Ethan

Before learning how to lucid dream, there are a few things people want to know:

• What is a Lucid Dream?
• What are the Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?
• What are the Dangers of Lucid Dreaming?

What is a Lucid Dream?

Lucid dreaming happens can become aware that you are dreaming while asleep, and increase this awareness into control.

A lucid dream can be interpreted as a gateway to communicate with your own subconscious mind. It will allow you to gain valuable insights into your deepest fears, desires, as well as problems.

10 Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

1. Learning to Manage Your Thoughts

Perhaps the most significant benefit offered by lucid dreams is a fact that they help us to control our thinking process. To lucid dream you literally train your mind to dream as you want. Meditation becomes your friend and will guide you to unlocking your mind. You learn to paint your dream scene and to direct it how you want.

2. Enhances Practical Skills

It has been shown by studies that lucid dreams can help to improve your practical expertise significantly. This implies any sort of activity including playing any musical instrument or even playing sports. By controlling one’s dreams, one will be able to practice virtually any sort of skill and also start seeing remarkable results within a short span of time.

3. Reduce or Eliminate Anxiety

Lucid dreams will likewise help us to get rid of stressful situations and tense moments without much problem at all. All individuals suffer some sort of anxieties in their daily lives because of the hectic lifestyle that is being led by them. You will not be an exception to this and lucid dreams will help to minimize your stress in any particular nerve-wracking situation including public speaking.

4. Helps to Conquer our Fears

Another notable benefit offered by lucid dreams is the fact that you will be able to get rid of your fears that might be affecting your waking life out there. Your subconscious mind might like to help you and make an attempt to play out any fear drama while you are sleeping; however, in case you are not present there to witness them, it will be extremely hard for you to experience any benefit.

While having a lucid dream, you will have the opportunity of experiencing and also processing those fears which your mind might attempt to get rid of. Many individuals have succeeded in alleviating their fears and stressful situations while experiencing a lucid dream.

5. Remembering or Reuniting With Loved Ones

It might be the fact that you have lost any friend or relative during the last few years. Lucid dreaming may help you to reunite with that person or persons once again. Obviously there are no guarantees, but some claim to relive memories and have new experiences with those who have passed on.

6. Enhance Your Problem Solving Skills

When it comes to solving problems, try to imagine solving any complicated equation while you’re sleeping. It does happen. In fact, numerous discoveries have taken place while individuals were sleeping because of the fact that our brain has the ability to work out some breathtaking stuff while we are taking a nap. 

7. Enhances Your Motor Skills

Lucid dreaming will also help to enhance our physical rehabilitation to a great extent. As a matter of fact, individuals suffering from physical impairments might practice their motor skills while having lucid dreams. However, it has also been revealed that individuals without any sort of physical disability can likewise use lucid dreaming for improving their motor skills significantly.

8. Enhance Your Sleep

Lucid dreaming will help to bring more awareness to your slumber and will provide you with a more restful sleep for a considerable period of time. A person has to become aware of their own sleeping patterns and the importance of sleep to truly take advantage of all that lucid dreaming has to offer.

You will be able to relax effectively in any situation when relaxing and maintaining consciousness is possible simultaneously. This is what lucid dreaming is concerned about in a nutshell. In fact, individuals who are known to practice lucid dreaming usually discover that they are able to interact with their slumber in a better way than before.

9. Improves Your Self-Confidence

Lucid dreams will help to solve your problems and become self-assured in your practical life. It will help us to concentrate much better and will also reinforce our memory significantly. Apart from this, it will help us to improve our ability to adapt as well. Lucid dreams will help us to sleep much better, as mentioned before, and thus we will be full of energy so as to become productive in our practical life. It will also help to enhance our confidence to a great extent and we will be able to accomplish our objectives with greater ease. 

10. Allows us to do anything while dreaming

In our daily lives, we all have different types of desires and aspirations. While lucid dreaming, it will be possible for any individual to satisfy these desires such that there is no need to obsess over them. You might experience anything that your deepest fantasy might be talking regarding discovering something like Einstein, having a picnic in the middle of the ocean, and so on. One can fly, go to any particular time in the past, or even interact with any version of his personal waking world where he has full control of the surroundings. You can easily fulfill all those desires in your dreams and lucid dreaming will enable you to do just that.

