(ORDO NEWS) — Controlling dreams means waking up when you are sleeping. In such a state, when the body is asleep, and the brain uses the resources hidden in the subconscious, you can visit anywhere in the world, learn a foreign language, clarify relationships with a colleague or loved one, materialize your plans, draw a path to achieve a goal or lose weight. You create a controlled dream, take all the events in it under your control and take everything you want out of it into your life.
Lucid dream is not fiction
Frederik Willem van Eeden, a writer and psychiatrist originally from Holland, is the originator of the term “lucid dreaming”. Nevertheless, for the first time in practice, Stephen LaBerge, an American psychophysiologist, was able to call him. He equated lucid dreaming with one of the options for an altered state of consciousness.
Fact. According to scientists, a person who has mastered the state of lucid (controlled) dreaming to perfection is able to draw more resources of his own mind than others.
Being in this state, a person manifests previously hidden abilities:
- He can give answers to questions that he would never have answered in a conscious state.
- Discover new facets of talent and creativity.
- Astral travel to the past or the future.
- Heal the body with the resources of the mind.
Being in a state of lucid dreaming, a person can influence what he dreams about. He can voluntarily view variations in the development of events, consciously influencing what is happening. For example, you can choose an interlocutor and find out his reaction to this or that news, influence the development of events that torment you in reality and choose the most effective way to solve current problems. With the help of a controlled dream, a person is able to overcome his fears, gain self-confidence, believe in his own strengths and take a decisive step towards the future.
What does it take to induce a lucid dream?
Not every person manages to immediately fall into the desired state. And the point is not so much that this requires practice, but the need to learn how to properly distribute the internal energy that everyone has. People themselves do not think about how they spend their own internal resources. Excessive fuss, anxiety and unrest frantically devour the energy of a person, make the brain work more than necessary. This is where the so-called internal talkativeness appears, when a person unconsciously conducts dialogues with himself that do not carry any semantic load in themselves, but take a lot of strength.
Can you do it the first time? To immerse yourself in this state, you need to train hard and long, hone your skills and a sense of self-control. It is quite difficult to do this the first time, however, with some effort, anyone can do it.
How to induce a lucid dream: a guide for beginners.
To enter the state of lucid sleep, a person needs to learn the so-called “mental silence”. With its help, you can release the excess energy of the mind and redirect it in the right direction, that is, with its help, enter the state of a lucid dream.
To summarize all the conditions for entering the state of lucid dreaming, you will need:
- Relentless intent.
- Concentration on this desire.
- Entering a state of mental silence.
It is necessary to strictly observe each of these conditions, since there is a subtle relationship between them.
Mental silence is needed to release internal energy, which a person must direct to his own desire and intention to have a lucid dream. The more often internal talkativeness is manifested in a person, the less strength he will have to call the desired state. Scattered attention and poor perception of surrounding information, due to internal talkativeness, will not let you see what you want.
It is also necessary to set up internal energy in a positive way, since in a depressed state it is extremely difficult to achieve mental silence and a firm intention to enter a lucid dream.
If you still need to get into a lucid dream, but at the same time you are tormented by internal disagreements, there is a way to do this. Using the skill of mapping dreams and thus strengthening your dream memory, you can enter the inner dream, but it is better to try to achieve harmony in the inner world.
Preparation for practice
Before moving on to practical exercises, you need to strengthen yourself and your mind. To do this, there are several useful tricks that make it much easier to enter this state:
- Increase the time you spend sleeping. This is useful not only for entering a lucid dream, but also helps to improve the general condition of your body and find inner harmony. Often this trick is used by those who like to sleep a lot and for a long time. Practitioners recommend falling asleep no later than eleven in the evening and waking up at about nine in the morning. This duration of rest is more than enough to enter the desired state.
- Adjust your mind. One and a half to two hours before going to bed, help yourself plunge into a state of inner harmony, while doing everyday things. Imagine that you have already managed to enter a lucid dream, give free rein to your imagination and let your subconscious mind tune in the right way.
- Motivate yourself. Without proper motivation, diving into the right state can be difficult. Give yourself answers to the questions – why do you need to learn this technique? What answers do you want? What facets of your personality do you want to know? By answering these questions to yourself, you can easily find the motivation to enter the state of lucid dream.
