Controlling Your Dreams - Things to Do While Lucid Dreaming

Meditation As A Part Of Lucid Dreaming Guide For Beginners
Up until today, many are still confused about meditation. Some say that it has a great connection with God and others anticipate that its simply concentrating in full silence. The truth is just far from those thoughts. Meditation is basically a practice wherein the person trains his mind and tries to persuade in a mode of heedfulness to discern some benefits. This is used by many individuals in lucid dreaming or the act of controlling the dream. Being an expert in meditation, you will never ask the question how to control your dreams again. Although meditation itself needs excessive practice, many are still being patient in doing it in order to get lucidity.
Meditation and Lucid Dreaming
Many dreamers twin their dreaming techniques with meditation. Some try to master both together and others focus on one aspect. Either way, many experts claimed that meditation plays a great role in their dreaming activity which gives beginners a clearer picture of lucid dreaming techniques. With just a quick search in Wikibooks they will immediately find various advices from experts and meditation is always a part of it.
One handy tip to assure that meditation will be an effective trick to achieve lucidity is to ensure that you do it perfectly. Dream control is not as easy as what many people think. In fact this needs practice and a good dose of concentration. To avoid similar lucid dreaming problem from happening repeatedly try following these handy meditation tips.
Tips To Meditate The Right Way
Practice In The Right Place - find a calm and peaceful place to practice meditation. There should be no disturbance or any form of noise and sit in the most comfortable way you can. It's not necessary to do the lotus position. You can either sit on a chair with your feet flat on the ground or sit on the floor with crossed legs.
Concentrate - softly close your eyes and begin to take few but deep breaths. Inhale with your nose and exhale with your mouth. This way you'll refrain from forcing yourself to breathe. In a couple of minutes you will then notice that this breathing pattern will come naturally. This will also gradually become deeper.
Be aware - in order to see the effects of meditation, be aware it alongside from fully concentrating on the right steps. You will notice that you're starting to be more relaxed and calm. Be aware of your breathing and don't think of any distraction which may come. Lend your full focus on the activity and refrain from thinking of other things. This may not come easy but as you continue this practice you will find it simpler to concentrate.
Positive Effects In Lucid Dreaming
Concentration and focus are vital when trying to dream lucidly. Improving in meditation will also result in improving lucid dreaming. Because beginners like you need to familiarize various lucid dreaming tips, you should also have enough focus to avoid similar lucid problems. How to control your dreams is one easy question, but applying these tips require an adequate amount of motivation.

For more lucid dreaming techniques and lucid dreaming tips and tricks, visit our blog at luciddreaminghq.com. Visit our training guide, videos and product information guide.

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Lucid Dreaming to Overcome Nightmares

Have you ever woken up screaming in terror after a nightmare that was so vivid you literally feared for your life - or perhaps the life of someone you love? We all have this experience from time to time, but if you're unfortunate enough to experience frequent nightmares, this is no laughing matter. What you need is some way to realize that what you fear is not real because you are only dreaming. This awareness is the essence of lucid dreaming - the best way to overcome nightmares.
Why Do We Have Nightmares?
We are more apt to suffer from nightmares during periods of stress, sickness, relationship problems, or traumatic events. Alcohol and certain drugs or medications can exacerbate these tendencies as they tend to suppress R.E.M. sleep - the phase of sleep where dreaming occurs. If you go to sleep under the influence, you may sleep soundly for some time, but the mind will not be able to dream. Once the effect of the substance wears off and R.E.M. sleep can resume, the mind needs to catch up on its dreaming, and this often results in more intense experiences. If those dreams are nightmares - look out!
The key to understanding nightmares, however, is to understand your fears. Shining the light of conscious awareness on these irrational fears can make them melt away. The benefits will be felt not just in the dream state, but also in your waking, everyday life. The Australian Aborigines believe that the dream state connects us to the "Dreamtime" from which all life came, and attach great importance to resolving issues while dreaming. But whatever your worldview, lucid dreaming can reduce your anxiety levels tremendously.
Using Lucid Dreaming to Overcome Nightmares
The following examples are supplied by perhaps the foremost researcher on lucid dreaming, Stephen LaBerge, in his 1990 book with H. Rheingold, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Their research suggests that it is healthier to adopt a conciliatory attitude toward hostile dream figures, rather than a 'confront and conquer' attitude.

