Study with Einstein, overcome nightmares, or even transform yourself into a chicken. Ok, maybe something cooler like an eagle, or a space alien, but this is what is possible with advanced lucid dreaming.
It allows you to change lucid dreaming from “something fun” to something transformative.
In the past 3 years, I’ve been obsessed with lucid dreaming, have recorded over 1,000 dreams and had over 300 lucid dreams.
In this post, I’ll share with you 11 advanced lucid dreaming techniques that will open up a new life-changing world for you, all while you sleep.
The basics (journal, reality checks, MILD, reading, goals when dreaming, dream stabilization)
To start, let’s make sure you have the basics down:
- Dream Journal: Writing down your dreams. This is the foundation of lucid dreaming. It does three things: helps you remember your dreams (as most people actually have 4+ dreams a night but forget all of them), identify dream signs or patterns, and signals to your subconscious that dreaming is something important.
- Reality checks: where you check to see if you are dreaming, or in real life, by looking at your hands, or trying to jump and seeing if you float.
- MILD: where when you wake up in the middle of the night, after recording your dream, you visualize yourself becoming lucid in the most recent dream, hopefully priming yourself for a lucid dream
- Goals: having a clear intention of what you will do when dreaming
- Reading: reading books like, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming will help you learn advanced techniques and again remind your subconscious that you care about dreaming.
- Dream Stabilization: Lucidity is fleeting in dreams. Some techniques to stabilize dreams include spinning in place, rubbing your hands together, and saying things like “increase clarity now.”
Ok, got it? Good. Let’s get onto the fun stuff.
1. Create a dream lab (intermediate)
Create a standard office or location where you experiment or meet with people to help you learn things.
Robert Waggoner, in Gateway to the Innerself, mentions how he would meet with dream teachers and advisors over and over again.
I remember when I was learning physics, I made a lab floating above a lake in the mountains, where Einstein would be asleep. I would wake him up, and we would get to work on Newtonian physics or electricity work! Here’s how a computer programmer in NYC uses this, too:
“I do this frequently. 1 have a certain computer program to design. At night I will dream that I am sitting in a parlor (an old-fashioned one that Sherlock Holmes might use). I’m sitting with Einstein, white bushy hair—in the flesh. He and I are good friends. We talk about the program, start to do some flowcharts on a blackboard. Once we think we’ve come up with a good one, we laugh. Ein-stein says, “Well, the rest is history. “ Einstein excuses himself to go to bed. I sit in his recliner and doodle some code in a notepad. Then the code is all done. I look at it and say to myself, ‘ 7 want to remember this flowchart when 1 wake up. “ I concentrate very hard on the blackboard and the notepad. Then I wake up. It is usually around 3: 30 a. m. I get my flashlight (which is under my pillow), get my pencil and notepad (next to my bed), and start writing as fast as I can. I take this to work and usually it is 99 percent accurate. (M. C., West Chazy, New York)” – Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming
Maybe Tiger Woods could teach you golf on Mars, or Steve Jobs would help you design your first product.
Some people visit their dream library by searching for doors, elevators, or stairs that feel significant. You might be able to access memories from when you were a child, or the solutions to mathematical problems, or life’s challenges.
How to: To do this, make sure to only have one specific person and thing you want to learn about. Or problem you want to solve. In all of your MILD occurrences, picture yourself walking through a door or gateway into your dream lab. The first time you get there, take in all the sights and sounds and try and interact with your dream tutor. Then wake yourself up and write down what you learned!
“When you are satisfied with your environment, enlist helpers—experts, teachers, assistants, wizards, consultants, muses, galactic councils. If you want to learn to Paint, summon Rembrandt. Go fishing with Hemingway Hesse and talk about that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Ask your helpers to get you started on your specific problem or creative challenge. Build or conjure tools—an idea machine, or a magical paintbrush.” – Steven LaBerge
2/3. Use WBTB + WILD (intermediate)
One of the most consistent ways I’ve gotten a lucid dream (and exciting) is by combining WBTB with WILD. WBTB is wake-back-to-bed, and WILD is wake-induced lucid dreaming.
