The Threshold
Lucid dreaming, guided by a psychologist
An eight-week lucid dreaming programme, guided by a psychologist. Six sessions of 45 minutes, online — in English, Spanish or German.
Who guides you
I have dreamt lucidly since I was a child.
Not because I trained for it. Because it happened, and over the years I learned to stay with it, to recognise what was useful, and — just as importantly — what was not.
I did not study lucid dreaming in university. I lived it first, and later sought the frameworks that could hold it with rigour. That is why this is psychoeducation, not therapy, and why the method is built from the inside out.
The methods you will find online focus on tricks: alarms, supplements, reality checks repeated like mantras. The technique is not the hard part. The hard part is knowing what to take into the night, what to pay attention to when something emerges, and how to make sense of it when you wake. That is not something you learn from a book. That is what these six sessions are for.
— Susana F. Díez, psychologist specialising in longevity and environmental psychology, gerontologist, and holder of a master’s degree in food technology.
Why one to one
Your dream signs are yours. Your symbols mean what they mean to you, and to nobody else. That work cannot be done from a book, and it is what these six sessions are.
What it makes possible
More than a lucid dream. A tool you can take with you.
Guided lucid dreaming begins before sleep. We shape what you take into the night, work with what emerges, and follow it up afterwards — so the experience does not end when you wake up.
Find answers
Bring a question, decision or creative block into the night. Guided incubation helps focus the dreaming mind and opens new ways of approaching what feels unresolved.
Meet difficult emotions differently
Dreaming gives emotions room to be experienced outside the usual waking context. With guidance, you can learn to stay with what arises with greater curiosity, distance and acceptance instead of automatically fighting it.
Turn problems into possibilities
Sleep connects ideas that waking thought often keeps apart. Lucidity lets you enter that process consciously — useful for creativity, decisions and moments when you feel stuck.
Create a place of freedom
Explore, fly, play, rehearse, imagine or simply experience something impossible. A lucid dream can become a private space with no performance, judgement or demand.
Discover what you didn't know you needed
Not every valuable dream begins with a question. Sometimes the most important material is the part you did not know to ask for. Guidance helps you recognise it and bring it back into waking life.
Make it part of your life
The work continues after the dream. With follow-up and integration, lucid dreaming can become more than an extraordinary experience — a companion for creativity, difficult moments, change, curiosity and the good periods of life too.
Explore the spiritual dimension
With rigour and without fear. Some of what appears in lucid dreams has been studied for centuries and takes people somewhere they did not expect. It is taken seriously here, and never explained away.
Lucidity is not the last door.
In the tradition that studied this for a thousand years, knowing you are dreaming was a stage, not a destination.
Milam
the lucid dream
Knowing, from the inside, that you are dreaming. Where most methods stop.
Ösel
the clear light
Awareness that stays when the dreams stop. Not a dream at all — knowing, with no content in it. Rare, and held as the higher practice.
Rigpa
knowing that knows itself
Usually translated as awareness rather than peace — though those who describe it describe an ease that does not depend on anything.
Milam, Ösel and Rigpa are terms from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of dream yoga. Read more →
And the encounters
Figures, presences, someone who has died, something that arrives and is not you. Reported in every century and on every continent, and among the most common experiences people bring to this work. Some live them as contact. Others do not.
The experience is taken entirely seriously. And the meaning of it stays yours.
I do not teach Buddhism. I borrow one observation from a tradition that studied these states for centuries: that lucidity is a doorway, not a destination. What I offer is the doorway — recall, presence, stillness inside the dream. What you meet once you are through it belongs to you, and my role is to help you recognise it and bring it back into waking life.
Sleep well first. Lucidity comes after.
We begin with the sleep hygiene that actually matters — the ramp down into the night, the evening meal, the light. On its own that is already a considerable gain. Sleeping well and dreaming well is the base of everything else, and it is worth having whether or not lucidity ever arrives.
