How To Lucid Dream Tonight, Guaranteed: Easy Tutorial For Beginners

Lucid Dreaming is the ability to be aware of your dreams, and control them. This lets you sleep better, experience the impossible, and practice real life skills. Here are some powerful techniques you can use to have a lucid dream TONIGHT (with and without waking up).

I’m Stef and I teach lucid dreaming to students all around the world. In this post I’ll share how to lucid dream TONIGHT (yes that quick!), as well as explain how it works and what it feels like.

By the way,

If you want to lucid dream WITHOUT having to wake up early, or set an alarm, I have a tutorial for that near the end of this article so you can scroll down to see that!

What is lucid dreaming?

Assuming you’re a beginner and don’t know much about the subject, Lucid Dreaming is basically the ability to ‘wake up’ in your mind and control your dream. It allows you to do almost anything and it all feels very real. This is very different to astral projection.

This is assuming you know at least what lucid dreaming is. Don’t worry, clicking it will open in a new tab so you won’t lose this page.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can start talking about the easy way to lucid dream TONIGHT.

If you know a little bit about all of this, then it will make more sense. We’re talking here about the best way to induce a lucid dream quickly.

So it’s about having one tonight, with as little practice as possible, for the people who want results fast. This is the best way to get fast results. They’re not guaranteed, and it’s not for everyone, but if you want to skip the basics and just dive right in, this is how to do it.

By the way if you’re more of a visual learner, watch this short video I made showing you how to lucid dream tonight:

Will this be your FIRST Lucid Dream?

Something to consider before we dive in is whether this is your first lucid dream or not. If you’ve done this before, and are just looking for a way to speed the process up and get results quicker, then that’s fine, read on.

If you’re looking for a way to lucid dream tonight and it’s your very first one, (how exciting!) then we just need to explain a couple of things.

Lucid Dreaming is very intense, and the experience is different for everyone.

If you don’t want to try it, then don’t.

It’s no more dangerous than just going to sleep normally, but emotionally, you may experience things you aren’t prepared for.

Examples of this include becoming lucid, willing a ‘lost relative or friend’ to appear, and then being distressed or emotionally unstable when you wake up. It’s not very common, but just be aware that you will be aware in the dream, and it will seem very real to you.

We need to just explain this sort of thing to people who are just starting so they don’t get a nasty shock. So, let’s get to the good stuff already, you want to know how to lucid dream tonight, with as little waiting as possible.

Let’s get onto the good stuff:

How to lucid dream tonight (reliably)

To lucid dream tonight, you need to prepare your body, mind and bedroom beforehand. Then set your alarm to go off after 6 hours. When it goes off, wake up and then go back to sleep with the intention of lucid dreaming, and keep your muscles still while you drift into a beautiful lucid dream.

That’s the BASICS at least. Now let’s break it down even further…

Here’s how to lucid dream tonight:

Spend the rest of the day thinking about lucid dreaming

Do several reality checks in the right way

Turn off ALL screens an hour before bed

Set your alarm for 6 hours time

Wake up with your eyes CLOSED

Go BACK to sleep with the intention of lucid dreaming

We should mention at this point, that the method shown here is going to involve waking up a little bit earlier than you normally do, only for a few seconds, it’s literally to just wake up your mind.

You won’t need to get out of bed, don’t worry. For the scientists/technical people among you, the method is called the ‘Wake Back To Bed Technique‘, and as the name suggests it involves setting an alarm, ‘waking up’ your mind and then going back to bed.

There are very good reasons for this; your brain is most active during REM sleep, which happens a couple of hours before you wake up naturally.

If you have time, maybe go to the shop and get some basic dream aids such as incense, pillow spray, background noise etc. If you don’t have time, then try and learn some basic meditation techniques for lucid dreams.

Step 1: Spend the rest of the day reading about lucid dreaming

This is where we’ll start.

For the rest of the day until you go to bed, think about lucid dreaming. Read about it, talk to your friends about it, think about what you’re going to do in your lucid dream.

The key is to get yourself focused on what you’re about to do. Here are some articles you could read:

Those links will all open in new tabs, so you keep your place here.

