A technique to stabilize dream awareness using auditory cues

There are multiple ways to find oneself submerged in a lucid dream. In addition to spontaneous occurrences, a plethora of induction techniques are known, practiced, and publicly available. However, once individuals have successfully trained themselves to become lucid while dreaming, advice for how to stabilize or control the dream abruptly halts. Despite unwanted awakenings being a common complaint amongst lucid dreamers, to date there is no established technique to maintain or extend the lucid dream and prevent its collapse. Here, we propose a novel technique for dream stabilization that involves an audio stimulus presented during sleep to induce a relaxed state of mindfulness in the dreamer. Prior to sleep, participants will learn and practice maintaining their breath at a fixed rate in the presence of an external cue. Subsequently, once lucid during sleep, participants will be presented with the same cues to induce breathing at the same rate. We hypothesize that coupling auditory cues with a focused breathing exercise will have a stabilizing effect on the lucid dream and thus will extend its duration. As an additional exploratory analysis, the audio cues will alternate between two distinct formats of presentation (bone-conduction and traditional headphones) to investigate whether the two methods differ in how sound gets incorporated and processed by the dreaming brain. Just as an anchor creates a stronghold to prevent a boat from drifting, the metronome of one’s own breath may act as an anchor of which to tie one’s attention to, and utilizing an auditory guide may be a first step in enabling extension of the lucid dream state.