Lucid Dreams

One of things I love about sleep is dreaming. I've been interested in my dreams since I was a teenager and in fact started learning how to recall them and interpret them at that time. It is a skill that can be easily picked up - just like learning a new language, in fact dream interpretation books are often called 'dictionaries'! I talked about it in this previous post.

As I became better at recalling and recording my dreams, the dreams themselves became more vivid and more real. They no longer are a hazy, shadowy image but clear and bright in my mind. I began to fix things that were anomalies in the dream. Maybe I would be in a boat and the river dried up, so I would create a dam upstream that was holding more water, so that the boat would float again. I often liked to go flying. At first it would be short leaps from tree to tree and as I became more confident I could fly longer distances.Flying over the sea at sunset is a favourite dream, flying up to the clouds and feeling them on my face, or skimming over the top of the waves.

I then read about lucid dreaming, how you could control your dreams and use them for your benefit and advantage - to overcome fears and anxieties, to learn new skills, to become more creative. I thought that sounded great and tried to learn to achieve a state of lucidity. I read up on how to do it and set about applying it to my dreams.

To start controlling your dreams and to achieve lucidity you have to be aware that you are dreaming. The recommended way to achieve this is to have a dream symbol - something unusual that if you see it in your dream then your brain trigger tells you that you are dreaming. A classic example of this is in the film 'Inception' where Leonardo DiCaprio's character has a small spinning top. If it stays spinning then he knows he is in a dream (as in real life it would stop spinning and fall).
I tried this method and a couple of others but none of them appeared in my dreams. I was confused. Then when I was listening to the radio one day, a guest was talking about lucid dreaming and perfectly described my learning to fly story, I realised that I was already lucid dreaming. That I was able to control my dreams. That I was already doing these things, so trying to add dream symbols into the equation was just making something I could already do more complicated.

I have to admit that I haven't done that much with my lucid dreaming. I am very impressed when people talk about creating whole new fantasy worlds and filling them with characters and people. It all sounds a little tiring to me, I guess I'm just lazy. I have used them to play out scenarios, trying to see what the outcomes of certain courses of action would be and that has been useful. I have used them to meet people and have a conversation with them, which has been amusing, mind you I haven't told my friends that I've arranged to meet them in my dreams, it sounds a little creepy. Guess they'll find out now though!  I'm not a great painter or artist but have heard that dreams can be a great source of inspiration for new pieces of work or story plot lines.

I have heard of lucid dreams being used to overcome fear and anixiety, apparently it is really successful at helping people who suffer from nightmares - as having control over your dream takes away the horror.
You can also use your dreams to solve difficult problems and find solutions for things that are bugging you. Simply asking your dream to show you a way to deal with something can provide unusual and creative answers.

If you would like to know more about lucid dreaming and how to start controlling and using your sleep 'down time' then why not join me on a new short, 4 week course that I'm running. The details are here.

Don't think that I spend every minute of my dream life solving problems, overcoming fears and learning new skills. Most of the time I like the unexpectedness of dreams and the bizarreness of things that can only happen in dreams. Yep, the lazy part of me showing up, even in my sleep!