• If being pursued, turn to face your pursuer. If it doesn't disappear altogether, start a dialog with it.
• If attacked, show readiness to defend yourself but attempt a dialog. Or, feel love within yourself and attempt to extend this to your attacker.
• If falling, relax and allow yourself to land. You are not going to die: it's a dream! Or, convert falling into flying and then go somewhere interesting. (This idea actually came from the Senoi people of Malaysia.)
• If paralyzed, remember that you are only dreaming and adopt an attitude of curiosity toward the experience. Don't panic!
• If unprepared for a test, you could simply walk out of the exam room and avoid the situation altogether. Or, have fun coming up with creative answers to questions.
• If naked in public, remember that modesty is a social convention. In dreams, anything goes. So allow everyone else to get naked, too! (It's okay if this becomes arousing!) Who cares what happens in the privacy of your own dream?

Of course, all of these possibilities depend on your ability to realize that you are dreaming and to exert a certain amount of control over the process. So how exactly do we do that?

Fortunately, a relatively new and inexpensive audio technology known as brainwave entrainment offers a wonderfully simple way to enhance your ability to lucid dream. If you'd like to tame the fears that ruin your sleep, and convert your nightmares into exciting adventures instead, visit the following site, which offers the best overall review of brainwave products: Meditation MP3.

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Dream Phenomena While Sleeping

There are a number of dream phenomena that can take place while sleeping that creates a sense of heightened reality in people. This is because during the night there are many different types of stimuli that bombard the sense and which the brain incorporates into the realm of dreams. The brain does this to ensure that we are not woken, but the mind can, and often does, awaken a person if it perceives something as a danger to that person. The mind can also be trained to wake a person when it hears a certain sound such as babies crying.
Did you know? The term "dream incorporation" is used to refer to the about sleep phenomena. However, the term is also used to describe the process in which preceding daytime events become elements of dreams
Precognition Events While Dreaming
Many people have claimed to experience at least one precognitive event during their lifetime. Most while in a state of deep sleep or hypnosis. A precognition sleep event is a psychological phenomenon in which the sleeper feels that their dreams are predicting upcoming life events.
The psychological explanation for this is that the mind can trick one into believing in precognitive abilities because of memory biases. This means that dreams are retrospectively fitted onto life experiences to fit the upcoming "reality" of a situation.
Lucid Dreaming Phenomena
Lucid dreaming is in reality the conscious perception of one's state while still dreaming. While in this state the dreamer sometimes has a degree of control over their actions within the dream.
Did you know? A lucid dream is in reality any dream during which the dreamer knows they are dreaming. Once a person knows that they are dreaming they should (in theory) be able to influence the dream.
Dreams of Absent-minded Transgression
Dreams of absent-minded transgression are also known as DAMT's and are simply dreams in which the dreamer absentmindedly performs an action that he or she has been trying to stop. A good example of this is when a smoker tries to kick the habit. They will often for a time after quitting continue to smoke and enjoy the cigarette in their dreams.
Dream Recall
One of the most well-known dream phenomena is the distinct lack of ability to remember dreams in detail. However, the remembering of dreams can be improved as it is simply a learned skill.
Did you know? Often, a dream is recalled upon viewing or hearing a random trigger or stimulus. This is often the cause of feeling of déjà vu in many humans

The author is a member of a bed and mattress sales team member who has taken an avid interest in sleep and dream science. He currently works for a South African bed and bedroom furniture company in Cape Town.

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Powerful Techniques For Lucid Dreaming

Welcome to the worlds of lucid dreaming. Everyone is capable of having them, and many people report having had at least a few over the course of their lifetimes. Imagine being able to have them regularly! Our aim is to help you toward that goal.

Lucid dreaming is a natural and exciting way to have adventures, try superhuman activities, practice for upcoming events, relive past experiences, or explore possible futures. As with many things, lucidity takes practice and patience, and most report that over time their lucid experiences have been deeper, more frequent, and longer. There are two ways to induce lucid dreams: wake-induced and sleep induced. This article aims to describe very basic methods of each. The links below contain even more information.

Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming (sometimes referred to as WILD) involves entering a dream directly from the waking state. Most wake induced techniques involve you lying motionless and thereby tricking your brain into thinking you've gone to sleep. Given your natural sleep cycles, timing is everything with a wake-induced lucid dream. The best times to try WILD is either by waking yourself up during or right before a REM cycle, or through taking a nap during the day. You'll have to experiment to find the best timing for the former - everyone's REM cycles are different - though you may have success trying to wake up about two hours before you normally do in the morning.

To successfully do WILD you need to wait for and become aware of your hypnagogic hallucinations, those dream snippets and strange sensations that happen while you are still awake but slipping into the sleep state. At the point you need to remain calm, conscious, and focused, telling yourself that you are going to remain lucid as you drift into the dream state.

Dream Initiated Lucid Dreaming (DILD) is the most common form of dream induction. There are several methods that can be used in combination to accomplish DILD. First, the use of meditation and mantras before you fall asleep may help "program" your mind to have a lucid dream. Clearing you mind and repeating something like "I will be aware while I am dreaming" many times is a good first step. Second, you can go about your normal day frequently asking yourself whether you are dreaming. This may help build that same inquiry into the dream state, and if the answer is yes...

