Welcome to the third and final part of my lucid dreaming series. Over the few days, you should have been practising a few techniques that can help you to control your breathing and your mental state. By now, you should be feeling relatively present throughout the majority of your days. Additionally, you should have been keeping a dream journal which should have a couple of entries. Don’t worry if not, using the information in this last article, you should be able to piece every together. You can then continuously practice these techniques day in, day out. Over time, you’ll build up your awareness so much that lucid dreaming will then become possible.

In today’s article, we’ll explore how to induce your mind into a lucid dreaming state. There are two types of induction you can attempt. These are known as WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dreams) and MILD (Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreams.

WILD

This is considered the most difficult form of lucid dreaming induction. You’ll need to practice your techniques strictly to achieve this. However, there are two primary advantages of using WILD. Firstly, you’ll be able to choose in your dreams when you want to become lucid. This means you can be simply observing a dream and then choose to become directly involved. The second advantage is known as Peak Lucidity. This means your dreams will be the most vivid and therefore the most engaging.

TECHNIQUE: WILD

Step 1

Firstly, get into your bed and lay in corpse pose. This is where you lay on your back with your arms comfortably at your sides. You’ll want your body to be loose and relaxed. Another way of achieving this is setting the alarm about 5-6 hours into your sleep.  You can then turn it off and return to your sleep. This is because your body will already be in the relaxed mode.

Step 2

Close your eyes and stare into the blackness. Use your meditative practices to observe and release any thoughts and feelings that pop into your mind. Try and clear your mind as much as possible. Inhale and exhale through your nose very slowly. For this, inhale for four seconds. Hold for seven seconds. Exhale for eight seconds. Counting your breath like this will also help you to stay focused.

Step 3

As you repeat this, you’ll start to see that strange buzz of colours you normally see when you have your eyes closed. Stare at these colours. At this point, you should feel your body starting to fall asleep. Concentrate on your breathing and these colours. Try not to lose consciousness.

Step 4

As you’re on the verge of falling asleep, start to create a mental image of what you want your dream to be. Start at the ground. Do you want a beach or grass? Slowly branch outwards from your feet. Are there trees, buildings or mountains around you? Slowly add in detail piece by piece, ensuring you can see each clearly before you envision the next. As you keep going, you should find yourself asleep and in a lucid dream.

TECHNIQUE: MILD

This is the ideal technique for beginners just starting out. MILD works by setting memory cues in your mind so, when you’re asleep, you can remember that you’re supposed to be lucid dreaming. This is where you’ll need the practices you have been doing. If practised enough, they should continue in your sleep. Note, you can also add an action to remember to be present. This could be looking at your hands or looking at your watch. Something simple that reminds you to be aware. These actions will naturally reoccur while dreaming, causing you to become lucid.

Step One

Get into bed and position yourself in corpse pose as above. Close your eyes and stare into the blackness. Now, with easy breathing, repeat a phase in your head. These should be something along the lines of ‘I will have a lucid dream tonight’ or ‘I’m Dreaming Now’.

Really mean the words that you are repeating to yourself. Maintain the easy breathing and stay focused. Your meditative practices will have taught you how to do this. Any thoughts or feelings that come into your head, simply observe and dismiss. You need your mind clear. As you repeat, you should find yourself quickly falling asleep.

Step Two

As you’re about to fall asleep, while repeating your chant, start to visualise your dream, similar to the method above. As you fall asleep, your conscious mind will also become part of that dream. If this happens successfully, you’ll be lucid dreaming!

Note

Another method that some people use is using lucid dreaming induction music, such as binaural audio. These can be easier found online, such as here. This is effective for some people and not to others; it simply depends on your mind.

And with that, I conclude my meditating to lucid dream series. You may not be able to enter lucidity on your first attempt but don’t give up hope. I practised for many months with the odd lucid dream, maybe once or twice a week. Sometimes none. After about six weeks, I was able to start lucid dreaming near constantly. We’d love to hear your feedback and some of your dream stories and how you got on with the techniques! Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!

