Wake Back To Bed Lucid Dreaming Technique (WBTB)

Another good way to have lucid dreams is the Wake-Back-To-Bed Technique or WBTB. It involves waking up for a few minutes between sleep hours in order to increase your chances of getting lucidity.

How to manage a lucid dream with Wake-Back-To-Bed Technique?

This technique implies waking up a few minutes in your normal sleep schedule and then going back to bed. In order to succeed, you need to plan in advance and try a few times. But before that, you need to know a few things, namely:

How long does a normal sleep cycle last?

Sleep cycles vary from person to person. To find out yours, every time you wake up at night, write it down in your journal. In a week, you should have enough information to estimate your sleeping hours. It’s not absolutely necessary to do it, but if you do, you can estimate your sleep time just right.

How many hours do you need to sleep before?

The goal is to wake up when a REM cycle is complete. This is why you should know the length of a sleep cycle. If you seldom wake up during the night so you can keep track of it, take into consideration the most common duration of sleep cycles, which is either 4 hours or 6 hours.

Waking up earlier than that implies not spending enough time in the REM cycle; waking up later may involve facing some difficulties in falling back to sleep. You must try to find out for yourself which hours are most suitable for you.

How long do you have to stay awake?

As a general rule: the longer you stay awake, the more you are likely to achieve lucidity. On the other hand, the longer you stay awake, the harder it will be to fall asleep.

Some people may no longer fall asleep, even if they woke up just for a few minutes. If you face the same problem, I recommend lessening the WBTB’s duration as much as possible. You can stay awake for an hour, but 20-40 minutes should be enough.

Techniques and Preparations

When trying a wake-back-to-bed, you must be psychologically prepared. You must be determined and ready even a night in advance and truly believe that you’ll be lucid when you try Wake-Back-To-Bed Technique.

Once you wake up, you have to keep your thoughts focused on lucid dreams and plan your next dream. Reading about lucid dreams during this time also helps a lot.

This is not necessarily a technique in itself, but rather an aid in obtaining lucidity. Of course, it is more efficient when combined with other techniques than as a sole technique, as it considerably increases chances to achieve lucidity.

WILD technique requires you to do a WBTB before you start, however, MILD technique and WBTB are the best combinations.

How should I apply WBTB lucid dreaming technique?

22.00: Go to sleep and set the alarm at 4 a.m., i.e. after 6 hours of sleep. Start envisioning images from your dreams and believe that you will have a successful WBTB and you will become lucid based on it.

04.00: As you wake up, test the reality. Stay awake as long as you need in order to maintain your awareness, generally between 20 and 60 minutes. Imagine how you become lucid. Think about being lucid as you go back to bed and being able to fly above the Himalayan mountains for instance (or wherever you want).

04.30: Go back to bed. Keep in mind that once you fall asleep, you’ll become lucid. Try to maintain this thought, or at least this should be your last thought before falling asleep.

Don’t worry if first attempts don’t succeed, just try different hours in which to stay awake or to wake up. You can try Wake-Back-To-Bed Lucid Dreaming Technique any night of the week, but I suggest you choose the nights in which you can afford to lose some of your sleep time.