Did you know that you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping? That's an average of 25 Years!
In my opinion, every second of our life that we spend either conscious or sleeping is precious. We should value every moment and take full advantage of anything we can to have a fuller life. So today I will be sharing with you some tips and tricks, to help you get the most out of your sleeping experience.
Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is the ability to consciously observe and control your dreams. While you are lucid dreaming everything you see, hear, feel, taste and even smell is as authentic as real life. Everything becomes possible and you won't be able to tell the difference, but don't get too excited because that is exactly what knocks you right back into the boring real word.
What are the benefits of lucid dreaming?
There are many ways lucid dreaming can improve your life. Here are some of the best ones:
- Controlling your dreams- The first and most obvious benefit, who wouldn't want to be able to fly trough a beautiful wonderland while gazing at the sunset. I mean come on!
- Boost your creativity- Your unconscious mind is capable of imagining anything and with lucid dreaming you can actually experience it.
- Facing your fears- With lucid dreaming you can easily get over phobias, by facing and defeating your fears head on.
- Practice real life skills- You can easily put tasks in front of yourself and take your time to master them, all while sleeping!
- Get better sleep- Lucid dreams take place during the rapid eye-movement or REM phase of sleeping, which is the deepest part of your sleep. So you will wake up well rested and with an awesome story to tell.
So how do you get started?
To start having lucid dreams you will first have to train your mind to be able to tell the difference between reality and the dream world. To achieve this, you will have to start some new habits.
- Dream journals- Start writing down any dreams or parts of dreams that you remember. It is important to write down everything in as much detail as possible, its best to do so as soon as you wake up. Later on you will encounter a certain pattern in your dreams, which you can use to your advantage.
- Reality checks- This is where you ask yourself ‘am I dreaming?’ and then answering that question by doing something which has different results in the dream world and in real life. This can be something really simple like looking at your watch, then looking away and checking the time again. If the time is dramatically different, then you are dreaming. The more often you do these types of checks throughout the day, the more likely you are to do one in a dream.
- Sleeping/Mediation music- Being able to relax your body while keeping a conscious mind is very important, so why not put on some relaxing music with binatural beats designed to induce lucid dreaming. I will be linking some of the most effective tracks (from my experience) later on in this post.
- Get comfortable sleeping on your back- Sleeping on your back is known to be the most efficient way of starting a lucid dream.
- Believe in yourself- When laying down in bed keep telling yourself "I will lucid dream tonight." to the point that you actually believe it. This will increase your chances of actually achieving it.
- Let your body fall asleep, while maintaining a conscious mind- Before going to bed, have a nice stretch to get the blood flowing. After laying down, get very comfortable and stay completely still. You will feel the urge to move some body part or scratch an itch, but this is your brain checking if your body is still awake. You have to fight these urges while relaxing your body and focusing your mind on visualizing what you want to dream about.
- Try these methods when exhausted- Lucid dreaming becomes much easier to achieve when you are tired. Try getting a bit less sleep than usual the night before and being active throughout the day.
There are many much more advanced techniques to induce lucid dreaming and I will be covering them in future posts. But simply following the steps above and being persistent ( most people experience their first lucid dream between the 3rd and 21st day of committing to having one) should be enough to get you started.
Lucid dreaming music that I recommend:
Happy dreaming everyone!
Cipa
Sources: howtolucid.com