So You Want To Be A Lucid Dreamer…
So you want to lucid dream. Well that’s a good start, at least you know what you want to do; but how exactly do you go about it?
Knowing why you have chosen to pursue lucid dreaming is important. How can it benefit ou personally? To know this we can work backwards from what it considered normal sleep.
Normal sleep helps us refresh ourselves for the next day. However, if you were a lucid dreamer, you would be able to control the period of time when you were dreaming.
The human body has a built in requirement for sleep. It rests the body so that we are prepared to continue our lives. Without it, there is strong evidence for insanity. That is all well and good but there is nothing saying we cannot control certain aspects of sleep is there?
Consider the idea of taking control of your own dreams. What would it feel like to purpose what direction your dreams would take you? Explore new worlds that are only limited to your control and imagination. This is what it means to be a lucid dreamer, kind of the ultimate fantasy world where you call all the shots.
Are you are ready to begin but remain unsure of how any of this is possible? That is ok we are getting there, there are two way to enter lucid dream state. The first is a dream initiated lucid dream, (DILD). This happens once you have already begun to dream and during the dream, you come to the realization that you are indeed dreaming. At this point, you have brought an element of control to the dream because your conscious mind is now involved.
The second method is called WILD, and stands for wake-initiated lucid dream. This is when you start out awake and fall asleep, but do not experience a change in consciousness levels. This is the process of simply entering a dream, the same way you’d walk through a door, instead of waking up inside the dream.
How exactly do you induce either one of these lucid dream states?
Dream Recall
If you’re interested in being a lucid dreamer, one of the most successful methods you can use is dream recall. This is the ability to remember your dreams. By developing this ability, you’ll be more readily able to recognize them while you’re asleep. That’s because you’re likely to have the same dream or dream elements on more than one occasion.
To make dream recall easier you can keep a dream journal. This is a notebook or pad of paper that has the sole purpose of recording your dreams. Whenever you have a dream, you should write all you can remember in the journal as soon as you wake up. The longer you are awake the more details of the dream that will be lost.
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)
This technique was developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, one of lucid dreaming’s lead scientists. The method used here is telling yourself that you’ll remember something in your dream. Once in the dream, you’ll see this object, recall what you told yourself, and realize you’re dreaming.
Wake-Back-To-Bed (WBTB)
The process here is to go to sleep, doing nothing but setting your alarm to wake you up a few hours later (5 or 6). Once you wake up, DO NOT go back to sleep. Instead, do something else like read for a while, or think as much as you can about lucid dreaming for around an hour then go back to bed.
According to LaBerge, this technique has about a sixty percent success rate. That’s because you wake up in the middle of your sleep cycle, with your mind not fully aware, and are still in the middle of your REM cycle. This results in something a lot like telling your mind you want to dream lucidly and having it obey!
Cycle Adjustment Technique
As the name suggests this technique is all about cycling your sleep. Go to bed at your normal time but for a week set an alarm to wake you one and a half hours early. You should continue to do this for around 7 days. Once your body has settled somewhat into this routine, begin to alternate your wake up times. One day normal, wake up time the next early, on your normal days you will be trying to wake up early and should increase lucid dream chances.
Wake-initiation of Lucid Dreams (WILD)
This method was mentioned above. To achieve a lucid dream using it, all that’s needed is keeping your mind awake while your body falls asleep. This is one of the most interesting ways of having a lucid dream. It’s as if you’re getting ready to watch a movie – you start in the real world, sitting on the couch, and turn on the television and press play (when you start to sleep). The screen begins black, just like when your eyes are closed, and all you need to do is wait for the movie or dream to start.
A number of ways to stay aware are counting, imagine climbing or descending stairs, chant, control your breathing, count your breaths, and concentrate on relaxing the body from their toes to head. (This all falls under the term ’self hypnosis’.) It is best to do this when you are not tired, like in the afternoon.
Technology has moved on in recent years, and there are various devices like dreaming masks and other scientific appliances which contain such things as strobe lights to induce lucid dreams.
Definitely the easiest and most reliable way of inducing a lucid dream however is by listening to binaural beats sound frequencies via headphones.
The sounds bring the two sides of the brain in synch. Your brainwaves are then converted to REM waves the time during sleep when you dream and the frequency at which lucid dreams occur.
With self-hypnosis and a conscious preparedness before you go to sleep anyone can practice lucid dreaming.
The author Lesley Groft writes for the http://www.luciddreaminginfo.com website. Discover the amazing experience of being a lucid dreamer and you can try it yourself when you get 29 Free lucid dreaming Audios when you visit here.
