Lucid dreaming method: what MILD, WBTB and reality checks do

Choose a lucid dreaming method and almost any guide on how to lucid dream will tell you it works within a week. The trials say something narrower. A few methods raised the number of lucid dreams in some people, none does it reliably, and the better ones are as much about when you wake up as about what you think while falling back asleep.

Below: how common lucid dreaming is, what the lab and field studies found for MILD, wake back to bed, reality testing and the senses-based SSILD, whether a lucid dreaming journal belongs on the list, and what is known about the downsides. If nightmares are what brought you here, Nightmares every night covers the treatment side.

First the definition, since the question behind "whats lucid dreaming" is a simple one. A lucid dream is a dream in which you know that you are dreaming. Recordings of brain activity describe it as a hybrid state. In six trained student volunteers recorded with 19-channel EEG, lucid dreaming had REM-like power in the delta and theta bands, more gamma activity than ordinary REM sleep (peaking around 40 Hz, strongest at the front of the head) and higher coherence between regions than REM sleep, so the authors called it a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming.

Voss U, Holzmann R, Tuin I, et al. Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep 2009. PMID 19750924

A 2019 review of the neuroscience adds a caution: EEG studies of lucid dreaming are mostly underpowered and show mixed results, brain imaging data are scant, and the preliminary results point to the prefrontal and parietal regions. In other words, the definition is secure and the biology is still being worked out.

Baird B, Mota-Rolim SA, Dresler M. The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2019. PMID 30880167

Lucid dreaming method or natural talent: how common it is

A lucid dream is one in which you know you are dreaming. A meta-analysis of studies from 1966 to 2016 found that 34 studies gave a mean of 55% (95% CI 49 to 62%) for having had at least one lucid dream in a lifetime, and 25 studies gave 23% (20 to 25%) for having one at least once a month. So the experience is common, and a monthly rhythm is not unusual.

Saunders DT, Roe CA, Smith G, et al. Lucid dreaming incidence: A quality effects meta-analysis of 50years of research. Conscious Cogn 2016. PMID 27337287

The question of whether you can learn it is harder. A systematic review of induction techniques included 35 studies (11 sleep laboratory, 24 field), with 26 using cognitive techniques, 11 using external stimulation and one a drug. The methodological quality was relatively low, and the authors write that none of the techniques was verified to induce lucid dreams reliably and consistently, although some looked promising.

Stumbrys T, Erlacher D, Schädlich M, et al. Induction of lucid dreams: a systematic review of evidence. Conscious Cogn 2012. PMID 22841958

MILD plus wake back to bed: the best-supported lucid dreaming method

MILD, the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams, means setting an intention to remember that you are dreaming, typically while falling asleep after you have woken from a dream. Wake back to bed (WBTB) means getting up for a while after several hours of sleep and then returning to bed. The strongest lab evidence is for using the two together.

In a sleep-laboratory experiment, participants were awakened from a REM period after 6 hours of sleep, kept awake for 30 or 60 minutes while practicing MILD or a control task such as reading, then went back to bed. With MILD, 6 of 11 (54%), 8 of 15 (53%) and 5 of 14 (36%) participants in the three conditions reported a lucid dream in the morning sleep, and 3, 4 and 2 of them (27%, 27% and 14%) gave verified eye signals on the polysomnogram. In the reading condition, 1 of 11 (9%) reported a lucid dream and nobody gave eye signals. The authors conclude that the combination can induce lucid dreams in people who were not selected for the ability.

Erlacher D, Stumbrys T. Wake Up, Work on Dreams, Back to Bed and Lucid Dream: A Sleep Laboratory Study. Front Psychol 2020. PMID 32670163

The same group then tried to replicate and simplify. In three experiments the procedure was adapted step by step: the uninterrupted first sleep was shortened from 6 to 4.5 hours, in the second experiment the REM-based awakening was replaced by a time-based one, and in the third reality testing replaced MILD. Four of 15 (26%), 0 of 20 and 3 of 15 (20%) participants reported a lucid dream, against 50% in their earlier single-night study. The authors conclude that the earlier sleep interruption seems to lower the induction rate, that without a REM awakening in the morning induction failed, and that reality testing did worse than MILD.

Erlacher D, Furrer V, Ineichen M, et al. Combining Wake-Up-Back-to-Bed with Cognitive Induction Techniques: Does Earlier Sleep Interruption Reduce Lucid Dream Induction Rate? Clocks Sleep 2022. PMID 35645242

The practical reading: the wake-up is a timing problem. Lucid dreams occur in REM sleep, and REM periods get longer toward morning, so waking well into the night gives you a better chance of landing in a REM-rich stretch than waking early. The trials say less about how to hit that moment at home, where nobody is watching your brain waves.

Reality testing, SSILD and the large induction study

Reality testing means checking during the day, many times, whether you are awake (for example by trying to read text twice) so that the habit carries into dreams. SSILD, the Senses Initiated Lucid Dream technique, means cycling your attention through sight, hearing and body sensation after waking and while drifting back to sleep.

