PILD – Punishment Induced Lucid Dreams

Punishment Induced Lucid Dreams seem a little strange, but PILD can actually be helpful, particularly for beginners who are having trouble becoming lucid at first. As with Reward Induced Lucid Dreams (RILD), you’ll probably find that you use PILD less often as you become more adept at becoming lucid in your dreams. However, at first, it may be a helpful technique.

How it works

Basically, you need to combine PILD with the stated, spoken intention to become lucid during your dreams. When it comes to dreaming, punishments and rewards are all about your intentions. The harder you intend to become lucid, so to speak, the more likely you are to do so.

So, before you go to bed – actually, all throughout the day – tell yourself that you will succeed at becoming lucid during your dreams. If you don’t, remind yourself that you’ll be punished when you wake up in the morning. It sounds brutal, but your punishment doesn’t have to be severe, simply uncomfortable or annoying.

PILD, like RILD, is a little like training a pet or a little kid. You have to carry through on your threats, and you have to punish swiftly after the offense has happened. That means first thing in the morning if you know you failed to become lucid during a dream in the night, you’ll carry out your intended punishment.

This should also be the case if you don’t remember your dreams at all! In fact, you can use PILD before you’re even trying to dream lucidly if you’re just starting out by honing your dream recall. Instead of being punished for failing to become lucid during a dream, you can punish yourself for failing to recall a dream. Remember, you, and every other person on the planet, dreams every night – or every time you go to sleep for an extended amount of time! – so if you can’t remember any of your dreams, you may need to shock your mind into intending to do so more strongly.

Types of punishment to use

As I’ve already said, your punishments shouldn’t be too harsh or severe. We’re not ascetics here, after all! Instead, your goal is to make yourself uncomfortable. This discomfort should be strong enough that you really don’t want to experience it.

Something that I like to use for punishment is a cold shower. I detest taking cold showers! But when I was learning lucid dreaming, PILD worked for me to develop stronger intentions to become lucid during dreams. If I didn’t become lucid during my dreams at night, I’d make myself take a cold shower in the morning.

Let me tell you, this technique worked pretty quickly for me! I didn’t look forward to those cold showers, so I quickly became more focused about becoming lucid during my dreams.

Some other punishments you might look at include eating something for breakfast that you don’t enjoy, touching your tongue to a nine volt battery, or making yourself miss out on something that you enjoy doing, eating, or drinking early in the day.

Combining with RILD

As you’d train a dog or teach a child using both punishments and rewards, it may be a good idea to train yourself to dream lucidly using both PILD and RILD (Reward Induced Lucid Dreams). When you fail to become lucid, punish yourself in an uncomfortable way. When you succeed at becoming lucid, reward yourself! The combination of punishment and reward will steer your mind from unwanted behavior and towards necessary behavior for lucid dreaming.

While I tried using just Reward Induced Lucid Dreams when I was starting out with lucid dreaming, I quickly found that RILD combined with PILD was much more efficient and effective! Within just a few weeks, I was starting to regularly become lucid during my dreams because my mind wanted both to avoid punishment and to get rewarded.