Archive for the 'Dreams & Lucid Dreaming' Category
I recently got my hands on a copy of Explorers of the Lucid Dream World, a new documentary about lucid dreaming. The DVD arrived in the mail on Friday and I immediately popped it into the player and watched the documentary and all the special features that accompanied it.
The documentary covers the basics of lucid dreaming, what it is and what it can be used for. It includes interviews with prominent researchers in the field — Stephen LaBerge and Alan Wallace, among others — along with comments from longtime lucid dreamers involved with the Lucidity Institute.
The documentary won't teach you how to have lucid dreams, but it offers a good introduction for people who are new to lucid dreaming. It includes a description of how to perform a reality check using text, so it gives aspiring lucid dreamers a place to begin their practice. One thing I especially liked was how the documentary subtly emphasized the fact that while lucid dreaming can be a vehicle for entertainment it also can lead you to a much deeper understanding of your unconscious mind.
The special features on the DVD were a highlight for me because there are additional interviews with each of the people featured in the documentary. The interview with Alan Wallace is more than thirty minutes on its own, and how can you go wrong with 30+ minutes of Alan Wallace? (Answer: You can't.) Patricia Keelin also offered some great insights in her interview.
Explorers of the Lucid Dream World was written, produced and directed by Richard Hilton. You can order a copy of the DVD through his web site in exchange for a small donation.
In my last article, I described some techniques to help you remember to perform reality checks and to help you turn a false awakening into a lucid dream. Today, I'm going to offer two easy techniques to help you become lucid during a nightmare.
Technique #1
This technique might seem silly at first, but give it a try anyway. It's actually very effective.
Think back to the last nightmare in which you were running from something. Perhaps you felt like you couldn't run, like your muscles just wouldn't move fast enough or wouldn't even move at all. Or maybe it felt like you were running through waist-high molasses, like your legs were slogging through something so thick you could barely walk, let alone run.
Now try to remember the last nightmare in which you tried to yell or scream. When you tried to yell, did it feel like you couldn't get enough air, like you were breathing water instead? Or perhaps no matter how much you yelled there was no sound and the only thing that came out of your mouth was air.
These problems are common in dreams. Scientists have speculated it is the mind's way of interpreting the paralysis that occurs during REM sleep. While we dream, the brain halts the release of certain neurotransmitters, causing a lack of stimulation to motor neurons and resulting in muscle paralysis. This state is referred to as REM atonia, and it's generally assumed that this happens in order to prevent us from acting out our dreams while we sleep.
Unfortunately, this sleep paralysis also translates into nightmares in which we can't seem to get our body to move quickly enough. Your mind doesn't really want you to be swallowed up by the three-headed hydra that's been chasing you down the road. It's just that while you're trying very hard to run away, your brain is working just as hard to keep you still.
So how can we use this to our advantage to help us have lucid dreams? …Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I posted an article about false awakenings. Today I'm going to offer some simple suggestions that can help you turn your false awakenings into lucid dreams. These techniques will also help you remember to perform frequent reality checks, which can greatly increase the likelihood of becoming lucid in a dream. (You can read more about reality checks here and here.)
To begin, think of the things you usually do when you first wake up. Which actions do you perform every morning upon awakening? For most people, this list will include turning off an alarm clock, getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, and other similar tasks. Those are the everyday activities that typically occur in a false awakening, so we're going to use them as the starting point for transitioning from a false awakening into a lucid dream, but because of the nature of these techniques, they'll also help you have lucid dreams even if you never have a false awakening.
Technique #1: Use your alarm clock as a trigger for a reality check. Whenever you glance at the clock, regardless of the time of day or night, ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?"
This technique is made even easier by the fact that you can use the numbers on a digital clock or the hands on a traditional clock to perform your reality check. In dreams, we often have trouble focusing on text and numbers for more than a few seconds at a time. The letters and numbers appear blurry, or they change rapidly, or they wiggle, or they morph into strange symbols, or they …Continue reading
If your dreams are starting to feel stale or unexciting, try taking a brief vacation to liven things up. Traveling can quickly stimulate your mind into producing more interesting and entertaining dreams.
Immersing yourself in a new environment or a different culture provides as much new material for your dreaming mind as it does for your waking self.
I just returned to Florida after a brief trip to Tennessee, and one thing I noticed while away on vacation was a surge in unusual dreams. I'd noticed the same thing while traveling overseas for a few weeks last year. The new surroundings provided plenty of fodder for my dreaming mind to make use of each night.
While Tennessee and Florida may not seem so different from each other — they're located within a day's driving distance in the same country, after all — there are definitely noticeable differences not only in landscape but in lifestyle. I live in the Tampa Bay area, which is hot, crowded, completely flat, and covered in condos, strip malls, and subdivisions full of houses that all look alike. I traveled to eastern Tennessee, which is mountainous, and the weather was cool and comfortable the entire time I was there. Since the point of the trip was to search for a large piece of land to build a house on, I also spent most of the trip visiting areas that were quiet, secluded, and sparsely populated.
Those details added up to a significant increase in new and unusual dream events. I won't bore you with stories of the individual dreams, but suffice it to say they were much more entertaining than my dreams from the previous few weeks.
So if you want to add a little spice to your dreams, take a few days off and hit the road. Visit someplace new, explore the location thoroughly, and enjoy the nightly results.
A false awakening occurs when you're dreaming and believe you've woken up when in actuality you are still dreaming and only dreamed of waking up. You "wake up" and begin to go about your daily routine — visit the bathroom, brush your teeth, get dressed, etc. — until eventually you realize you're still dreaming.
At that point, you may slip into a completely new dream or you may wake up from the dream for real this time. Or, even more intriguingly, you may have another false awakening and believe you've woken up when instead you're still dreaming and once again only dreamed of waking up.
You can "wake up" from a dream only to discover you haven't really woken up at all and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" from your first false awakening and think to yourself "This time I'm REALLY awake," only to find out you've had another false awakening and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" again into another dream of awakening, and so forth.
This cycle of false awakenings can go on and on. In fact, it can go on so long you begin to constantly question whether or not you're awake, and you wonder how you can ever be one hundred percent certain you're not still dreaming. This is exactly the kind of persistent questioning of reality that rests at the heart of lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming offers so much more than entertainment. It can lead to an entirely new awareness and insight into the nature of reality. …Continue reading