Conclusion:

These are some of the most significant advantages offered by lucid dreams to any person.

The benefits of lucid dream can be breathtaking and it can affect everything in the life of any particular individual. In one particular study, it has been revealed that approximately 20% of the individuals have this kind of dream once every month. Interestingly, lucid dreams have lots of benefits when it comes to our health.

In a nutshell, self improvement is the focus and goal of learning to lucid dream.

Risks and Dangers of Lucid Dreaming

The dangers of lucid dreaming are few in number and none are really that serious. There are many who question if lucid dreaming is even real.

It is real and not dangerous, especially for the mentally stable, but it has its risks that you should know about.

Sleep Paralysis

What happens when you fall asleep is that the mind temporarily renders you paralyzed. This is so that you can’t act on the perceptions coming to you.

Pretty much everyone experiences sleep paralysis; it’s just that you don’t know about it because your consciousness is gone.

For the lucid dreamer, however, they may have a heightened state of awareness in this state of temporary paralysis. However, they too may not be able to do anything about it since they are asleep.

Sleep paralysis can be frightening, as the sleeper attempts to move but they can’t.

It can lead to panic attacks and mild hallucinations. Experts, however, say this is not something to be alarmed about as there are ways you can get out of this state and that it doesn’t last long.

It Can Affect Your Quality of Sleep

Attempting to control the narrative of one’s dreams can require great focus and effort, and can be draining.

As it is closely connected with sleep paralysis, you may experience this with interrupted sleep.

It is important if you are learning how to lucid dream that you make sure you are getting the proper amount of rest.

As one gets more comfortable with

You Can Confuse Dreaming and Reality

Experts warn that if you have certain mental health conditions, you should not pursue lucid dreaming.

For people with schizophrenia, for example, lucid dreaming exacerbates the condition where one fails to distinguish between imagined and real-life events.

It makes everything realistic; even one’s fears.

While lucid dreaming is pursued its VR-like effects where one can explore desires: happiness, sex, and more, the opposite happens too such that fears, sadness, and pain are possible.

Therefore, the thing making lucid dreaming magical is also its pitfall, negative feelings are possible. However, don’t worry, death won’t get you in there.

Lucid dreaming is some form of escapism into some virtual reality to explore one’s desires while asleep, but it can force one to lose touch with reality too.

Things can get addictive once you start taking on those superpowers and controlling the things you have no power over in reality.

Lucid dreaming can also get addictive making you do it all the time to escape reality. Experts, however, say the lucid dreaming addiction can be stopped easily.

Dream Claustrophobia

On the heels of sleep paralysis, dream claustrophobia is getting lucid in a dream scenario you can’t control. Getting stuck in a nightmare, you are aware of but cannot awaken from or manipulate the worst fate lucid dreaming can condemn you too.

However, like sleep paralysis, dream claustrophobia won’t last the whole night, and it’s also not that different from the normal dreaming that other people do.

How Avoid or Stop Lucid Dreams

If you find yourself in a lucid dream, the best thing is to avoid freaking out as things can get messy via sleep paralysis and night terrors.

You can prevent Lucid dreams by:

• Trying to fall asleep in your dream

To fall back to sleep in your dream involves taking away your mind from the narrative and focussing on other things. You could, for example, think of your daily chores so that you get bored. You may then lose the sense of self-awareness in your sleep and drift back to the unconscious state.

• Sleeping on Your Side

Lucid dreams happen mostly when you sleep on your back because you’re most likely to fall experience sleep paralysis and out-of-body experiences. Sleeping on your side minimizes the chances of such phenomena.

• Have a Regular Sleep Pattern

Getting a decent night’s sleep will help you forget lucid dreaming episodes. As they get out of your mind, the phenomena will wear down as your body clock adjusts to your sleeping pattern. Develop a regular sleep pattern and stick to it.

• Avoiding Recording or Recanting Your Dream

Going through the dream you had last night increases the chances of you getting into vivid dreams. Help your body clock adjust by forgetting about your dreams and focusing on a regular sleeping pattern.

