Have you ever wanted to be in control of your dreams? To be in a world where you can create anything using just your mind? To fly with birds, walk through fire and kiss your high school crush? Then you might want to check out lucid dreaming.
Source: https://luciddreamingpro.com
Lucid dreaming occurs when people are aware of their own consciousness while they are dreaming. This phenomenon has for a long time been seen as absurd and ridiculed by many members of the scientific community. However, recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have started to shine more light on the topic.
To understand lucid dreaming, I first need to mention the human sleep cycle. The human sleep cycle is comprised of two types of sleep, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. For most people, the sleep cycle takes 90 minutes with several NREM phases followed by a REM phase. REM sleep can last anywhere between 10 to 60 minutes. Lucid dreaming, like normal dreaming, has been found to usually occur in late night REM sleep periods. The difference, however, is that lucid dreaming is a skill which needs to be trained. Lucid dreaming hardly ever occurs in people that have not trained it.
So, now I guess you want to know how you can train lucidity dreaming huh?
Lucid dreams can be achieved by several methods, one of them being metacognitive training. A fancy word for a simple concept. “Meta” means above and “cognition” means thinking or perceiving, thus metacognitive training is simply training to be aware of your own thoughts. An example of a metacognitive exercise is:
Source: http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca
Another way to train lucid dreaming is autosuggestion. Autosuggestion is a psychological technique in which you guide your own thoughts, feelings or behaviours. By training to guide your thoughts, feelings and behaviours you can start manipulating them at will. One method which has been promoted by many lucid dreamers is to keep a dream diary next to your bed in which you write down your dreams right after waking up.
There are, of course, also many, many other ways to embark upon your journey towards lucid dreaming. If I sparked you interest in lucid dreaming, I suggest you give the internet a try to find out more! Or comment on this post and I can give you some help. One really well written paper regarding consciousness and lucid dreaming can be found under: https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/doi/10.1093/nc/nix009/3859602/Exploring-the-neural-correlates-of-dream
Happy Steeming!
