I want to share today an article I’ve been reading about controlling dreams. This article suggests that there are less than 100,000 people who know how to Lucid Dream in the United States. One technique for lucid dreaming that is suggested is the reflective technique, where you reflect throughout the day as to whether you are awake or dreaming, the theory is that at some point you’ll ask yourself if you’re dreaming and you will be. It is suggested that you continually keep an eye out for “Dream Signs” obvious charactoristics of the world around you that would indicate you are dreaming.
One dream sign I continually watch out for are is the writing in books, if I’m reading a book and the text can’t solidify then I recognise that I’m dreaming, once this occurs I can take control of the dream. As mentioned before, another good sign I keep an eye out for is fear, spiders, nightmares almost always make me aware that I am dreaming.
The article mentions the following:
MILD begins with telling yourself when you go to bed that you’ll remember your dreams. You then focus your attention on recognizing when you are dreaming and remembering that it is a dream. Then, you focus on reentering a recent dream and looking for clues that it is indeed a dream. You imagine what you would like to do within that dream.
The article mentions the practical uses of Lucid Dreaming, that it’s not just for flying and eating.
How Dreams Work - Controlling Dreams
If you learn to control your dreams, what will you do with that power? I banish nightmares and have fun, what would you do? Is there anything specific you’d love to experience that only a dream can provide?
Thank you for reading and for your comments.
I’m working on a post regarding attaining goals that I’ll publish on Saturday, I’m really excited about it, a combination of current goal attainment methods with project management principles added to it. I’m also excited about tomorrow’s Podcast.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I’m curious, if you are busy controlling your dreams, or just one dream during the night will you be less rested the following day.
Sometimes I have dreams where I working, and the next day I’m very tired.
Have you any experience with this? Have you read anything on this?
August 8th, 2008 at 6:03 am
From all the reading I have done what happens in your dreams shouldn’t affect the quality of your sleep. In this same posted article it suggests an individual who got in an accident and couldn’t REM sleep after that, he was still able to live a normal life, so it’s hard to say the quality of your dreams should affect real life.
One other thing I discovered in my research is that your mind releases a specific chemical when you enter this stage of sleep that stops your movement (probably why we can wake up so groggy and unable to move easily at first) (so we probably can’t blame it on actual muscle fatigue)
I’m going to jump to the conclusion to say that it’s probably just a suggestion placed in your mind by the dream that carries onto the waking world, the suggestion that you’ve worked hard all night and sleep wasn’t everything it could have been.
I imagine also on the physical side if your body did react to the dream flexing muscles and faux working out all night the muscles might be tired, but I really doubt that any significant muscle breakdown can occur during a night sleep where you don’t leave the bed.
(I reserve the right to be completely wrong, but this is my theory)
August 9th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Claudious,
Thanks for coming over to visit my blog. I am actually an advocate of the “controlling your dreams” concept. I have read the articles and watched a TV show once that helped me immensely.
I used to have a dream about a shadowy figure crossing my windows since I was a child. It would totally leave me shaking when I awakened because I’ve never actually had any windows that someone could walk by! Then I watched the TV show and thought, “Hmm, I guess I could try that.” You know what? Totally worked! The dream came again one night, but I was ready this time. I went to the third window as the figure started to cross, I yanked up the curtain and yelled, “Stay away from my windows!” Guess I frightened him because he took off running. I have, to this day, never had that dream again.
I would also add that I’ve done this with other dreams that used to bother me … all of them gone now. Now when others tell me about dreams that freak them out, I tell them about the program I saw, how I applied it, and they say they have had favorable results too.
I don’t remember who the doctor on the program was, but I thank him every day for helping me get rid of the “boogeyman.” Thanks for this great post.
August 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am
I’ve had “lucid dreams,” but never intentionally or with intention. Hm. Something to start thinking about…
August 9th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Carolyn, I’m so glad to have you here.
I think it’s great how you dealt with that nightmare… one of the minor forms of dream control is to decide when you’re awake how you will deal with situations in the dream, it often helps. (Thanks for pointing that out)
August 9th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Green Girl, I had the most amazing lucid dream last night. I just read about a method of dream control that requires you to wake up at some point during the night… anyone with children will find this easy, for me it was simply the light of day interrupting my sleep schedule, when I went back to sleep I stayed aware, and when my body shut down I started to move my eyes until images appeared and just stepped across a threshold into a dream. It was surreal. One of my more favorite parts was when I was driving a car and decided to change it into something else, it required a little concentration but whatever ferarri it ended up as drove really smooth.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Greetings and thanks for stopping by and the comment on my website… I posted a reply to you there.
The 100,000 figure is interesting, that’s like 3 in 1,000. I have also noticed in my blog searches for “lucid dream” that some people use the term to simply mean a dream that they recall very clearly. (I’ve always probably had an above average ability to recall dreams, but it wasn’t until I was aware during the dream that I really thought much of it. Not sure why, they are interesting either way.)
I’ve never had to do anything special to facilitate lucid dreaming, it just happens. Speaking of things people try…I know there’s a lot who work on transitioning smoothly from being awake into dreaming, without losing consciousness in-between. That has happened for me a few times, but don’t try to do it more often because I’m just not patient enough to lay around and wait for sleep, since that very intention delays when I actually do fall asleep unacceptably.
When I was conscious for the transition, I found it to be very tingly and static-y. I’d start moving my hands and find that I couldn’t precisely locate the point where signals to my body stop controlling me physically and when they start being “the dream body”. One thing that concerns me is that sometimes I can end up paralyzed with my eyes open and hearing a din of raspy voices — which isn’t such a bad experience but then I think “Hm, what would happen if I got stuck like this… or if I woke up and the voices didn’t go away?” So far lucky to not have that happen — all the weirdness stops when I wake up — but I sort of hate to press my luck.
When people ask me how I lucid dream so easily, I tell them that a lifelong pattern of critical thinking about the things going on around you works best. Not only is it good for you generally, but it means you’ll almost certainly notice something is up in a dream! I think people would then notice there are a lot of things askew when they are awake which warrant a closer look…
August 11th, 2008 at 3:10 am
I had a fun Lucid Dream the other night, as you mention reality checking is one of the more definite ways to recognise when you’re dreaming versus when you’re awake, and through that crtiical thinking activity that I imagine you’ve built up to be second nature it makes the lucid part of dreaming just as second nature, and probably much easier than taking that step between awake and asleep. (Fascinating step… very stargate-ey)
I had a dream the other night where a bully from my High School days and I were re-united, it was a fancy event, he took something that belonged to me and threw it up on top of a chandelier, his goal was to make fun of me while I tried to get it down. I took unusual amounts of pleasure from then grabbing him, and throwing him against the wall (he was easily 325 lbs as an overweight slob and taller than I) I raked him from one side of the wall to the other then he became slightly afraid and I asked him to retrieve what he threw up there for me. He was congenial. I’ve thought that Lucid Dreaming in this manner is kind of cheating, I try to let the dream play out and just remain aware that it’s a dream through most of it, but I enjoy not letting my dreams desturb me.
I read an article the other day from a psychologist at Berkly who things that lucid dreaming is terrible because you interrupt messages your subconscious is trying to send you. Maybe he has a point, but I don’t want to explore it.