• Avoid Alcohol and Caffeinated Drinks, Especially Before Bed

In the heels of getting a decent night’s sleep is avoiding drinks that tend to mess up with the regular sleeping pattern.

Coffee and alcohol may cause you to wake up frequently in the night, and you may start awaking in your dreams too; avoid such arousals around bedtime.

In Conclusion

While lucid dreaming seems magical, and without dangers, lucid dreaming does possesses certain risks.

Overall, there is not much to worry about when you considering learning an art like lucid dreaming.

Showing that people believe lucid dreaming is real, is not that difficult. But some will not ever believe until they experience it for themselves.

The lucid dreaming phenomenon occurs naturally during REM sleep, but some people are able to train themselves to experience it in a higher degree.

Certain people experience this kind of an awakening or awareness when they’re asleep and dreaming.

Is Lucid Dreaming Real?

The truth is that many people just become skeptics of what they don’t understand.

As far as we can tell, lucid dreaming is a concept that has been around for centuries now.

It was first featured in the essays, On Dreams by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in which he describes a state of sleep in which one becomes self-aware and starts taking over the narrative of his/her dream to control its content.

There are many fan-favorite lucid dreaming movies, such as Inception, where feats that seem impossible in real life are embellished. In the movie, the characters can not only control their dreams, but they can enter other people’s dreams and manipulate them too.

At first glance, lucid dreaming can be misunderstood and even considered to be scary. See, dreams are able to bring our greatest fears into a virtual world designed in our brains while sleeping.

The scary part is, you won’t even realize it’s not real. This coupled with the lack of control you have over your environment and body makes it a terrifying place to be in.

But what if we told you that there was a way you could change all this; a way to tilt the odds in your favor and have full control over everything in your dream.

Today we are going to change your perception and prove to you that it is without a doubt a real thing.

Scientific Proofs of Lucid Dreaming

So we’re going to jump straight to the point and give you the much sought after evidence. The following are some of the scientific research done over the years that show just how real lucid dreaming is.

Dr. Keith Hearne’s experiment

This experiment, done in the year 1975, was the first proof of lucid dreaming and marked the beginning of several other scientific studies which would be done in the future.

Dr. Keith Hearne made this groundbreaking discovery while experimenting on a lucid dreamer (Alan Worsley) in the sleep laboratory situated in Hull University.

At this time, lucid dreaming could not be verified because there was no way one could tell the time at which it was occurring during the dream.

Dr. Keith came up with a way in which the lucid dreamer could signal to him when in a lucid dream. He asked the subject, Alan Worsley, to make around 8 left and right eye movements when the lucid dream began.

To his surprise, the subject did exactly that at 8 am in the morning. The sequences of eye movements could be seen on the Electro-oculograph through a series of long zig-zag movements.

See, whereas the rest of the body is paralyzed during sleep, the eyes are not and therefore can be used to indicate a state of consciousness. Biologically, it is during the rapid eye movement stage of sleep that humans dream.

In the year, 2006 we also had an experiment done to prove the concept of lucid dreaming. In this experiment carried out by a German researcher earphones were used to send certain tones to the dreamers.

Although asleep, the lucid dreamers could hear these tones in their dreams and responded through eye movements which could be seen by the researchers who were awake.

Munich’s Max Planck Institute of psychiatry experiment

Dr. Keith’s experiment may seem old and outdated but fast forward to 2012, and the conclusion still holds.

This recent experiment employs a more advanced piece of equipment known as the FMRI brain scanner to further support Keith’s research.

These scanners are usually used to measure the speed at which blood flows to the different brain areas thereby conveying information about what one is thinking and doing through an image sequence.

In the experiment, the subjects were asked to clench and unclench their fists while awake. As they did this, the researchers used the FMRI scanner to spot which parts of the brain showed any signs of activity.

Some vital parts of the brain lit during the experiment which was an indicator of neural activity.

Soon after, the subjects were asked to sleep and dream about clenching and unclenching their fists.

Remarkably, the same spots which showed neural activity in the brain while they were awake did so again while they were asleep. This objectively proves that lucid dreaming is indeed real.

Lucid dreaming research on the Brazilian population

Numerous studies on dreams and lucid dreaming have been conducted on the Asian, North American and European population but limited studies have been done in South America.