- Practice remembering your own dreams. Without proper practice, it will be difficult to immerse yourself in the desired state. Before you dive completely into this technique, you can prepare yourself and your mind for a lucid dream. Try to fully remember your own dreams, and not the fragments left in your memory, which disappear without a trace a few minutes after waking up. Those who regularly practice this state can easily recall every detail of their dreams. They remember all the events that happened to them, and have a complete dream memory, the existence of which many people do not even know.
Many people who experience the state of controlled sleep for the first time soon stop training and practicing this technique, which makes it even more difficult to repeat such an experience later. If you decide to learn this technique, you need to practice constantly and not miss the opportunity to know yourself better.
First time direct entry method
How to make a lucid dream the first time?
To be sure that you will be able to fall into a lucid dream state, you need to take the following steps:
- Wake up in the middle of the night. Try to lie in an uncomfortable position – this should prevent you from falling asleep immediately, and you can take the remaining steps to enter a lucid dream.
- Stop your mental speech. When you talk a lot in your mind, you waste your inner resources. You need to redirect this energy in the direction you need in order to immerse yourself in the state of lucid dreaming. As a rule, if you stop your internal talkativeness, then the released resources will be quite enough to plunge into a controlled sleep.
- Start focusing on your intention. Try to avoid any thoughts that will only interfere with you. Fall asleep with the firm intention of getting there.
Although there are many ways to get into a lucid dream, the above algorithms are the most effective, whose effectiveness has been confirmed by many practitioners. However, if you don’t succeed right away, don’t fret. You can try other ways to master this technique, presented below.
In addition to directly entering a lucid dream, there are also techniques for indirect lucid dreaming that are even more effective than direct entry. Using the technique of indirect entry, you can dive even the first time, because in this case the training is already in the phase state, when a person is on the verge between sleep and reality right before waking up.
Theory and practice of inducing lucid dreaming
Controlled dreams are very rare for people, but everyone can get into them on their own. It should be understood that the first time it may not work. It will take practice to enter the desired state, but it is advisable to study the theory before embarking on it.
When REM sleep sets in, the human brain begins to study and analyze what it sees. Consciousness perceives time and space. Only in this phase can a person remember a dream, although he sees them in the other four.
Lucid dreams can be explained scientifically, but esotericism interprets them differently. Sleep is a state when the mind can go to another dimension. In this state, a person is able to begin communication with another world and exchange information.
Whatever the interpretation, without preparation, entering the state of a lucid dream will not work.
Before going to bed you are required to:
- Don’t drink a lot of liquid. This can lead to frequent urges to the toilet, which will prevent you from getting the desired result.
- Keep a notepad with a pen by your bed. When you wake up, immediately write down what you remember. This will allow you to analyze your feelings and behavior. In the future, the information received will make it possible to correct their actions.
- Sincere desire to achieve the goal. Believe in success.
It is very important to consider that a person who experiences severe fatigue will not be able to plunge into a lucid dream. In this case, it is better to go to bed earlier and wake up at about four in the morning. After that, try to fall asleep again and begin to control your actions.
Sleeping technique
Read these guidelines carefully before entering a lucid dream:
- For the first sleep you need six hours, no more. You will have to wake up the body with the help of an alarm clock.
- In order for the brain to finally wake up, walk around the house, drink water, read the news while lying on your back.
- Lie on your back, try to relax, close your eyes. A person falls asleep in a few seconds, it is important not to miss this moment. Control the brain so that it does not “turn off”.
- If you think you are still awake, check your reflection in the mirror. If you are in a lucid dream, then it will be different from the real one.
When the first attempt to take control of consciousness did not work and you fell asleep soundly, try again in a few hours. You can make attempts not only at night, but also during the day, when the person’s condition is not tired.
Controlled Dream Technique
The technique of sleep is that in illogical events a person learns to understand himself, control his actions and influence behavior. If you can figure out how to become aware of a dream, then you will learn many useful skills.
For example:
- be able to express your emotions without harming the people around you;
- you will begin to completely relax in a dream, as you will be able to visit anywhere in the world or just fly in the sky;
- there is a claim that, having learned to control sleep, people discover supernatural skills in themselves.