This can be scary because you may start to experience pressure, hear crazy sounds, or see crazy things as your body falls asleep. This is hypnagogic imagery. But if you don’t wake yourself up, and you stay lucid, you will likely enter directly into a lucid dream.
To increase your chances of having a lucid dream, you combine falling asleep consciously, like above, with WBTB because, as the night goes on, the duration of REM increases. About 4.5 hours after falling asleep, wake yourself up and try to stay awake for maybe 15 minutes, do not turn on lights, and try to think exclusively about lucid dreaming. It is a difficult line to walk because you want to be awake enough that when you fall asleep, your brain is awake enough to stay with the dream, but sleepy enough that you can fall asleep. If you tread this line carefully, as you fall aslee,p you may experience something magical.
A Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky, called “half-dream states” provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
“I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks, and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes that moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment, the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then ,suddenly, I detach myself from the windowsill on which I am lying and, in the same reclining positio,n fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, and the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes.” – Exploring the world of lucid dreaming
Some people add on to this by picturing or doing certain things to go right into the dream
- FILD: moving their fingers in micro movements like playing the piano, pointer and middle in one hand
- Stairs: picturing themselves walking up stairs (this is the one I use)
- Visualize a Dot: visualize a tiny dot and watch it expand until it’s big enough to be a portal you walk through
- How to: Set your alarm for about 4.5 hours after you fall asleep. When you wake up stay awake for 5-30 minutes (depending on what works best for you), then lie in bed and pay attention to the noise and sounds and sights. If you stay with them, and don’t get to scared, you should enter right into a lucid dream.
4. Enter The Transformation Chamber (intermediate)
Transform into animals, a different sex, an object, an alien, the sky, or anything you want.
I like to have a certain room that I can go into with a transformation pod. I enter the transformation in the screen on the right, hit a button, get in, wait 10 seconds, and imagine steam and transformation happening, then get out! I’ve done this with an eagle and become a storm. The storm was amazing.
Expectation plays a huge role here, and it’s interesting to see what your subconscious thinks about certain objects, as many times, the dreams don’t even follow my expectations.
How to: build a transformation chamber and do something simple first, like puting your arm in and generating a claw hand, then try putting your entire body in and becoming a certain animal.
5. Create Dream Portals and Time Travel (intermediate)
Doorways are the best way to start new things or go to new places, in my experience, dreaming. I like to say out loud, “on the other side of the door will be the Hogwarts main hall,” and then walk through it and expect to hear and see the magical ceiling and Dumbledore standing on his podium. My spells still need a lot of work!
Here’s a quote from a Lucid Dreaming Amy, “I wonder if I can create a portal. I use my right index finger to trace a circle on the mirror-wall. I don’t know what exactly made me pick this destination, but in my thoughts, I pick “heaven” as the destination that I want to be on the other side of the portal. When I’m finished drawing the circle, the area inside it doesn’t transform into a portal; instead, it swings inward, like a door on a hinge. I go through the doorway.” —A field guide to lucid dreaming. A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics.
You can even create a time machine and step into different times.
How to: I simply like to use a door. Find a door, and know (don’t think) that what you seek will be on the other side of that door. Say it out loud, and then step through the door. Some people have better results with portals, elevators, and steps.
6. Dream character interviews (advanced)
There is a huge variety of dream characters. Some seem to be NPCs, minimally responsive and interactive, while others seem to be omnipotent, seeing into my future and altering the dream reality in ways I never thought possible.