The International Lucid Dream Induction Study compared five combinations of techniques: reality testing, WBTB, MILD, SSILD and a hybrid of MILD and SSILD. A total of 355 people with an interest in lucid dreaming kept a sleep and dream recall logbook for one baseline week and then practiced the techniques for another week. MILD and SSILD were similarly effective, the hybrid showed no advantage, and the techniques worked regardless of baseline frequency or prior experience. Better general dream recall and the ability to fall asleep within 10 minutes of finishing the technique predicted success, and successful induction had no adverse effect on sleep quality.

Adventure-Heart DJ. Findings From the International Lucid Dream Induction Study. Front Psychol 2020. PMID 32765385

Two limits apply. The induction study compared the techniques with each other and with each person's own baseline week, and relied on self-reported lucid dreams, so it ranks the techniques against each other better than it proves any of them against doing nothing. And the lab experiments are small (11 to 20 people per condition, and in the first study mostly sport students), with large differences between runs of the same protocol.

Does a lucid dreaming diary help?

A lucid dreaming journal, also called a dream diary, sits at the center of most guides, and the plain summary is that nobody has tested it alone. What the studies show is indirect. The induction study had every participant keep a logbook for baseline and practice weeks, and general dream recall was one of the two predictors of success. A journal is the obvious way to practice recall, and a lucid dream that is not remembered the next morning cannot be reported, so it earns its place. But recall may simply mark people who were going to do well anyway, and the trial did not randomize journalling.

One more piece of indirect support concerns recall itself. A 2016 study comparing one-off estimates of dream recall with three types of logbook found that logbooks gave much higher recall rates, and that the gap was larger in people who reported better recall during the logbook period; the author concluded that keeping a logbook enhances dream recall (a corrigendum to the paper was published in 2023). So a lucid dreaming diary plausibly helps with the raw material, which is remembering dreams, even if no trial has linked it to more lucid dreams.

Aspy DJ. Is dream recall underestimated by retrospective measures and enhanced by keeping a logbook? An empirical investigation. Conscious Cogn 2016. PMID 27023923

If you try it: write down whatever you remember in the first minute after waking, before you move, and note the time you woke. That timestamp also helps with WBTB, because it tells you how long you actually slept before the interruption. For more on why dream recall differs from night to night, see Vivid dreams and How much REM sleep do you need?.

Putting the trials together gives a sensible order of operations, with the caveat that nobody has tested this exact plan. In week one, change nothing except writing down what you remember each morning; that shows your baseline and trains recall. In week two, add MILD as you fall asleep. Only then try a wake back to bed, once or twice a week rather than nightly, at about the 6-hour mark where the lab put it. If you have no lucid dream after a few weeks, that fits the trials: even the best protocol failed most nights for most people.

Risks: broken sleep, and who should skip it

Wake back to bed is a deliberate sleep interruption, and the cost is the sleep you lose. It makes little difference once, and quite a lot if you repeat it every night on top of a short week. The 355-person study measured one week and found no effect on sleep quality, which is reassuring for a trial and says nothing about months.

A prospective study gives a more cautious signal. In 187 undergraduates, the frequency of lucid dreaming was unrelated to psychopathology, and the intensity of lucid dreams and positive emotions in them was inversely related to several symptoms. But use of deliberate induction techniques was positively associated with psychopathology and sleep problems, and in the 78 students followed for two months, deliberate induction predicted an increase in dissociation and schizotypy symptoms. The authors conclude that lucidity should not be assumed to signal well-being and that deliberate induction may carry long-term risk.

Aviram L, Soffer-Dudek N. Lucid Dreaming: Intensity, But Not Frequency, Is Inversely Related to Psychopathology. Front Psychol 2018. PMID 29623062

This is one study of students, measured by questionnaires, and it can't say what the induction does to any one person. A reasonable reading: if you already feel detached from your surroundings, have unusual experiences when waking or sleep poorly, then pushing into mixed sleep-wake states deserves a conversation with a clinician first. Experiences at the edge of sleep, such as false awakening or sleep paralysis, are not caused by this practice but can be more frequent when sleep is fragmented.

One clinical use has real data behind it. A systematic review of lucid dreaming therapy for nightmares found 4 randomized trials, 2 case series and 5 case reports, and most found it reduced nightmare frequency in adults with chronic recurring nightmares. The authors call the results encouraging but limited by weak internal validity.

Ouchene R, El Habchi N, Demina A, et al. The effectiveness of lucid dreaming therapy in patients with nightmares: A systematic review. Encephale 2023. PMID 37005191

What a sleep tracker can and cannot tell you

SleepTrace cannot see dreams, eye signals or lucidity, and the REM label in the app is an estimate from sound, not a measurement. For a wake-back-to-bed experiment it is useful in one small way: the log of the night shows when you were awake and how long you slept before the interruption, so you can see what the practice cost you. The app works through the microphone, labels snoring, talking and coughing with playable clips (3 a month on the free plan) and timestamps apparent breathing pauses; a sleep talking clip may even show whether you spoke during the morning sleep. On iPhone and Android it needs the app open overnight (the screen dims by itself) and the phone plugged in. Its sleep apnea indicator is a screening estimate, not a diagnosis, and nothing in the app tells you whether a dream was lucid.

Frequently asked questions

SleepTrace is a wellness app, not a medical device. This article is general information, not medical advice. If your symptoms are frequent, severe or worrying, please talk to a doctor.

Keep reading

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• False awakening
• Sleep paralysis and the demon
• Nightmares every night
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