One of the main goals of controlled sleep is to teach a person to doubt the real. Sometimes you need to ask yourself the question “Am I in a dream?” and look for a positive response to it. You can answer the question by looking at the object several times, the second picture should be different from the first. This action must be done in order to distinguish a dream from reality. Perhaps this situation is a little scary, but you will quickly get used to this issue.
How to get into a lucid dream
When a person becomes lucid in dreams, it usually takes him several days or weeks of regular sleep training. It is difficult to get into a lucid dream from a normal one, the easiest way is to prepare for this in advance, when the brain is actively working. Successful experience contributes to:
- complete relaxation;
- even breathing;
- rested body;
- silence and darkness.
For beginners, it is best to start practicing in the morning.
The simplest tips you need to know:
- Make sure your vacation is regularly good.
- Do not drink alcoholic beverages on the days you intend to have lucid dreams. Such drinks knock down the phases of dreams, and the chances of working out the desired program will be reduced to a minimum.
- Learn to restore what you saw while relaxing. When you wake up, remember the details, even if there is a desire to fall asleep again. There must always be a will to learn.
- Read the literature on such practices. The more practice, the faster you will achieve your goal.
- Be patient and persistent.
Planning and intention
In order for the experiment of mind control to work out, it is necessary to prepare for it in advance. The main key to success is the absence of fatigue. If you are physically or mentally tired, you should not start the experience. It is important that at this moment you are not under the influence of alcohol or other substances that distort consciousness.
Complete relaxation helps to tune in the right way. If you practice meditation, do it. Deep measured breathing works well. Make sure that you are not distracted by unnecessary sounds or lights.
The experiment will not succeed if thoughts are confused, and unnecessary images slip into consciousness. Therefore, before embarking on an experience, clear your mind of negative feelings and postpone solving problems.
Dream Diary
Adopt a method of recording your dreams. Without this stage, you are unlikely to be able to get into a meaningful dream. The essence of the technique is in the processing of memories associated with night visions. It is necessary to write down any details, even if you wake up in the middle of the night.
The first step is to keep a diary of what you saw in your dreams and analyze those entries. In the morning, you need to write down what you saw and your feelings. Perhaps you felt the events as real events in your life, fully experiencing them, or you just saw the movie. After a while, you will be able to analyze your notes and understand what is there: prophetic, echoes of everyday life, empty dreams. So you will understand in which dreams you can interfere, and in which it is better to just leave as a spectator.
Use a diary every day, because without regular note-taking, the method will be ineffective. And even if you fall into a lucid dream, you will quickly forget it. Try to reflect the whole plot on the pages of the diary. Even seemingly insignificant details are important.
Mastering the technique of lucid dreaming is always a rather lengthy process. Just to learn to understand your dreams can take several months, but this is an important point – learn to understand the nature of your dreams. The key to this analysis is to learn how your subconscious mind works. Because interference in some dreams can have a bad effect on the human psyche as a whole.
Practice Books
The study of controlled dreams began in the last century in order to understand how it works and what it is for. From a scientific point of view, lucid dreams have not yet been proven, but from the literary side, the topic is very popular.
Not only scientists are interested in the practice of such dreams, but also ordinary people. Therefore, there is a lot of popular literature that tells in simple terms how to achieve the desired result.
The most popular authors of benefits include:
- Stephen LaBerge;
- IN AND. Gromov;
- R.V. Lisovetsky.
Their books reveal in detail the theory of dreams, the main ways to achieve results, how to do self-hypnosis to speed up the effect, the sensations that a person experiences while in a state of controlled sleep. In addition, you can learn interesting facts related to dreams.
How to get out of a lucid dream
At first, after mastering the technique of visiting a lucid dream, it will be quite difficult for you to stay in this state, but in the future you will need to master the technique of exiting a controlled dream. To leave a lucid dream, it is enough to perform the same actions that you did to dive, but you will need to do this already in a dream in order to return to reality.
General recommendations regardless of the chosen technique
All lucid dreaming techniques require the implementation of a number of general recommendations necessary to increase the likelihood of entering the state of the phase and then holding it in it:
1. Intention while falling asleep (for indirect techniques)
Every time you fall asleep, focus on the thought of waking up and doing any of the planned techniques. This is very important so as not to miss the moment and avoid the failure of the attempt by any physical movements. Scientists have proven that in 80-90% of cases, when a person wakes up, he thinks about the same thing that he thought about falling asleep for the last time.
