The NovaDreamer detects when you are dreaming by sensing the movements of your eyes during REM sleep with photoelectric sensors. The sensors are mounted in a sleep mask worn over your eyes (nothing touches your eyelids). When the NovaDreamer's microprocessor receives the right signals from the sensors and decides that you are dreaming, it gives you a cue to remind you to recognize that you are dreaming, that is, to become lucid.
The cue to become lucid is a light and/or a sound from the mask, in a variety of patterns, according to your choice. It is just the right brightness or volume to enter your dream without awakening you. This is similar to your alarm clock or radio coming into your dream in the morning. Having prepared to recognize the cue by following the exercises accompanying the NovaDreamer, when the cue comes you realize it is there to tell you that you're dreaming, and with your new lucidity you are free to embark on unlimited adventure.
REM-detection: Advanced micro-technology enables full REM-sensing ability inside of a light, comfortable mask.
Preset modes for easy use: Three preprogrammed settings for light, medium, and deep sleepers allow you to get started right away with minimal adjustments.
Flexible programming: To customize the NovaDreamer's operations to your needs, you can select cue brightness and duration, flash frequency, sound, alternating flashes in the left and right eyes, and varieties of cuing patterns.
Reality-test button: Helps you to distinguish between the dreaming and waking states, an additional aid to learning lucid dreaming.
Feedback: The NovaDreamer will tell you how many cues you received during the night so that you can readily adjust it for maximum effectiveness.
Compact and comfortable: All electronics are in a soft, flexible sleep mask. There are no attached wires or separate units.
Battery power: No electric cords or recharging needed. Operates for months on two AAA batteries.
Output jack for add-on devices: A computer interface that will connect to the NovaDreamer through the built-in jack is under development. The NovaDreamer may also be connected to the Programmable Electronic State Tester (an alternative cuing device) through this jack.
Simplicity: All controls and features are operated with a single dial and a button.
A Course in Lucid Dreaming (Includes Trance tape)
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold (Ballantine, 1986). This is the text for the Course.
One year of membership in the Lucidity Institute, with the quarterly newsletter NightLight
One-year limited warranty on NovaDreamer parts and workmanship
Two AAA-size batteries
Lucid dreaming means dreaming with full awareness that you are dreaming. It most often occurs when you realize in the middle of a dream that you are dreaming. Many people have had this experience at least once, often awakening immediately after the realization. It is possible to remain in a dream for up to an hour while being aware that you are dreaming.
The onset of lucidity usually brings with it some degree of enhanced control over the course of the dream. How much control is possible varies from dream to dream and from dreamer to dreamer. Through practice, you can develop increased skill at directing your dreams. At the least, in a lucid dream you can choose how you wish to respond to the dream events. Even a small amount of control can transform a dream from an experience of helplessness and frustration into the delight of forgetting the cares and concerns of waking life to enjoy complete freedom. And those who can achieve mastery of lucid dreaming gain the power to create any world, and live out fantasies, limited only by their imaginations.
Experience unparalleled adventure. Discover the ecstasy of flying. Explore strange new worlds. Dare dangerous exploits (without real danger). Enjoy complete sexual freedom. Fulfill your wildest fantasies.
Tap creative inspiration. Throughout history, dreams have inspired many ideas and inventions in a variety of fields. With lucid dreaming you can go directly to the inner source of creativity to stimulate ideas and solve problems.
Enhance your abilities. Lucid dreams feel so real that you can use them to practice and improve skills. Lucid dreamers have used their dreams to develop expertise in sports, music, dancing, public speaking, surgery, mathematics, and many, many other fields. The list is endless!
Overcome fears. Nothing can hurt you in a dream, and when you are lucid, you know you cannot be harmed. Simply becoming lucid in a nightmare can be enough to banish the fear and end the nightmare. The confidence you acquire from facing dream fears can extend into your waking life, where you can use it to face and overcome fears and inhibitions that may be hampering your progress and limiting your freedom.
Discover transcendence and illumination. When you attain lucidity in a dream you realize that what you had only a moment before taken for the reality of waking life is actually a dream, an all-encompassing reality created wholly within your own mind. This experience illustrates in a powerful way that the "reality" we experience, is in our minds, not "out there" in the world. The Tibetan Buddhists have used lucid dreaming for many centuries to help them attain realization of the illusory nature of experience. Such revelation is a sign post on the road to transcendence of ordinary being.
