What are some techniques for lucid dreaming?

Years ago, I was sitting with my grandmother, just catching her up on my life. I don't know why or how, but somehow I thought to question the reason why she, one of my closest family members, had missed several major events in my life. And then I remembered: she'd died almost a decade earlier.

I briefly thought she was a ghost, but then realized that I was dreaming. It is awesome having absolute control over *everything*. Technically, "lucid dreaming" means that you're aware that you're dreaming."Dream control" (which can happen with or without being lucid) is just what it sounds like: having complete control of your dream.

I don't quite understand how one can happen without the other - every time that I've realized I was dreaming, I was immediately in power and could bend everything to my will. According to DreamPush, "You can find out what your dream signs are by looking through your dream journal entries to find recurring themes, events, objects, etc.One common event you might find is occasionally dreaming your teeth fall out. While it can be very frightening to experience this, you can use it as a dream sign to realize you are dreaming and gain lucidity.

" Basically, you just have to notice something isn't quite *right* and your mind will put it together. Every source online seems to agree that anyone can learn to become lucid while dreaming, they just have to be motivated and put in the effort. Several different sources claim that the ability to remember dreams is a predictor of how easily the person will learn dream control.

*** start quote from The Lucidity Institute *** Reality Testing. This is a good technique for beginners. Assign yourself several times a day to perform the following exercise.

Also do it anytime you think of it, especially when something odd occurs or when you are reminded of dreams.It helps to choose specific occasions like: when you see your face in the mirror, look at your watch, arrive at work or home, pick up your dream journal, etc. The more frequently and thoroughly you practice this technique, the better it will work. 1.Do a reality test. Carry some text with you or wear a digital watch throughout the day.

To do a reality test, read the words or the numbers on the watch. Then, look away and look back, observing the letters or numbers to see if they change. Try to make them change while watching them.

Research shows that text changes 75% of the time it is re-read once and changes 95% it is re-read twice. If the characters do change, or are not normal, or do not make sense, then you are most probably dreaming. Enjoy!

If the characters are normal, stable, and sensible, then you probably aren't dreaming. Go on to step 2. 2.

Imagine that your surroundings are a dream. If you are fairly certain you are awake (you can never be 100% sure! ), then say to yourself, "I may not be dreaming now, but if I were, what would it be like?

" Visualize as vividly as possible that you are dreaming. Intently imagine that what you are seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling is all a dream. Imagine instabilities in your environment, words changing, scenes transforming, perhaps you floating off the ground.

Create in yourself the feeling that you are in a dream. Holding that feeling, go on to step 3. 3.

Visualize yourself enjoying a dream activity. Decide on something you would like to do in your next lucid dream, perhaps flying, talking to particular dream characters, or just exploring the dream world. Continue to imagine that you are dreaming now, and visualize yourself enjoying your chosen activity.

*** end quote from The Lucidity Institute *** After my dream with my grandmother, I read the same advice from a different source and trained myself to think every time I go through a doorway, "How did I get here?" And every time I touch a living thing (tree, dog, person), "Am I really here? " It sounds like a lot of work to remember to do all the time, but it works surprisingly often - and it's absolutely been worth it.

As for my interesting experiences, interestingly, when I have absolute control and know that there won't be any consequences, I almost always end up dreaming the same thing - I call it the Imax Dream: zooming over the African veldt, through the Amazon jungles, underwater in some tropical reef, or even tooling around outer space.

Oh I love lucid dreaming! It's the best way to fly! One way to become aware in your dreams is to become aware of the moment you fall asleep.

Another interesting thing to do is to look at your hand in your dream as soon as you become aware you are dreaming.

Here are five different ways to have a lucid dream tonight. Some of these methods are more likely to occur than others. However, once you become experienced at lucid dreaming, you will learn to use all of them as helpful gateways in to your lucid dream-world.

Spontaneous Lucidity This is the most common kind of lucid dream in beginners. In fact, your first lucid dream was probably caused by spontaneously lucidity. This occurs when you suddenly realize "I'm dreaming!" for no apparent reason.

Or perhaps your dream became so strange that your conscious self awareness kicked in. Spontaneous lucidity relies mostly on luck. However, by increasing your self awareness during the day time you can train yourself to recognize the dream state better, and thereby learn how to become lucid in dreams with ease.

Through regular meditation and lucid dreaming, I have become a lot more self aware. This helps me recognize the dream state even when it is mimicking real life, because I can pick up on more subtler clues. Dream Characters The prevailing wisdom says that dream characters are part of your unconscious psyche (as opposed to conscious beings interacting with your dream).

So this method relies on your subconscious mind helping you out. Here's how it works. I set the intention to lucid dream by meditating before I go to sleep and firmly telling my subconscious "I will lucid dream tonight.

" I wake up around 5am (naturally, or with an alarm clock) and repeat my intention. For the next 2-3 hours I'll have long periods of REM sleep with vivid dreams. This is when I'm most likely to lucid dream, and if I'm lucky, a dream character will tell me so.

For instance, once a psychology professor came up to me in a dream and said "let's try some lucid dreaming now. " It worked! The professor triggered my conscious self awareness into action and my dream became lucid.

Dream Themes This is similar to the concept described above. Simply do some lucid dream incubation before you go to sleep (meaning, tell your subconscious that you want to recognize the next time you are dreaming). Then go to sleep thinking about what you might do inside your next lucid dream.

When a dream event triggers you, it's usually because you are dreaming about lucid dreaming! (Note: this isn't foolproof. I've dreamed of giving a lecture on dream control and still remained unconscious the whole time.

) Recently though, I dreamed of being in a movie theatre and as the opening credits rolled up, I saw a string of incomprehensible letters. Then something clicked - the letters were an anagram of "LUCID" with a few random letters thrown in. BAM!

You may not have this kind of self awareness in dreams yet, but as you improve your dream recall and have more conscious dream experiences, you'll find this is a neat way to become lucid in dreams. Reality Checks This technique is great for a first lucid dream. Doing reality checks programs self awareness into your regular dreams, thereby creating spontaneous lucidity.

A reality check is simply trying to do something impossible in the real world - like pushing your hand through the wall. Making this a force of habit will create reality checks in dreams, giving you the opportunity to recognize the dream state. Wake Induced Lucid Dreams In my view, the more you practice meditation and self awareness skills, the easier it is to have Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (WILDs).

This is unlikely to produce your very first lucid dream because, unlike any of the above techniques, WILDs occur when you walk your brain from a waking state directly into a dream state. While difficult to achieve at first, this kind of lucid dream is the most vivid. Source: http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/become-lucid-in-dreams.html.

In lucid dreaming we have dreams where we become aware that we are dreaming, and then gain an element of lucid control within the dream. Relaxation, meditation and visualization are all excellent tools to master lucid dreaming, but it's not always possible to have lucid dreams on demand. It takes training and patience.

Source: dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/lucid....

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