 Welcome to the podcast. This is, as you all know, Explore Lucid Dreaming. Can you tell everybody your name? Um, my name is Explore Lucid Dreaming. I haven't done like a name reveal yet, so people are just not popular on YouTube now, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize. I thought in the base reveal you did the, that's fine. The anonymous Explore Lucid Dreaming, or Mr. Beluga. Mr. Beluga. As you all know, he's obviously the creator of Explore Lucid Dreaming for a big channel, the biggest channel about lucid dreaming. A million subscribers, probably more now. So congrats. Thank you. Did you, so did you think you would reach a million that fast? Like what was your kind of plan? On Explore Lucid Dreaming? Yeah. I mean, I didn't really know like that it could be done, but I think once the first video went viral, like when I started the channel, then I kind of realized that there was the potential for like a bigger audience out there. So it was really neat. Like when I first got a hundred thousand, I didn't even think that was possible. It was just something I did for fun. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's crazy. No, because I remember when, I think I remember when you published like your first couple of videos and I saw it being talked about on, I think it was Reddit and I think at that point you had about three, four thousand subs. Yeah. And then I checked back like a few weeks later and it was just, I mean, I can't remember how many exactly, but it was, it was a lot more and then it just kept on like snowballing basically. Yeah, it was weird. I think, I think the hardest milestone was like 10,000 and then after that, that's kind of when I got the first lucky or like viral video and then it went up 200,000 in like a couple, a couple of days, I think, or a week. That's amazing. Yeah. So maybe we should first talk a bit about lucid dreaming itself. So how did you actually start lucid dreaming? What was your first experiences with it? I think one, I don't know how I first heard about it, but I do remember that when I first heard about just like the idea of it and that it was something you could do and learn. I got lucky on my first night and then I was able to get like a lucid dream right away from that, but it was about five or six years ago or even seven when I first heard about it and I thought it was pretty cool. I was really into like writing down my dreams and stuff in a little book and that was really interesting for me because before then I hadn't remembered anything from my dreams and even just after a few days, it was like everything was super clear because your recall gets better and that's when I really started getting into it because it was a super cool thing. Yeah. Would you say that it was writing a dreams down that kind of it was the main thing that made you start lucid dreaming or like start remembering all dreams? I think so. I think that's like probably the easiest step anybody can take and you can get results like right away from doing that. So you know, you don't even need to succeed, you just need to write down dreams and they'll become more vivid, which is fun in itself. That's interesting because I feel like for beginners, people think it's quite difficult to start learning or they think it's going to take them ages, but really all you need to do at least like for the most part, 80% of the difficulty is just being consistent with like basic stuff like writing dreams down, doing reality checks and getting off decent sleep. Yeah, I agree. I think the learning curve is like very steep for like mastery and for doing it very consistently. Like I wasn't even able to you know, consistently do them like for a prolonged amount of time because it's just that hard. Like you always like you have to focus on it really hard and most people just can't do that, which is understandable. But yeah, like just from doing the basic things like it is possible to see some results, which I think is really neat, you know, it's like you kind of get what you put into it. Yeah, I guess like anything, right? Yeah, just like it's a weirder skill because you can't really see what you're doing. It's like it's all in your mind. So yeah, it's pretty neat. Yeah, and I guess for beginners, it can be quite frustrating sometimes if you're putting all the effort in like you're doing reality checks, trying to learn techniques and and then nothing happens. Like, you know, I think a lot of beginners have that problem where they're trying stuff, techniques or whatever, but it's not actually doing anything. Maybe not everybody, but I would say a good percentage of people, maybe. Yeah, do you have any advice for them? Or is it just is it just a case of being consistent and just sticking with that? Yeah, I mean, like you can you can try like so many different techniques and just have nothing work. But I think like if people are able to make their dreams even just like a little bit more vivid, I would still count that as success. I think people need to like look at it that way. And just like, you know, like, is anything changing? And if something is, then it means you're doing at least something, right? Yeah, even any improvement is good. I think that's another reason why people should keep more of a detailed dream journal, like not just write the dreams down, but maybe like a journal about their progress in lucid dreaming as well. Not just what they actually dreamed about, but you know, did you try a certain technique and then that worked or you know, did a certain reality check work more than the other ones and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, the thing about it is like everybody's different. So there's not one track to do it. I mean, if