Everybody has had that dream where, at some point, they look around and go “what is going on?!?” and then realize “I must be dreaming!” There is something very surreal and interesting about feeling conscious in your dreams.
You can control the elements of your dreams, you can accomplish super human feats that you would never be able to do during your waking hours (flying, leaping over buildings, etc). Once you have a lucid dream, you will want to have another one. Some people even work on developing the skills to make most of their dreams lucid. If you are interested in becoming lucid during your dreams, here are some lucid dream tips:
Lucid Dream Tips
- Learn how to recall your dreams readily. Keep a dream journal to help you with this. The more you can remember about your dreams, the better able you will be to recognize that you are dreaming when you are asleep. This step tells your brain that you want to know more about your dreams and it will be more open to clueing you into the dream when you are having it.
- When you keep your dream journal you probably start to see patterns in your dreams: certain people, places, things or situations will turn up again and again. This helps you remember that you have dreams about a certain subject when, as you are dreaming, you encounter it. Sometimes that is all it takes to clue you in to the fact that you are dreaming.
- Do a few reality checks. Train yourself to ask yourself “am I dreaming” at regular intervals. Learn a few of the dream “tells” (signs changing the second time you look at them, words not being steady when you try to read them, etc) and then when you encounter a situation that you often dream about, train yourself to ask “am I dreaming” and then analyze your situation. If you do this often enough, your brain will start to perform these checks automatically, and after a while, you will be dreaming when you ask yourself that question!
- If you find yourself in a lucid dream you can often control the situation by giving yourself “verbal” commands. Nobody is sure why the verbal commands work so well at helping you to control your dream, but they have been very successful.
- Try to stay calm. Some people get so excited when they realize that they are lucid dreaming that they accidentally wake themselves up! Nothing is quite as disappointing as realizing “Hey! I’m dreaming!” and then suddenly being awake instead.
- These are just a few lucid dreaming tips to help you both achieve lucid dreams more often and to have more control when you find yourself in the middle of a lucid dream. Lucid dreaming can be addicting—once you’ve had one, you want another! Believe it or not, you can train yourself to achieve lucid dreams with regularity. It just takes time and practice.