stay consistent. When I found the purpose, I experienced the above life-changing things.

What do I think now? Well, I think it’s ok to oscillate between lucid dreaming and not lucid dreaming. Sometimes, the interest will spike, and I’ll go on a Lucid Dreaming whirlwind for a week or two. Rereading books, writing down dreams, and having mind-bending encounters with an ethereal “subconscious Zach.”

What would be my advice to someone trying to decide whether or not to have a Lucid Dream?

No greater or more mind-opening experience can be done while you sleep than Lucid Dreaming.

To me, it was very similar to travel. After experiencing these things, my entire worldview was changed. There were so many unknown unknowns that became known unknowns or known knowns.

Here’s how to start now:

1. Keep a dream journal on your phone with voice-to-text where you record every dream you have
2. Do reality checks every time you stand up or sit down, where you count the number of fingers on each hand and try to breathe through a pinched nose. In real life, when you do it, picture what you would be doing if it were a dream
3. Read at least one book, preferably 3-4, on Lucid Dreaming – these people have studied it for their entire lives, and, more importantly, it builds your interest and communicates to yourself that lucid dreaming is important
4. Practice MILD
5. When you are in a Lucid Dream, rub your hands together, spin in a circle, or focus on a singular point when you lose lucidity or wake up. Try to stay in the dream as long as possible.
6. Develop a list of 2-3 things that you would absolutely love to do while Lucid Dreaming. This will keep the passion alive
7. Find a friend so you can keep eachother accountable with reality checks and talking about cool dreams!

Here’s how to take things to the next level:

1. Ask your subconscious the big questions: “What is the meaning of life,” “Who am I?” “What should I be doing right now?” “What do you want to tell me?”
2. Transform yourself into something: an animal, another person of a different sex or race, the entire earth, the entire universe, “Now I will become an Eagle!”
3. Try a dream within a dream: while having a lucid dream, go to sleep to have another lucid dream. It will be tough to stay lucid, but if you do, you will experience a profoundly philosophical or surreal world
4. Interact with dream architects or higher beings: ask someone in the dream to direct you to “the dream architect,” God, or whoever would be seemingly impossible to meet. Ask them questions like, “What world is this?” “Who am I?” “Who are you?”
5. Build a dream office or dream factory. I built an office with Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill, with a lovely assistant, that I visited floating above a beautiful lake nested in a forest in a mountainscape. It’s amazing. When I am in lucid dreaming mode, I say, “Teleport to the office!” and I appear there.

Let me know how it goes!

Oh yeah, are you dreaming right now?