How to wake yourself up

You can always end a lucid dream. Ordinary dreams end on their own; lucid ones can be ended deliberately, and knowing that removes most of the anxiety people bring to the practice.

Methods

• Stare at fine detail. The opposite of the stabilising advice. Fixing on something with a lot of small structure (text, patterned fabric) tends to destabilise the scene.
• Close your dream eyes and keep them closed, intending to wake.
• Shout that you want to wake up. Frequently reported as effective and worth knowing if you are panicking.
• Blink rapidly, or hold your breath.

If a method does not work immediately

Try another, and expect a short lag. The common frightening experience is not being trapped. It is trying once, having it not work, and concluding you are stuck. You are not; sleep ends whatever you do.

Watch for the false awakening

The most common "I could not wake up" story is actually a false awakening: you wake into a convincing replica of your room and are still dreaming. If waking felt effortful or strange, do a reality check straight away. This is exactly the situation reality checks are for.

And the overlap with sleep paralysis

Waking directly out of REM can occasionally leave you briefly unable to move. This is unpleasant and completely harmless, it passes in seconds to a couple of minutes, and the sleep-paralysis page explains what is happening. Knowing what it is in advance is most of what makes it bearable.