How to Lucid Dream Without Waking Up: 3 Ways to Stay Sleeping

A common issue people have with lucid dreaming is learning how to lucid dream without waking up.

The most popular lucid dreaming techniques involve setting an alarm to wake yourself in the night, but that can really mess with your sleep.

While using those waking techniques seems to be the best way to learn how to lucid dream for beginners, it is not for everyone.

Let’s look at some proven ways to lucid dream without messing with your sleep too much, and some tips to help you stay asleep while lucid dreaming.

You may also like these other lucid dreaming guides:

1. Reality Checks

When attempting to lucid dream, the whole purpose of waking up then going back to bed is to help you gain consciousness again and to focus on again in having a dream.

Most lucid dreaming techniques are designed to wake you up when you are in REM sleep, which is your deepest part of sleep where dreams occur.

In my experience, I believe you can’t begin to control a dream until you recognize that you are in one, or want out badly enough to end it.

Either way, control is started and accomplished by practicing some form of reality checks.

In lucid dreaming, reality checks are physical actions a person can perform to check to see if they are awake or sleeping.

You practice getting in the habit of checking so that you can recognize when you are in a dream.
To some not knowing if you are asleep or not may sound silly, but how often have you had a dream that you thought was real at first.

The truth is that we all dream often, we just don’t recognize it and soon forget we dreamt at all.

Here are a few examples of common reality checks you can perform:

• Try to push your finger through the palm of your hand and see if it goes through or gets blurry.
• Trying to flip on and off a light switch and see how it reacts.
• Plug your nose and see how it affects you.

If you have never performed reality checks before these might sound crazy or just a hard thing to accomplish while dreaming. It is the repetition of practicing these reality checks during the day that will help you remember to do them while dreaming.

If you keep practicing them and do so often, you will be more likely to sooner recognize your dreams so that you can start learning to control them.

2. Meditation and Study

If you are not planning to wake up during your deepest part of sleep to lucid dream, you will have to focus more on your meditation before bed.

As it will likely be several hours before you have your first dream, you have to really focus on your desire to have a lucid dream.

One of my best lucid dreams came as I dreamt about having a lucid dream. In this particular dream, I was asleep in my bed actually having a lucid dream.

When the phrase of lucid dreaming clicked in my mind it sparked a thought that I may be dreaming. I realized that I was dreaming and was able to become lucid to control my dream within a dream for a while.

While this can be confusing, the main point is that I had trained my mind to recognize weird signs I may be in a dream. I believe it happened because I had often been researching the topic and writing about it.

This particular lucid dream happened on a normal night without me trying to wake up before the dream.

If you make the habit to focus on your true desire to lucid dream through study and meditation it will eventually happen. Think about what you want to dream about and how you will perform a reality check.

Plus meditating about dreaming can also just help you take your mind of the world and fall asleep faster.

3. Lucid Dreaming Supplements

If you choose to avoid waking up before attempting to lucid dream you will need some backup. A major key to lucid dreaming is actually just achieving a deeper sleep.

Luckily for us, there are some great herbal supplements you can take to boost the mind and help you better your sleep.

There are a ton of great lucid dreaming supplements that are perfectly safe to take, but here are the 3 most recommended:

1. Melatonin is produced naturally in the body to help regular your sleep. This is one of the most common supplements taken to help with sleep. It is a great place to start for those looking for a smoother and deeper sleep.
2. Vitamin B6 can help regulate sleep and has been proven to actually help with dream recall. It is also referred to by some as the “dreaming pill” for its ability to help give you more vivid and memorable dreams.
3. Dreamleaf is a more potent but still very safe cocktail of amazing herbs designed specifically to help in many aspects of lucid dreaming. This is a great option for those really ready to dive into lucid dreaming.

Trying these simple supplements can truly make your lucid dreaming life a lot easier, and help expedite your learning without interrupting your sleep.

Conclusion

For beginners looking just to get any lucid dreaming experience, the best methods seem to be those that involve waking yourself up during REM sleep.

However, when trying to avoid that use all three of these ideas mentioned in combination to help you lucid dream without waking up.

All three of these ways mentioned are directly tied to Dream Induced Lucid Dreaming, or the DILD method. 

This method focuses on continual study around learning to recognize signs you are dreaming.

When you become proficient in testing reality and recognizing when you are in a dream, it allows you to become lucid anytime you dream.

Instead of forcing yourself to wake up in the middle of the night and go through crazy techniques, you can become more of a natural lucid dreamer.

These things will also help you achieve one of the hardest feats, which is actually staying asleep in a lucid dream.

It is also still a good idea to learn the waking techniques for those occasions on which you do wake up in the middle of the night.

Remember to enjoy the benefits of lucid dreaming responsibly and don’t lose too much sleep over it.

Happy Dreaming!