Reality Shifting Methods for Beginners: Which to Try First

A shifting method is a set routine that shifters follow to try to move their awareness to a desired reality (DR): you relax, focus your mind, and then count, affirm, script or picture your way there.

Most of the talk among shifters today is about the void state, the law of assumption and lucid dreaming. But if you are a complete beginner, pick one simple bedtime method, like Pillow or Intent, and give it about two weeks before you switch.

No study has shown that anyone actually travels anywhere. Psychologists who read shifters’ own accounts describe shifting as a deep, self-guided kind of absorption, close to self-hypnosis. Our guide to what reality shifting is explains the words shifters use and the ideas behind them, and our page on whether reality shifting is dangerous is worth reading before you start.

Each card below is a short introduction with a link to that method’s full guide. Our shifting tips for beginners help with any of them. If you would rather stay awake, browse our awake shifting methods. If you prefer to shift as you fall asleep, start with the sleep shifting methods.

Pick a Shifting Method in a Minute

Start with when you want to practice.

• As you fall asleep. Pillow, Intent, Raven, SATS, Lucid Dream, Alarm, Swirly Eye, Hug, Train, Hogwarts and Piano.
• In the middle of the night. The real-alarm version of the Alarm method, and wake back to bed, which you add to one of the sleep methods above. Keep both for a night before a lie-in.
• Just before you wake up. Sunni can go here as a tip rather than a rule. Try it in the drowsy minutes after you wake, while your eyes are still closed and you are not yet sure where you are. You can also do it at bedtime or during the day.
• Awake, with your eyes closed. Julia, Estelle, Mirror, Falling and Heartbeat. Each of these ends with your eyes opening, so you do not need to fall asleep.
• Either way, your choice. The void state, ADHD, 5 Senses, Cinn’s, Alice in Wonderland, Valentino, Coraline, In Your Arms, Sunrise, Melting, Cloud and Staircase.

The law of assumption has no set time at all. Shifters carry it into whichever method they pick.

Then think about how your mind works best.

• You think in pictures. Lucid Dream, Sunni, Mirror, Falling, Alice in Wonderland, Train, Swirly Eye, Hogwarts, Coraline, Sunrise, Melting, Cloud and Staircase. These are scenes you walk through in your imagination.
• You think in sounds. ADHD, Heartbeat, Estelle and Piano, each built around a track, a rhythm or a song.
• You think in words. Pillow, Intent, Raven, Julia, Alarm, Cinn’s, Valentino and the void state. These rely on a script, a count, affirmations or one clear intention (the simplest void routines run on a single “I am” line).
• You think in feelings. 5 Senses, Hug, In Your Arms, SATS and the law of assumption. They are about touch, comfort and the feeling of already being there.

Before You Try Any Method

A few small habits matter more than which method you choose.

1. Write a short script first. One page is enough: where you are going, who is there and how you come back. Shifters often script a safe word meant to bring them quickly back to their current reality (CR), so put yours near the top. Our reality shifting script template has a space for it.
2. Choose one method and give it time. Pick the one that fits how your mind works, then give it about two weeks of calm nights before you switch. Experienced shifters on Reddit say this again and again. Methods are tools, and hopping to a different one every night mostly adds confusion.
3. Never trade sleep for it. Do bedtime methods at your normal bedtime, and awake methods during the day or early evening. The safety notes at the end of this page have the hours you need.

The Shifting Methods Most Shifters Use Now

These are the methods behind the busiest discussions on Reddit’s shifting forums right now, and the ones that still get new videos on YouTube. Some are less a method than a way of using one, so read them as approaches you can combine with the simpler methods further down.

○ The Void State

When shifters talk about the void, they mean a calm, featureless state of awareness. Our void method guide describes it as a blackness that is not quite black, with no shape and no sense of time, and gives the routines people use to reach it.

Many shifters treat the void as a doorway they pass through on the way to their DR. It is a skill, not a trick. The most excited posts come from shifters who finally learned to reach it on command, which shows how much practice sits behind them.

Some shifters link the void with staying in a DR for good, which they call permashifting. If that idea pulls at you, read the safety notes below first.

○ The Law of Assumption (Living in the End)

The law of assumption comes from Neville Goddard’s teaching. You assume what you want is already true and live as if it is, which shifters call living in the end. Instead of trying to travel, a shifter acts as if they already live in their DR.

Many shifters now pair it with their usual method, and some drop methods altogether. Some of the most upvoted recent shifting posts on Reddit are about it.