Therefore, without intention, when falling asleep, you simply will not have time to apply the technique of lucid dreaming.
2. Awakening without movement
With the delayed method, after waking up, it is necessary to maintain complete calmness of the body. No physical movements – immediately transition to the application of techniques. At the same time, in the first seconds, you can try IMMEDIATELY to separate from the body, even without the use of techniques. This is achieved by focusing on the intention at the moment of falling asleep.
3. Complete confidence in one’s own abilities and in the success of each particular attempt and technique of lucid dreaming. According to statistics, it is people who are confident in the result that are almost guaranteed to reach the entrance to the state of the phase from the first few attempts (if the techniques are correctly performed, respectively).
4. Forced falling asleep – within 3-10 seconds you try to imagine and force the body to fall asleep quickly. Imagine the situation that you have to get up early tomorrow, there is very little time for sleep and you need to fall asleep as quickly as possible. Trying to get out quickly. But you don’t need to sleep! It is important to catch the moment just before falling asleep and apply one of the entry techniques.
Forced falling asleep can be used both with indirect techniques to get attempts on awakening, and with direct ones to create “gaps” in which separation techniques with the physical body can be applied.
The technique of lucid dreaming, forced falling asleep, is used if the first attempts to enter the state of the phase (30-60 seconds) were unsuccessful. And it gives a chance to get closer to the necessary state again.
The following are the most effective techniques: entry, separation, deepening and retention. We sincerely hope that this information will help you in reaching the state of the phase and, what is equally important, in stabilizing your being in it.
The Most Effective Phase State Techniques
These are the most effective techniques in the early stages.
Three Practical Steps to Enter Lucid Dreaming
There are productive ways by which you can dive into the OS as early as the coming night.
- Waking up at night, lie down in a new position. An unusual posture will help you not fall asleep immediately and perform subsequent actions.
- They stop the thought process and stop mental speech. The released energy will be enough to replenish personal energy resources and enter controlled sleep.
- Having achieved complete inner silence, they concentrate their inflexible intention on realizing themselves in a dream. Without thinking about anything, they fall asleep at the same moment.
All actions are desirable to perform within 60 seconds.
There are various options for mastering OS techniques. Consider the most popular of them. They are simple and accessible to everyone.
Effective ways to help you enter controlled sleep
To get into lucid dreams, you can use the following useful tricks:
- increase sleep duration. This recommendation is especially suitable for those who love and have the opportunity to sleep for a long time. It is easier to experience controlled sleep if you go to bed at 11 pm and sleep until about 9 am.
- 1.5 hours before falling asleep, you should set yourself up for the fact that self-realization will occur. Doing ordinary things in the evening, it is worth imagining that this has already happened.
- Find powerful motivation for yourself. For example, the desire to learn a given technique in order to know oneself better. This will contribute to the further development of the individual.
- We must try to remember our own dreams. To do this, waking up, remember the details. Beginners will be able to remember only the last fragment. Experienced practitioners can list all dream events. To train your memory, you can start keeping a diary to describe dreams. There is an improvement in body memory at the physical and energy levels.
Inspired by a successful experience, beginners sometimes relax and stop training. This irresponsible approach leads to experience gaps.
These are interesting – A dream that fulfills wishes
Algorithm for the indirect method of entering the OS
You can try to get into a lucid dream the first time using a common method of cycles of indirect practices, the purpose of which is to obtain a lucid dream and out-of-body projections. Training is performed during awakening, when the brain continues to be in a phase state. Create a comfortable environment: ventilate the room; Use earplugs and an eye mask if necessary.
Detailed instructions tell you how to enter a lucid dream the first time. The first two steps are optional, because they do not affect the final result; they can be skipped. The remaining steps are performed in strict sequence:
Six hours sleep and wake up on alarm
It is convenient to do on the eve of the weekend. Go to bed at the usual time. Relax and close your eyes, without thinking about anything. They turn on the alarm clock so that the bell rings after 6 hours. After the signal, they get up and go to the toilet. You can drink a little.
