13 May 2011

001 How to Lucid Dream: Introduction

I got into dreaming back in my sophomore year of high school, and I've been wanting to make a post about how to lucid dream for a while. What got me into dreams in the first place was this one very vivid dream I had sophomore year. Before that, I could hardly ever remember my dreams at all, and I didn't really care much: It was more of a "that's-interesting,-but-who-cares?" and a "yeah,-it-was-weird,-but-that's-nice." And then I had this full-on, full-detail, from-beginning-to-end adventure with my friend and the kid I had a crush on to save the word from an evil corporation run by giant gold fish. It was intense.

I got really into dreaming and found out about lucid dreaming. The problem was I didn't get much sleep (about four hours a night), I fell directly into REM sleep, and I started having a hard time remembering if some things had been a dream or reality. And, since I had nightmares every night, this isn't really the most pleasant thing, especially when trying to get through high school. So, I stopped.

But now I'm trying to get back into it, and I want to share the best steps, -- in my opinion, -- for having a lucid dream.

Firstly, what is a lucid dream? A lucid dream is a dream where you know you're dreaming. And, if you know you're dreaming, you could potentially control your dream, which is why most people want to lucid dream.

The second thing you should know is that there are two kinds of sleep: One is called NREM for "non-rapid eye movement," and the other is REM for "rapid-eye movement." They are called this because your eyes move around more during REM, whereas they're usually quite still during NREM. Pretty basic, yes?

Usually when you fall asleep you fall into NREM sleep. During this phase, you don't have full dreams, but usually clips or flashes of things. It's during REM sleep that you have your vivid dreams. There are several phases of NREM and REM sleep a night (for a regular eight hours). Usually it starts off slowly, maybe ten minutes for your first phase of REM sleep, and then fifteen the next, etc. This is important to know for some methods of attempting to lucid dream, but not for mine.

Because you can find a tonne of information on lucid dreaming out there, I am sharing my method of lucid dreaming, what has worked for me over and over again. I'm probably biased, but I think it's the best and most consistent method.


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