I'm beginning to take the steps to become more actively lucid in my dreams. I want to do everything I can to become more involved in that stuff. I already have a dream journal going.

Is there anything one can I ingest to increase or grant lucidity? I've heard of a few things like peppermint tea and spicy foods or cheese. I've used entada rheedi, the dream seed with great success but ran out.

I was thinking this thread could also be the official dream thread if we need one. Methods of exploring dreams is something this site needs more of.

So post away!

Silene Capensis works great for potentiating LDs. Also, Calea Zacetecichi drank as a tea helps with this. There are also numerous other herbs, and artificial pharmaceuticals than can potentiate dreams, but i would suggest you stick with the natural ones. Here are two awesome websites on the subject i found helpful in the past when i was into LDs:
http://www.dreamviews.com/content/
http://www.lucidipedia.com/misc/index.php

there's some other good ones too that i cant remember.

You should also look into Astral Projection (OBE's); i think you'll enjoy it. its harder to master, but once successful with it, its a lot more thrilling than LD i would say. I have almost no experience with this but i know it exists and is very real. If you're interested in this, the best two books on the subject are: Adventures Out Of Body and Mastering Astral Projection
Best of luck on your journeys Morbiddoctor

Ilex guayusa helped me a lot to begin to remember my dreams, have yet to achieve lucid dreaming dough
The plus of this plant is that there is also a good amount of caffeine in it, thus it can be a very pleasant coffe substitute.
Gonna have to try some Silene next

Yes caffeine is a good antidote, it keeps your brain awake while you sleep. MELATONIN! I've never been able to get as close as I have gotten with alcohol + melatonin, but I hear pinolol or pindolol? Whichever, it does help to initiate lucid dreams. I have had success with being lucid recently with this combination. It does wonders and I love it! Good luck to you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirophrenia

Syrian Rue can induce pretty vivid dreaming (while sleeping)

A few months ago my sisters boyfriend was telling me how he trained himself to be able to have lucid dreams almost every night. He said he would force himself to wake up at around 6 in the morning and go to the bathroom to brush his teeth or have a glass of water. Afterwards he would go back to bed and put himself back to sleep. He began training his mind and body to induce lucid dreaming and after a while didn't have to wake up early to make it happen. A lot of it has to do with being in a light sleep (i think) and you do not need drugs to do it.

I know for a fact i am missing out some key info on the process. I am going to email him and find out exactly what he did and i'll report back. I wanna try it

^please do. Repeat waking is one I've heard before. These are All great suggestions and I intend to Try many of them in time. Keep em coming.

African dream root (Silene Capsensis)--you can get it pre-ground or you have to grind it up..I take 1/8 tsb before sleep every night..takes a few nights to really start working

Alpha-GPC--600-900mg before bed-helps with recall

Piracetam-2400mg before bed-increases vividness

Smoking some pot helps increase the vividness as well.

Wearing a nicotine patch increases dreaming activity. Something to do w NMDA receptor modulation.

Ive heard doses of like 30 to 60mg DXM help with lucid dreaming as well. I have not tried this yet.

You can try Calea Z but i didn't have much luck with it.

Stilton cheese? They say it makes for some vivid dreaming..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilton_cheese

Virola wrote:

"Stilton cheese? They say it makes for some vivid dreaming..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilton_cheese"


Haha funny, so would it be this blue microfungus ( saprotrophic fungus Penicillium roqueforti ) responsible for dreamwork ?

If so we could try with gorgonzola or roquefort....

IMpressed by this to say the least !!

I also wanted to add that benzos give me intense, crazy dreams all night long. Dosent seem to work for all people, though. The dreams induced by benzos tend to have a darker, more bizarre quality. When combined with the other supplements Ive listed above, I tend to have very vivid and realistic dreams.
Keeping a dream log triggers the subconscious to help remember nocturnal adventures. I think it sends a message to your brain that "dreams are important, so lets remember them from now on instead of discarding the memories"
I cycle the supplements, piracetam and alpha gpc for a few days on and a few off.

I have very good luck inducing intense dreams with these regimens..Becoming lucid is another thing though. You can do things like reality checks throughout the day.. EG: look at your hands at random times while you're awake and ask yourself "Am I dreaming" Or look at a watch, or try to push your hand through a solid object. Eventually, while your dreaming, these actions will carry over and you can then determine that you are indeed in a dream. Personally, I can get lucid in a dream after seeing my hands...