Brazil being by far the most populated country in South America was the best place to carry out the experiment.

An online survey was done on 3427 people in the country. The median age was 25 years. The results showed that at least 77% of the people in the study have had a lucid dream.

This is a large number to ignore and therefore further supports the reality of lucid dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming Benefits

Experts have hailed lucid dreaming for therapeutic applications in:

• Dealing with recurring nightmares so that they may not affect the quality of one’s life. The lucid dreamer can decide to get out of the dream or take on some superpowers and confront the attacker. It is believed that lucid dreaming can help with treating ptsd nightmares.
• Creating pleasant experiences – kind of a virtual reality where the dreamer can explore whatever they desire.
• Resolving fears and exploring one’s inner self.

According to Dr. Denholm Aspy, a specialist in lucid dreaming from the University of Adelaide, the most important benefit of lucid dreaming is the ability to control nightmares and mainly the frequent ones. This can be very essential to a person’s life.

Nightmares normally make us undergo an unnerving experience that leaves us terrified even while going on with our daily lives.

Lucid dreaming can help solve this by giving you exclusive control over your environment. You can simply snap your fingers and turn an evil clown into a bouquet of roses.

Some people boast that you can re-unite with your loved ones, while others practice some of the real daily skills like playing the guitar and best of all have fun.

Lucid dreaming makes you a God in your dream and eliminates any fear you might have while dreaming because you know that nothing can hurt you. This trickles down to your everyday life because you wake up a fearless and happy person.

The Dangers of Lucid Dreaming

There benefits of lucid dreaming definitely outweigh the minor dangers it There isn’t a lot to worry about when it comes to the risks or side effects of lucid dreaming.

Dangers of lucid dreaming may include:

• Sleep Paralysis – This can be a scary experience, but not really a big deal. If you learn more about sleep paralysis you can actually learn how to turn it into a lucid dream.
• Confusion– Sometime you can confuse reality with the dreams, because they can seem so real. You can wake up with some confusion, but that happens with normal dreaming as well.
• Less Quality Sleep–  The main thing to pay attention to is that you are getting the proper amount of sleep.

How to Induce Lucid Dreaming?

If lucid dreaming is real, the next step is to learn how to do it.

Some can simply induce a lucid dream at anytime they want. Others do it while half-asleep, while others can simply wake themselves up on realization that they are in a dream.

As mentioned earlier, you dream during the Rapid eye movement stage (REM) and this is also when lucid dreams happen. The experience varies in most people and each person has a different degree of influence over it.

All these shows that you are aware that the environment you are in is not real and hence a lucid dream.

People can generally induce lucid dreams through some specific triggers that help you realize you are in a dream.

Some things that can help induce lucid dreaming are:

• Music – Binaural beats
• Sleep Masks 
• Health supplements
• A dream journal
• Meditation

Conclusion

More and more research is being carried out on the subject matter and many people are seeking this incredible power and control over their dreams.

With the right stimuli and mindset, you too could be able to alter your dream into a virtual heaven every time you go to sleep.

The best way to find out if lucid dreaming is real is to start learning how to lucid dream for yourself.

It takes less than an hour to prepare to have a lucid dream tonight, so why not give it a try.

Lucid dreaming is when you become so self-aware during your dream that you know you are, in fact, dreaming. As well as this, some dreamers can go on to have an element of control over what happens in their dream.

From its name, you would think lucid dreaming refers only to dreams that feel particularly realistic or that you remember clearly.

While this is true, in part, there is far more to the notion of lucid dreaming, which is becoming increasingly popular among all age groups.

This consciousness while dreaming creates heightened perceptions and sometimes stronger emotional feelings during the dream. It has been mentioned in history, as far back as Aristotle, and is a feature of some Hollywood blockbuster movies today.

While some people often claim to remember their dreams, it would seem lucid dreaming happens by chance; however, there are some steps you can take to increase your chances of having lucid dreams more regularly.

There is proof that lucid dreaming is real and if we can learn to control our dreams, we might be able to avoid nightmares as well as more fully enjoy living daydreams.

STEP 1: Prepare Your Mind

The first thing you need to do is envision and believe you can have a lucid dream tonight.

You need to put into your mind the idea that you are going to dream and be aware of doing it.

