Category Archives: General

About five years ago I found a pretty interesting and different interest – lucid dreaming. After watching Inception, my friends and I got onto the topic of lucid dreaming. After a pretty interesting discussion, they were quite interested in trying it out. I thought that while I could just send them a few links to various sources I used, it would be a lot more useful if I wrote up a summary for them as a bit of a beginners’ run down on the basics. Then I thought it would be a lot more useful if I put it on my blog so that others might also find use out of it. I’m also hoping that writing about it might get me back into it as well so I can start to do it again too! Also, if you haven’t seen Inception – you really need to… it was amazing.

What is lucid dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming.

What is the point of it?

If you can learn to identify when you are dreaming, you can learn to gain a greater sense of clarity and control in your dreams. Imagine a world where everything is completely under your control, you can do whatever you want with no limits and no worries about consequences in real life. You can fly, fight a tiger, eat your favourite foods while gaining no weight, relax on a beach in the sun, meet the girl/guy of your dreams (literally), live out your favourite movie/TV show/book, blow up a mountain using your thoughts, make it rain chocolate, travel back in time, float around space – you can do almost anything. Not only can you do anything but it will feel totally real. Sometimes emotions and senses can even be more vivid in a dream than in reality. It is an amazing experience.

It can help with nightmares (realise you’re in a dream, take control and there’s no nightmare anymore) and you can even use lucid dreams to practice something you’re not so good at (try public speaking, try mentally preparing yourself for a stressful moment by living it out first in your dreams).

How do I do it?
For people who don’t become lucid in their dreams naturally, it takes a lot of practice and focus. When I started lucid dreaming, it took me a few weeks before I finally had one. Even then, they were very short and took time to learn to control. After a few months I lost focus with it all and stopped having them altogether. It takes a lot of work but it’s worth it!

Start a dream journal – Write down and record details your dreams somewhere, get in the habit of remembering as many dreams as you can (what’s the point of lucid dreaming if you don’t remember it in the morning?).

Find yourself some dream signs – Look through your dream journal, are there any common themes? Do you find yourself in the same place in many dreams? Do you see the same person? A common object? These are good dream signs. Keep a record of these and start to focus on whenever these things appear in your life.

Learn to do reality checks – A reality check is something you can do to find out whether you are dreaming or not. Any time you see your dream sign or for any reason think you might be dreaming, you do this reality check. My favourites are:

• Holding your nose and trying to breathe – if you can still breathe through your nose, you’re dreaming!
• Look at technology – have a look at your computer, your phone, your alarm clock, are they working like they usually would? Technology often doesn’t work as it does in reality when you’re dreaming.
• Reread something – look at your alarm clock or a book, look away and then reread it. Has the time/text on the page changed? If so, you’re dreaming!

Stay focused – keep thinking about lucid dreaming, remember to do reality checks, keep reading about it and studying it – keep the idea of lucid dreaming in your mind.

Be prepared – when you do have a lucid dream, what do you plan to do? Have an idea in mind so you’re focused and ready to give it a go.

Learn to stabilise your dreams – it’s likely that in your first few dreams, you’ll be so excited or surprised when you find out you’re dreaming that you wake up. You’ve got to learn to stay in the dream and get things clearer. A few techniques for this are:

• Spin around – not sure how this works but it does! Spin around on the spot and the dream can get clearer. You can use this technique to go somewhere else as well.
• Rub your hands together – focus on the feeling of your hands rubbing together and you’ll be drawn back into the dream

There’s so much to learn and so much to say on this topic but I’ll leave it there for now to keep things simple! A few good sites to read if you are interested are:

• Dream Views – http://www.dreamviews.com/ (has a great forum)
• The Lucidity Institute – http://lucidity.com/ (great articles here!)
• Lucid Dreaming FAQ by the Lucidity Institute – http://lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html
• LD4all – http://www.ld4all.com/guide.html (not a huge fan of the site but it could be helpful)