My dream work is closely related to my psychic work and as such this might feel woo woo to some but I'll try to stay grounded.
Body: both marijuana and alcohol disrupt our dream cycles but pulling us too low. I had been using for years before bed specifically to avoid dreaming, so for me the big first step was quitting both for the most part.
I find some supplements promote active dreaming, like vitamin c and d, melatonin, zinc, and gold Ormus. Although I treat the Ormus like caffeine and only have it in the AM. I took it before bed once and the dreams felt like an intense alien abduction it was crazy.
Next I need to give up or at least get under control my caffeine and nicotine habits. I think that'll help the dreaming a lot but I'm only human and these things are hard.
I fast in the evening time rather than the morning as I find an empty stomach promotes dream activity.
Doing things like stretching, rebounding, dry brushing, sauna and bathing are also important as these promote the lymphatic system which is an important part of your body's spark generating process lets say.
Mind: simply setting the intention to remember your dreams helps a lot. I had a devoted journal on my night stand for the first several months. Those moments when I woke in the middle of the night I'd jot down what I was dreaming without even turning on the light. It was very messy and I could hardly read the notes, but it helped me remember them better.
I eventually moved on to doing morning pages like in the artist way, and would typically write my dreams to take up pages. Now I'll journal them if they're particularly meaningful and if they're entertaining I throw them on #dreamstr. It all helps the brain to feel like there's some reason to remember.
Before bed I usually do a Michael Sealey sleep hypnosis, I find that very helpful in steering the dreams into calm happy things rather than nightmares.
Spirit: the most important thing is to not be afraid. Dreams are the language of the unconscious and your brain will be trying to communicate a lot of uncomfortable things to you when you first start paying attention to it. If you're afraid and rejecting of it, then your conscious mind will not want to remember it. So we need to control our emotions and stay calm while inviting the demons to sit down for tea with us.
So within dreams if you can just remember to stay calm you've really done the hardest part of the lucid dreaming work. If a dream tries to turn into a nightmare and you can just shrug it off, then you'll eventually realize you're actually dreaming and from there you can do neat things. In dreams, as in waking life, it is very hard to make realizations when you're panicking. This part of the work starts with learning not to panic in waking life.
Meditation and learning to still your mind, learning to recognize your voice within your mind, and learning what your mind feels like in different levels is very important. I use the alpha stim every morning to help my brain understand waking frequencies, and now I can tell when my brain is veering into theta or delta. It helps me understand reality and is a good indicator of when I'll have good dreams so I'll take a nap or go to bed then. Idk how to explain this except that you learn as a toddler when you need to go poop and now I've learned when I need to go dream.
There's a lot of philosophy involved as well, and the more I do this type of work the more I subscribe to the holographic universe theory. As such, I think waking life is actually another layer of the dreaming. Before I started bending my landlord's cutlery this winter I was first dreaming of being taught how to bend spoons.
I'm happy to answer any questions about these adventures, it's been a big part of my life and I'm only really just starting to understand how big. When I was a kid I couldn't tell the difference between dreams and reality because my dreams would come true often and my reality was very bizarre. So I think I have a higher baseline for dream work than many, but I do strongly believe we can all work up to gaining more control over these things.
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