Work environments are stressful at the best of times. With colleagues bothering you at all hours of the day, ever-increasing ‘in’ boxes and impending deadlines, it’s not uncommon to feel like you can’t catch a break. Lunch breaks don’t even feel like lunch breaks these days when your mind is running at a million thoughts a minute about what you have to do later that afternoon. However, by squeezing in a quick meditation session at work, you can become present, introduce peace into the middle of your day as well as reducing those all-important stress levels. Below, we’ll show you how;

Ensure You Stay Hydrated

We know that every doctor under the sun will recommend this to you two times over, but it’s so important. The body is made up of over 60% water, and by keeping these levels up, you’ll be able to stay hydrated and in top form throughout your day. Furthermore, when you go to top up your water levels, this is the perfect time to get present. At the water fountain, take three deep breaths. Inhale through your nose and fill up your lungs as much as you can. Then slowly exhale through your mouth, prolonging your exhale to as long as you can. Follow your breath for its entirety.

Remain Present

This is extremely difficult at work. Your mind is constantly at other times of your life. Maybe on that deadline for a weeks time. Maybe it’s on what you’re going to have for lunch or dinner. It could be on Friday and what you’ll be doing at the weekend. Get yourself into the present minute. Get your mind into this second. While at work, implement the breathing technique mentioned above. One of the best ways to stay present is to write down all your ‘unpresent’ thoughts in a list. This will help you clear your mind of all these thoughts, leaving you free to live in the present.

Be in Nature

Being in nature is one of the most therapeutic spaces you can open your mind in. Whenever you get the chance, get yourself outside for some fresh air. If there’s a local park of green space near your place of work, go and eat lunch there. Take some deep breaths to really revitalise your mind.

Better still, invest in some low-maintenance plants for your desk. Some sort of cactus or a Chinese Evergreen is ideal as it requires minimal watering and looks great. You could also make this plant a reminder to stay present. Every time you look at it, get into the habit of taking a few deep breaths. The perfect way to stay present and focused.

Summary

By implementing these methods throughout your day, you can easily stay focused, calm and collected throughout your day. You’ll notice you’re a lot more stress-free and you’ll be a lot more productive, lighten your workloads and helping you to stay on top of things with ease.

Do you have any advice for staying calm and stress-free at work? If you have any tactics, let us know in the comment sections below! Don’t forget to share this article with your friends and family to help give them the boost they need!

In my previous article, we explored how you can meditate throughout the day using a variety of methods to prime your body and your mind to achieve lucid dreaming successfully. For a brief recap, we focused on breathing techniques that you should practice throughout the day to help yourself stay present. We also used notes to bring ourselves into the present moment. If you’ve been practising these techniques, you should feel relatively present. We can now grow these techniques to allow our brains to enter a state of lucidity when we sleep.

Now, these techniques will need to be practised every day to become effective. These are in addition to your daily meditative practices that you already committed to. This will keep your mind calm, present and relatively stress-free throughout the day. This creates the perfect mental conditions for achieving a lucid dream. When referring to lucid dreaming, there are four main areas of focus which I’ll describe in depth.

Sleeping

This is a crucial element to get right. Make sure you are getting enough sleep every night. The best way to achieve this is by going to bed early the night that you want to lucid dream. By practising this on a regular basis, your sleeping pattern will normalise and will also become consistent. This is also vital for lucid dreaming.

Waking Up

This is the act of waking up after you have been asleep. When you wake up, you don’t want to rush out of bed as though you are late for work. Ensure that you wake up calmly, taking your time. The best way to achieve this is to lie still for a few minutes and just rest. Let your body wake up naturally. When you decide it’s time to get up, follow the tips on my Ayurveda guide.

Additionally, you’ll want to record a dream journal. Once you are awake and your dream is still fresh in your mind, take a notepad or piece of paper. On this paper, you’ll want to jot down all the information you remember from your dream the night before. This is essential for dream awareness. This is also useful for finding reoccurring patterns in your dreams.

Walking

This refers to you be awake during the day and going about your daily business. In addition to the present techniques such as saying, ‘I Am Present’ and breathing methods, take note of how you feel throughout the day. This will help you help you to become more self-aware, perfect for achieving lucid dreams.