Galantamine is also reported to have good effects, again, one I have never tried.

I just want to stress that supplements are a only a tool. You have to have the right mindset/intention and be willing to devote the time to become lucid on a regular basis.

Ive been working on techniques to potentiate lucid dreaming for quite a few years. Here are some of the methods that have and have not worked for me... Everyine is different...

Calea Zacetecichi: Is very powerfull when used regularly. I found that for >threshold effects you really need to drink a strong tea before bed AND smoke a large Calea joint or a couple of pipes. The most vivid dream experience I have ever had was with Calea... more real than real!

Piracetam : Clarity and vividness
Aniracetam : Same
(used with a choline source...)

Combo's of:
large doses of Vitamin b6
Melatonin
Valerian

Brainwave Entrainment and Hemispheric Synchronization tools have also worked quite well for me.

also I would like to add that for me:

Cannabis: DEFINITELY reduces clarity and vividness... it is possible to become lucid while stonned but much harder
Benzos: produce a deep dreamless sleep that is void of anything...

This thread has made me think I would really like to begin some more focussed lucid training.... but Im smoking way too much weed and hasish at the moment to really remember my dreams.... maybe soon... hehehe

timeloop: I have the same problem with cannabis, I used to remember most of my dreams and induce lucid ones rather easily, but since I started smoking I can barely remember dreams. Oh weed..

I have stumbled over Red Spider Lilly Extract a while ago to potentiate dreaming in general.
And oh boy does it work like a charm.
The commercial version of the extract can be found at http://www.brilliantdreams.com/index.html .

Heres a little mini knowledge base about the Red Spider Lilly:
The Red Spider Lilly is called Higanbana (彼岸花）in Japan, and is tied to the afterlife.
It is said the Red Spider Lilies grows along the banks of the Sanzu River (三途の川）.
The Sanzu River is said to be the dividing section between the physical plain and the afterlife.
The active compound that makes the lilies a lucid dreaming catalyst is called Galantamine, and can be also found in daffodils and snowdrops as well.

Best Regards.

Lucid dreaming has been an interest of mine for quite a while. Hopefully I can add some nuggets to the conversation.

If you start doing research you will see a lot of common themes to help, such as the dream journal and reality checks that people have mentioned. I believe the main purpose in regards to the dream journal and achieving lucidity is just that doing the dream journal is important to help you gain better recall of your dreams so they don't fade away. After all if you can't remember your dreams you won't be having any lucid ones. I sort of strayed away from this because I would end up with huge volumes of the journal. Instead a huge key to remembering your dreams is to avoid moving when you wake up. Just stay in the exact position you were in when waking and think about your dreams. If you do move, move back to the position you were in. It really helps. Though regarding the dream journal another benefit of it is that you can notice recurring dreams easier if you write them down and keep track which may help you the next time you are in a dream in the same sort of situation. Your subconscious will begin to go "hmmmmm something is odd about this" and it can be the trigger you need to realize you are dreaming. You may just snap right into it, or it may be what you need to subconsciously do your reality check. This can be simply asking yourself if you are dreaming. Usually that is enough to hit you and realize it. Other methods are things like looking at a clock or something else digital. When you are in a dream, but on the verge of realizing you are dreaming you probably see all the numbers jumbled on the clock. Flipping light switches is also a good one. They will not work like they do in the waking world. The one that I typically use is to look at my hands. If I am dreaming the sensation will be very odd and my hands will look very odd.

To help the chances of you perfoming these checks inside your dreams you should do them regularly throughout your normal daily activity. This will seep them into your subconscious so that you do them in your dreams. Sometimes I have done them in my dreams even without the hint that I might be dreaming. Those are always really suprising, because I wasn't expecting anything as I was sure I was awake and then bam, nope, here I am lucid.

So ok now you have realized you are dreaming. This is the first step. For me the shock was so extreme that in the early days I would basically realize I was dreaming have this great feeling while realizing this and then almost instantly wake up. It was hard to get over the shock and maintain lucidity. However with time and practice I was able to gain more control and hold it for much longer.

Once in a lucid dreams I find that if I go about whatever it is I want to explore that sometimes you can feel the dream slipping back away from you. I find that if I continually look back to my hands for a little bit to stabilize I can regain my composure to not loose it. It is a little hard to describe you just have to try it out to get a feel for it. Another technique is to spin around. I have no idea why this helps but it is a bizzare and affective technique. Sometimes you even end up in a different dreamscape than when you first started dreaming though you retain your awareness.