It does not suit everyone, though. Some shifters say that checking whether they were “living in the end” properly became a worry of its own. If that happens, go back to a simple method. Our guide to the law of assumption and Neville Goddard’s formula explains the idea, and our law of assumption for shifting guide shows how shifters use it step by step.

○ The Lucid Dream Method

In a lucid dream, part of you realizes you are dreaming, and the dream keeps going anyway. Shifters use that moment as a way through, usually in one of these ways.

• The Portal Method. Find a door in your dream, or make one appear, and walk through it expecting your DR on the other side.
• The TV Screen Method. Here the portal is a screen or a book. Shifters tune it to their DR and step into the scene.
• The Create Your DR Scenario Method. Rather than leave the dream, you reshape it into your DR: the room first, then your people, then an ordinary moment of your DR day. Many shifters build it up over several nights rather than all at once.

The difficult part comes first, because you have to get lucid. Even with the best-tested techniques, a week of practice brought lucid dreams on only about one night in six. So treat this as a slow skill. Keep a dream journal, and use your weekend nights rather than every night.

Our lucid dream method guide covers getting lucid, staying lucid and telling a dream from a shift.

○ SATS (State Akin to Sleep)

SATS is short for “state akin to sleep”, Neville Goddard’s phrase for the heavy, drowsy edge just before you fall asleep. As they drift off, shifters replay a tiny moment that shows they have already arrived, such as a DR best friend saving them a seat in class, and let sleep take them mid-scene.

People often mix SATS up with the void, but they are completely different. In SATS you hold a scene. In the void you hold nothing at all.

Shifters also call that drowsy edge “mind awake, body asleep”. Our awake guide shows a calm way to practice mind awake, body asleep on a rested afternoon, and explains why to skip it if you get sleep paralysis. Our law of assumption guide covers how shifters use SATS at bedtime.

○ Wake Back to Bed (Pair It With Any Method)

Wake back to bed, or WBTB, is a way of timing a method rather than a method of its own. Many shifters who say they shift regularly pair it with their usual method.

You go to bed at your usual hour and set a soft alarm for about 5 hours later. When it rings, you stay up quietly for a short while, with the lights low and your phone out of reach. Then you lie back down and do your method as you drift off again.

Keep that awake spell calm and short. Researchers found that people had more lucid dreams when they fell back asleep within ten minutes.

The catch is sleep. Breaking up your night on purpose can leave you short of it. So keep wake back to bed for a night before a lie-in, such as a Friday or a holiday, and never use it on a school night.

Our sleep guide shows where wake back to bed fits in your night, and the lucid guide explains how lucid dreamers pair the alarm with MILD.

Easiest Shifting Methods for Your First Nights

These ask the least of you. There are no long scenes to hold, no alarms and nothing to learn first, and every one of them can be done at your normal bedtime.

○ The Pillow Method

The Pillow method is our pick for a first night. Instead of holding a picture of your DR in your head, you put it on paper, so it works even if you find visualizing hard.

Keep the page short. Write who you are in your DR, the room you wake up in (with one sound or smell that could only belong there) and the first person you see.

1. Write your page earlier in the evening, and read it through once before bed.
2. Slide it under your pillow and lie down the way you usually fall asleep.
3. As you drift off, repeat one short affirmation in your head, such as “I am waking up in my DR.”

Some shifters add a quiet subliminal on a sleep timer. That part is optional. The written page is the heart of it.

○ The Intent Method

The Intent method has no long scene to hold and no track to play. It rests on your intention to shift, sent out just as you are about to fall asleep.

Its guide makes one point worth knowing. Your intention does not have to describe your whole DR. It can simply be the reason you want to go there, such as a person you miss or a life you want to try. Intent shifters say the meaning behind the wish matters more than the detail.

Take a DR on a farm in Stardew Valley. You brush your teeth, get into bed and wait until your eyes feel heavy. Then you think, calmly, “I intend to wake up on my farm in Stardew Valley, because I want slow, sunny days with my friends in Pelican Town.” Whenever your mind wanders, bring it back to that thought until sleep comes.

Some shifters go one step further and say they need no method at all. They simply decide, as they fall asleep, that they are going. That is the Intent method at its simplest, and it might suit you if complicated methods make you tense. Our guide to no method shifting shows how they try it.

○ The Raven Method

The Raven method gives a restless mind something simple to do, which is counting.