Another interesting thing to do throughout your day is to pretend to fly. I’m not saying jump around from building to building though. Whenever you’re in a high up place, imagine flying around the area in which you can see. The more often you do this, the more commonly you’ll be able to fly in your dreams. This is renowned for being one of the most liberating and satisfying dream experiences.

Dreaming

This is the state when your body and mind is in the deepest form of sleep. It’s here that you’ll experience lucid dreams. There are two things you can do in your dreams. Firstly, you can do nothing. Dreams are extremely creative in their own rights, so, for the next couple of days, don’t try and control your dreams. Simply observe them. Any dreams that you do have record them in your dream journal.

The second state of dreaming is a controlled dream. This is lucid dreaming. For example, if you want to fly in your dream, you simply must desire to fly. Never think of falling or crashing. As long as you remain thinking that you can fly, you will be able to do so. Make it all you are thinking about. It will take time and practice to achieve a lucid dream, but it will happen as long as you put the time in.

The third and final part of my article tomorrow will explain the process of lucid dreaming. Bookmark this page for future reference and over the next few days, practice. Using this technique on a regular basis, you’ll train your mind to become closer and closer to lucid dreaming. Only with practice will you be able to achieve the right state of mind. Return tomorrow for the final part, and we’ll explore the best methods of getting your mind into a lucid dream.

Meditation has always been promoted as having a tonne of benefits from improving your mental health and well-being to helping people across the planet to relieve stress and anxiety. You’ll find a wealth of articles on this site, as well as across the internet for the many uses of meditation. However, have you ever considered using the practice as a gateway into lucid dreaming?

If you’ve heard of lucid dreaming before, being mindful and self-aware is the first step to completing a lucid dreaming session. If you haven’t heard of lucid dreaming, in this article, I’ll explain what it is and how you can achieve it.

Lucid Dreaming

In short, lucid dreaming is the ability to take control of your dreams. At first, this may sound crazy and somewhat spiritual, but there are countless cases where people have been able to achieve this state of mind. In fact, it’s actually quite common in certain communities. If you successfully enter the state of lucid dreaming, your dreams will feel very real. Instead of witnessing your dreams and watching them play out in front of you, you’ll be able to have complete control.

This may sound like something out of the film Inception, however, this is a very good way of describing it. Without the fighting and people taking over your mind, of course. Lucidity, as the practice is known, when your mind switches conscious states, and you suddenly realise that you’re actually in a dream. Usually, dreams will feel fuzzy and hazy. When in a lucid dream, things seem a lot clearer and more vivid.

Despite how this sounds, this is a very safe practice and nothing like an out of body experience. When you’re in a lucid dream, you always safe and tucked up in your own bed. Of course, having full control of your dreams also means you can wake yourself up at any time.

It’s been known that Tibetan monks have been able to achieve this state of mind of thousands of years. The term ‘Lucid Dreaming’ was coined by Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, an enthusiastic dream researcher in the 1800s. States of lucid dreaming have been scientifically proven by several studies.

So, How Can Meditation Help Me Achieve This State?

To enter a state of lucidity, you must be relaxed, calm and possess a reflective state of mind. I’m sure you can see where this is going. By constantly practising meditation, you’ll find that your mind becomes more and more peaceful throughout the day. One of the key aspects of meditation is ensuring your mind is presently aware. This means being aware of the moment you are in right now, right this very second. As a rough guideline, close your eyes.

Take a long deep breath in, filling up your lungs with air as much as you can. Hold for second or two and then exhale. Make this exhale as long and steady as you possibly can. Empty your lungs of air. As you practice this exercise, follow the breath inside you with your mind. Right from the beginning of the exhale to the very end of the exhale. You should feel your breath fade out at the end. Try it now.

When you open your eyes again, you should automatically feel a huge amount of stress release from your shoulders and back. You’ll also feel a lot more aware of your surroundings. This is a feeling of being in the present moment. The more you practice this technique, the longer this effect will last throughout your day. This is meditation in its simplest form.

