如何做一个「清醒梦」？
Hi, everyone.
Picking up from last episode, let’s keep talking about dream control.
This episode, we’re upgrading our dream-control technique one step, moving up to the level of direct dream control.
The focus this time is an extreme dream-control method I invented myself.
A special disclaimer:
The exclusive dream-control method I’m about to introduce came from a sudden, wild inference while I was reading some material. It makes perfect sense in principle, but it hasn’t been verified by personal trials or scientific experiments.
If you decide to try it yourself after listening to the episode, that can only mean one of two things:
Either you’re as hardcore as I am, or you truly love me!
Okay, let’s get to the point.
The two stages of direct dream control
First, let me explain what “direct dream control” means.
Direct dream control has two stages:
1. Knowing you’re dreaming
The first stage is the prerequisite for dream control—knowing you’re dreaming, meaning becoming aware inside a dream that you’re dreaming.
The English term for this state is lucid dreaming. In Chinese it’s usually translated as “lucid dreaming” or “clear dreaming”; on our show, we’ll just call it “lucid dreaming.”
Once lucid dreaming appears, direct dream control is already seventy or eighty percent successful. As long as you realize you’re dreaming, you can unleash your imagination and do whatever you want in the dream. Once lucid dreaming appears, the second stage—“controlling the dream environment”—is basically just a matter of letting things take their course.
2. Controlling the dream environment
Of course, the second stage, “controlling the dream environment,” also involves some techniques.
For example, how to maintain lucid dreaming for as long as possible, and how to make the dream environment easier to manipulate. After looking through some material, I found this part of the technique relatively short on scientific rigor, so I’ll save it for a separate episode next time and have a proper chat about it.
This episode focuses on the first stage: how to trigger lucid dreaming.
How to trigger lucid dreaming
To enter lucid dreaming, the key is to produce an awareness in the dream that says, “Huh? Am I dreaming?”
Sometimes, the moment this awareness appears, you can immediately confirm that you’re dreaming.
But what if you can’t confirm it? Just do a few little experiments. For example, bend your finger backward and see whether you can bend it tightly against the back of your hand without breaking a bone. Or try walking through a wall. If you actually pass through it, you’re definitely dreaming.
1. Doubting that you’re dreaming
So how do you generate that doubt in a dream—the awareness of “Am I dreaming?”
The method is to develop the habit, while you’re awake during the day, of regularly asking yourself, “Am I dreaming?” Once it becomes automatic, if you keep asking yourself during the day whether you’re dreaming, the odds of asking the same question in a dream will rise too.
2. The watch reality check
For example, one method that has been tested and shown effective by scientists works like this:
Check your watch 5 to 10 times every day, and make sure that each time you can accurately see what hour and minute it is.
After looking at your watch, ask yourself: “Am I dreaming?”
Then pinch one of your fingers and see whether it hurts.
After sticking with it for about a week, this deliberate act of “looking at your watch” will become a habit.
Once that happens, in a dream you’ll also start looking at your watch, and you’ll naturally want to see what time it really says on the dial—but you won’t be able to read it clearly. That urge to see the dial clearly will help you become a little more lucid.
And right afterward, you’ll ask yourself, just as you do when awake: “Am I dreaming?”
Now pinch your finger again. You’ll find that your finger is being pinched tightly against the back of your hand without you feeling a thing. You’ll realize that you’ve hit the jackpot: you really are dreaming.
And just like that, you have lucid dreaming.
The spinning top
What is the core point of the “watch reality check” method?
The “watch” scene has to appear both in reality and in the dream. Only then can it become a bridge connecting reality and the dream environment, carrying that waking doubt—“Am I dreaming?”—into the dream.
The action of “looking at your watch” is actually equivalent to the spinning top carried by the little boy in Inception. In Inception, this object is called a totem.
Whenever the boy doubts whether he’s dreaming, he takes out the totem and spins it. If it stops, he’s in reality; if it keeps spinning, he’s in a dream.
For this method to work, the first condition is that the totem has to appear both in reality and in the dream.
And the fact that scientists have shown the “watch” method to be effective seems to prove that, if you keep practicing, this “watch” scene really can enter your dream environment.
This may be because the “watch” exercise is especially unnatural, especially deliberate—the more deliberate it is, the deeper the impression it leaves. Material that leaves a deep impression in your memory during the day is naturally more likely to appear in a dream.
The weakness of the “watch reality check” method
But here’s the thing: I think the two words “deliberate” are exactly where this method is weak.
The more deliberate something is, the harder it is to stick with.
Don’t underestimate an exercise this simple—how many obviously easy good habits in life are we actually able to keep cultivating?
