The first thing you have to do is to have a good dream recall. This doesn’t cause LD’s, but how can you know if you have had LD’s, if you don’t remember them ? In order to have a good dream recall, the best for beginners is :
- to keep a dream diary.
- to practise autosuggestion. Each night before sleeping, you mentally repeat "Tomorrow morning, I’ll remember my dreams ".
When you think your dream recall is sufficient (it will take one week or two), you can try to have LD’s. Generally speaking, always for beginners, I would recommend a DILD technique : there are 2 alternative techniques :
- again, autosuggestion : repeating yourself before sleeping “This night, I’ll become lucid in my dreams”.
- you can try the “look at your hands” technique. It’s described there : [url]Castaneda's technique : looking at your hands]
WBTB and RC’s are not said by Stephen Laberge to cause LD’s (though RC’s can work alone and are recommended by Paul Tholey). They increase your chances to have an LD. However, I would give the advice to practise RC’s. About RC’s, prefer quality to quantity : 5 to 10 a day are enough (even 2 or 3), if you really ask yourself “Am I dreaming ?” and imagine strongly that your RC will succeed, like you can imagine it will succeed in a dream.
You can also use your dream diary to see what themes and dreamsigns happend again and again, and use it in conjunction with RC’s to choose the best moment when you have to check reality IRL.
The average time to have a first LD is 3 weeks (without dream recall practise time), I would say. Don’t forget that the most important is motivation. With motivation, strong autosuggestion, dream diary, RC, etc. some people have a LD in the first week.
Good luck ! 