The reason your’e reading about lucid dreaming is that it will train your subconscious mind to THINK about being lucid. For many people, just thinking about being lucid will be enough to actually make you lucid. That’s a really simple hack that you can use form now on.

Every night when you go to bed, think about the IDEA of lucid dreaming. More than that, visualise yourself BECOMING lucid while you’re dreaming.

For many, just visualising this point of lucidity is enough to make you lucid. Try it out for yourself, and from now on imagine yourself becoming lucid several times a day. It should help to make it more likely.

Step 2: Do lots of reality checks

A ‘reality check’ is where you test whether you’re awake or asleep.

You should perform reality checks about 10 times a day, but if you’re trying to do this tonight, perform at least 25 of these reality checks today before going to bed.

Here’s how to do a reality check to lucid dream:

Hold out your hand and with your other finger, try to push a finger through your palm

REALLY expect it to go through, and ONLY when it doesn’t go through, say to yourself ‘Oh, I must be awake’

As you’re expecting it to go through, ask yourself ‘Am I dreaming?’

In a dream, the finger/s will ALWAYS go through your hand, but in real life, they NEVER will

Do this test lots of times throughout the day, and eventually it will happen in your dream

When it happens in your dream, the finger will go through your palm, and you’ll say to yourself ‘I MUST BE DREAMING!’ and you’re now lucid!

This is just one reality check…

There are many different ones you can do, but we’ve found that this finger palm push test is the most effective one, and it will help you lucid dream FAST. Later on, you can experiment with other reality checks, if you want.



It’s very important to remember if you’re trying to lucid dream tonight that you DO these reality checks. It’s no good to just try and lucid dream at night, the practice begins during the day. And that’s the best advice for many people, is just to do more reality checks during the day.

But that’s only a tiny part of the problem.

Lucid dreaming is a complex and nuanced skill that can’t REALLY be learned in one night, or at least not for many people. It’s possible, sure but it’s more likely that it will take a bit longer. And that’s fine, because the results when you GET there are very much worth it.

Moving on:

Step 3: Turn of all screens an hour before bed

Right before you go to bed, don’t look at any screen.

Turn your phone to silent mode, (but make sure the alarm still works) and don’t watch any more TV.

This is because you want your body to produce enough of the hormones that make you sleepy, and these are slowed down by artificial light. I would say this is actually THE biggest sleep hack or tip I can give you as well.

If possible, turn the lights down or off and just relax for a bit, if not then just read a book for an hour or so before going to bed. This really starts to wind you down and relax your mind. You could even wear a sleep mask and just meditate.

Why is this so important?

Well, our bodies are finely tuned machines. We’re designed to go to sleep when the sun goes down, and wake up early and full of ENERGY hen the sun rises. So why don’t we? Well, because we artificially stimulate our brains with light, using phone screens, LED light bulbs, TV screens and more.

And this causes your body to produce serotonin at times when you should be relaxing, and winding down for the night. It also STOPS your body producing serotonin which as I said means you have trouble falling asleep, and even MORE trouble having deep sleep.

The worst part?

Well, unless you track your sleep and try experimenting with things like this, you won’t even KNOW you’re not sleeping properly. You won’t KNOW that you’re not getting enough deep or REM sleep at night, and you are left confused in the morning as to HOW you can be so tired.

And many people wake up after 8 or more hours of sleep wondering why they’re still feeling tired and miserable. It’s because you didn’t get enough DEEP or REM sleep, because your body didn’t produce enough melatonin the night before.

It matters.

Step 4: Set an alarm for 6 hours or so

Whatever time you would NORMALLY wake up, set your alarm about 2 hours before that. If you normally wake up at 9, set the alarm for 7. Choose an alarm that is going to wake you up but isn’t too loud. My free lucid dreaming app has several of these alarms.

You want something soothing and easy to listen to, and you need to put your phone close enough to you that you can turn it off without getting out of bed, and without opening your eyes. Choose a soft sounding bit of music or a relaxing tone.

Whatever alarm you decide to have, make sure it’s not going to snooze, you want it to wake you up one time and then turn off.