The wake-up-back-to-bed technique (WBTB) essentially consists of alternating intervals of wakefulness and sleep. Practitioners set an alarm to wake them up a certain while after the first phase of sleep, and once woken up, perform a reality check technique or a mnemonic technique, repeating to themselves: “the next time I fall asleep, I will remember that I am dreaming.”
This method has repeatedly proven its efficacy in the laboratory setting. However, is it just as successful at home, without additional supervision from scientists? A team led by Michael Shredl, one of the main researchers in the field of lucid dreams, tried to answer this question.
The experiment involved fifty volunteers who used the sleep fragmentation and mnemonic techniques at home. The results showed that this technique is no less effective for daily use at home. Among the participants, 18% were able to experience lucid dreams after sleep fragmentation, compared with 6% before using the technique. And out of the ten volunteers who had never had lucid dreams before, five had a new phase experience during the five weeks of the experiment. Although this result does not seem particularly impressive, the scientists are confident that almost everyone can master lucid dreams in this way if they keep at it.
The study was published in December 2020 in the Dreaming journal.