Robert Waggoner talks about meeting one of his guardians in a Lucid Dream, “English garden is too dreamy and I say, ‘This is a dream.” I begin to fly, and ahead I see a totem pole with figures standing on top of each other. I fly to it, then realize that the top figure of a woman in a red silk outfit is actually alive. As she comes to life, we begin to talk. She states that she is a type of guardian. She says that she watches over us and is there to help us. She has some other comments; she mentions something about the “deadman’s day.” She then hands me another totem-like figure—this one of an Asian male priest-like figure with a red silk outfit and boxy red hat with a tassel or feather on the right side. Suddenly, he comes to life and becomes life-size. We all then talk.” —Waggoner, Robert. Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self
Interacting openly with dream figures is key, because one idea is these are not even separate entities, but parts of yourself that are anthropomorphizing in just this place.
Some of the best questions I’ve tried are, “What do you represent?” or “Why are you here?”
If they answer in a confusing way, you can ask them to explain it to you more!
Finally, specific questions usually work better, instead of saying, “what is the meaning of life,” questions like, “what do you mean by X,” usually work better with more relatable and understandable answers.
How To: when you encounter a dream figure, don’t brush them by or use them for your purposes, try and have a real interaction with them. What can you learn?
7. Dream Exit Induced Lucid Dreaming (DEILD) – The Instant Replay Technique (Advanced)
After you wake up from a lucid dream, try and go back into that dream again. This is especially powerful for facing nightmares (we will cover this later).
Daniel Love (author of “Are You Dreaming?”) and the community-developed DEILD technique both stress one crucial thing: DON’T MOVE. Love puts it clearly: “When such an awakening occurs, be certain to remain absolutely still. The idea is to avoid any physical movement that will pull you out of sleep. Instead, remain in the position you find yourself. This will allow sleep paralysis to reengage and a rapid reentry into the dreaming state.”
Remain in the position you find yourself; this will allow sleep paralysis to re-engage and a rapid reentry into the dreaming state.
Side note: don’t be afraid of sleep paralysis, it is a sign you are getting into the awesome lucid dream! Or, it will fade very soon.
Here’s one of mine:
“I am on a playground, but think it’s weird that I’m an adult playing on a playground, instanly I’m lucid! But I get too excited so wake up. I decided to try DEILD, so after I wake up, I don’t move at all, and just relax my body willing myself to enter into the lucid dream, but this time I want the playground to be a space playground off of earth. I notice the buzzing noises around me, I hear a couple bangs, but then I find myself looking at the sky, but the sky is black. I realize i’m back in the dream on the playground! I jump off of playground into space and explore the mystical area of the universe I am in. I decide to explore an interesting all green planet, and shoot off to it like Superman. I lose lucidity around this time and get lost in some jungle planet dream that I don’t remember much of.”
How to: Wake up from any dream. Freeze. Don’t even open your eyes. Think about the dream you just left – or imagine how you want it to continue. Within seconds, you’ll feel that fuzzy dream feeling return. Let it pull you back in.
8. Meet the dream architect (advanced)
Robert Waggoner calls this “awareness behind the dream.”
“Like Hilgard’s ‘hidden observer’ in deep hypnosis, lucid dreaming also shows an inner observer with whom the lucid dreamer can relate.” This awareness seems to know things you don’t consciously know and can orchestrate experiences beyond your imagination.
I first encountered this when I shouted into the void of my dream, “Show me something important!” The entire dreamscape shifted, and I found myself in a crystalline library where every book contained a memory I’d forgotten. The dream itself seemed to be teaching me something about memory and consciousness.
Some lucid dreamers ask questions directly to the dream awareness:
- “Show me what I need to see!”
- “Show me something important for my growth”
- “What do I most need to know?”
- “Take me to the source of my creativity!”
One dreamer reported asking to see “the meaning of the Universe” and received an infinitely complex, living mathematical equation – “an extremely complex, three-dimensional network of fine lines glowing like neon lights… constantly changing, filling up the Universe with increasingly complex structures and interrelationships.”