Going back to sleep with intention
After a short-term wakefulness (approximately from 5 minutes to an hour), they again go to bed with the thought that on subsequent awakenings they will carry out the plan of planned actions. They fall asleep for 2.5 – 3.5 hours, the alarm is no longer turned on, they wake up in a natural way, remaining motionless. Return to sleep with the intention of re-experiencing the technique for lucid dreaming.
Which technique is the fastest
There is no instant way to learn to control the subconscious. All techniques require some effort and time. Any of them will bring quick results if you are serious and follow the prescribed rules. For some, it takes 2 days to successfully complete the experiment, for others it takes several weeks.
Dream control techniques were developed by scientists, as well as esoteric lovers. It was not possible to fully explain the nature of the origin of meaningful dreams. Scientists are sure that the matter is in the work of certain parts of the brain, esotericists are inclined to believe that the basis of such dreams is the exit of the human soul from the body shell to the astral plane.
How to learn to order dreams
How can we learn to see the dreams that we want to see? Sometimes we want to dream about loved ones who are not around or want to go to some place where we have never been. In this case, it is worth practicing a practice that helps to “order” dreams. It is necessary to start small: try to think hard before going to bed about the close people you want to see in a dream. Why native people? Because you already have them in your subconscious and it will be easier to see them. When you are successful at this, make it harder by thinking about some place you want to go. At the moment when this starts to work out, program yourself to perform certain actions.
How to learn to influence the plot of a dream
When you can “order” dreams, you can begin to learn the technique of comprehending a lucid dream. To do this, during sleep, you focus your attention on controlling everything that happens around you. Try to influence events. If you regularly dream that you are running away, then try to fly away or stop abruptly and feel stronger. If you fall in your dream, visualize that suddenly you are in the cockpit of an airplane or in a hot air balloon. If possible, try to improve your imagination in real life.
How to get rid of nightmares
Absolutely all people periodically see bad dreams and often wonder how to interrupt such a dream? You need to learn how to open your eyes with an effort of will, imagine a button by pressing which you will wake up or any other option. Stay awake for a few minutes, then the likelihood that the dream will return to the previous one is minimized. This is a good skill that can significantly improve the quality of your life through healthy rest.
How to learn to end an unpleasant dream in a dream
A difficult skill to learn in the process of studying lucid dreams is to change your emotions during sleep, which will entail changes in all surrounding events. If you have a good sense of humor in your life, then it will be easier for you to deal with it. It is by changing your negative emotions such as fear, anger at laughter and joy that most quickly change the plot of dreams.
What needs to be done? While in a dream, stop the events and imagine how something that frightens you becomes very funny. In dreams, imagination plays a very serious role, so it is worth developing it in real life.
Constant practice
If you can’t get into a lucid dream once or twice, don’t despair! This does not mean that you are unable to control your dreams. A lucid dream can be mastered by absolutely anyone, and this has already been proven by numerous studies by foreign scientists. Know that only one person in a million can manage to enter a lucid dream the first time. Perhaps, if you haven’t practiced yet, you will be lucky and find yourself one, or perhaps, like most people, it will take more than one night to learn how to manage the nocturnal adventures of your mind.
First you need to try all the techniques you know and choose one of them. You can alternate methods each time you go to bed as you like, this will not affect the quality of your future lucid dreams, but the main thing is to choose one. Strictly adhering to the rules of a particular technique, you can understand which one is most suitable for you. When you decide on a technique, try to constantly stick only to it. At first, it is important to do the same manipulations before going to bed. This is necessary so that the brain remembers the algorithm of maneuvers and it is easier for it to enter a conscious state of sleep.
In addition to the activities before bed, your sleep is also affected by the past day. If you are determined throughout the day to succeed in mastering lucid sleep, this will increase the ability to control dreams, since it is the brain that works for us in this amazing phenomenon and therefore self-hypnosis plays a major role here. If you do not believe that you will succeed, then you should not expect success.
The practice can take days or months, and for hurried people, lucid dreaming can be a real challenge, but it has its upsides, as you can develop your patience. This is completely normal, because each of us has an individual body and we all need different times to master a particular topic.
What to do if it doesn’t work?