You can’t just lucid dream anywhere, even if you have an extremely powerful mind. Meditation and visualization can take you out of your current environment, but to have the best chance of a lucid dream you need to arrange your bedroom to help you.

Total relaxation is vital, therefore it is best to either sleep alone or make sure your mattress is designed so that excessive movement on your partner’s side will not affect you.

Lucid Dreaming Preparation Tips:

• Write down any pressing worries down on paper or in a journal
• Take a shower or bath- getting clean and feeling fresh can help
• Prepare your room – make sure it is a clean and comfortable environment
• Get rid of distractions – silence phones, turn off things that may interrupt
• Uses binaural beats – relaxation music designed to relax and enhance the mind
• Take a natural sleeping or lucid dreaming supplement like melatonin.
• Kindly ask roommates or family members to help by reducing noise.

When you are ready, start by laying in a comfortable position in which you won’t have to adjust often.

TIP: Laying on your back seems to be the best position, if possible.

Throughout the following steps the whole goal is to keep your mind focused even as your body is falling asleep.

STEP 2: Use Mantras and Meditation

Linked to the use of mantras, using meditation techniques is a helpful way to help your body achieve a state of relaxation similar to sleep while awake. This will help link the boundaries between your conscious and unconscious mind.

Practice breathing techniques and visualization to make sure your body is fully relaxed and your inner eye is given freedom to explore.

A mantra is a words or sounds repeated to help concentration or meditation. Some experts recommend using a mantra just before you go to sleep to will your mind into being aware during your dreams.

For example, you could try repeating to yourself: “I will be aware in my dream tonight”, or “I am going to have a lucid dream”. Preparing your unconscious mind to interact with your reality can help you to engage more fully in your dreams.

You could also try counting down from 100 or 50, but while inserting the mantra after each number.

For example, “100, I am going to have a lucid dream, 99, I am going to have a lucid dream”.

You can do this until you fall asleep. Just remember to do it calmly and try not to force it. Believe in it and take it slow.

While in this meditative state you can be painting and focusing on a dream you want to have.

Mindfulness meditation is a bit different from regular meditation because the objective is to become the observer. You’ll want to lay or sit in a comfortable place, close your eyes, and breathe slowly.

Make sure that your focus is directed towards your deep breathing. It is okay if a thought naturally enters your mind. Acknowledge it, but do not interact with it.

Then, refocus back to your breathing. By doing this as a practice, you will eventually find that you can think more clearly and rationally. Dreams will be less chaotic, drama filled, and easier to control.

You don’t want to ignore or avoid any thoughts that come up during meditation because it creates greater resistance.

STEP 3: Practice Reality Testing

Experts suggest that we need to build in regular reality tests throughout our day in the hope that we may reenact these reality tests while we dream. This will help us become aware of when we are actually dreaming.

The old fashioned “pinch yourself” technique might work for some, although you might want to avoid anything that could wake you up.

Instead, think about trying to read something, like words in a book or on a poster, in your dream. In real life, you will be able to read normally, but in your dream, the letters and words could be jumbled up.

Other tests could be as extreme as trying to fly or trying to pass your hand through something solid, even another part of your body.

Make sure you practice these reality tests throughout the day, about once an hour or so. This way, it will become second nature for you to try them out while you are dreaming and suddenly become self-aware during your dream.

Throughout the following steps the whole goal is to keep your mind focused even as your body is falling asleep.

STEP 4: Learn to Recognize Your Hypnagogia

This is a crazy word, I know, but this can be the most critical part of learning to lucid dream.

When you are falling asleep you should pay attention to your hypnagogia.

Hypnagogia is some sensation or hallucination that may occur close to the time of falling asleep.

This can be a visual color pattern, an audible calm buzz, or just a dreamy sensation.

It can be hard to describe, but it can be helpful to identify and learn your own. Take notes of what you feel before sleep as well in your dream journal.

Hypnagogia can appear in a swirling patterns you see before your eyes with your eyes closed, often just before you fall asleep. Sometimes, these twisting colors can be almost fluorescent.

Combining approaches will be really helpful here. Think about your breathing to keep yourself relaxed, and a mantra can also be useful.

As you watch your hypnagogia, begin to try to control the patterns.