there was like one set way, I feel like all I would have to make is just one video and that's it. But yeah, like the fact is there's so many different techniques. I don't even know all of them. And like they just keep coming out and there's so many different approaches you can take. Like I've read some books about it and there's like all kinds of tests you do during the day. But yeah, like you don't want to over complicate things, but you also want to keep experimenting. Yeah, exactly. I think there's different ways you could because like you said, there's loads of techniques and they keep on coming up. Even people on Reddit like kind of create their own techniques or like their own variations of techniques and methods. But I think the fundamentals are kind of consistent in terms of engaging prospective memory, getting reality checks in some form to show up and then somehow in some way optimizing your REM sleep. So whether that's, you know, acetylcholine or anything that will boost memory like vitamin B6 or even just writing dreams down more consistently and just generally getting good quality sleep. I think that's in my opinion, that's 80% of the battle basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely like there are things that you can do and certain like milestones that you can cross where you know that you're making progress that are basically universal. You know, like if you can't even remember your dreams then good luck. You know. Yeah, it's just never gonna happen. I mean, there's almost no point trying to lose a dream if you can't remember your dreams because how would you even know? I mean, yeah, it's just a waste of time in my opinion. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, part of what makes it cool is the fact that like it is possible from hearing about it to succeed on the very first night and then just completely remember everything. That's what happened to me. And like sometimes when I forget about it or when I do something else and I come back and like you can get a lucid dream right away, which is really neat. But then again, like you don't want to be tricked into thinking that's like that's it. Like you have to actually put in the work and build up your skills. Even if you get lucky, like it's not really an indication of your progress. It's just it's just luck pretty much. Yeah, that's so true. And I think what people should do is when you have because when you first try and lose a dream, you have this kind of, I guess you could call it luck or yeah, beginner's luck or you know, there's this excitement and then because you're trying to do it, that usually gives you a lucid dream, especially at the beginning. It's like very common that you'll like you say have a lucid dream your first night. I think what a lot of people do is they assume that it's going to be that easy forever. But really what they should do is just take that excitement, just like build the momentum and then just yeah, it was you know, good that you had one the first time. But now you need to actually learn how to do it consistently like actually learn the techniques and put in work instead of just assuming it's going to be like sunshine and rainbows from then on basically. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. But it's but there's still a very, in my opinion, there's still a very important place for content about lucid dreaming that inspires people to actually want to learn it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, like lucid dreaming in YouTube, it's like kind of hard to mix because you have people who are very like, I wouldn't say they have like a short attention span, but it's just they want entertainment and like excitement. And it's really hard to like take somebody like that or just like the average person in real life and say like, you want to learn this skill, you have to do like you have to read these books and commit like a lot and do things that you don't want to do like wake up at like 3am and stuff. And it's just like being able to make it work for like a YouTube audience is really difficult, which is one of the hardest parts of my channel is like, I'm trying to make things like appealing and like energetic and get people excited without giving like false hope. So yeah, I think that's that's one of the difficulties. I would say we've probably both been criticized for like in quotation marks, hypey content that gets people motivated, but in my opinion, it's like with YouTube, you won't get seen unless you have some degree of hype and excitement. And it's still an overall net win because you get more people interested in lucid dreaming than they have one their first or second time, you know, because of the beginner's lack thing and the excitement. And then that makes them that brings them into the, you know, the topic. And now they're actually, in most cases, they're going to want to learn about how to do it. And they're going to be like lifelong advocates of lucid dreaming. I agree with that. I mean, I'd rather I'd rather be known as someone who kind of like hypes up the topic than somebody who's boring and doesn't doesn't really like pull people in because I mean, even just like looking at my channel and what I like, what was built, it's just so cool to see like millions and millions of people on these new tutorials come in, come into the discord and like really get into it. And then they start reading books and stuff like that. I think that's the way to do it. Like you want to interest them. You want to show them all the cool parts about it, because that's how you get someone interested. You know, like that's how you you come to them with these crazy new hobbies they can try. Yeah. And if you consider like the kind of the impact that it has to reach millions of people and who didn't know about lucid dreaming or, you know, they hadn't really tried and then to bring them into that topic, that's quite a bit. That's a big impact that it has on the world compared to the opposite where you have, let's say you have somebody who is not good at presenting themselves, they're not good at videos or marketing, let's say, not good at creating a good thumbnail. And yeah, they might be the most knowledgeable experience to lucid dreaming teacher. But if they're boring, and if nobody watches them, you know, if they upload their hour long videos or two hour long videos, and it gets 10 views, it doesn't really help. I mean, it helps those 10 people, of course, but it doesn't bring the topic further. It doesn't have a bigger impact. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of too bad with like YouTube. Like I wish people had the attention span and like sit down and watch those people's hour long videos because I think they have lots of knowledge and you definitely benefit people. But at the same time, like it's just like that's not the case. And I mean, yeah, like when I started to explore lucid dreaming, I did it because I thought it was a cool topic and I just had fun like making those videos. I definitely wasn't the most experienced. I don't have like a degree in that field or I'm not like a professional, but I just thought it was such a cool thing to like learn and talk about and share. So I just, you know, found the best guides I could and kind of talked about what I was doing. And you know, those videos were so much fun to make. And I think people definitely like picked up on that. And I mean, when they just like heard my voice, they heard that I'm a younger person. So obviously he's not the most experienced, but you know, like I'll just kind of like learn as he does. And I think it was, yeah, I mean, there's many benefits. I mean, it makes it easy to relate to someone like hearing that you're young, for example, it makes because a lot of the audience for lucid dreaming is typically younger people. So it makes it kind of easier for them to relate on that level. And then also in terms of teaching things, especially things like lucid dreaming, I feel like it's the idea that you have to be like this qualified expert to teach something like this. I think really all you have to be in most cases is just one or two steps ahead of where your audience is. And it's still going to be massively helpful to them. Like if you're explaining something that is two steps ahead of where they are, and you're explaining it really well in a fun way that makes them want to do it. And it actually teaches them how to do it. I mean, there's of course lots of value in that. So I think it's yeah, it's great. And also like on YouTube, anybody with a microphone and an idea can make a video and make a channel and talk about whatever they want. Whereas I think like more professional things like writing books or selling courses or something like that should be left to the people who really know what they're doing, which is why I'd never consider writing a book or selling any, anything to anybody because it's just like, I don't want to seem more knowledgeable than I am. I just want to entertain people. And some of the funnest videos I made were like my little animations and stuff, because that's kind of what I would like to focus on. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of those. So that's like where you animate your dreams, right? Yeah, I can imagine. Like very creative. That's a nice segue into my next question, which is, can you tell me your best lucid dream or like one of the best? I think the most memorable one was one of my like first prolonged ones. It was, I remember, I think I did animate it where I was like standing outside. I realized like after a whole bunch of previous things that happened in the dream, I realized I was dreaming and then I, it was like one of the first real lucid dreams that I had, where like I knew where I was and everything just felt like super real. I'm like, oh shoot. So I just like jumped up and I started flying and I just remember like flying over my neighborhood and all the houses that I saw and then like into a big city. And then I think I like landed on a roof and I was just like running around and doing a bunch of things. That was probably my favorite one, although I have many others. Like that was probably like the most memorable, even though I didn't do much. I think there's some of my favorite dreams as well, just like just the crazy superhero ones flying around, you know, teleporting. Yeah, it's just like once you do it and you just realize that like it's something you can do and it just feels so real. Like my best, my best dreams are the ones that feel the most real because I've had dreams where I realized that like I'm aware in it, but everything's kind of fuzzy and I'm like floating around in the abyss and that's not really like that, that much fun. Like you're conscious, which is cool, but then you just kind of wake up or you know, it's just the ones where you're like really deep in a dream and you're aware and you know that you're like in like that you're asleep and everything's just so like so detailed. Like it's really hard to describe that feeling. All right. What about your worst lucid dream? Do you have like a bad experience or a lucid nightmare or something? No, I don't get nightmares that much. So I can't really remember off the top of my head. Yeah, that's good. I think I've had like really weird lucid dreams that kind of turned into regular dreams where I got like stuck where I couldn't wake up. And those are just kind of like weird