Now, to achieve lucidity, you need to bring this present feeling into your dreams. Throughout today, practice this technique. Tomorrow, we’ll be exploring the technique of how to enter the state of lucidity but for now, try and get your mind into this state as often as you can. Maybe write a note on your hand saying ‘Now’. Every time you notice this note, take a deep breath in as described above. Also, throughout your day, repeat in your mind, whenever you remember, ‘I Am Present’. This is also vital to achieving Lucidity.

Practice

Keep practising, and I’ll see you tomorrow! If you’re looking for any more tips on how to stay present throughout the day, leave a comment in the section below, and I can advise other methods on how to stay present. This will also allow you to stay focused throughout the day, making you more productive and stress-free!

Meditating is a fantastic way to become more self-aware. No, I’m not talking about AI machines becoming self-aware and taking over the world, I’m talking about your current state of mind. Here’s a question for you, how many times a day do you check in with your body?

When asked this question, many people will scratch their heads, not understanding what I’m asking them. I’ll put it another way. Whether you’re sat at a computer or browsing on your smartphone, take ten seconds just to stop whatever it is you’re doing and take notice of how your body feels, right this very second.

Does it feel hot? Does it feel cold? Do any parts of you or do any muscles feel tight? Do you feel relaxed, stress or excitable? Just take a moment to feel your mind and your body. Feel the blood rush flow around your body and try to feel your heartbeat inside your chest.

…

This is the first step to becoming self-aware. From the moment you wake up, you’re instantly checking your social media feeds, emails, deciding what to have for breakfast, deciding the best route to work, so you miss the traffic, choosing what music to listen to, work, work, work, go home, dinner, television, more social media feed scrolling and then sleep. At what part of the day did you take a step back to let your mind breath? At what point in the day did you stop and think ‘Am I okay? Are my body and mind okay?’

Chances are you probably didn’t. However, you’re not alone. This is the daily routine for millions, if not billions, of people around the world. By becoming self-aware, you can enjoy many benefits including better levels of focus, reduced levels of stress and anxiety, higher rates of productivity and the rest which I will include in a follow-up article tomorrow.

So how do you become self-aware? To help get you started, here are three things you can include in your everyday life to free your mind from the restraints of modern-day mental states.

Write

One of the most effective ways of becoming aware of your mental state is to write down your thoughts and feelings. You don’t have to be a good writer or even have written anything before. Simply write down what’s going on in your head. This could be in note form, a poem, a letter to yourself, whatever you feel comfortable with. This is a great way of destressing, and it will also help you understand how your mind works. This is because thinking something to yourself and seeing that thought on paper is a completely different experience. It makes it real.

Grow

Once we leave school, many of us stop learning. Not in the sense of starting a new job, for example, a factory where you would learn a new machine or a new system, I mean in a worldly sense. When was the last time you spoke another language or attempted to learn a new one? When was the last time you sat down and tried to solve a maths puzzle? With so any brain training apps and language learning programs, it’s easier than ever to pick and maintain a new skill.

Why are new skills necessary? Because knowledge is fuel for your mind. Like any muscle, the brain needs exercise to grow and develop to be the best it can be. To get you started, I used the brain training app Elevate (not an affiliate link). For just ten minutes a day, you can push your brain to improve its existing skills that will improve your life and your mental state.

Meditate

This one goes without saying, but it’s so important for achieving a state of self-awareness. You can meditate for an hour or a five-minute session after you wake up. It’s really up to you what you can do and fit into your schedule. You’ll see the most effective results if you do three 20-minute sessions a day, the first being as soon as you wake up. But it’s up to you. The important part is making sure you make a regular habit out of it, that’s when you start to see the results.

By meditating at least once a day, you are taking a break from your everyday life and treating yourself to a bit of ‘you time’. This gives you the ability to check in with your body, allowing you to listen to its wants, needs, passions, pains and, above all else, to relax.

I’ll be talking about each of these points about becoming self-aware over the upcoming articles so stay tuned to find out more! If there’s anything you would like to discuss or any topics you would like for me to explore, leave a comment in the comment section below!