An Exciting New Experience As A Lucid Dreamer
You have heard about lucid dreaming and think it is something you would like to do. That is a good starting point but exactly how do you begin and what are the steps to being a successful lucid dreamer?
You also need to think about exactly why you want to become a lucid dreamer. What are the benefits of dreaming lucidly? To help us find the benefits, let us first look at ‘normal’ sleep.
Have you ever considered the process of sleep before? Every night you make preparations, crawl into bed and go to sleep. You may have dreams or nightmares or all may just be dark for a few hours, it is rather boring isn’t it?
Normal sleep just seems to serve the purpose of simply refreshing ourselves in order to live out the next day. But what if you could control that period of time that you have dreams?
What if rather than being an active observer, you can be the one who can lead your dream to be whatever you want, rather than your dream leading you? This is what a lucid dreamer is; someone who is in total control of their dreams; able to explore new worlds that are not bound to the physical, societal and time-space laws of the real world.
Are you are ready to begin but remain unsure of how any of this is possible? That is ok we are getting there, there are two way to enter lucid dream state. The first is a dream initiated lucid dream, (DILD). This happens once you have already begun to dream and during the dream, you come to the realization that you are indeed dreaming. At this point, you have brought an element of control to the dream because your conscious mind is now involved.
Another popular method is to have a wake initiated lucid dream (WILD); this is a straight shot from awake to asleep with no lapse in your consciousness. This is usually achieved by purposefully retaining awareness during the hypnagoogic state, which directly precedes sleep.
So, what methods are used to induce both of these kinds of lucid dream experiences?
Dream Recall
A simple place to start when you would like to lucid dream is in dream recall. This is where you can remember and perhaps recite your dream in part or in whole. You are very likely to have the same dream more than once in your life and being able to remember them will alert you the next time you have that particular dream.
To make dream recall easier you can keep a dream journal. This is a notebook or pad of paper that has the sole purpose of recording your dreams. Whenever you have a dream, you should write all you can remember in the journal as soon as you wake up. The longer you are awake the more details of the dream that will be lost.
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD)
Developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge the idea is to tell your self to recall an object or situation from your dreams, before you go to sleep. You can look back to your dream journal for an example of a recurring them like a pink haired woman. Anything that when you see it in your dream will tell you that you are in fact dreaming.
Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB)
The process here is to go to sleep, doing nothing but setting your alarm to wake you up a few hours later (5 or 6). Once you wake up, DO NOT go back to sleep. Instead, do something else like read for a while, or think as much as you can about lucid dreaming for around an hour then go back to bed.
According to Stephen LaBerge, there is a 60% success rate of this technique. The reason why is that you would have woken up during the process of sleep, meaning that your mind is not fully aware of this, and are still in the middle of REM cycle. So basically, it’s like going to your mind and telling it that you want to lucid dream.
Cycle Adjustment Technique
This technique was created by Daniel Love, and involves setting an alarm that will wake you an hour and a half before you’d normally get up. Once you’re used to waking up early, alternate between the early alarm and your old alarm. When you’re waking up normally, your body will already be expecting the early alarm, and make you more likely to “wake up” in your dream.
Wake-Initiation of Lucid Dream (WILD)
When you consider all the methods and techniques wake initiated is by far the most intriguing way to enter lucid dreams. What you have to do is manage to keep the brain aware while the rest of you falls asleep. You can enter your dreams much like entering a theater. You go into watch the movie, set down and the light go down, (sleep) dark envelopes you just before the movements on the screen appear.
To get into this correct frame of mind if you will there are a few tricks you can use. Focus seems to be key so try to focus your mind on things like your breathing, counting, perhaps chant or meditate. In a way, you are practicing self-hypnosis. Use this technique when you are not extremely tired, perhaps during a late nap.
Technology has moved on in recent years, and there are various devices like dreaming masks and other scientific appliances which contain such things as strobe lights to induce lucid dreams.
Definitely the easiest and most reliable way of inducing a lucid dream however is by listening to binaural beats sound frequencies via headphones.
These work by synchronizing the two hemispheres of the brain and have the effect of almost instantaneously changing your brainwaves to the REM frequency needed for a lucid dream to occur.
Combined with the self hypnosis sessions and affirmations to prepare your subconscious mind beforehand, becoming a lucid dreamer is something that everyone can now experience!
The author Lesley Groft writes for the popular http://www.luciddreaminginfo.com site. You can enjoy the incredible experience of being a lucid dreamer and you can try it yourself when you get 29 Free lucid dreaming Audios when you visit here.
Filed under Entertainment by 
Leave a Comment