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.