Mnemonically Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD)

First introduced in this context by Stephen LaBerge in "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" (1990), the basic concept of MILD is to recall that you are dreaming at the time you are having a dream. The term "mnemonically" is misleading though. Mnemonics make use of something that can be easily memorized to replace something that is much harder to recall, which is not what this method really is about. A psychologically accurate description for what is meant by MILD would be "event-based prospective memory induced lucid dreaming". I'll keep the widely adopted term MILD though. The concept of MILD is often misunderstood or confused with rather unreliable methods belonging in the categories autosuggestion and autohypnosis, so I'm trying to describe it as clearly as possible.

We seem to possess an inherent and trainable ability to remember future intentions by linking them to related events. For example you may remember that you need to post a letter when seeing a mailbox. In our special case, the intention is to remember that we are dreaming and the trigger event is the fact that we are dreaming. Yet how do we know that we are dreaming in the first place? It would be absurd to train yourself to realize that you are dreaming when the trigger already implies that you do.

This is where dreamsigns come into play. We can not train ourselves to directly realize that we are dreaming, but we can train ourselves to recognize certain signals that suggest we are dreaming. Those signals are called dreamsigns, which stands for recurring events that frequently and preferably take place in dreams, for example being in a certain place or meeting a certain person. The quality of dreamsigns is highly individual, which means that you will have to figure out your own personal dreamsigns. This can be done by analyzing your dreams, which again requires you to keep records, for example in the form of a dream diary.
 
Regarding dreamsigns, we're mostly dealing with probabilities. Depending on the particular dreamsign, there is a lower or higher chance it may occur when awake too or - and this happens quite often - you start to reason that it is perfectly normal under the given circumstances, whatever those are. What we need is a way to test our current state, something that tells us whether we are asleep or not. This procedures are called reality checks.
 
A good reality check should be simple, reliable and inconspicuous. It should be possible to perform it without special preconditions, the tendency to produce false positives should be minimal and when doing it in public, it should not draw unnecessary attention.

An example is to hold your nose and breathe through it. If you can't breathe (positive result), you're probably awake, if you can (negative result), you're dreaming. Whenever you get into a situation that represents a dreamsign or is at least unfamiliar to you, which can be counted as a dreamsign too, you should do a reality check, even if you are one hundred per cent sure that you are not dreaming. In dreams that is also the case, so your assessment is irrelevant. What matters is the result of the reality check - and remember, even that may produce false positives, causing you to assume that you are awake. Avoid reality checks that can produce false negatives though. Concluding that you are dreaming when you are actually awake can lead to dangerous behavior.

Lets assemble the parts. To successfully apply the MILD method, you have to know your individual dreamsigns, you must be familiar with performing reality checks and you need to program your prospective memory to do at least one reality check whenever you encounter a dreamsign. The deeper meaning of the MILD method is not to remember that you are dreaming when you are dreaming, it is to remember to perform a reality check whenever you perceive a dreamsign. The reality check will tell you if you are dreaming or not. Although LaBerge did not phrase it that clearly, his procedures and training methods indicate that this is exactly what he intended MILD to stand for.