How to: In your next lucid dream, instead of controlling everything, try speaking to the dream itself. Look up at empty dream space and call out your question. Stephen LaBerge advises: “To go beyond the ego’s model of the world, the lucid dreamer must relinquish control of the dream—surrender—to something beyond the ego.” Don’t try to imagine the answer – let the dream respond. The key is genuine curiosity and openness to whatever emerges.
9. Face Your Fears and Shadow work(adventure time bit) – advanced
Nightmares are gold mines for personal growth when you’re lucid. Instead of running from that monster, what if you turned around and asked it what it needs?
The idea being that nightmares are “shadow aspects” of yourself that you are rejecting or suppressing. Of course, some people have experienced truly horrible things that reappear in nightmares. Many lucid dreaming experts would argue that even that can be confronted and accepted as these horrific things in the dreamworld aren’t really those things, of course, but your minds representation of those things. Once you choose to accept that it happened, which doesn’t mean you are approving of it, you can begin to work through it.
Andrew Holecek, in his book Dream Yoga, teaches that “Nightmares become sacred teachers when you turn toward what frightens you, offer compassion, and invite it into conversation.”
Paul Tholey’s research found that when dreamers courageously faced hostile dream figures, the figures often transformed from “lower order into higher order creatures” – from beasts into humans. Here’s his own powerful example:
“I became lucid, while being chased by a tiger, and wanted to flee. I then pulled myself back together, stood my ground, and asked, ‘Who are you?’ The tiger was taken aback but transformed into my father… I told him that he could not order me around. I rejected his threats and insults. On the other hand, I had to admit that some of my father’s criticism was justified… At that moment my father became friendly, and we shook hands.”
The transformation technique works like this:
- Become lucid in the nightmare
- Turn to face what frightens you
- Send it love or ask what it needs
- Watch it transform or listen to its message
Key questions to ask threatening figures:
- “Who are you?”
- “What do you represent?”
- “What do you need from me?”
- “Can I help you?”
Here’s another dreamer’s story from online, “The demon chasing me turned into my father when I asked what it wanted. It just wanted to be heard. We had the conversation I never had in real life, and I woke up with years of anger dissolved.”
How to: Next time you have a scary dream and become lucid, stand your ground and say something like “I know you’re part of me. What do you need?” The scarier the figure, the more powerful the potential healing. Remember, don’t be confrontational with the figure. Truly try to project love and compassion towards the figure.
Stephen LeBerge had ideas for the most common nightmare scenarios:
Common Nightmare Themes & Responses
Being Pursued
- Stop running and face the pursuer
- Often causes pursuer to disappear or become harmless
- Try starting a conciliatory dialogue
Being Attacked
- Don’t flee or give in meekly
- Show readiness to defend yourself
- Engage attacker in dialogue or extend love/acceptance toward them
Falling
- Relax and allow yourself to land (you won’t actually die)
- Alternative: transform falling into flying
Paralysis
- Relax, don’t let anxiety take over
- Remind yourself it’s a dream that will end soon
- Adopt curiosity about what happens
Unprepared for Exam/Speech
- You can simply leave the room
- Or boost confidence by creatively answering questions
- Give a spontaneous talk on any topic you enjoy
Naked in Public
- Remember dreams are private experiences
- Have fun with it or make everyone else naked too
- Modesty is a public convention that doesn’t apply in dreams
Redreaming Exercise Steps
- Recall & Record – Write down the recurrent nightmare in detail
- Choose Reentry Point – Select where to change the dream and what new action to take
- Relax Completely – Find quiet space for 10-20 minutes, practice progressive relaxation
- Redream with Changes – Visualize dream with your new action at chosen point
- Evaluate Resolution – Write down the new outcome, try again if unsatisfied
- Apply in Dream – If nightmare recurs, execute your planned new behavior
10. let the dreams guide you (you are aware and remember, advanced)
The ultimate advanced technique might be… doing nothing. Many religions and sects of lucid dreaming even think controlling the lucid dream is sacrilege, that we should never do it.
