Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The state of lucid dreaming or “lucidity” sometimes starts at the beginning of a dream. The dreamer understands that the experience is not occurring in physical reality, but in ones dream. Often this understanding is noticed once one is either floating, flying or meeting a deceased relatives. In some instances one may lucid dream randomly during ones dream, suddenly realizing that you can control the settings. The state of lucidity can range from high and low. If the dreamer is at a high level, one might be cognizant of all the details of the dream. You will not be in any danger as you move with free will possibly manipulating your dream settings. However the low lucid state is quite different. In the lower frequency of lucidity, one may be able to float or fly around, though will still feel one is in the dream.

5 Life-Changing Benefits of Lucid Dreams

1. Fun

This is probably the most simple attraction of lucid dreaming, and yet it can give the most fundamental, primal joy. Imagine the most vivid, open-ended video game you’ve ever played or even conceived of. Lucid dreaming, when properly practiced and mastered, is like the most realistic VR simulation you can imagine, combined with a degree of complexity and open possibility that make GTA V look like pong. Want to fight Nazis on a flying motorcycle? Overthrow an empire? Visit distant planets? It’s all possible. Fun might not be the deepest or most sophisticated reason for wanting to get into lucid dreaming, but just one session battling ninjas on Jupiter will give you the kind of encouragement you need to further pursue the practice and achieve some of its more abstract and holistic benefits.

2. Overcoming Anxiety

Lest you think lucid dreaming is just a playground of escapist fantasy, a bubbling cauldron of Saturday morning cartoons and comic books, let’s remember that it’s also a practice that can have immense benefit for your everyday life. Lucid dreaming can assist in overcoming anxiety surrounding meetings, activities or events. Everyone suffers from anxiety to some degree—with some more affected than others—and lucid dreaming can be an invaluable tool for tackling it.

Lucid dreaming personally helped me to tackle a crippling anxiety about public speaking. This is one that I’m sure plenty of people can relate to. I’d be asked to read aloud, or defend an argument in front of a crowd, and the anxiety would come in floods. My blood would turn to cement, my heart would kick like an over-clocked engine, and the sweat would coat me in a fine, sparkly sheen.

One of the greatest opportunities offered to by lucid dreaming, however, is the chance to practice. Being able to test-run scenarios that terrify you, and then just being able to hit the reset button upon waking up, is fantastically useful for dealing with situations that stress you out. Slowly but surely, as I commanded troops and spoke to masses in my sleep, public speaking when I was awake became a little easier. Today, I’m a passionate public speaker, and can thank my lucid dreaming trial runs for much of my confidence.

3. Communicating With Yourself

I’ve been enamored with the idea of the subconscious since I first read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams at the age of 13. The idea that there’s some powerful, primal, hidden part of yourself that influences your actions without your knowledge absolutely fascinated me. Although it was Freud that captured my interest, it was Jung that would entrance me with his conception of the subconscious as the model for God and the source of ageless, eternal memory and wisdom.

As the Delphic Oracle would suggest, the basis of all knowledge and achievement is to first “Know Thyself” and communicate with your subconscious. Luckily, lucid dreaming provides an excellent venue for this, as your dreams are the stage on which your subconscious puts on its nightly, fevered and mysterious plays. If you can spot that it’s all a set-up, it doesn’t take much to peel back the curtain and have a chat with the director. I have a friend, an avid lucid dreamer, who has gotten to know his unconscious mind so well in his lucid dreams that he’s personified and named the “entity” that creates his dreams, and often uses this model to consult with his unconscious mind whenever a tough decision is to be made. This form of communication can offer immense insight into yourself, and any unconscious motivations or pain that you might not be fully aware of, and which might be negatively affecting your life.

4. Getting in Touch With Spirituality

From Native American shamans to Tibetan dream yogis to West African mystics, dreams have always been an inexorable part of humanity’s connection with the divine, the transcendent and the mysterious. And today, at a time when organized and dogmatic religion is wavering, and many are looking for an alternative, lucid dreaming can provide a gateway to spirituality that is personal and intuitive. Our dreams can present opportunities for transcendent and beautiful experiences, as well as the perfect place to examine ideas and concepts in an outside-the-box fashion, making them ideal for testing the spiritual waters for those who are turned off by traditional conceptions of religion.

Lucid dreaming, when mastered, can be an intense and symbolically rich experience, and once one understands how dream images can often draw from human mythology and world religion, the spiritual dimension to dreams can become an immediate way to connect with whatever idea of “God” or Oneness or transcendent principle you might be interested in. Even if you’re not at all attracted by spirituality, lucid dreaming can give you an idea of the kind of profound, transcendent and connective states of mind that drive people toward religion and spirituality.