Yes, a long practice is not for everyone, because before going to bed you just want to relax, and not perform complex techniques and constantly try to wake up your mind. But this is not a reason to give up everything without knowing the possibilities of your consciousness and without seeing all the splendor of the “second world”. There is good news for you! There are several ways that can help you speed up the onset of lucid dreaming.
What to do to enter into a conscious dream? First of all, you need to create the right environment for lucid dreaming, ideal conditions for sleep, so to speak.
- Do reality checks.
This can be done throughout the day, it is enough to do 5-10 checks, this will help your brain remember the state of consciousness and develop reflex reality checks.
- Read quiet books.
Reading books or articles about lucid dreaming before bed can speed up the learning process. Ordinary calm literature also helps to relax and distract from possible problems that prevent you from falling into a peaceful sleep, it can be any fiction book that does not cause emotional stress.
- Turn off the light.
Exposing a person to light during rest interferes with their dream cycle, preventing long and deep sleep, and this interferes with lucid dreaming. When the brain senses a state of complete darkness, the body releases melatonin, a hormone that helps the body fall into deep sleep more quickly, which is important for lucid sleep.
- Keep a dream diary
This is actually the important part. Usually, most of your dreams are forgotten, and in the morning you can remember only 1-2 dreams or not remember them at all, but in fact we have 3 to 7 dreams every night and hardly any of us remember all seven. And even though in the morning you remembered one or two of your recent dreams, by the middle of the day everything can be forgotten if the dreams were boring and dim, or partially forgotten. The diary will help you remember dreams, which is the basis for building your lucid dreams. It is also very interesting, so keeping such a diary is not difficult. Write down everything you remember about your dreams, transfer absolutely all the details to paper or phone, try to accurately convey your state during a dream. For many people, such a diary has become a real helper in mastering conscious dreams.
- Listen to binaural beats
They can help you with insomnia, anxiety, and most importantly, lucid dreaming. Binaural beats are sounds that stimulate and change the state of the brain. They affect him and can affect sleep and rest.
- Listen to white noise.
If you are a light sleeper, white noise will help to mask any external sounds that disturb you while you fall asleep, as well as during your sleep itself. It can relax you, provide you with a restful rest. It is a good way to focus by inducing lucid dreams.
- Sleep cool.
Through research, we have learned that sleeping in a cool place improves the frequency of REM sleep. To create a cool atmosphere, you can:
- sleep on a cooling mattress pad;
- use a quiet fan that will control the temperature of your bedroom and circulate the air in the room at the same time;
- open the window at night in the warm season in the absence of air conditioners or fans.
The Perspective of Continuous Practice: Further Opportunities
Conscious sleep has a lot of advantages and perhaps only one drawback, which you will learn about by scrolling down a bit.
Here are 11 amazing benefits of this phenomenon, learning about which, you will immediately want to visit a lucid dream:
- Lucid dreams will help you overcome your fears.
When you manage to overcome fear in a dream, it will not prevent you, for example, from jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. In addition to being completely safe while you sleep, you can also slow down time and have full control over your fall. Many claim that being able to face their phobia one-on-one in their dreams has made them feel much better, and some have even been able to overcome their fear in the real world.
- Help in solving problems and making important decisions.
Scientists, researchers, inventors consider this to be one of the best benefits of lucid dreaming as they can think about a specific problem while they sleep. A fully functioning brain will search for a solution and create completely new thoughts that you may not have even thought of before.
- Practice and improve real life skills.
Practicing your real life skills in your dreams will improve them in real life. For example, you can take percussion lessons and actively practice in your sleep (in addition to self-study in reality, of course). Thus, you will master the skills you need faster than if you just tried it in life. This can help you save money and time, and become more proficient in what you would like to develop.
- Overcome or stop nightmares.
Most people have nightmares and recurring dreams that involve stressful situations. Once you master lucid dreaming, you will be able to intervene in the nightmares as they happen and change them.
- Sex in a lucid dream.
This is another benefit of lucid dreaming. You can experiment with your sex life in your dreams if for some reason you don’t have the opportunity to do so in real life.
- Emotional healing.
In lucid dreams, you can heal yourself of various emotional traumas. Depending on the degree of stress, everyone will need a different time to heal. The more severe the injury, the more work on it will be required. For example, if you are upset about circumstances at work, you can express your anxiety to someone in a dream and you will feel better.
