How To Lucid Dream

• Knowledge Vault


• 15 Mar 2015

Develop the art of experiencing self-awareness while dreaming by learning how to lucid dream. Besides creating an enjoyable and exhilarating journey in dreams, conscious dreaming helps you understand more about yourself by exploring the realm of your subconscious mind.

Interestingly, all of us are likely to experience lucidity in dreams spontaneously, at some point or the other, especially during childhood.

Surely, it is a wonderful feeling that gives you a natural high when you know that you are in a dream and still continue witnessing it so vividly.

So, without further ado, let’s find out how to have lucid dreams.

• Motivation plays an important role in inducing lucidity. Therefore, it is essential to manage your thoughts and focus your efforts on developing this incredible skill. Remove all doubts and suspicions from your mind and assure yourself that you can lucid dream.
• Make your intent stronger by thinking about why you want to lucid dream and what you would like to do once you become conscious in a dream.It is suggested to plant ideas in your mind in an affirmative manner rather than plainly forcing them on yourself. Plus, study the various benefits of lucid dreaming to develop a positive approach and enthusiasm.
• Strengthen your dream recall by maintaining a dream diary and recording your dreams in it daily. The ability of remembering dreams will help you understand the nature and patterns of your dreams, thereby assisting you in observing familiar dream signs.Basically, these signs are weird objects, unusual locations, or absurd happenings that are impossible in reality. This, in turn, triggers the analytical part of your brain and makes you realize that you are in a dream.Here’s a video to help you understand how to lucid dream.
• Perform reality checks a number of times throughout the day to expand your consciousness and train it to make you aware of your state even while dreaming.You can start by asking yourself if you are dreaming and repeat this exercise several times in a day. Plus, conduct reality tests at intervals.Some such tests are:
  • Observing your surroundings and asking yourself logical questions is perhaps the most obvious reality check that you can incorporate in your routine.• Another easy test is self-observation. It involves looking at your hands, legs, clothes, etc. to determine if you are dreaming or awake.Your appearance would be somewhat different in dreams. For example, your hands may have additional fingers; lines on your palm may become blurred; clothes are likely to have changed altogether and so on.• Read and then reread any text or number that you can lay your hands on. You will find it to be fuzzy and hence, difficult to read. In case you do manage to read it, on rereading you will that the text has changed.• Light switches can also be used to determine whether you are dreaming or awake. In dreams, they will inevitably work differently.
• Meditation can prove useful in helping you learn how to lucid dream by enhancing your abilities and letting you gain control over your consciousness.
• Although reality checks in themselves help a great deal in developing self-awareness in dreams, you can combine this method with several other lucid dreaming techniques such as MILD, WILD, WBTB, visualization, etc.With practice and experience, you can come up with variations in these methods to make them more effective.
• It has been observed that lucid dreams are more common during morning naps, that is, when you get up about 1 or 1.5 hours prior to the regular waking time and then drift back to your sleep.
• You can also make use of binaural beats or other aids available in the market to assist you in lucid dreaming induction.
• Initially, try to incorporate simple actions such as flying in your dreams and then practice other dream adventures gradually.
• It is believed that having certain foods like, milk, cheese, orange juice, mustard, pickles or other similar spicy foods before going to bed increase the chances of experiencing lucid dreams.Moreover, vitamin B-complex tends to encourage vivid dreams. You can also try herbal teas, particularly mint tea and peppermint tea. Besides, nutmeg, honeysuckle, kava kava,valerian, marigold and anise facilitate lucidity and dream recall.
• Create a calm environment in your bedroom. You can also use the fragrance of essential oils to induce relaxed sleep. In addition, patience and persistence go a long way in ensuring success in this interesting venture.

Now that you know how to lucid dream, or how to induce lucidity in dreams, move on to explore how to stay lucid in a dream and how to control your dreams.