Directing Dreams: A Beginners Guide to Lucid Dreaming
Have you ever experienced being aware that you are actually dreaming or having the ability to control the circumstances in your dream? If yes, you are not alone because people all over the world have experienced this same thing.
It may disappoint you that experiencing this thing doesn’t mean that you have tapped some kind of supernatural power. But fortunately, science can enlighten you about this and give you a closer look at why it happens.
In fact, science has a name for it, and this experience is called Lucid Dreaming.
What Is A Lucid Dream? Let Us Help You Explore This ‘Alternative’ World
Like you, various researchers all over the world are fascinated by this amazing experience; that is why they’ve conducted numerous studies to learn more about lucid dreaming. And by closely studying this experience, they were able to learn a lot of things from it, like its benefits and its dangers.
Researchers have also discovered how to intentionally start this experience instead of just hoping every single night to lucid dream again.
Sounds exciting? Yes, we know! So come and learn more about lucid dreaming, and discover how to tap its hidden benefits that can improve your life!
How and When Do Lucid Dreams Occur?
Researchers have discovered that lucid dreams occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. ‘REM Sleep’ is a term that you may have already heard in your science class before. It happens when you are in deep sleep where brain activity is intensive, eye movement is faster (hence, ‘rapid’ eye movement), and breathing is much faster.
THE POSITIVE SIDE OF LUCID DREAMING
While you’re a bit disappointed (we know) that lucid dreaming is not some kind of supernatural power, science has proven that it can provide significant benefits for you.
It Can Enhance Your Problem Solving Capabilities
Some research shows that lucid dreaming can help you in dealing with some of the most pressing problems you are facing. While this is certainly good news, the catch is lucid dreaming only provides a great improvement on your creative side and less on the logical side.
And as much as we want for both of these sides to benefit, what we may need to do is to get the most out of what lucid dreaming can provide and use it to our advantage. After all, having a significant improvement on our creative side means that we can think of creative solutions for our problems, right?
It Can Decrease Your Anxiety
Believe it or not, lucid dreaming can also act as your ‘personal therapist’ because it has the capability to lower your anxiety. According to some researchers, since lucid dreaming gives you an awareness that a dream is unreal and even lets you control its circumstances, it gives you a sense of control.
And while a sense of control in the real world is not always the case for most of us, which only heightens our anxiety, having control in an ‘alternative world’ can lighten up the anxiety that we’re carrying.
THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF LUCID DREAMING
Lucid dreaming is not all about benefits; it also has downsides that you should be aware of.
It Will Decrease The Quality Of Your Sleep
Everybody hates it when someone bothers them from their comfy sleep, and this is a nasty habit that lucid dreaming has. Since lucid dreams can be more realistic than usual dreams, they can wake us up because of their intensity which cuts us from our sleep.
And as we all know, once our sleep is cut, it would be very hard for us to go back to sleep, and this unwanted scenario greatly reduces the quality of our sleep.
It May Cause Hallucinations And Confusions
Lucid dreaming might be more of a punishment than a benefit for people who are suffering from mental disorders because it can distort their sense of reality. These people may believe that what they saw in their lucid dream was what happened in real life, and this confusion can certainly affect their decisions and may worsen their condition.
HOW CAN I HAVE A LUCID DREAM?
Researchers have found that it is possible to start a lucid dream on your own and even found ways on how to exactly do it. With this exciting discovery, we don’t need to wait for lucid dreams to visit us every night because we can initiate them whenever we want to.
Have a look at our list of the most effective ways on how to start a lucid dream:
Take Care of Your REM Sleep
By now, you’re already aware of what REM sleep is, and spending much longer in this state will increase your chances of having a lucid dream every time you sleep.
And what you need to focus on first is how to get enough sleep because this is the most important factor that can bring in the state of REM.
And to achieve it, you need to do a series of preparations before going to bed to ensure that you would have enough sleep throughout the night.
You may start with things like starting a ‘no gadget before bedtime’ policy for yourself, optimizing your environment for sleeping, crossing off caffeine and alcohol before going to bed, and having regular daily exercise.
Indeed, being in a state of REM sleep requires a lot of effort and a large dose of discipline, but all these things will certainly pay off as they can help you with lucid dreaming.
Take Notes Of Your Dream
By having a written record of our lucid dreams, we are encouraging our brain to focus more on them and even remember their tiny tiny details.
And according to several researchers, the act of recording our lucid dreams and being more focused on it conditions us to initiate this kind of dream in our future bedtimes.
But one thing that researchers want to highlight here is that this act alone is just a contributing factor and is intended as a complementary technique for other methods in initiating lucid dreams.
Take Notes Of Your Dream
By having a written record of our lucid dreams, we are encouraging our brain to focus more on them and even remember their tiny tiny details.
And according to several researchers, the act of recording our lucid dreams and being more focused on it conditions us to initiate this kind of dream in our future bedtimes.
But one thing that researchers want to highlight here is that this act alone is just a contributing factor and is intended as a complementary technique for other methods in initiating lucid dreams.
Test Your Reality
Relax. There’s no need to acquire the Reality Stone just to pull this off (any Avengers fan here?). What you only need are easy-to-do tasks to let yourself know that you are in a state of reality.
These simple tasks will enhance your mind and increase your chances of having a lucid dream in your upcoming sleep.
Here are some of the things you can try:
‘Inject’ Your Fingers Through Your Palm
If your fingers passed through your palm, it is a clear sign that you are dreaming.
Check Your Reflection In The Mirror
If you see that your reflection is not normal, yes, you guessed it right, you’re in the World of Dreams.
Take A Look At Your Tattoos
Just like your reflection, your tattoo would not appear normal in your dreams.
Pinch Your Nose
You are dreaming if you can still breathe while pinching your nose.
Read Some Books
It is clear that almost everything appears not so normal in the world of dreams, and that includes the texts from books.
Apply Induction Techniques
And now, we would like you to meet MILD, WILD, and WBTB
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD)
This technique requires you to wake every five hours and remind yourself several times that you will clearly remember the details of your next dream.
Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD)
This technique requires your mind to remain conscious when you enter into a sleeping state, and while it may sound impossible at first, a lot of people are successful in doing it. But of course, this technique requires lots of practice to make it a habit.
Wake Back To Bed (WBTB)
WBTB requires you to wake up after 4-5 hours of sleep. After waking up, you need to go off your bed and let yourself be occupied with something, preferably with reading. Be awake for up to 20 minutes (with better results if it lasts for an hour) while doing your chosen activity, then go back to bed and sleep again.
And while you slowly sink in sleep, visualize the dream you want to dream about, and it would be better if you could think of as many details as possible.
So, there you have it, a basic map to go through the different paths of lucid dreaming! And while the methods that we’ve mentioned are effective and helpful, you must still exercise extreme carefulness so your journey can be a smooth and safe one.
Happy (lucid) dreaming!