There are a few basic approaches proven to assist the development of the ability to have lucid dreams. The Lucidity Institute offers a selection of products that utilize each of these methods. For the most effective lucid dreaming training program, we recommend purchasing a DreamLight(R) or NovaDreamer(R) and using it in conjunction with A Course in Lucid Dreaming (which is included with all three devices). The Trance Induction of Lucid Dreaming audio tape can complement any method. To keep up to date on the latest findings of our research, become a Lucidity Institute member, read the NightLight, and participate in the experiments. Membership is included with purchase of a DreamLight or NovaDreamer.
When you awaken from a dream, it is immediately obvious to you that you were dreaming. Why didn't you realize it at the time? The reason is that we get caught up in our dreams and forget to question whether or not we are really awake. To learn lucid dreaming, it is essential to learn to remember your intention to recognize when you are dreaming.
Two ways of enhancing your ability to attain lucidity in dreams are: first, develop your skill at remembering to do things in the future and use specific mental exercises to encourage your memory in dreams, and second, use a device to give you cues when you are in dreaming sleep to remind you to notice that you are dreaming. The best program combines both mental exercises and an external cuing device.
You can learn the powerful mental techniques for stimulating lucid dreams developed by Dr. LaBerge in A Course in Lucid Dreaming. For example, the Reflection-Intention Technique centers around Reality Testing: asking yourself many times a day whether or not you could be dreaming, testing your reality, and focusing on how dreaming differs from waking. MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) is the method Dr. LaBerge used to train himself to have lucid dreams up to four times in a night. It involves intensely focused concentration on the intention to remember to recognize when you are dreaming, practiced in bed while going to sleep, and/or when you briefly awaken during the course of the night.
Another set of mental techniques is based on the Tibetan Dream Yoga tradition, and leads to entry into lucid dreams directly from the waking state. This mode of entry, called Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) is possible towards the end of a night's sleep and during naps. Napping itself can be an extraordinarily powerful method. A Course in Lucid Dreaming presents a procedure for napping to stimulate lucid dreaming.
Many people find that their ability to create a sincere will to succeed at an endeavor like lucid dreaming is boosted through suggestions heard in a trance state. The Lucidity Institutes's Trance Induction of Lucid Dreaming audio tape, written and read by Dr. LaBerge, is designed to enhance your ability to remember your intention to become lucid.
In waking life, to help us remember to follow through on our intentions, we use reminders, such as shopping lists or strings around the finger. Obviously, we cannot write notes to ourselves and carry them into our dreams, but we can make use of a cue to remind us to check if we are dreaming.
A light or a sound of the right intensity can enter an ongoing dream. You have probably experienced this with an alarm clock or neighbor's lawnmower noise coming into your morning dream in a disguised form. The Lucidity Institute lucid dream induction devices give you cues when you are in REM sleep, when most dreams happen. The cues are flashing lights, from bulbs mounted in a comfortable sleep mask, or soft clicks or beeps from a small speaker in the mask. When the cues enter your dreams, if you have prepared yourself with mental exercises (from A Course in Lucid Dreaming), you will recognize them and realize you are dreaming. You are then free to explore the fantastic realm of lucid dreaming. Research has shown that lucid dreams initiated by recognizing cues are as exciting and fulfilling as those achieved by mental techniques alone.
Reality testing requires examining the behavior of something in your environment to see if it behaves as it would in waking life or as in a dream. It is most effective if you pick one kind of test to do every time. Reality testing works without any equipment; one of the best tests is to read any text near you once, look away, then look back and read it again. If it changes, or if you can get it to change, then you are dreaming. The challenge can be in finding a piece of writing in a dream, or remembering to look for one. The Lucidity Institute lucid dream induction devices have a button to make reality testing very simple.
The principle behind the Reality Testing button is that machines in dreams usually do not work as expected. On the sleep mask of each is a button, located over your forehead. When you press it, the lights in the mask flash once and you hear a brief chirp or click. Frequently when sleeping with one of the devices, people dream of awakening in bed wearing the mask or of walking around with the mask on. If you press the button on the dreamed version of your sleep mask, it will not work right. Most often when people press dream Reality Testing buttons, nothing happens. Sometimes you may get a sound without a flash or something unexpected. In any case, if the button "malfunctions," then you can be reasonably certain you are dreaming. Thus, by simply training yourself to press the button every time you wake up with the mask on, or wonder whether you are dreaming anytime you find yourself wearing the mask, you have an easy, reliable method of determining whether you are dreaming.