Wake Induced Lucid Dream (WILD) techniques have always been a frustrating idea to me, as they seem to require and extensive amount of practice and expertise. In many descriptions, it seems you nearly need to become a high level Tibetan Buddhist monk, in order to master this type of induction. However, I just read a research paper supporting the idea that WILD can actually be one of the simplest techniques. In a 1991 paper, Lynne Levitan reports on 30 subjects who used a "Counting" technique. Essentially they just counted themselves back to sleep: they would go to bed with the intention of noticing when they would awaken from a dream and once awake would count themselves back to sleep by saying, "one, I'm dreaming, two, I'm dreaming, etc." That's it! This is much easier than imagining a lotus flower on your throat or counting through 61 points on your body. This technique resulted in dream re-entry in 57% of trials. Out of all attempts, 23% resulted in lucid dreams (this also included a "Body" technique that was a bit more complicated). She comments that 30 subjects is not enough data to make firm conclusions, but based on this limited data, it appears that simply "counting" can lead to lucid dreams on almost 1 in 4 tries.

Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold introduced the concept of Dreamsigns in the 1990 book "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming." In short, a Dreamsign (all one word) is "a peculiar event or object in a dream that can be used as an indicator that you are dreaming." The idea is that if you can familiarize yourself with your personal Dreamsigns, you will more likely recognize them in your dreams and become lucid. In the book, they propose a somewhat complicated system for categorizing and inventorying your own personal Dreamsigns. I have always found this concept intriguing, but too laborious to be practical. However, recently I was reviewing the research that went into creating their categorization system (in Lynne Levitan's 1992 article "A thousand and one nights of exploring lucid dreaming") and noticed an interesting bit of information. The two most common Dreamsigns (and with high likelihood of triggering lucidity) were: 1) "Dreamer does something unlikely or impossible in waking life" and 2) "Dreamer experiences unusually intense emotions." Thus, I would propose that a simplified version of Dreamsign familiarity/recognition would be to focus on just these two categories. So, focusing on Dreamsigns like flying or intense surprise/happiness/fear might give you more "bang for your buck" and may not require such intensive analysis of your dream diaries.

The late German researcher Paul Tholey published an amazing paper in 1983 in the journal "Perceptual and Motor Skills" entitled "Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams." I have gone back to this article over and over again, and today I noted a technique that I had glossed over previously. He did not give it a title, so I am calling it the "Dream Figure Contract Technique." Tholey describes a technique he himself had used based on the phenomenon that dream figures will often comment on the state of consciousness of the dreamer. His idea was "willfully allowing a certain dream figure to aid him in attaining lucidity." He reported making an agreement with a dream figure (while in a lucid dream) to meet him in his next dream and "tell him that he was dreaming." It worked! No further research is cited, nor how often this worked for him.