Darkness is also important. Blackout blinds can be very effective, or you could use a comfortable eye-patch to keep out any potential unwanted light.

Think about merging a visualization into the patterns, either within the patterns themselves or beyond the patterns using your inner eye.

If you do this just before you fall asleep, you might begin to have some control over your dream or even begin to dream about the scene you have created.

It can feel quite easy to fall asleep at this stage, but that might not result in a lucid dream.

You need to keep your consciousness immersed in this state of near-sleep so fight hard to stay awake while giving your full concentration to the images in your hypnagogia.

Keep breathing gently. Try to begin to awaken the other senses – sometimes, the hypnagogia can trigger sounds as well as visual patterns.

STEP 5: Lucid Dreaming Techniques – Wake Back To Bed

“Waking Back to Bed” means waking yourself up in the middle of the night. The intention is not to get up, but simply to wake up and go back to sleep to alter your sleep cycle and give you a better chance of experiencing lucid dreams.

As your mind drifts in that semi-conscious state between sleep and wakefulness, the boundaries between sleep and reality become blurred and you have a stronger chance of being fully conscious in your dream.

You want your body to stay relaxed and in its sleeping position, if possible. It is best to learn to wake up with your eyes still closed, and to keep them closed.  Stay awake for a few minutes, and you have a higher chance of going straight into REM sleep and straight into a lucid dream.

Set an alarm to wake yourself up somewhere between 4-6 hours from when you plan to fall asleep.

You can name your alarm something like “Lucid Dream” to remember why you set it.

When you wake up you have a couple different options:

Scenario #1:

If are wide awake or need to use the restroom then it is probably best to get up for a bit. While you are up for a bit, remember to use the mantra and to focus on lucid dreaming.

It is good to stay up for about a half hour but try not to exert too much energy. Stay calm and think about what you want to dream about.

You can then go back to bed and repeat the mantra and/or counting techniques just as before.

Scenario #2:

If when you woke up you were still sleepy, try not to move too much. Just shut off the alarm and go straight into the mantra and counting techniques.

Meanwhile picture what you want to dream about and start forming the scene in your mind.

TIP: Many people believe in focusing on the third eye, or the space between your eyes on your forehead. This can be a great focus point for meditation.

STEP 6 – Stay in the Dream

The main goal of having a lucid dream relies heavily on the fact that you must first have a dream. All the preparation, relaxation, and meditation is designed to help you enter a deeper sleep in which you can have dreams.

Some people claim they never dream, but it is most likely that they simply don’t remember their dreams when they wake up. If you go through the normal cycles of sleep each night, it is impossible to avoid having at least some REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), which is when dreams occur.

The hard part that takes the most work is learning to become aware in your dream and being able to continue in that dream. Think about your mindset, and your desire to stay in the dream. Most people wake up a short time after realizing they are in a dream.

STEP 7 – Reflect in Your Dream Journal

Simply telling someone about your dream as soon as you wake up is enough to begin to etch it into your memory so that your dreams start to become a normal part of your life.

When you write down what you remember of your dreams, you find you begin to recall more and more each time. Very soon, you will be able to recall a number of dreams from the same night.

Think carefully and give yourself time to focus on small details, especially the senses. Try to remember specific sounds, smells and even what you could taste from the dream.

Take notes of what happened in your dreams and what degree of control you had in it. How long did it take you to become aware that you were dreaming? What do you think you could do better next time?

It is best to start with these steps first and then worry about improving your lucidity later.

This is all about just developing your own habits and techniques first.

Some people can naturally lucid dream on a small scale. For most becoming lucid when you are dreaming, however, is still like a muscle that needs to be exercised to maintain or grow.

Tips for better lucid dreaming:

• Try different lucid dreaming supplements – supplements can work a little differently for each person.
• Keep track of your sleep patterns and the amount of sleep you are getting. Using a Fitbit or some other tracker can help you learn your sleep cycles and help make sure you are getting enough sleep as well.
• Learn more about sleep paralysis, which is the closely related to lucid dreaming
• Read more and study more about lucid dreaming. Have fun learning about it too.
• Invite a friend to try lucid dreaming with you! You can share experiences and learn from each other along the way.