Intuitives & more: Lucid dreaming 101

Couple nights ago, I was flying home when I saw the lights on at your house, and the dog on the porch. You waved from the window & smiled, and I waved back, and then went the rest of the way home.

Nope, I wasn’t in an airplane, on the way home from a trip, buzzing your house.

I was in a dream.  I remembered its details when I woke up. When I was in the dream, I felt that I had control of what I was doing in response to the things that were coming up, and did the things I thought were the best response to what was going on (this is what I do in my non-dream, waking state, which includes making mistakes, too!)

This is an approach to what some folks call lucid dreaming. With practice, people can recall bigger & bigger chunks of their  night time adventures, and begin to find connections with what’s going on there.

Now, if you’re really interested in this, I have three articles that will both introduce you to lucid dreaming and give you some ideas that, when you practice them, will help make you better & better at it.

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Maybe a good overview place to start is this article, “Ten Interesting Facts about Lucid Dreaming That Will Open Your Mind,” by Rebecca Turner, who has a useful website about lucid reaming as well.

While the best way to get into this is to read the article, here are the 10 things, just so you know what’s there.

1. The first lucid dreams were recorded by Ancient Egyptians.

2. One in five people lucid dream every month or more.

3. When you close your eyes in a lucid dream, you can wake up.

4. Lucid dreamers can “talk” to the outside world.

5. Lucidity arises from a special part of the brain.

6. Lucid dreaming can be mapped as a state of consciousness.

7. Certain vitamins will increase your dream intensity.

8. Lucid dream orgasms can be real.

9. Meditation is profoundly linked with self-awareness in dreams.

10. Tibetan Buddhist Monks practice lucid dreaming on their path to enlightenment.

(For more information, check out Rebecca’s World of Lucid Dreaming site.

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You may find it helpful to look over this set of suggestions for getting going, which are an easy read, with easy steps – check out this WikiHow article.

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Maybe this is a good way to approach all this – here’s a TED talk with Tim Post about lucid dreaming.

In 2013 Tim gave a talk at TEDx in the Netherlands on the emerging science of lucid dreaming and its potential power to enhance psychological development and overall wellbeing.

Having had numerous lucid dreams as a child, it wasn’t until he was 17 years old that Post discovered there was a special name for what he was doing. Since then he has researched, practiced and taught lucid dreaming, recording more than a thousand lucid dream entries in his journals. A graduate of educational psychology, he founded Lucidipedia and SnoozOn, online projects which support the scientific study and practice of lucid dreaming.