When you become lucid, this marks a sudden change in the activity inside your brain, regions which were previously idle are now active, and this means those first few moments of lucidity are inherently unstable. Just like those stabilizers on your bike kept you steady when you were first leaning to ride, these techniques will help stabilize your dream in those first few shaky moments of lucidity.

Step 1 : Take 3 deep breaths - It might sound simple, but just taking 3 slow deep breaths, will immediately relax you, slow your heart rate, and stop the excitement from waking you up.

Step 2 : Do a reality check – Even if you already did one in order to get lucid, doing a second reality check (which obviously will fail) will reinforce the idea that you really are in a dream, and help to cement your conscious awareness. Looking at your hands, or breathing through your nose while it’s pinched closed are good checks for this step.

Step 3 : Engage your dream senses – Now you want to get as many parts of brain online and engaged with your conscious mind as possible. This will not only make it much harder for you to lose lucidity but also comes with the bonus of making your dream experience much more vivid. One by one pay attention to each of your senses. Take in all the shapes and colours you can see, feel the ground beneath your feet, pick something up and notice the temperature and texture, listen to any sounds you can hear, smell the air, and try tasting something (remember it’s a dream it doesn’t even have to be something edible!)

Step 4 : Take one final breath – With your dream senses fully engaged, take one final slow deep breath to collect your thoughts, and ask yourself ‘Now I’m lucid, what do I want to do?’

No matter what your answer to the question above is, unless you are very lucky, you are unlikely to find yourself already in exactly the situation you want. To see how to manipulate the content of your dreams, go back to the main Dream Control page.