- Do incredible things in your dreams without risk or fear of injury. Perhaps this is the safest way to push your limits.
- Helps to reveal the personal meaning of life. Being in a lucid dream, you interact with your subconscious and have the opportunity to get to know yourself more deeply.
- Enjoy complete privacy.
In your dream, you can do whatever you want, and no one will even know about it. You can simply forget about the rules and norms of real life during a lucid dream, do something immoral and no one will judge you, step into the unknown and forbidden.
- Pleasure, the experience of the impossible.
Despite age, somewhere deep in a person’s subconscious, childhood dreams remain. Everyone would like to have this or that superpower, to do something impossible, to become a different person. In a lucid dream, you can fulfill all your childhood unfulfilled dreams, such as becoming invisible or learning to fly.
- Helps in creativity.
In a surreal and completely unexpected way for you, you can compose music in your dreams, look for original artistic images and invent many interesting things, as many famous people did, having studied a lucid dream and mastered it in their own practice.
A little more skeptically, I looked at the perspectives of lucid dreaming practice in the article On the Benefits of Lucid Dreaming.
Books, movies and music to help
It was mentioned above what literature you need to read in order to fully tune your mind to lucid dreaming.
Here are some helpful books to read before bed:
- “Thresholds of Dreaming” by Alexei Ksendzyuk.
- Lucid Dreaming Course by Stephen LaBerge.
- “Naive. Super” by Erlend Lou.
- “Talking Dog” by Mark Barrowcliffe.
- “School of out-of-body travel” by Mikhail Raduga.
- Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce.
- Journey Out of the Body by Robert Monroe.
- The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda.
- Lucid Dreaming in 7 Days by Thompson Bradley.
Now it remains to analyze the topic of films and music as an aid in lucid dreams. Movies, in general, like fiction, have a very specific effect on our conscious dreams. It is better to choose films for each individual, since only you can know what can relax and help you, and what can interfere with the onset of a lucid dream. It is up to you to decide which categories of films are suitable for these purposes. In general, people choose calm films without sharp and heavy plot twists. Remember that before going to bed you need to completely relax, and watching some thriller or drama will certainly not help you with this.
However, as a movie fan, I will say that there are many films and cartoons that it makes sense to watch at a different time (not before going to bed) in order to feel the appropriate atmosphere of miracles and go beyond the boundaries of the real:
- “Beginning” (2010)
- “The Science of Sleep” (2006)
- “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)
- “Ink” (2009)
- “Matrix” (1999)
- “Vanilla Sky” (2001)
- “Outland” (2006)
- “Big Fish” (2003)
- “Imaginarium” (2012)
- “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” (2009)
- “Where Dreams May Come” (1998)
- “The Neverending Story” (1984)
- “Dark City” (1998)
- “Mr Nobody” (2009)
- “Fountain” (2006)
- Cloud Atlas (2012)
- “Amelie” (2001)
- “Tree of Life” (2010)
- “Legion” (TV series, 2017-2019)
- Waking Life (animated film, 2001)
- “Paprika” (animated film, 2006)
- “Your Name” (animated film, 2016)
- Spirited Away (animated film, 2001)
Music before going to bed should be calm, preferably without depressing lyrics and incendiary choruses. The right choice of classical music can set you up for a lucid dream and focus your thoughts on creating a future dream.
Most people who practice lucid dreaming through music recommend artists such as:
- Juzhin
- Sandy Leah
- Mary Juane Clair
- Ephemeral Mists
- Subatomic Dreams
- Enya
- Enigma
- Air
- Jack Johnson
- Morcheeba
You can also search for other artists, it is not necessary to stick only to this list.
In addition to music, there are 3D sounds known as ASMR. The Internet deciphers this term in a very abstruse and incomprehensible way, but in simple words, these are audio or video recordings in which you can hear many pleasant and relaxing sounds, from which some people experience goosebumps and pleasant tingling in the body. Try this relaxation method, as it may be more effective than music and movies.
Sleep paralysis is a possible side effect
A common phenomenon that a person has experienced or can experience at least once in a lifetime is sleep paralysis. Approximately 7.6% of the general population, 28.3% of lucid dreamers and 31.9% of mentally ill sufferers have experienced this condition.
Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon when your body is asleep, but the brain is already awake, at first glance it may seem that it is similar to a lucid dream, but this is not entirely true. Yes, your mind is awake while you are asleep, but you are not in control of your dreaming. You dream that you wake up in the place where you fell asleep, you experience horror, but you cannot move, because your body is completely relaxed, you feel heaviness or even suffocation, while you see some terrible images, most often this humanoid creatures (many believe that this is how the stories about the abduction of people by aliens were born). This state lasts from a few seconds to several minutes. But it feels like it might take longer.
Do not be afraid to try to enter into lucid dreams because of this phenomenon. There is a way out. You can turn sleep paralysis into a lucid dream. Also, sleep paralysis is not bad for you, it’s just a special kind of nightmare. It can be quite scary, so there are a few things you should remember in case you experience it:
– repeat in your head: “This is a dream”, “I am safe” and so on;
– since you are almost in a lucid dream, try to stop the horror with the help of your imagination.
If things get out of hand and you’re really scared, it’s best to wake up. At first, this may seem like an impossible task, but it is quite real. To do this, you need to try your best to move a small part of your body, it can be toes or hands, eyes, lips. The movement will directly send signals to your brain that will wake you up. Visual effects and hallucinations will disappear immediately.
Don’t be afraid of sleep paralysis. The best approach to it is a complete understanding of this phenomenon. Once you know it, you will feel secure in the next possible attack.
Remember dreams
If you are one of the lucky few who can remember dreams in detail, consider that the first step on the path to lucid dreaming has been taken. Are the memories almost gone? You’ll have to do hard training.
Get a special notebook and every time you wake up, write down what you saw in a dream. For starters, it can be disparate moments or objects – even the smallest details matter. Over time, you will remember entire episodes. Still later – dreams in their entirety.
It took me a year to learn how to control the plot of a dream. True, I did not study every day: during periods of workload, I could take two-week breaks. And even in his free time, he often remembered his hobby only on weekends.
Alexey, 30 years old
To better remember a dream, I learned to wake up immediately after it ends. Wake up, make a record – and continue to sleep.
Timur, 27 years old
Learn to be aware that you are dreaming
Without understanding that everything that happens is a dream, you will not be able to control and change dreams. It turns out that it is not easy to do this with an almost disconnected consciousness. When a dozen described (at least partially) dreams appear in the notebook, analyze them and on a separate sheet make a list of sleep signs: objects, actions and situations that are repeated most often.
This list should be regularly updated and re-read. The signs of dreams, if you remember them properly, will play the role of beacons, informing you that at this moment you are in a fictional world of your own consciousness. Moreover, one person has completely different dreams often begin in the same way: for example, you are walking through the park with Nikita Dzhigurda and you are eating ice cream. At such moments, you can very quickly realize that you are already asleep.
I have been lucid dreaming for six years. Found that the list of sleep signs is limited and may not expand. I have not replenished it for two years: it still has 19 signs.
Vla, 38 years old
Develop critical thinking
It will help you realize that you are in an imaginary world. It is necessary to practice critical perception of the world even during the period of wakefulness, so that state control works automatically. For example, while talking with a friend, try to take off (what if this is a dream?). Or read what is written in the newspaper, turn away and delve into the text again.
Since memory in a dream works in a limited mode, practitioners assure that letters and numbers almost always change in dreams, it is worth looking away from them.
Test: Do you have critical thinking.
Engage in self-hypnosis
During the day and, most importantly, before falling asleep, suggest to yourself that this night you want to become aware of the state of sleep. Also, imagine that you are sleeping. Moreover, you need to fantasize using several signs of sleep from a notebook. Decide that you want to do something specific that night, like take off.
Our memory is arranged in such a way that even if you fall asleep and do not understand that everything that happens is unreal, you can still remember that you need to take to the air. And you will probably get up. Sooner or later your brain will understand that in real life this is impossible, and then you will have every chance to ride the dream.
I can’t compose the entire plot of the dream in advance. That is, I can, for example, in a waking state decide that I want to fly. But where I will do it and where I will fly, I have to decide already in a dream, changing the environment with the power of thought. I also manage to change it with the help of a door: it is enough to decide where you want to be and enter it.
Max, 29 years old
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