Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life

The book I'm here reviewing is Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge published in 1985 (304 pages).

I found the book readable in part, but much of it was quite boring. It is a well-written, intellectual/cerebral account not only of lucid dreaming but dreaming as a whole and other related subjects.

The author is irritatingly skeptical, and, for instance, does not believe that out-of-body experiences are real, but that they are a form of lucid dreaming. He himself has had several out-of-body experiences but uses his own form of logic to explain them away.

In conclusion, I would say that many will appreciate this book, which is an all-round theoretical approach to the subject, but I myself was disappointed, and will now be looking for other hopefully more captivating books on lucid dreaming, and OBEs also for that matter.

This is a book and CD combination with a very focused purpose: to introduce lucid dreaming and teach you step by step how to do it for yourself. The only thing assumed is that you can usually remember your dreams, and have some curiosity about being able to wrest some control in them. The instructions are concise but sufficiently detailed, your objectives at each step are explicit and clear, and the CD intended to be listened to after each lesson is a helpful aid to learning. The author is an authoritative source, a pioneering researcher who helped define and legitimize the subject of lucid dreaming. The only downside to this is that it is purely a primer. It does not go at all into detail about Leberge's interesting research into lucid dreaming, the history of the topic, or even very much about why it is an interesting topic. If you are already interested and just want to try it, this is for you. If you want to learn more about lucid dreaming in general, I think you will find this too thin and would be better off with one of Leberge's other books which go more into the background. It is purely a primer to get you started on your own journey into lucid dreams.

So far I've had over a hundred lucid dreams, so I'm definitely not a complete newbie to the concept. I have the author's other book, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, and decided to check this one out as well. Frankly, while I'm a voracious reader, this book failed to keep my interest. It was mostly dull, but it did provide some useful techniques (mainly MILD) that a novice might find useful. This is a pretty short book, and many of the topics he discussed (mainly stuff about nightmares) wasn't really of much use to me. Maybe someone who has constant nightmares might find it more helpful.

There's also a CD that comes with the book, with guided instructions featuring some of the techniques from the book. I tried it once and didn't really care for the author's voice, and I found use of some of the instruments (a bong drum or something similar) very jarring, so I didn't get far with it. I prefer doing the techniques myself, so it wasn't really a huge loss for me.

Overall, if you had a choice between buying this book and his other one (Exploring...), I'd recommend the other one. You get a lot more for less, and it's not as dull as this one is. Frankly, I'm not even sure why this new book was published at all. You can also find a lot of good info on this topic on the internet.

Just because, here's the technique that I've had the most success with so far: First, if you don't remember your dreams, I recommend saying "I remember all my dreams" before going to sleep. Go to sleep as normal, and wake up naturally after six hours or so or use an alarm if you never wake up early. Go to the bathroom and do anything else you need to do quickly. Go back to bed. Say to yourself: "This is a dream. I'm dreaming!" as you fall back asleep. Imagine that you're in a dream (either made up on the spot or the last one you remember having) and repeat the affirmation. If you can't fall asleep, just repeat the affirmation one last time and let go. If everything goes right, you'll find yourself in a dream and realize that you're dreaming, and hopefully it lasts long enough for you to do something fun! You can also use the above method right before going to sleep as well, but I've found most of my lucid dreams occur after I wake up and go back to sleep again.