1. Choose a time when you feel a little tired, ideally your normal bedtime.
2. Lie down in any comfortable position. Many Raven shifters like the starfish position, with arms and legs spread wide so they do not touch. If you have had sleep paralysis before, use your side (the safety notes below explain why).
3. Close your eyes and start counting, slowly, from 0 up to 100. Between the numbers, say a short affirmation, such as “I am going home to my DR.” A quiet subliminal or ASMR track in the background is optional.
4. As you count, keep your desired reality in mind: where you will wake up, who is there and what you can hear.
5. When you reach 100, check where you are. Raven shifters say this is often when they arrive. If you have not, one or two more rounds is plenty. After that, stop counting and drift off with your DR still in mind.

○ The Julia Method

The Julia method runs on two words, “I am”. Its guide suggests binaural beats to help you settle into a calm, meditative state.

1. Lie down comfortably and close your eyes, with binaural beats playing if you like.
2. Choose one mantra that starts with “I am” and repeat it to yourself, again and again, until you start to notice shifting sensations.
3. Now picture your DR with every sense you have: what you can touch, see, hear and smell.
4. Open your eyes once the scene feels real.

Your mantra can be just “I am”, or it can say where you are. A few to start with: “I am wearing my DR uniform.” “I am smelling breakfast in my DR kitchen.” “I am safe and happy in my DR.”

Its guide ends with your eyes open, and our awake guide covers the Julia method as an awake method. But plenty of shifters use it at bedtime too, and if the mantra rocks you to sleep, that is completely fine.

○ The 5 Senses Method

If visualizing is hard for you but you can still do a little of it, the 5 Senses method lets you practice on the room around you first.

1. Whenever you have a few quiet minutes, take in your CR with every sense: colors and textures, sounds, the temperature of the air, any smell or taste, and the feeling each one gives you.
2. Shut your eyes for a moment and check whether the room is still there in your mind. Practicing on something real makes the same skill easier to use on your DR later.
3. When it is time to shift, start a subliminal if you want one, lie down, close your eyes and count up from 1, stopping for an affirmation whenever it feels right.
4. Keep counting until shifting sensations begin, then build your DR with all five senses, the way you did with your room.
5. Finish by opening your eyes in your DR, or by falling asleep.

If your mind stays blank when you try to picture things, our shifting methods without visualization lean on words, sound and feeling instead.

More Shifting Methods With Their Own Guides

Each of these has a full guide of its own, so here you get just the idea.

○ The ADHD Method

The ADHD method is for thoughts that keep wandering off. You put on headphones and play an 8D track, music mixed so the sound swirls from one ear to the other.

You match your breathing to the track and count, coming back to the same affirmation every few numbers. If pictures of your DR come, let them in, and if they do not, carry on without them. Then let the session end in sleep, or open your eyes.

The name is just what the shifting community calls it. It was made for wandering minds, ADHD or not, and it is not a treatment for ADHD. Keep the volume low, too, because the WHO advises setting it no higher than 60% of the maximum.

○ The Alice in Wonderland Method

Here you play Alice. Lying in any comfortable position, you picture yourself resting against a tree until someone from your DR appears, then dashes off and jumps down a rabbit hole. You jump in after them.

At the bottom is a locked door. Once you tell your guide you are ready (affirm until you are), they open it onto a room where people from your DR welcome you, and then they lead you to your DR bedroom.

You lie down there in the same position your real body is lying in and go to sleep, and the guide says to open your eyes in your DR as the shifting sensations grow. The whole story is in our Alice in Wonderland shifting method guide.

○ Cinn’s Method

Cinn’s method is named after the shifter who created it. You count slowly up to 100, one number on each out-breath.

At 10, 20 and so on up to 50, you stop to put part of your DR life into words: who you are and where you live, how you look, your family, a few general affirmations, and finally a walk through your DR home.

After 50 you count straight on to 100, then keep affirming while the feeling of being close lasts. Open your eyes once you sense you have arrived, or drift off if sleep comes first.

○ Shifting to Hogwarts

Shifting to Hogwarts means taking a familiar method and pointing it at the castle. Shifters use everything from a Raven count with Hogwarts affirmations to the Mirror of Erised, and most of these routines end in sleep.

Our how to shift to Hogwarts guide walks through each one. The Hogwarts shifting script helps you fill in your year, your wand and your Patronus before you go.

○ The Valentino Method

The Valentino method has a note at its heart, written to someone special in your DR. You read through your script, write that note and say a few affirmations.

Then you lie down the way you picture yourself waking up there and imagine your DR room with all your senses. Fall asleep from there, or, if you use it as an awake method, open your eyes once you feel ready.

