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My pal Nate True's latest project is a lucid dreaming inducing machine!
When I first started reading about lucid dreaming, I found that some companies had created expensive pieces of technology aimed at increasing your likelihood of having a lucid dream when you wear it to sleep. I wanted one, but at the price of $200 they did not look so promising. Thus, I decided to go in search of how to make my own lucid dreaming mask.
Almost immediately, I happened upon the Kvasar, a do-it-yourself clone of the NovaDreamer which tracks eye movement via infrared to determine the state of REM sleep. I never built the Kvasar, because I believed optical eye tracking would not work so easily. It would require a light-blocking mask (terrible for keeping your biological clock running smoothly) and a potentially uncomfortable means of securing it to your face.
I was determined to find an easier solution. I thought that maybe measuring skin resistance (Galvanic Skin Response), an indicator of stress levels, I would be able to isolate the REM state. It was upon this basis that I built the first iteration of my Lucid Dreaming mask. - Link
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Well, this description is a little misleading. He gave up on measuring GSR and just used predefined time intervals. But that's still neat, I'm tempted to try it. I've only had one or two lucid dreams in my life and that was a few years ago.
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High tech mask aside (don't get me wrong-- I want one!), anybody can do this with a few simple techniques:
1) Build "reality checks" into your behavior (waking and dreaming) by doing double-takes at anything with text. When you look back at the word and it reads the same, answer the question to yourself: "So I'm not dreaming." When it's different, "So I am dreaming," and there you go.
2) Use an alarm to ensure you wake up only in 90 minute increments-- wake up at 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, or 7.5 hours to try to interrupt dreams. Then avoid moving, turning on lights, or opening your eyes-- stimulus will wipe away the fleeting dream memories-- and recall what was happening in the dream. Pay extra attention to things that were "off" from reality, and sit up and write them down as soon as you figure them out.
If you actually do these methods for a week, you should get to the point where you know you're dreaming-- a word will change when you reread it, or you'll see reality bent like you remember from your dreams.
You'll be flying in no time!
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Very nice idea. I wonder if it might work as well to flash the room lights or play a noise so that you can avoid the mask. Has anyone tried something like that?
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Sound has a particular way of waking you up immediately, at least for me. As for lights, it's a serviceable idea, but you'd need some pretty dim room lights to avoid waking yourself up. Then you'd have to compensate for where your head is pointing in relation to the light you're flashing - otherwise you have either a too-bright light that wakes you up or a too-dim light that you won't notice in a dream.
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