I had one person ask me about dreamwalking, and I’m sure there are others who are interested, so I’ll share what I do.

First off, dreamwalking occurs after mastering lucid dreaming, and I’ve heard lots of people come up with lots of different methods over the years with little to no success. I go with what I was taught because it’s never failed to work, but it’s not an easy process. There’s no immediate “Wow, I had a lucid dream I controlled!” Nothing in life is that simple. It takes time, it takes effort, and it will be exhausting.

Just like any muscle built up through exercise, dreamwalking builds up mental muscle. And like exercise, you don’t start with the finished product. A lot of people think psychic skills / mental abilities should come to them easily – sorry, life isn’t that kind. Sure, there are people with a higher potential skill level than others, just as there are people with higher natural athleticism than others. But if that athleticism isn’t trained into something, it never becomes more than potential.

That being said, lucid dreaming must be mastered before dreamwalking occurs. And to master lucid dreaming, you first have to become aware that you *are* dreaming. If you never manage to wake up in a dream and think, “Oh, this is a dream,” you will never learn to control it, and thus never learn to dreamwalk.

The first step then, is to master the awareness of the dream, and the trick that I used when I first learned the skill is a very simple one. The only thing required is a place to lay down. This is a trick my mother taught me when I was very young, and I have taught others this same trick one-on-one. To my knowledge, it works for everyone.

First, pick a number higher than five but less than ten. Then, before you get ready to sleep, tap the back of your head that many times on your pillow and tell yourself, out loud, that you will know you are dreaming when you begin to dream. The vocal affirmation is necessary only until you get used to waking up in a dream.

When I first taught this trick, I was unaware of the level of exhaustion it would cause. The first person I taught told me that he slept nearly ten hours after he did this trick, and he woke up feeling like he hadn’t slept at all. This is normal, so if you don’t want to sleep more than an hour or two when you start, I suggest setting an alarm.

This trick only allows you to realize that you are dreaming. Control, the pinnacle of lucid dreaming, comes later. First, you must master the ability to handle your dreams as they come to you, no matter how disturbing or bizarre they may be. When you get to the stage that lucid dreaming is possible, you learn how to wake yourself up out of the disturbing dreams. That’s the first step to controlling the dreamscape itself, but it’s a lesson you must learn on your own.

If and when you start using this trick, begin keeping a dream journal. The best way to do this is to keep the journal by your resting place with a pen beside it, as the dream realm and physical realm are connected by the thinnest of margins. If you place your feet on the floor before you have written down the dreams you’ve had, you will forget most, if not all, of the dream. We naturally ground ourselves when the soles of our feet contact the ground, so if you intend to remember everything, write it down before grounding yourself.

Also, as one final note, remember that we have multiple dreams when we sleep. I have gotten to the point that I have five to six dreams that I remember each night, but it didn’t start off that way. If I am remembering correctly, when I began dreaming purposefully, it took me awhile to realize that the “dream” I woke up in was actually a chain of dreams running together. It’s that realization, along with the ability to wake myself up, that allowed me to learn how to control my dreams and begin to dreamwalk.

So to recap the steps to dreamwalking

1) Master the awareness of dreaming (using the trick mentioned)

2) Learn to wake yourself up out of bad dreams

3) Learn to distinguish between dreams and identify the chain of dreams

4) Lucid dreaming allows dreamwalking

Remember, dreamwalking isn’t an easy thing to do – it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes dedication. If you truly intend to learn to dreamwalk, it’s not something that can be done in the space of a week or two. Nothing worth doing in life is that simple.