Sunday, May 29, 2011

Lucid Dreaming: A quick introduction

"What is lucid dreaming?" one may ask. If you've never heard of it before, let me take a moment to give a brief explanation of this phenomenon.

When you sleep, you go through a cycle of different phases of sleep. During one such phase, known as the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase, you dream. This occurs every night, or every time you sleep. The longer you sleep, the more REM phases you go through, meaning that you dream more. However, you don't always remember your dreams when you wake up. Because of this, many people think that they don't dream, but we all do.

I'm sure you have at least once woken up from a dream and thought to yourself: "Wow, what a weird dream! I can't believe I didn't realise that I was dreaming!" Indeed, some dreams can be very weird, and impossible things can happen. But while dreaming, our sense of logic is thrown out the window, letting us accept all these impossible things without questioning them. But sometimes, we end up questioning them anyway. And it is at such times that we can become lucid.

Becoming lucid means that you become aware that you are dreaming, and everything around you is all part of your dream. Once lucid, a whole new world of endless possibilities may open up to you. In your dream, you are the master. And since it is all a dream, anything goes. Want to fly like a bird? Go ahead, take off! Want to eat a skyscraper with mustard? Dig in! Want to turn yourself into an animal and experience new incredible sensations? Just do it!

Of course, this can be a bit tricky to do if you're not used to it. I am still far from mastering lucidity myself, and I've been doing this on and off for over a year now. But with practice, motivation and time, anyone can become a lucid dreamer, and have awesome adventures every night, from the comfort of their own bed. Neat, huh?

I hope I've sparked your interest in lucid dreaming, and I highly recommend you to try it out. I will make some more posts about the subject in the future, discussing techniques, things to watch out for, and other things. In the meantime, try looking up lucid dreaming on the internet. There are plenty of sites and forums dedicated to lucid dreaming, with extensive guides and explanations of techniques and research into the subject.

Until next time, sweet dreams!

2 comments:

  1. I've randomly had a couple lucid dreams before, it's really fun. But I wake up when I realize I'm lucidly dreaming...

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  2. Very interesting, always read about this sort of stuff just never remember to actually try it haha. Good article:)

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