because you're like in a room, you lie down, you're like, okay, I'm going to wake up and you like get up, but then you can't or you're in another dream. And I may have animated one of those before, but those ones are like weird because they mess with you and you just feel like you're stuck and then you eventually wake up. Yeah, that's trippy. I think my worst ones is where I'm lucid, but I'm kind of like I can't move in the dream. So I'm just sitting there like sometimes it's like in a wheelchair, sometimes it's just a random chair or a bench or something. I can't move. Are you like aware that you're that you're in a dream or is it kind of like a lower level where you know that you're in it, but you don't know why you can't move? Maybe half and half. Usually I realize it's a dream, but it's still scary. Yeah, those dreams are definitely weird because there's definitely like there's different levels. And sometimes when you wake up, you're just like, what was my logic in that situation? Like when you know that you're dreaming, but then you feel like there's something you can't do when in reality, like you can do anything. It's like. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's subconscious things or beliefs. I'm curious what your plan to change your subject a bit now, like what your plan is for Beluga? Do you plan to be the biggest YouTube channel? No, that's not really my plan. I would say I just like making videos on there that like people enjoy and because it's just so much fun to like get the feedback and and like make like sometimes when I have an idea that I'm super confident about and then just like releasing it and seeing all the people I know like messaging me and say like that was really funny or something like that. I think I'm just going to keep doing it as long as I can make entertaining content that I believe in and the channel kind of grows, I guess like in proportion to how good your videos are and like so I don't really have any like subscriber goals. It's mainly just the content itself like I always want to innovate my content and like try to find the next thing with that and just keep doing it as long as I have fun. That's pretty much the goal for Beluga. Yeah, that's mine. That's a pretty good goal to be honest just have fun with it be creative and obviously people like it so it's kind of a win-win. Yeah, I think like creativity is probably like my favorite part about YouTube and just being able to to make whatever video that you can think of. Yeah for sure and there's so many different like different directions you could go with it and styles. How did you get into actually video editing or like video making? Well I've always been interested I would say like in YouTube itself. My first channel I started when I was in grade six and I think like right away when I would start shooting videos like I did gaming back in the day on like a super small channel. Really? But I think you just kind of learned it as you go because you shoot something and then you're like okay what do I do with it or there's like this section that you have to cut out how do I do that. Back then I only had my I think like my phone so I had to download apps and like splice things out of there iMovie and stuff like that. Eventually when I got a computer I got Premiere and that's really when I started to explore lucid dreaming because I I did kind of teach myself how to use Premiere and just like the things you could do on it and then figured out like learn the things that I needed to do for that channel which basically was put a bunch of clips have like transitions, text, music, you know stick my voice up with it. Can't imagine editing on a phone. It was brutal. I don't think anybody should have to do that. And editing gaming footage like would you how would you even do that? Would you transfer it from your console to your phone and then? I used to be like a console YouTuber but the reason I never really did well is because I would film the like the TV screen with my phone camera. It was really bad quality but yeah isn't that like weird flickering when you do that? Yeah and it was like an iPod too so because I didn't have a phone till I was older but it was like flickering it was bad and then I would like try to edit like cut it together and try to like save the clip with editing so maybe I learned I learned a bit from that like cutting out boring parts but yeah yeah oh wow that's that's interesting do you think you'll ever make another gaming channel or like go back to gaming channel? I think if there's a specific game that's like really good for YouTube and there's like an idea that that can be executed like I would never sit down and just play a game like for YouTube because that's already done like that's already been done like a million times and there's not really anything unique. I think if you're able to make like skits or like stories through video games then I would do that but I wouldn't I wouldn't know if I would be like a gaming YouTuber then or if I would just be like a like a story person I don't know but I I do like creating like stories and and carrying them out on right now it's discord but yeah yeah yeah it's pretty like the characters you make for the on the beluga channel was pretty funny actually so that's very creative. It was like a complete 180 for my lucid dreaming channel which I just realized like how much creativity I had with it like because it was a completely different channel I could do anything I wanted and I'm just like it was so much fun to plan that out and to like create characters and stuff for it. How long does it take you to come up with an idea for the beluga channel like one of the discord stories where you have different characters