The third way to practice DILD is the most interesting and powerful. Every person has a set of "dream signs" which are parts of reality that are distorted in their dreams. Dream signs may include not being able to see your reflection, having extra fingers or toes, being able to walk through walls, etc. (On our main site we list many more dream signs, the link is below). If you go about your day looking for dream signs, when they do happen in your dreams it may snap you to lucidity.

This article presents only a very short and general overview of lucid dreaming. Then again there is nothing terribly complicated about it! Much more information is available. The most important thing is that you are willing to be patient, diligent, and creative as you pursue having regular lucidity. It will be worth it!

For more detailed information about techniques you can use to have lucid dreams, plus access to free information and advice about lucid dreaming please see the lucid dreaming center. For our blog with up-to-the-minute ideas and coaching, see this lucid dreaming how to blog.

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How to Lucid Dream - Your Own Journey

How to Lucid Dream? For most this question would seem to appeal to a beginners only. I found there are different types of beginners that start off within different stages in there Lucid Dreaming journey. Let me explain. I know people who recently discovered what lucid dreaming is only to realized they have been doing it for all their dreaming life. These people typically can give you a detailed five minute rendition or blow by blow version of last nights dream. This they can do every day. Well lets just say this was not the case with me and I had to start right at the beginning. You'll also find that if you talk to them about techniques for practicing dream awareness, while awake in order to achieve dream awareness while in a dream, they are successful without much effort at all.

If this last sentence did not make sense let me try and explain in another way. The first goal with lucid dreaming is to realize or to become conscious that you are dreaming and that you are not awake. So you are consciously aware of the fact that you are dreaming while you are asleep. Now to achieve this you have to practice checking or testing whether you are in a dream while you are awake. This can be done in different ways but one example is to have a set routine. For example every half an hour ask yourself "Am I dreaming", pinch yourself (and feel it) and look at the time on your watch twice a couple seconds apart.

The main idea involves conditioning yourself to test if you are dreaming, so that your subconscious mind keeps on requesting you to do this test. Eventually while you are in a dream the answers change FROM "no I am not in a dream"," ouch that hurt" and 10:10am & 10:10am TO "yes, I am in a dream", wow that did not hurt and 10:10am & 05:28pm.

Typically in lucid dreaming, otherwise known a conscious dreaming, if you look at your watch twice a few seconds apart, the time with each view is totally different and you do not feel being pinched and you just somehow know you are now dreaming.

Typically people need to practice this for days and weeks before they get it right. The naturally talented lucid dreamer mentioned above was able to tell me, the day after a conversation we had about double checking the time, that the previous evening they where "practiced" enough to remember to do this test in a dream. We had one conversation about it and they were able to try it in a dream and succeed within hours. Their starting point in the lucid dreaming journey was not the same as mine.

The point being that learning how to lucid dream is a journey and each individual will have a different starting point. Not to mention also a totally different paths. This is important to understand in order to know where you are on this journey to help you focus on the next techniques to practice for you. This journey's life cycle could involve the following phases.

· not being aware of any dreams

· conscious awareness practice while awake

· successful dream recall

· successful dream control

· create and experience amazing adventure and fantasies

· use lucid dreaming for self discovery and personal growth

· out of body experiences

· personal healing

· spiritual awareness and growth.

· and much more.

Not only is it important to understand where you are in your journey but also to know where you want to be. There are many end destinations and they keep on changing as you reach some successfully.

Note that the above list is only a rough guide and that each phase can involve lots of ground work and practice while awake. The trick is to first learn about conscious dreaming, understanding more about each phase and then deciding what you want gain from it. Then it is simple to know where you are and what you need to do to get to your destination. From there you can easily find out exactly what lucid dreaming techniques and exercises you need to do. As you start your journey and become more experienced you'll soon notice that there are many other benefits and usage of lucid dreaming that can to be discovered and help you to archive your goals, basically you can tailor make a journey for you.

To really make the most of conscious dreaming one needs to find ways to work on your creative imagination. After all everything you experience and create in your dream comes from yourself and you need to cultivate this gift with a creative imagination. But first things first, aim to understand the big picture as discussed above, then realize where you are in it and then figure out the detailed effort involved to get to the next step. So when learning how to lucid dream make sure you know what your first goal is, you need to be very goal focused to be successful.

And lastly remember to enjoy the lucid dreaming experience from the beginning. In this case the cliché of the journey is more important or fun than reaching the destination is so true as with most things in live.

If you want to learn more about how to lucid dream then we have lots of information for you at our website on lucid dreaming.

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