Lucid Dreaming

Are you conscious that you are dreaming, or dreaming that you are conscious?

Why can't all we all enjoy lucid dreaming, and more often? The annoying thing about dreams is that for all their rampant craziness, you don’t realise at the time that it’s only a dream. The potential to really take advantage of them is lost, and instead you’re a slave to whatever anxious or surreal situations your brain creates for you. Unless you're lucid dreaming.

On rare occasions you may enjoy lucid dreaming. This is where you realise that you are having a dream, and are able to control it (if you don’t wake up first). They can be very therapeutic, allowing you the chance to explore your mind. They are also interesting from a self-awareness point of view. Most people have had at least one.

How do you encourage lucid dreaming? When I was researching lucid dreaming, I used to have quite a few. This led me to believe that just thinking about them is enough to trigger one. This probably works because dreams are often linked to thoughts from the day.

The other method is to wake earlier than normal, become fully alert, then return to bed and fall asleep again. For some reason, this ‘tampering’ with awareness can lead to a state where you are lucid dreaming before your consciousness has fully subsided again.

Of course self-hypnosis, guided hypnotherapy or Binaural CDs could be utilised to stimulate a waking dream as well.

Lucid dreaming is something of a paradox, because awareness can be a grey area. You could know that you are in a dream, but still be terrified of it, or be 'locked' into the dream logic. To me, this strongly suggests that consciousness is variable, meandering through the day as it does through the night.

To wake during lucid dreaming is something very special, and in some ways again, I wonder if it could also occur within life. How often do you feel like a passive spectator to a series of events, without realising that you could become more aware and start directing them?

Learn more about Binaural Beats