○ The Hug Method

The Hug method is a whole imagined day with your DR person, opening and closing with a hug. When the day is over, you picture your DR self settling into bed, then say your affirmations and drift off yourself.

○ The Coraline Method

Like the girl in Neil Gaiman’s story, you find another world through your own bedroom.

In the Coraline method, you picture a key on your nightstand. When you pick it up, a small door appears in your wall. You crawl through the tunnel behind it to a second door, with your desired reality on the other side. Shifters say you may open your eyes there, or carry on, settle into your DR bed and fall asleep.

○ The In Your Arms Method

The In Your Arms method is for cuddlers. You hold a big pillow or a soft toy and imagine, as vividly as you can, that it is your DR person and that the two of you are curled up together.

Then you say your affirmations and count down from 100. When the count is done, open your eyes, or let yourself drift off.

○ The Alarm Method

The Alarm method comes in two quite different versions. In the first, the alarm is imaginary. You picture your DR self setting a clock in your DR, tell yourself at bedtime that you will wake up there when it rings, and go to sleep.

The second uses a real alarm, set to wake you after you have slept for a while. You let yourself fall straight back asleep while trying to stay aware, and once you are dreaming lucidly, you use the lucid dream method to reach your DR.

It breaks up your night much as wake back to bed does, so save it for a night before you can sleep in.

○ The Swirly Eye Method

Think of the Swirly Eye method as Raven with one extra step. Once you have counted to 100 with affirmations, leave your eyes shut and let them trace slow, small circles, or drift gently left and right, as you picture your DR. Carry on until you fall asleep.

Go slowly, and stop straight away if your eyes feel strained or sore.

○ The Train Method

Picture a train carriage filled with soft light, carrying you toward your DR while its scenery rolls past the window. That is the setting of the Train method. You affirm that you are on your way and take the ride as slowly as you like.

When the train pulls into your DR station, perhaps with people you love waiting on the platform, you keep affirming and let yourself fall asleep.

○ The Mirror Method

The Mirror method takes place in a dark room, with a soft glow on you and a mirror a few steps away. You walk slowly up to it, and the reflection looking back is your ideal DR self. When you place your hands on the glass, theirs meet yours and the two of you become one. Then you open your eyes.

○ The Sunrise Method

The Sunrise method is a flight. Someone from your DR offers you their hand, and the two of you rise into the air together. In one version you start in a field as the sun comes up. In the other you take off at night and reach your DR bed in time to watch the sunrise from it.

Either way, you fly in through a window of your DR home and lie down, then open your eyes or fall asleep there. Some shifters call it the Peter Pan or Neverland method.

○ The Melting Method

The Melting method works by imagining your solid body softening away. You picture your DR bedroom right below your own and count with affirmations. When you feel close, you imagine sinking, soft as warm wax, down through your bed and the floor until you settle into the body of your DR self.

Its guide asks you to stay completely still during the melt, since each small movement reminds you of the body you are trying to leave.

○ The Cloud Method

The Cloud method starts on a soft cloud, with your DR self beside you. You take their hand and become one with them. Then the cloud gives way beneath you and you drop, gently, as if your DR is calling you home. Affirm as you settle, and fall asleep.

Its guide also has a version where you fly from the cloud right into your DR bedroom.

Classic 2020 Methods Fewer Shifters Use Now

These spread in the first wave of shifting videos, after the practice caught on in 2020 as the pandemic took hold. Few new posts or videos mention them now. Each still has a full guide, though, and an older method is worth a try if it appeals to you.

○ The Sunni Method

The Sunni method borrows a feeling you may already know. If you have ever woken up with your pillow at the wrong end of the bed, you will remember the confused second before you worked out which way you were lying.

Sunni shifters try to create that same confusion on purpose. Lying with your eyes closed, you picture your DR in full detail, then talk yourself into believing you are truly there.

Its guide uses a beach house as the example, with a white noise track of waves standing in for the real ocean. Once it feels convincing, you say your affirmations and open your eyes whenever you feel ready.

○ The Heartbeat Method

The Heartbeat method uses the sound of a beating heart. You play a short heartbeat track from your phone under your pillow, so it feels like you are lying with your head on the chest of someone you trust from your DR.

When the sound stops, you picture them waking, leading you to a door and asking if you are ready to go home. Beyond it is a room of pure white light. You fall through it, affirming all the way, and Heartbeat shifters say that when you land, your eyes open in your DR.