Stephen LaBerge writes: “To go beyond the ego’s model of the world, the lucid dreamer must relinquish control of the dream—surrender—to something beyond the ego.”
A programmer from Seattle discovered this approach accidentally: “I stopped trying to control my lucid dreams and just watched. The dream took me through a visual representation of a coding problem I’d been stuck on for weeks. I saw the bug as a literal insect crawling through my code architecture. Woke up and fixed it in five minutes.”
One of my favorite dreaming quotes from Henry waldsorf longfellow, “Is this is a dream? O, if it be a dream, let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet!””
How to: In your next lucid dream, try doing absolutely nothing for the first minute. Just observe. Notice details you might normally miss. Let dream characters approach you. See where the dream wants to take you.
11. Robert Waggoner describes the 5 stages of lucid dreaming
Stage 1 – Personal Play: Beginners marvel at being lucid, focus on maintaining awareness and controlling emotions, and explore basic sensations while avoiding scary elements (dreams last seconds to 3 minutes)
Stage 2 – Manipulation & Movement: Dreamers learn to fly, change objects, and interact with dream figures using belief and expectation as tools (dreams last 30 seconds to 6 minutes)
Stage 3 – Power & Mastery: Advanced control emerges through intent and will, allowing complete environmental changes and experiments, though unexpected events may cause confusion
Stage 4 – Reaching Beyond Self: Dreamers discover a responsive awareness behind the dream, realizing they’re co-creating with something larger than themselves, leading to deeper exploration
Stage 5 – Pure Awareness: The ultimate stage involves experiencing consciousness beyond the dream itself, often characterized by self-less experiences of light and connection to all awareness
I think I am on level 3 or 4, but greatly enjoy going back to stage 1 and 2.
These 11 advanced techniques transform lucid dreaming from entertainment into a tool for creativity, healing, and self-discovery. You might compose symphonies with Mozart, heal childhood wounds, or discover solutions to problems that baffle your waking mind.
The Bottom Line
Here’s exactly how to implement each advanced technique:
- Master the basics: Keep a dream journal by your bed, do 5+ reality checks daily, repeat “Next time I’m dreaming, I’ll realize I’m dreaming” as you fall asleep
- Create a dream lab: Visualize walking through the same door into your workspace where your mentor waits – “build or conjure tools—an idea machine, or a magical paintbrush”
- WBTB + WILD: Set alarm for 4.5 hours after sleep, stay awake 15 minutes, then “remain absolutely still” as Alan Worsley advises – the dream will return
- Transformation chamber: Build a consistent pod, enter desired form on screen, wait 10 seconds imagining steam and change
- Dream portals: Find any door, say out loud “Behind this door is [destination],” know it’s true, walk through with total expectation
- Interview dream characters: Ask “Who are you?” or “What do you represent?” – Tholey found this “brought about a noticeable change in the dream figures”
- DEILD re-entry: When waking from any dream, “remain in the position you find yourself; this will allow sleep paralysis to reengage” (Daniel Love)
- Meet the architect: Look at empty space and ask “Show me what I need to see!” – don’t imagine the answer, let it emerge
- Face your fears: Turn toward nightmares, ask “What do you need?” – remember “everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us” (Rilke)
- Let dreams guide you: Become lucid but observe for 60 seconds – “relinquish control… to something beyond the ego” (LaBerge)
- Mutual dreaming: Agree on specific location with partner, both attempt to meet there, compare detailed notes without leading questions
As P.D. Ouspensky observed: “Images of desirable future events tend to foster the behavior most likely to bring about their realization.” Your lucid dreams are laboratories for experimenting with changes in your psychic life.
Sweet dreams, and may your lucidity illuminate both your nights and days.
What technique calls to you most? Have you discovered your own advanced methods? The lucid dreaming community thrives on shared discoveries – each dreamer’s breakthrough lights the path for others.