There is wake-induced lucid dreaming where you transition from being awake into a lucid dream while retaining consciousness. I can do it sorta-regularly with the wake-back-to-bed technique, which involves me getting up six hours after bedtime, staying up for half an hour, then lying awake and meditating in bed for up to an hour. Haven’t figured out a way to do this regularly without messing up my sleep cycle, and the lucid dreams are pretty short and uneventful.
I think the trick is to both have a sufficient level of wakefulness (need to stay awake a bit and read the morning news instead of just turn off the alarm clock and go back to bed) and having the brain in a state where the next phase of sleep isn’t very deep. Going to bed or taking a nap after a day of being awake always just leads to a full loss of consciousness.
There is wake-induced lucid dreaming where you transition from being awake into a lucid dream while retaining consciousness. I can do it sorta-regularly with the wake-back-to-bed technique, which involves me getting up six hours after bedtime, staying up for half an hour, then lying awake and meditating in bed for up to an hour. Haven’t figured out a way to do this regularly without messing up my sleep cycle, and the lucid dreams are pretty short and uneventful.
I think the trick is to both have a sufficient level of wakefulness (need to stay awake a bit and read the morning news instead of just turn off the alarm clock and go back to bed) and having the brain in a state where the next phase of sleep isn’t very deep. Going to bed or taking a nap after a day of being awake always just leads to a full loss of consciousness.