Keep the volume low, let the track end by itself, and never leave the phone under your pillow while it is charging.

○ The Estelle Method

Music lovers tend to like the Estelle method. With headphones on and a slow, soothing song playing, you imagine someone special from your DR, such as a friend or a crush, asking you to dance.

When the dance ends, they say it is time to go home, then open a door for you. You step into bright white light and let yourself fall, affirming that you are in your DR, until you feel ready to open your eyes.

○ The Falling Method

The Falling method begins in a calm hall with a door at the far end. You open it and let yourself fall, affirming as you go. Shifters say a second door is waiting where you land, with your DR behind it.

○ The Piano Method

The Piano method puts you on stage. With soft piano music playing, you imagine walking into a grand hall, playing a piano while an audience listens and taking in the applause. At the exit, a person of your choosing takes your hand, opens the door and walks you through, saying “Welcome home”. You let that warm feeling carry you into sleep.

○ The Staircase Method

The Staircase method has you climb a staircase toward a bright light and step through it into your desired reality.

A longer version adds a goodbye. As you climb, you look back over your CR and thank your CR self in a mirror at the top. Then you walk down a second staircase to someone important to you from your DR, who is waiting at the door. Both versions can end with your eyes opening or with sleep.

Helpers That Go With Any Method

None of these is a method, and none is necessary. Shifters add them to whatever method they already use.

• Subliminals and guided meditations. Audio with affirmations hidden under music, or a voice that talks you through a method. The best subliminals for shifting guide explains how to choose one and listen safely.
• Affirmations. Short lines you repeat, like “I am in my DR.” Borrow some from our list of shifting affirmations.
• The starfish position. Arms and legs spread so nothing touches, which some shifters say helps them forget their body (the Raven card above links its guide).
• Group shifting. Friends write one shared script for the same DR. Our guide to group shifting explains how.
• The Gateway tapes. Older guided audio exercises that some shifters use to reach a deeply relaxed, “mind awake, body asleep” state.

Did It Work?

Shifters describe the moments before a shift in different ways: a buzz or tingle, a body that feels heavy or weightless, a jolt like missing a step, or light flickering behind closed eyes. Our reality shifting symptoms guide covers the meaning shifters give each one. But just as many report no sensations, and a quiet, ordinary feeling is no reason to give up.

Waking up in your own bed does not mean anything went wrong. That is how most attempts end, and not everyone can shift. If weeks have turned into months, our guide to why you cannot shift realities has honest reasons and what helps.

Shifters share their own accounts on Reddit, Tumblr and YouTube, and we have collected some in our reality shifting stories. Read them as stories, not proof. When you want small changes to try next, our shifting tips are full of them.

Stay Safe While You Practice

Most of these methods are quiet things to do in bed. The risks come from how they fit around your sleep and your body.

• Keep your sleep. The CDC recommends 8 to 10 hours of sleep each day for teens aged 13 to 17, and at least 7 for adults. Never stay up late for one more try.
• Sleep paralysis. Being awake but unable to move or speak while falling asleep or waking up feels frightening, but the NHS calls it harmless. The NHS also links back sleeping with more episodes, so if you have had it before, do every method lying on your side. A doctor can help if it keeps happening and leaves you scared to go to sleep or tired all day.
• Headphones. Whether you use them for the ADHD or Estelle method, a heartbeat track or a subliminal, keep the volume at no more than 60% of your device’s maximum, as the WHO advises, and give your ears frequent breaks.
• Stop signs. Chest pain, trouble breathing, fainting, sudden dizziness or weakness, or confusion have nothing to do with shifting. Stop and call your local emergency number. A racing heart is not a shifting sign either. If you have never felt it before, see a doctor, and if chest pain, breathlessness or dizziness comes with it, call emergency services.

If you start losing track of what is real, or skipping sleep, school or meals for your DR, stop practicing for a while and let a parent, a teacher or an older person you trust know what has been happening.

If staying in your DR for good ever seems like the only way to get away from a painful life, or you have had thoughts of ending your life, please reach out today. In the US, you can call or text 988 to talk with a counselor, free and in confidence, at any hour.

In the UK, Samaritans take calls free on 116 123, and anyone under 19 can call Childline on 0800 1111. In India, the government’s Tele MANAS line, 14416, is toll-free and open 24/7.

Our guide to shifting safely lists more places to find support, but if you feel unsafe at this moment, call your local emergency number before anything else.

So choose one card, write your page and make tonight a calm one.

Frequently Asked Questions About Shifting Methods