The MILD technique is very beginner-friendly, and has been very effective overall, regardless of experience.

MILD works by teaching your mind what should be happening in a dream, and affirming to yourself that you will lucid dream. This way you're training your mind to lucid dream without actually having to be in a lucid dream yet to do it.

With this technique it's important to do it every day. Persistence and consistency are the key to successful MILD. If you wake up in the morning after having done MILD and haven't gotten a lucid dream, it just means you've worked further towards one. Every night trains your mind a bit more and eventually you'll start to see results.

Every evening, put some time apart right before sleep to do MILD. You need at least 5 minutes, but for better results do roughly 10 to 20 minutes. Before you start, put your worries and thoughts about the next day away and clear your mind. Perhaps write them in your dream journal if you're worried about forgetting something. You're about to get some sleep, so you can't really do much with those worries anyways, set them to the side and relax.

If you fall asleep easily (within 10 minutes), you should start MILD sitting comfortably on your bed for roughly 5 minutes before laying down. You should be keeping your focus on MILD for at least 5 minutes, so if you fall asleep easily, laying down will make this harder for you. If you're not someone who falls asleep within 10 minutes, just lay down from the start. After those 5 minutes are over you should continue, but make less of an effort to keep focus. At that point you should start falling asleep and trying to keep your focus on it will keep you awake.

So, as you sit or lay down, start thinking about lucid dreaming. Imagine your last dream in as much detail as possible. Imagine becoming and staying lucid. Imagine exploring the dream, and what you would do when lucid. Imagine completing the goals you have for lucid dreaming. Believe that in a few minutes, this is exactly what will happen to you. Mix it up a bit what you're imagining every night, use different dreams, or entirely invent a dream of your own.

When the 5 minutes are over, try to continue, but let your mind drift. At this point you're trying to fall asleep. By the time you fall asleep you'll have ingrained the idea of lucid dreaming further into your mind. If you're someone who wakes up naturally during the night, or because of an alarm for another technique, you can also do MILD the next time you fall asleep. It will help, but all you need to keep improving is doing it once every night.

You can also boost your MILD successfulness by adding a mantra to it, or after it when you're trying to fall asleep. A mantra is simply something you repeat to yourself in your mind. Some good mantras are...

• I'm dreaming
• This is dream
• I will wake up in a dream
• I'll be dreaming soon
• I will have lucid dreams tonight

A thing to keep in mind with mantras is that the mind ignores negation in mantras. Avoid words like "not". "I will not fail to have a lucid dream" will become "I will fail to have a lucid dream" to your mind.

MILD by itself is very effective, but it also benefits from combining it with other techniques. All-Day-Awareness, Reality Checking, and Wakeup-Back-To-Bed all give you an added bonus in effectiveness and can be easily combined with MILD.

• Naiya's Simple MILD Technique Guide