Staying in the dream

The teaching

As the lucid dreamers' craft, from Saint-Denys to LaBerge teaches it.

The first seconds

The moment of realising that you are dreaming is a moment of excitement, and excitement is what wakes most beginners at once. The first lesson of staying is to meet the discovery calmly. Say quietly that this is a dream, and turn at once to the dream itself, its ground and its colours, rather than to the thrill of having noticed.

Holding on through the senses

A dream fades when the dreamer's attention leaves it, and the surest way to keep attention in the dream is through the dream senses. Look at the dream hands. Rub them together and feel the warmth and friction. Touch a wall, feel the ground under the feet, listen to the sounds around you. Look steadily at one hand, the old way of Hervey de Saint-Denys, and then rub both together; LaBerge found the rubbing one of the best ways to keep a dream from slipping.

Spinning

When the dream begins to fade anyway, the colours thinning or the feel of the bed coming back, LaBerge's remedy is to spin: stretch out the arms and turn round and round like a child, feeling the motion vividly. The spinning tends either to hold the dream or to carry the dreamer into a new scene. Afterwards, test at once, because the new scene may be another dream or a dream of waking in bed. Spinning can also be used to travel: turn while expecting that the next scene will be the place you wish to visit.

A small aim first

Settle beforehand, while awake, on one small first act for the next lucid dream: a slow breath, a look at the hands, the feel of the ground underfoot. A small aim held calmly does more for a beginner than a grand plan that dissolves in excitement. Longer projects can wait until staying comes easily.

Expectation

Inside a lucid dream, expectation shapes what happens. Expect to fly and you rise; doubt it and you sink. Expect to pass through a wall and you pass; hesitate and it stops you. A person you want to meet can often be found by turning round in the expectation that they will be standing behind you, and a place by opening a door in the expectation that it lies beyond. The dreamer learns to hold expectations firmly but lightly, since anxious expectations work as well as hopeful ones.

Meeting dream figures

The people of a dream can be spoken to, and lucid dreamers often find that they answer in surprising ways. Ask a figure who it is, what it wants, what it stands for. Paul Tholey advised meeting a threatening figure face to face rather than running, looking into its eyes and speaking to it, and reported that hostile figures so met often became less frightening or changed into friendlier ones. And whenever a dream turns frightening, the dreamer can recall that the body lies safe in bed, and either turn to the figure with a question or let the dream end by waking.

The way of dream yoga

Once the dream is known, Tibetan dream yoga sets three tasks in turn. First, do not fear it: whatever appears, fire, water or a pursuer, is the dream's own substance and cannot harm the dreamer, and the practitioner may tread on the dream fire to prove it. Then change it: make the small large, the one many, the frightening harmless, to learn that its forms are pliable. Then see it as empty, without solid substance, and through that see the waking world in the same light. These are practices of a religious path and are taught by teachers within it.

False awakenings

A common end to a lucid dream is a dream of waking up. The dreamer seems to wake in bed, often in their own room, and begins the day while still asleep. Celia Green sorted these false awakenings into two kinds: a commonplace kind, in which the dreamer simply seems to wake and go about the morning, and a rarer kind with a strained atmosphere, in which the room looks right but something feels about to happen. Either way the remedy is the same: whenever you wake from a lucid dream, test once before believing it.

Waking well

When the dream ends for good, keep still, make one check that you are truly awake, and then write the dream while every part of it is still there. If a lucid dream left you shaken, sit up, put on a light, and let the room be ordinary for a while before trying to sleep again. Staying is a skill learned slowly, and a dream that ends at the moment of knowing is still a lucid dream.