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If you are here you are curious to know your dreams or want to experience them the best you can by understanding how to lucid dream. Being conscious when you are dreaming is lucid dreaming.
There is a measurable difference in brain waves that indicate lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of awareness and definitively different from either awake or REM sleep. There are techniques mentioned here that elaborate on how to lucid dream using different techniques.
But, the difference between lucid dreaming and awake is characterized by brain waves. As usual, awakening is characterized by peaking Alpha waves and in lucid dreaming, there is high coherence in the theta and delta band.
If you are searching for ways to control the environment, character of your lucid dream there are techniques in the research regarding lucid dreaming. Almost more than 55% of people have experienced one or more lucid dreams according to healthline.com and 23% of people experience lucid dreams at least once a month. Sometimes, we remember the feelings, characters, and visual cues with minute details.
Benefits of lucid dreaming
Alongside knowing how to lucid dream you might be curious as to why lucid dreaming and what are the benefits. Researches and studies have shown that people dealing with nightmares due to trauma, stress, and anxiety
- By training your cognition to recognize a dream as just a dream, you can learn to neutralize nightmares or experiencing your trauma through the dream.
- Learning how to lucid dream helps to control the dream, environment, and storyline which can reduce anxiety and stress. And, you will feel more in control of events in your life and feel empowered.
- Lucid dreaming requires having better motor skills or cognition in many techniques that improve overall motor skills.
- Creativity improves in people as they consciously sometimes create the characters, stories, and artists can also get inspired from the stories, visuals.
Caution before you start lucid dreaming:
Some people may have problems with lucid dreaming if they are insomniac or have mental health issues. After practicing lucid dreaming if you feel fatigued the whole day, experience hallucination, confusion you should stop right away.
- less sleep quality
- hallucination, delirium
- fatigue
Most Popular ways on how to lucid dream
If you want to be knowledgeable on how to lucid dream there are two broad techniques to induce lucid dreaming.
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DILDs: Dream initiated lucid dreaming helps you to have a cue in the dreaming that triggers the consciousness that they are dreaming.
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WILDs: Wake induced lucid dreaming is when you go to dreaming from an awake state directly.
The best technique for a beginner
There are different lucid dreaming techniques on how to lucid dream, but the best one yet is to WBTB or wake back to bed. The wake back to bed technique requires the individual to wake up at a certain time frame of the sleep and go back to REM sleep in the conscious mind. And, this generally shows results within one week or less.
Steps:
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Set an alarm five hours from when you fall asleep.
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Stay up for 30 minutes.
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Then, go back to sleep as normal.
This helps you to go to REM sleep in an aware mind.
To explain, there are four stages of sleep that are light transitional sleep, stable sleep, and then deep sleep, and finally REM sleep. This sleep cycle with a duration of 90 to 120 minutes occurs four to six times in a full night’s sleep. In the REM sleep eye movement, heart rate, breathing increase compared to the previous non-REM stage.
In the WBTB technique, the individual wakes up before the fourth REM sleep ideally and go back in there consciously. Hence, the dream will be lucid in that stage.
There are other techniques that you can also experiment with other techniques to find what best suits you when you get used to lucid dreaming.
Reality check:
You can practice reality testing for any other lucid dreaming. Increasing your metacognition while you are awake will also help you to increase awareness and cognition in the dreaming state. There are several ways to check if you are dreaming or not. You have to practice this reality testing several times a day to be able to do it while dreaming.
The most popular reality checks are:
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Put your finger through the palm to see if it enters or not
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Check time as time will not change consistently if it’s a dream
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Pinch your nose to see if you can breathe or not.
Reality checks are efficient ways to recognize if you are dreaming. As though, you need some practice and time to fully able to do reality checks.
MILD or Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming:
Sometimes even if you try to remember the dreams, you tend to forget the details, and often they can be blurry and forgettable. With recurring dreaming patterns regarding a particular event, MILDs can be effective to forget or neutralize the dream. It can help you remember that it was just a dream.
First, try to rehearse a particular dream again and again.
And, In the second step, tell yourself next time I dream I will remember this or any sentence or words that will make you remember your dreaming.
The wake back to bed technique is often used integrated with the MILD. When you are awake just before the REM sleep tell the mnemonic or the chosen sentence to yourself before you go back to sleep. MILD is a strong foundation to become lucid in your dream and remember them.
External stimulation:
The previous methods are all self-induced techniques while this one is not. often researchers use this technique to stimulate the activities in the brain or cortical activation using external stimuli such as light. If you are here to learn how to lucid dream by yourself this won’t be much necessary. But any stimulation should be used according to the sleep intensity, response to external stimulation of the sleeper. The external stimuli help the sleeper to incorporate the stimuli and making the dream lucid.
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