Introduction
I have written on the subject of lucid dreaming a few times now. I’m not exactly sure why it’s such a fascinating topic for me and for other people. Maybe it’s the magic of it, or the mystery, or perhaps it’s the power that it brings? Regardless of the reason, having complete control over one’s dreams is nonetheless a pretty novel and appealing concept.
Our dreams are a place where anything is possible. They are a place (or perhaps a state) where we can see anything, or do anything. When we wake up in a dream we wake up in a world created by our own mind; a world that is often both strange and beautiful. We experience structures and colors and even beings that are unlike those that we experience in our normal reality. We also have power and control in our dreams. Depending on our level of lucidity we are able to essentially do anything – fly, walk through walls or anything that we like. The only limitation is our imagination.
But it is also extremely challenging to lucid dream (at least for some individuals –like me). I think this is another reason why it’s so appealing and why it fascinates so many people. The challenge of it makes it mysterious and it feeds our curiosity. It also makes it something that we can work towards, like a goal or an accomplishment.
The remainder of this article will discuss some of the ways in which a person can work towards achieving lucidity in their dreams. It discusses the mindset that lucid dreaming requires and what I would call "triggers." I hope you enjoy.
Lucid Dreaming Requires Focus
Not always, but often we dream about things in our lives that we are focused on. For instance, when we start a new job, our mind is often occupied with learning the ways and tasks required by the organization. These subtle aspects of our focus often creep into our dreams. Similarly, if we have an important deadline to meet that causes us stress, we often go to sleep at night and dream about the project or task that we are working on. Sometimes this even happens when we marathon a TV series that we like, or when we attempt to learn a new sport, talent or activity. Ultimately, when our mind focuses a lot of its attention on one particular task or aspect of our life, this sends a signal to our brain that this particular thing is very important and possibly something of a problem that needs to be solved. As such, our brain continues to engage with the activity and try to problem solve it while we are asleep.
When it comes to lucid dreaming, we can utilize this natural process to our advantage. By focussing a lot of our attention on lucid dreaming we send a signal to our brain that this task is important which will hopefully carry the idea into our dreams.
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.
Similar to the explanation above, our dreams often revolve around repetitive activities that we engage in over the course of our day or week. When we build or create something, or when we spend a lot of time writing a paper, we often go to sleep at night and dream about the very same activity. We may wake up frustrated by the fact that we spent our entire night dreaming about filing papers or painting the walls in our home.
One positive aspect of this mechanism that relates to lucid dreaming is that we can also utilize it to our advantage.
For instance, in order to lucid dream we often need something to trigger wakefulness within us while we are asleep. By "trigger" I mean we need something to remind us to become aware within our dream. We can do this by associating an action like looking at our hands with the idea of becoming aware. For instance, every time we look at our hands we can ask ourselves “Am I dreaming?”
In this case, the action of looking at our hands becomes a trigger to becoming aware and it will hopefully have the effect of waking us up in our dream. Repetition also comes into play in that we need to perform the trigger enough times throughout our day that it will carry into our dreams. Ultimately, we want to dream about our trigger (i.e. we want to dream about looking at our hands).
So to combine the idea of focus and repetition we can tell ourselves that’s it’s very important that we become aware in our dreams and that when we look at our hands we will become aware. Then we perform our triggering activity many times throughout our day, hoping that we will dream about our trigger activity.
Ideas for Dream Triggers
A triggering activity can be anything really, but the key is that it has to be simple enough that we can perform it discreetly and common enough to ensure that we will have many opportunities to perform it during a normal day. So for instance, using the example of looking at our hands, we would look at our hands dozens or even hundreds of times per day and every time we do so, we would say something like “I am awake” or “Am I dreaming?” You could also combine several of these activities to increase the chances that one of them will carry into your dream.
The following is a list of some trigger behaviors and activities that can be used. It’s best to do something that feels comfortable for you or something that you already do quite often:
1. Walking through a doorway
2. Looking at your phone
3. Turning on a light switch
4. Seeing another person
5. Looking at a watch or bracelet
6. Playing with a necklace
7. Sitting in a chair
8. Standing up
Conclusion
Lucid dreaming is an incredible experience that I would highly recommend to anyone. Though it can be quite challenging to accomplish, there are many tricks and techniques that can be used to increase a person chances of waking up in a dream. This article only discusses a few of the techniques that I use, so if lucid dreaming is something that you are interested in, I highly recommend doing some more research or asking questions of others. It is definitely worth it!