Some fun things I like to do in my dreams when I am lucid is to just do a thorough scan of the environment I find myself in and then to explore. It is fun when walking around to go from one scene to a totally different scene but without conciously attempting to change the scene. More like just an observer in the place you find yourself in. Sometimes going from one scene to another can start to pull you back from lucidity which is where the looking at my hands helps. Look down at them then look back up. Do that a few times. Talking to people in your dreams once you have become lucid is a fun thing to try and remember to do as well. YOu will sometimes get some really weird stuff. I have had them turn totally still and not respond like becoming lucid shut them off. Sometimes they will say they are just part of the dream and sometimes it seems like they have nothing to do with me. And of course there is the typical thing of flying which can be great fun.

All of this applies to the technique of becoming lucid while already in a dreaming state. They call this MILD (Mnemonic induced lucid dreaming).

There are other ways called WILD (waking induced lucid dreaming). I think there is a lot of confusion with terms between WILD, Astral projection and OOBE's. People definetly interchange the terms alot. I think that if WILD and Astral projection are not the same thing, then they are at least super close. As doing Kermit mentioned, it is much easier to achieve lucidity if you do the wake up early and stay up a little bit routine. This is also the same advice I found somewhere about astral projection (It might have been on Grant Morrison's website). Basically the point is that you wake up 3 or so hours before your normal wake up time. Then get up and do something. Don't just go right to bed or you will fall back into a deep sleep. You want to stay up long enough that your mind wakes up, but your body is still tired. This allows your body to be tricked into falling back to sleep with your mind active. There is a very good chance that you can enter sleep paralysis when doing this. This can be very freaky as you typically feel like there is an entity there and you are totally paralyzed. I find it very interesting that sleep paralysis and reports of alien abduction can be very very similar and most abductions take place around 3 in the morning. Regardless of that, when you are in sleep paralysis you can use it to launch yourself directly into a lucid dream or an astral projection. I am a heavy sleeper and haven't spent as much time with this as I would like, but I have more time to experiment with this now so I may get back into it. For me what I was able to do was to basically just "sit up" while in paralysis. I basically felt like my "astral body" or whatever ripped away out of my paralyzed body. Typically I would launch right into a dreamscape, but since I was there for the transition I would already be lucid. Another curious note I found there is that when you are entering the hypnagogic state while concious there will be a point where there is a crazy buzzing sound in your ears. It's been a while, but I find it curious that there is something similar with smoked DMT ( which I do not yet have any experience with). This buzzing sound was usually the place where I could pull myself out of my body and directly into the lucid dream/astral projection state. Regardless of whether you do the WILD/Astral projection straight into your dream this technique provides very vivid dreams in a light state of sleep that make it many times easier to become lucid once already inside of a dream.

Well that is a huge wall of text. I better stop now

Does anyone think you could do with dmt what malaclypse did with sleep paralysis?

Yeah - but weed actually stops parts of your brain functioning properly - so you actually get much less dream sleep when you smoke habitually.

Probably why when you stop smoking and start withdrawing, a lot of people get lots of very vivid often scary dreams, for about a week.

Man, I really need to find a source reference for this - it sounds really stupid.

I found starting on valerian to get to sleep again started giving me lucid dreams again.

Very good - I hadn't had any in over a year.

I'm not sure of any links available to official studies, but what I have heard weed does is that it inhibits REM sleep. Here is a little something from Ryan Hurd. You can get the free PDF e-book at his sight here.

http://dreamstudies.org/




The REM rebound thing allows you to enter REM more quickly with increasing depth and length. So if you can get 8-9 hours you will lose out on REM during the beginning where it would normally show up, but have a bunch at the end.

Regardless of that, I found that my dream recall was way worse when smoking lots of pot. I could occasionally remember a lucid dream, but it seemed that even for the percentage of dreams I did remember there was a lower percentage of lucid dreams.

W.I.L.D. Worked really well when I tried it..its real similar to what Doingkermit described

Also I have friends who use silene capensis and it seems to work really good for them

I really liked the entada rheedi I had at first but I'm all out . It was also a real chore to grind it all up. Does anyone know where to get any that's already powdered? I can't see myself buying a bunch of seeds And grinding them down again.