Three features of a lazy person’s totem
So I really wanted to find a totem that was simpler than the “watch,” required almost no willpower, and could bring the “lazy person’s version” into the dream environment.
I think a totem that satisfies a lazy person’s need to slack off while still perfectly completing the “bridge” task should have three key features.
Feature One: It appears spontaneously and frequently in reality
First, a totem better suited to a lazy person like me should appear spontaneously and frequently during the day.
There are two layers to this:
- Spontaneously. You don’t need to deliberately do anything; it appears automatically every day. Once it appears, you simply ask yourself whether you’re dreaming. Compared with deliberately looking at your watch, this is much easier to keep practicing.
- Frequently. It needs to appear several times a day, so you have enough chances to practice.
That’s the first feature of a lazy person’s totem: it should appear automatically and often during the day.
Feature Two: It makes you anxious
If you listened to the content of our previous episode, you should remember that, according to scientists’ statistics, the things most likely to enter our dreams are the things that make us anxious.
Most dreams—even if they don’t qualify as nightmares—make people anxious. Either someone is chasing and killing you, or you’ve failed an exam.
So the second feature a totem should have is this: it needs to be a scene that makes people anxious.
The “watch” isn’t a scene that makes people anxious. It isn’t a natural ingredient of the dream environment, and in that respect it doesn’t have the advantage.
Feature Three: The anxiety happens before sleep
Last episode also mentioned that we dream several times every night, but the dreams we remember are usually just the one right before we get up in the morning.
So lucid dreaming usually also happens in the dream environment right before getting out of bed.
That makes the third feature of the totem: it needs to appear when you’re close to getting up in the morning.
The perfect totem
To sum up, a good totem needs three features:
- It appears automatically and frequently during the day;
- It makes you anxious, so it also appears frequently in dreams;
- And it always appears when you’re waking up in the morning.
A totem that satisfies all three features—surely it’s practically begging to be created, right?
It’s—the urge to pee.
Does this scene of looking for a bathroom show up automatically and repeatedly during the day?
Feature one: check.
When you urgently need to pee, you’re pretty anxious, right?
Feature two: check.
If you didn’t use the bathroom all night, doesn’t that urge to pee peak right before you wake up in the morning?
Feature three: check.
It satisfies all three features. That’s basically the perfect totem!
Old Wei’s extreme dream-control method
Using this totem, my exclusive extreme dream-control secret technique was born.
Here’s how you practice it:
Every day, when you feel the urge to pee, don’t rush straight to the bathroom. Give yourself 30 seconds to focus completely on experiencing the sensations your body is producing. But don’t hold it too long—it’s not good for your body. A few dozen seconds is plenty.
Then, when you walk into the bathroom, ask yourself one question:
“Is this a bathroom in reality, or a bathroom in a dream environment?”
Next, bump your head lightly against the bathroom wall—if you think that last action would make people mistake you for having a neurological disorder, pinch your finger toward the back of your hand instead and see whether it hurts. The effect should be about the same.
Then, do your business.
With this one move, you’ll spontaneously have more than 10 practice opportunities every day. Unlike the “watch,” which requires deliberate practice, everyone has to pee. You only need to practice when the urge appears, so it’s completely easy to keep up.
In theory, once this practice becomes a habit, whenever you dream each morning that you’re getting out of bed and searching everywhere for a bathroom, the thought “Is this a real bathroom?” will enter the dream environment.
At that point, you’ll bump your head against the wall again, only to discover that you’ve somehow walked straight through it—congratulations, you have lucid dreaming.
Okay, that’s as far as I’ll go with my exclusive extreme dream-control technique. It really is this simple and crude.
Let me emphasize once more: this method hasn’t been tested. Anyone who tries it after listening to the episode is doing so out of genuine love.
If you really manage to pull it off, please leave a comment below the official account and tell us about it!!
Written by Zhichao Wei
Edited by Wang Xiaowei
References and further reading:
1. The Lucid Dream Trigger
Fans of lucid dreaming have named the totem in Inception a lucid-dream trigger.
“A lucid-dream trigger is an object or scene in a dream that can trigger a dreamer’s suspicion and lead to lucid dreaming, causing the membrane to spring out and revealing that it is a dream.” (From Chasing Dreams Ant, Dream Control Master)
Quite vivid.
2. A paper summarizing whether various lucid-dream induction methods are effective
Stumbrys, T., Erlacher, D., Schädlich, M., & Schredl, M. (2012). ‘Induction of Lucid Dreams: A Systematic Review of Evidence’. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1456–75.
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