A Guide to Lucid Dreaming
Added Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm | View Comments
Bedstar not only have cheap beds, mattresses and bedroom furniture from all the main brands, we also know about sleep. Here in the bedstar knowledgebase we have articles on all the aspects of sleep and hints on how to sleep well. So before you browse our selection of bargain beds online here’s a guide to one of sleep’s interesting phenomena – lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming is simply being aware that you are dreaming whilst dreaming. There are different degrees of lucidity from just thinking to yourself ‘this is a dream’ to being able to fully control the dream world. You can learn to have lucid dreams and with practice gain control over them and we’ve got a few suggestions how to do it.
A lucid dream can be very exciting, you can try things that you could never do normally like flying, conjuring up the people you want to see and thinking through problems that are occurring in real life. It is also a great technique for regular sufferers of nightmares since once you are in control you can stop things happening, control you fear and alter the situation to make it better.
Before you try lucid dreaming it’s important to work on remembering your dreams, try to write them down as soon as you wake up so gradually you will remember some dreams most nights. Lucid dreaming mostly occurs when the deepest dreaming occurs during REM sleep which is just before waking, so don’t jump straight out of bed but try to stay still and remember what just happened!
The most common technique to achieve lucid dreaming is by performing reality checks regularly which establish whether you are dreaming or not. In dreams strange things happen but don’t seem unusual and you just accept such as breathing underwater, the grass being bright red or all your teeth falling out.
If you get into the habit of reality checks during your waking time then you will start doing them in dreams, triggering awareness of the dream. Simple reality checks are looking at a clock or piece of text to see if it stays constant or pinching yourself to see if it hurts. The more often you can train yourself to do these the more likely you’ll spot a dream sign.
Once you have established you’re dreaming it just takes practice (and a bit of creativity) to learn to control what happens. It’s easy to get distracted and lose your lucidity, or become excited and wake up, but dream spinning can help keep you there. This simply involves spinning in circles in your dream, like children do, and when you stop your dream will likely have regained clarity.
Since lucid dreaming requires a deep sleep combined with high awareness, the last thing you want is to be woken up by an annoying spring sticking into your back. So take a look at bedstar’s massive online catalogue of bargain beds and cheap mattresses to find a bed that will help you to relax and focus on your dreams.
1 COMMENT
Graham
January 18th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Great article. Will try this tonight
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