What is a lucid dream and how can it improve your daily life?
Dreams have always been a fascinating and mysterious part of our life, full of symbology and meaning. A lucid dream is even more powerful than a regular dream because they are a tool to take a deeper look inside our subconscious
During the LUCID DREAM, you are aware of the fact that you are dreaming, and despite that, you don’t wake up and you don’t leave the dreaming state!
Many people are interested in learning to be conscious in their dreams, to understand better the real their real essence and using the knowledge and experience they have acquired in lucid dreams to improve the quality of their waking life.
Once aware of this, the knowledge gained from your dreaming will be much richer and will allow you to have a greater understanding of yourself and your unconscious side. For example, during the lucid dream, you can make questions to yourself and receive answers inside your dream story.
In the lucid dream, the events are extra clear. So much that it’s easier to recall the events of a lucid dream than of a normal dream, since we actively explore them.
Lucid dreams are powerful tools for self-exploration, they allow you to experience and process inner fears. They also implement problem-solving.
Lucid dreams are used in psychology for the treatment of disease as anxiety and depression, in addition to reducing nightmare frequency and to enhance creativity.
With practice and motivation, you can increase the chances of having lucid dreams!
It is hard to explain what a lucid dream is like and how helpful it can be if you never had a personal experience of lucid dreaming.
It’s possible that you already experienced a lucid dream before, however, without proper dream recall training, it’s difficult to notice it.
Lucid dream – Where to start?
Many people are interested in exploring dreams, in fact, is possible to obtain some kind of knowledge from them.
Learn how to have a lucid dream on your own is possible, but it requires motivation, mind-training, and some good advice from Stephen LaBerge, psycho-physiologist specializing in the scientific study of lucid dreaming.
This book i a complete guide (with exercises) to explore, understand and live the experience of lucid dreaming, and good part of this article is based on the book.
Is important to mention the excellent book about the Lucid dreams by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold called “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming” (1991).
If you want to start this journey inside yourself and learn how to experience lucid dreams try to follow these tools:
1- Practice the Dream Recall
The ability to remember and replay mentally the dreams
2- Keep a Dream Journal
A diary or notebook for write down and pin your dreams
3- Get in contact with the “Dream herbs“
Plants and seeds used in folk/traditional medicine to enhance dreams. Nowadays are present on the market with the same purpose
1. Dream Recall
The ability to remember and replay the dreams in your mind.
Every night we have multiples dreams, even if we do not have conscious memories of them after we wake up and seems wrongly that we slept without having any dream.
On the other side sometimes dreams are so vivid and impressive that the dream recall is automatic: as we wake up we still have in mind what happened during the dream, especially if something meaningful takes place.
Dream recall is fundamental in order to experience lucid dream because:
- Without dream recall, even if you had a lucid dream, you won’t be able to remember it;
- Dream recall allows you to understand how your dreams are made and distinguish them from waking life. In fact, dreams seem real and for experience, is essential to recognize them as dreams and not as real-life. Can also happen to wake up as we notice that we are dreaming, ending immediately our permanence in the dream realm. That’s why practice is very important.
In this article we talked about dream recall and how to improve the ability to recall dreams:
2. Dream Journal
The dream journal is a diary or a notebook for writing down the dreams. Is a good tool for practicing your dream recall. Meanwhile, you try to describe on paper your dream, more memories and fragments of the same will be accessible, and will be also easier to rebuild the storyline of the dream.
How to use the dream journal:
1 – Keep always the journal close to your bed or the place where you sleep or nap.
2 – Write down what you remember immediately after you awake, even if is a fragment, an image, or a state of emotions.
If you don’t remember anything don’t give up, stay where you are, and try to recall some minutes. Sometimes we have flashbacks of our dream during the day: get prepared to write down when this happens and report in your journal.
3 – What to write:
Focus on the main theme of the dream, describing sensation, feeling, and your mood during the experience, change of emotional state, and other sign that impressed you;
Then, try to focus on the details, symbolic images, colors, and smells.
4 – Give a short and catchy title to your dream.
5- Keep always some white pages between one dream and the other: maybe more details will come to you and you may need the space for adding the details.
6 – You can also make a drawing of your dream: is not necessary to the good at, is just a tool for you to remember better your dream in the future.
7- Don’t forget the date!
3. Herbs for lucid dream
Some herbs, roots and seeds are strong dream-enhancer, increasing the possibilities of having a lucid dream.
This group of plants is called “oneirogenic plants” (óneiros = “dream” and gen = “to create) and humanity has known their effect for many centuries, incorporating them into their own culture(1)(2).
The most famous and well-known in the world are:
- Calea zacatechichi: Mexican Dream Herb
- Silene capensis : the African Dream-Root
- Entada rheedii: the African Dream Herb
Those plants are extremely helpful for intensifying dreams, practicing dream recall, and increasing the chances to have lucid dreams.
Other plants, not oneirogenic, can contribute to enhancing your sleep, as example:
- Nymphea caerulea, the Blue Lotus or Blue Water Lily
- Valeriana officinalis, Valerian
- Passiflora incarnata, Passion Flower or Mary pop
If you are interested to read more about these and other herbs for vivid and lucid dreams don’t miss:
Reference:
- Calea zacatechichi – Dream Herb | Entheology.com
- Jean-Francois Sobiecki B.Sc. Hons. EthnoBot (2012) Psychoactive Ubulawu Spiritual Medicines and Healing Dynamics in the Initiation Process of Southern Bantu Diviners, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 44:3, 216-223, DOI: 10.1080/02791072.2012.703101
- LaBerge, Stephen; Rheingold, Howard (1990). Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. ISBN 0-345-37410-X.