and sound effects? I think like the idea for the title and thumbnail of the video usually takes like one or two hours and then once I have like the idea then I just write the script for it which it can take a long time depending on the idea because some ideas are like harder to get a script for and that other ones are more straightforward like yeah like a story related to like when your phone's at one percent but you kind of know where it's going to lead and you just kind of like fill in the gaps so it really depends but usually a few hours. That's a pretty good time. How about you how long does it take to like get all your your research together and your topic or whatever? I mean kind of depends on the on the if I'm just responding to a question or you know a comment or something then not very long because it's just based on my knowledge experience memory but if it's more of a complicated or if I'm like presenting information like about a supplement for example or research or yeah then it can take longer maybe a few hours depends. Do you write like an exact script like word for word or like an outline? Yeah exactly I have like keywords those statements and sentences and then they'll be next to the camera so I just like look at the keyword to remind me and then just kind of improvise on that yeah because otherwise no no maybe it sounds too scripted if I if I were to write out an actual script compared to if I just add a keyword and then just kind of spoke naturally about it. Yeah and like also people don't naturally talk like they would write so people would definitely know if you're reading off something. Yeah yeah exactly. Have you thought about doing like a TikTok or like making small pieces of of your channel videos into TikToks? I have I know like people repost my stuff on TikTok they usually have to like cut it up in small segments but I feel like I always want to just focus if I'm making videos to make them on YouTube because then you have more creativity and you can kind of do more with longer videos because on TikTok like how much impacts can you have on someone if you only have a few seconds before they swipe up. See there's like only so many ideas you can do and usually they're pretty like shallow surface level ideas like just try to get a quick laugh before they swipe up whereas on YouTube like if you have a really good idea you make into a video it can be like an hour long and you could still have success with it which like I would rather make long videos or medium length videos than like 10 20 second short videos. Yeah. But there is a lot of people on TikTok and yeah it's a huge sight. Yeah I think I actually saw a couple of people like reposting your Explorers to Dreaming stuff on TikTok. Oh yeah. I just yeah I just think maybe that some of the blue guys could be translated to like a really short form and they probably do really well because I see a lot of short like YouTube shorts reels and stuff where it's very similar style you know like the quick editing entertaining storyline but condensed into a so it's engaging you know. Yeah. But yeah I guess YouTube is more impactful because it's a bit longer. And also I feel like when you build an audience on YouTube they'll stay with you longer than on TikTok and just like you can really get to know someone on YouTube more than a platform like TikTok. Like I don't really know I only know like a few people on TikTok but they're also on YouTube and when I think of them it's like I think of their YouTube channel mainly and I think like yeah I'd rather build things on YouTube than kind of try to get like fast growth or you know like tens of millions of views on TikTok. And I think also the way they count of you is a bit different. From what I understand YouTube counts of view is anything above 30 or 20 or 30 seconds but with TikTok it's like it's almost automatic that it counts to view. So even if you're scrolling past it instantly it's still technically a view which is actually worthless. I mean it doesn't they might not have even watched the video they might just be like scrolling while they're looking at something else. Yeah. So do you have any advice for complete beginners? Like imagine there's somebody out there who's watched all of your videos or they've watched let's say 10 of them and they still can't lose a dream. What would you recommend they try? I would say get first of all like get your motivation back. Like watch videos on like people succeeding and like what it looks like or just create like scenarios or get all of like the goals of what you want to do to get your motivation back up and then really focus on like the fundamentals and like the things that you learn when you're first starting. Like definitely get your recall going like if you don't have your your dream recall there's not really a point in doing all these other complicated things. So definitely like be consistent keep a journal. I would say like dream journaling is probably the most important thing to practice because once you have that then you're kind of like you have more things to work with after that just experiment with a bunch of techniques and don't give up like you just have to pick something and keep doing it and then see what happens because some like some techniques you just have to keep trying them before you know if it really works for you or not. Right it's very individual and yeah different for everybody. Cool good advice. Yeah I was thinking we can wrap it up there for the lucid dreaming one. Certainly final words. Um subscribe. Yeah subscribe to both these channels. Yeah and subscribe to lucid dreaming experience. Hopefully they already are. They're watching this but yeah. Cool thanks so much for coming on. No problem.