5. Inspiration

If there’s one thing to which dreams are more closely tied than spirituality, it’s artistic inspiration. From the Greek belief in the Muses communicating through dreams, right through to the influence that dreams had on the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe, dreams have long been regarded as a mystical and ethereal source of inspiration for art. The way in which dreams combine vivid images, complex symbols and strange premises provides fertile ground for artistic “Eureka!” moments. As a writer, I’ve lost count of how many short stories, metaphors and poems have shot straight from the soil of my subconscious. And artistic inspiration isn’t the only kind of insight afforded by intense exploration of dreams: many historical scientific breakthroughs have also emerged from dreams, from the discovery of the double helix structure in DNA to some of the most complex formulations of Indian mathematics genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Dreams have brought us some of the most remarkable advances in human history—and who knows what you might accomplish with power over your dreams?

Other Benefits of Lucid Dreaming:

* Strengthening your problem solving skills

* Able to confront your fears first hand

* Becoming more creative

* Great way to improve your confidence level

* Become more in tuned with yourself and others around you

* Experience a different way to dream

* Understanding more about our unconscious mind

* Healing aspects

Lucid Dreaming Steps:

Step 1 - Repetition:

Though out the day  working or at home you must practice repetition. You will have to keep asking yourself “am i dreaming right now?”. After a couple tries an hour it might sink into your head that you are not dreaming. This repetitive thought process helps you unknowingly remember this when your dreaming.

Step 2 - Record Your Dreams:

You must learn how to record your dreams when you wake up. Keeping a dream journal is vital because it improves and expands your dream capability. Once you are able to remember the events and symbols in your dream you have a better chance getting to that lucid state. Taking the time and going through your previous recorded dreams before bed helps build a sence of awareness when your in a dream state.

Step 3 – Control Your Sleep:

Controlling your dreams consists of being mindful of your sleep schedule. Changing your sleep behaviour will greater your chances of having a lucid dream. Scientists reveled the lucid dreaming works best when taking a quick nap after you have gotten up from a long sleep. Randomly interfering with your sleep schedule usually increases Lucid dreaming as well.

Step 4 - Believe:

Start believing in your dreams and the significance behind them. People who feel a dream is just a dream would have trouble trying to lucid dream. You must understand the symbols and the mystic power behind them. Try your best to remain positive and confident. You must have a desire to want feel lucid.

Step 5 - Meditation:

For thousands of years meditation has been directly linked for human inner peace. Learning how to meditate is a great way to build your awareness on in your conscious and unconscious world. Practicing mindful meditation at least 10 minutes a day can increase states of lucid dreaming.

Step 6 – Conscious Mind Awareness:

The most important step is training your “Conscious Mind”.  You want to start by becoming more aware of your daily surroundings and the objects around them. Any items in your walking life that you would usually over look, now has to be taken into consideration. Anything from the tiniest detail that was once overlooked like stop signs to billboards, now needs attention. You must observe everything in full detail. This means the color, shape and feelings of objects so  when it appears in your dream it will connect.  Dreaming about an object that you analyzed in detail in your walking life you can apply it to your dream to see what is real and what is not. Once you can convince your mind that its just a dream the fun starts. Stretching your awareness in your day will help you gain more control of your dreams. You don’t need to keep focus on every single detail in your life because it would drive you mad. Just start with a couple of small observations a day that you would normally never look at in detail.

How To Stay In Your Lucid in Dreams:

The hardest part about lucid dreams are trying to stay in them.  Learning the proper technique provided below will turn an armature dreamer to a experienced one.  If trained properly you can last up to 30 minutes in the lucid state.

Relax – Relaxing is key when you want to stay longer in your fun lucid dream.  Most of the time we tend to get over excited and wake up from sleep.  In order to achieve a long period on lucidity you must calm your mind.

Hand Movement -Once relaxed state rub try and remember to rub you hands together.  This help prolong the lucid dream because its constantly stimulating the conscious brain.  Doing this technique you can last up to 10 to 30 minutes in a lucid state.

Focus -Focus on your hand in your lucid dream.  Don’t loose track of them, keep them in front of you.  Also focus on wanting to be in your dream.   Keep repeating out loud “attention or focus” and you will become more in tuned with the dream for a longer period of time.

 Spelling Test – Think of spelling word or doing an easy math question. This will help engage the logical part of your brain when your loosing focus of the dream.

Circles – Going around in circles helps you ground your awareness in your lucid dream which in turn brings  you to a new dream scene.