Okay, I’ll tell you about a technique I thought up today, and that I think may have good potential as an LD induction technique to be used during the day, in the same way as the RC technique. I don’t know whether this technique is original with me (I find it quite likely that others may have used it before me), but I couldn’t find any post about it, so I decided to write one. I call the technique Lucid Acting, as it involves the practitioner acting out the attainment of lucidity during waking.
Now, acting can bring about the feeling that you, in some sense, ‘become’ the character you’re impersonating. Playing a raving alcoholic screaming insults to passers-by will probably make you feel, to some extent, the anger of such a person, although you will still be able to stay detached from that feeling. Laughter therapy builds on the premise that even a fake laugh can have positive effects on the mind and the body. Of course what is a fake laugh to begin with can easily transform into a real one.
In other words, there is an intimate link between mind and body. What the body does affects how we feel and think; what we feel and think affects what the body does.
This insight may be used to induce lucid dreams. Now, asking yourself whether you are dreaming or not, that is, doing RCs, is one way of inducing lucid dreams. However, I often find it hard to get into that dreamlike state of mind that is said to be crucial to have success with RCs (some people may contest this notion, arguing that sheer frequency is more important). Trying out acting as if I were in a lucid dream, I found it a lot easier to recreate a dreamlike state of mind. I have also, as far as I can remember, seldom achieved lucidity following or preceding an RC within a dream, even though I have at times used the technique quite a lot during my waking hours. Usually when I get lucid I simply realize that I am dreaming, and that’s it. The realization that I am dreaming is often so obvious that doing a reality check would seem completely unnecessary, although for people who regularly experience FAs or other realistic dreams, RCs may have a greater value. Other people may also have success with RCs for other reasons, so I don’t want to deny the validity of this technique.
However, considering the fact that my lucid dreams mostly seem to begin with a sudden realization that I’m dreaming rather than an RC, I figured that by recreating that realization many times during my waking hours, I could probably increase the frequency of such realizations in my dreams as well, as waking habits tend to reproduce in dreams. This is of course also the premise of the RC technique. But there’s a difference. By acting as if you’re already in a dream, rather than asking yourself whether you are, it may be argued that you’re more closely recreating the natural situation in a lucid dream, both in terms of the general scenario (as RCs are induced and not natural features of a dream, and rather the attainment of lucidity is the crucial moment, inherent in all dream-initiated LDs), as well as in terms of your state of mind (in that it recreates the feel of being lucid, to some extent).
Walk around somewhere (if possible a place which features frequently in your dreams), and suddenly burst out: “I’m dreaming!” I found it helpful to speak out loud while acting lucid. “Everything feels so real even though it’s a dream!” “I can do whatever I want - I could fly to the moon!” “Everything here is part of my dream!” But make sure no one is around while you’re doing this technique, or they may think you have lost your mind!