How to Lucid Dream: 6 Essential Steps
What if you could unlock even more hours of your everyday life to do things that you’ve never done before and go places that you’ve never been before? By practicing the art of Lucid dreaming, this can easily be accomplished. You can enter into an entire realm of new possibilities, new adventures and enhance your spiritual and mental well-being. Lucid dreaming is the art of being conscious within the dream state- in other words- dreaming and being aware that you’re dreaming and then learning to control your dreams or direct them to where you would like to go. Lucid dreaming is an ancient practice that has most likely happened since the dawn of man. However, the first written occurrence of this practice was in 415 A.D. St. Augustine wrote in a letter that: “Your body is asleep, but in your brain your mind is bright and awake and awareness is now in your brains own created world.” Tibetan Buddhists were also practicing a form of yoga that assisted them in maintaining waking consciousness while sleeping and in the dream state during the 8th century. Indigenous peoples around the world have practiced the art of waking up in dreams for centuries. To them it is part of a spiritual practice that is known as shamanism. Centuries later, in 1975, lucid dreaming was scientifically proven by Alan Worsley at the University of Hull in England. Worsley was successfully able to signal a pre-determined set of eye movements while in a dream state to researcher Keith Hearne. It was Stephen LaBerge who, in 1978 performed this experiment and gained worldwide credibility and made the validity of lucid dreaming well known. LaBerge is the founder of The Lucidity Institute and author of: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Another who is well known within the lucid dreaming world is author and spiritual teacher Carlos Castaneda. Carlos is the author of the book The Art of Dreaming and in this book he describes in detail what he calls “The Seven Gates of Dreaming.” He also extensively describes how to get to a state of Total Awareness; achieved by means of dreaming, although, people are skeptic of Carlos’ work and many parts of it are often dubbed as mythical or fictitious. Many lucid dreamers claim to practice his techniques regularly. One of Carlos’ most popular techniques and one that I have had success with myself is the “hands technique.” This is where periodically throughout the day you make a conscious effort to look at your hands for about 10 seconds at a time. While dreaming, after having had made an imprint in the mind of your hands, they should be seen at some point and when they are you will notice them (your hands). You will notice that they will look a bit different, fuzzy, morphed, you might have 6 or 7 fingers instead of 5 and it’s at this moment that you may realize, I’m dreaming?! From here you may be able to consciously control your dream. You can decide what you would like to do, where to go and who or what to see! Other suggested techniques for remembering your dreams and being conscious throughout your dreams include: 1. As mentioned above, throughout the day, remember to look at your hands for about 10 seconds. This will help you notice any changes in your hands in the dream. 2. Before you go to sleep at night say to yourself: “I am going to remember my dream tonight and I am going to dream about ________.” Repeat this over and over again and it will increase your ability to remember your dreams. 3. Ask yourself repeatedly throughout the day, “Am I dreaming?” Then (like the hands method) while you are dreaming you will ask yourself and hopefully become consciously aware that you are dreaming. 4.
The good old fashioned “pinch test,” if you are unsure if you are dreaming, give yourself a pinch. If you are dreaming you won’t be able to feel this, so then you will know that you are dreaming. 5. Keep a dream journal. This is very important. Keep a notepad beside your bed and whenever you wake up, whether its 3, 6 or 9 am write down whatever you remember about your dream and if you did become conscious write down exactly how that happened, and then what happened after that point. 6. Set your alarm clock to wake you up about 5 1⁄2 hours after you have fallen asleep, studies show that if you are woken up during a dream you are more likely to remember them. Lucid dreaming does take some practice so be patient. Sometimes the very shock of realizing that you are dreaming within a dream will wake you up, so just keep practicing. It is pretty incredible to be able to control your dreams, when you learn this technique you can take control of your dreams and use them to your advantage. You can use them to help you try out new ideas and methods before implementing them into your waking life. You can virtually put yourself anywhere you want to be in any circumstance, you can even face some of your greatest fears all while getting a good nights rest. Our friends over at Lucid Secrets (www.lucidsecrets.com) have put together a comprehensive system to help master the art of lucid dreaming, including lessons on essential techniques such as astral projection, mind relaxation, meditation, and more. This program will tell you guys everything you need to know about the limitless world of lucid dreaming, we highly recommend you explore this program. CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE THE PROGRAM Much Love, Sources and more information: http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/history-of-sleep.html http://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter429/history.htm http://www.lucidity.com/ Books: “The Art Of Dreaming” by Carlos Castaneda “Adventures Beyond The Body” by Cristina Zaccaria “Remembering And Understanding Your Dreams” by Craig Hamilton-Parker .
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