WBTB - Wake Back To Bed

WBTB is an abbreviation for Wake Back To Bed.

This technique is very similar to the WILD Technique, except that you stay awake for a while before attempting to go back to sleep.

The concept behind the WBTB technique is that you are utilizing the fact that you wake up in the middle of the REM state as previously discussed in the Sleep Cycle section from The Lucid Dream Primer.

It is nearly impossible to go from the waking state into a lucid dream when you go to bed first thing at night, because your mind has to wind down during the NREM stage of your sleep cycle.

However, if you allow yourself to wake up while you are in the middle of the REM stage, then you can go back to sleep and enter right back into finishing that REM stage (which is the dreaming stage of the sleep cycle).

To perform the WBTB technique, do the following:

Step 1:
Set the alarm on your clock or cell phone to wake you up at a later stage of your night's sleep. Setting the alarm to wake you up 1/2 hour before you usually wake up is optimal. This is because you will likely still be in the REM stage, which is where most of your dreams occur.

Step 2:
Get in bed and go to sleep at night as you normally do.

Step 3:
When the alarm wakes you up, turn it off and get out of bed.

Step 4:
Try to stay awake for at least 15 minutes (but not more than 1 hour) and repeat to yourself "I will have a lucid dream". Repeat it over and over as a mantra. You may consider doing 10 repetitions of an aerobic exercise to get your mind awake a little bit more than normal.

Step 5:
Now climb back in bed. As you close your eyes and go back to sleep, continue repeating "I will have a lucid dream" to yourself. Visualize yourself being conscious in your dream.

Step 6:
After about 5 to 10 minutes of this, do a reality check to see if you are still dreaming. Look at some text or numbers and check to see if they change when you look away and look back at them. If they changed, you are now lucid dreaming!

The reason you check after 5 to 10 minutes is because you may have fallen asleep, but not even realize that you have. It could very well seem as though you are in your room still trying to go to sleep, but in fact, you have fallen asleep already. Try this technique out and with any amount of success, you may just find yourself smack dab in the middle of a lucid dream!