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.
The second method is called WILD, and stands for wake-initiated lucid dream. This is when you start out awake and fall asleep, but do not experience a change in consciousness levels. This is the process of simply entering a dream, the same way you\’d walk through a door, instead of waking up inside the dream.
How exactly do you induce either one of these lucid dream states?
Dream Recall
If you\’re interested in being a lucid dreamer, one of the most successful methods you can use is dream recall. This is the ability to remember your dreams. By developing this ability, you\’ll be more readily able to recognize them while you\’re asleep. That\’s because you\’re likely to have the same dream or dream elements on more than one occasion.
The way to practise dream recall is by keeping a dream journal. The dream journal is meant as a tool to write down anything you can remember about your dream, in order to recall it for the future. This should be done right after waking up; otherwise dreams will become harder to remember.
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 LaBerge, this technique has about a sixty percent success rate. That\’s because you wake up in the middle of your sleep cycle, with your mind not fully aware, and are still in the middle of your REM cycle. This results in something a lot like telling your mind you want to dream lucidly and having it obey!
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 Dreams (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.
Several ways to stay aware but not awake include imagining descending or going up stairs, chanting, counting, breathing control, counting your breaths, and relaxing your body from head to toe. This all falls under self hypnosis. Don\’t do this when you\’re tired, or you\’ll simply fall unconscious.
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.
The most reliable and easiest way of inducing a lucid dream may be listening to binaural beats sound frequencies through headphones.
The sounds bring the two sides of the brain in synch. Your brainwaves are then converted to REM waves the time during sleep when you dream and the frequency at which lucid dreams 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!
Lesley Groft is one of the expert writers for the http://www.luciddreaminginfo.com site. You can enjoy the incredible experience of being a lucid dreamer for yourself and get twenty nine Free lucid dreaming Audios when you visit here.