It also happens to be the door to it. There are techniques in circulation that involve setting an alarm for four in the morning. We do not use them. We do not manufacture a single awakening: we use the ones you already have — above all the natural one in the morning, which is both free and the most fertile of the night.
What you leave with
- Six sessions of 45 minutes, online, across eight weeks.
- Your sleep and rhythms profile, returned in session two with the three levers that will make the most difference for you.
- The daily channel, on WhatsApp — two short messages a day for the first four weeks.
- The Cartography Notebook — a PDF you can print or fill in on your own device.
- Your dictionary, written up, in the final session. It is yours and it keeps working long after we finish.
- One dream a week between sessions, with a brief written comment.
Honesty about results
That the phenomenon of lucidity exists is well established: it has been documented directly in the laboratory. That induction techniques reliably work is far less certain — the evidence shows tendencies across groups, not guarantees for any one person.
The first lucid dreams usually appear between the second and sixth week of practice, and on most nights nothing happens. Nobody finishes with a guaranteed lucid dream. You finish with the method, the notebook, and the practice that makes it likely.
Who it is not for
It is not indicated if there is a history of psychosis, manic episodes or bipolar disorder; dissociative conditions or a habitual difficulty telling apart what was lived from what was imagined; or post-traumatic nightmares that relive a real event. Some situations are better served elsewhere, and I will say so plainly.
How to work with me
€150
A single 45-minute session — the doorway in. Comes off the programme if you continue within 30 days
Message Susana directlyFrequently asked questions
For the full step-by-step version, read the practical guide →
What is a lucid dream?
A lucid dream is a dream in which you become aware, while it is happening, that you are dreaming. You remain asleep and REM sleep continues, yet a layer of awareness recognises that what is happening is not waking life. It has been studied in sleep laboratories since the 1970s.
How do you have a lucid dream?
I tried many techniques over the years. The ones that work consistently combine daytime habits — reality checks — with night-time techniques such as setting an intention before sleep (MILD) and paying attention to the natural morning window, when REM sleep runs longest. Evidence suggests combining several works better than relying on just one.
How long does it take to learn?
It varies a great deal from person to person. With guided practice, the first lucid dreams tend to appear between the second and sixth week of consistent training. Most nights, even with good practice, nothing happens — that is a normal part of the process, not a sign something is wrong.
Is lucid dreaming safe?
For most people, yes. It can feel intense, and is sometimes associated with brief sleep paralysis, which is uncomfortable but harmless. It is not recommended for people with a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, or difficulty distinguishing what was experienced from what was imagined.
What is a reality check?
A daytime habit — such as pinching your nose and trying to breathe through it, or asking yourself 'how did I get here?' — repeated several times a day until it becomes automatic. Doing the same check inside a dream can help the question trigger the realisation that you are dreaming.
What are dream signs?
They are the elements that recur in your dreams and nowhere else: a place, a person, a situation, a specific emotion. Recognising them in your own dream record is what lets you use them afterwards as triggers for lucidity within the dream itself.
What is the MILD technique?
MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) involves, after waking from a dream, repeating an intention — 'next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming' — while visualising going back into that dream and recognising you were dreaming, before falling back asleep. It is one of the better-supported techniques.
Can you control a lucid dream?
Realising you are dreaming is not the same as controlling everything that happens. With practice you can influence parts of a dream, but the aim of training is awareness — recognising, staying present, exploring — not full control over the dream.
Does it help with nightmares?
In many cases, yes: recognising you are dreaming during a recurring nightmare can change how you experience it, rather than living through it passively. It is not suitable when a nightmare re-lives a real traumatic event — that calls for a different approach, not lucidity training.
Do you need to sleep well to dream lucidly?
Yes, and it is the first step. REM sleep lengthens towards the morning, so sleeping enough and without interruption gives more of a window for lucidity to appear. Fragmenting sleep with night-time alarms to force it works against this.
This is psychoeducation and training in a lucid dreaming method. It is not medical treatment or psychotherapy. If at any point something needs a different kind of care, I will say so and point you towards it.
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