Lucid Dreams

Day 86 / 365

We all have weird dreams. A recurring one for me is having all of my teeth fall off with me trying to put them back in again. But the weirdest part for me is not the dream itself. It’s the fact that when I am in the dream, everything feels perfectly real. At no point will I question the absurdity of the dream while I am in it.

If I was able to do that, I would turn my dream into a lucid dream.

What’s a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you are in a dream. That’s it. So what’s so great about that?

As a bonus to getting awareness of your dream, you might be able to gain some amount of control over it as well. So if you are having a bad dream and you become aware that it is in fact just a dream, you might be able to change the narrative of your dream and turn it into a good dream.

So how does one have a lucid dream?

Lucid dreams are a natural phenomenon, and chances are you may have already experienced one in the past. I know people who have been able to do this at will naturally.

But the good news for others is that it is a skill that can be developed by practice as well.

The first place to start would be to make sure you remember your dreams. There are lots of elements which recur in our dreams. But since we forgot about our dreams the moment we wake up, we don’t recognize these elements. A good way to remember your dreams is to write them down. Keep a diary and pen near your bed, and as soon as you wake up from a dream, write down everything you remember. You can then revisit this diary every now and then before going to sleep.

Another method is to develop a habit of doing reality checks throughout the day while you are awake. It could be as simple as asking yourself — “Am I in a dream?”. You can look at your hands as well, as in our dreams our hands are generally misshapen.

This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Taking Deep Breathes