Dreams

Dreams

In my opinion, dreams make some of the best and most interesting conversations.  It's always fun to tell someone about my dreams and hear all the interesting stories in other people's dreams as well. The fact that anything can happen in dreams makes it even better.  

Another concept that interests me greatly is lucid dreaming.  Lucid dreaming is dreaming yet knowing you are in a dream.  It could be as simple as only knowing you are dreaming and can go all the way to you being able to react with dream characters and essentially control the events in your dreams.

I decided this sounds very cool and I am going to try and teach myself how to lucid dream! 

Lucid dreaming is like any skill, you must work on it and it will develop over time.  Before you start lucid dreaming you must be able to remember your normal dreams each night.  You might not have known that people actually dream every night, just don't remember them most nights.  So start a dream journal!  (I actually started one a couple months ago.)  A dream journal is one way to tell your brain that remembering dreams is important to you.  When writing down dreams, write them as detailed as possible, write down every event, emotion, and feeling you can remember.  

Everyone sleeps for a third of their life, yet many people don't know anything about what happens during your sleep.  Here is just a touch on what happens when you sleep.  

Most of you have probably heard of 'sleep cycles.'   Sleep cycles can explain why, on some mornings you wake up and feel refreshed and it's easy to spring out of bed, however, on other mornings you feel as though you are still sleeping when you turn off your alarm.  Sleep cycles also explain what happens each moment when you fall asleep, they explain when your deepest sleep happens and when you are most easily awakened.

Essentially there are three stages before you get to the fourth stage called, REM or Rapid Eye Movement.   

Non-REM 1. This is the first stage and it begins minutes or even second after you drift asleep.  This is the shortest stage of the all four stages.  Here, you are in light sleep and in the most alert stage and you can be easily awakened during this stage.  

Non-REM 2.  You will begin slowly falling deeper in sleep yet would still be easily awakened during this sleep stage.  If you were to take a power nap you would want to wake up after this stage.

Non-REM 3.  There used to be four stages before the REM stage began, however; stages three and four were so similar they are now combined into just stage three.  During this stage the brain essentially builds up energy for the next day.  It would be harder to wake someone up in this stage than if they were in stages one or two.  There is still no eye movement or dreaming in this stage.  

REM.  This is when dreaming occurs!  Your eyes jerk quickly in every direction, breathing quickens, heart rate and blood pressure increase.  Your mind becomes active.  You enter REM stage about 90  minutes after initially falling asleep and this stage lasts for about an hour.  On average an adult goes through the full four stage cycle five to six times each night.

I found a couple simple tips for how to remember your dreams each night that will later lead to lucid dreaming.

Now, pretend you keep forgetting to take the trash out, so you decide to tell yourself "I will not forget to take the trash out" over and over.  Chances are you will not forget.  The same works for other things.  If you want to remember your dreams say: "I will not forget my dreams."  Say it, repeat it, write it, often.  After a while that statement could change to: "I am going to control my dreams tonight" or "I will have a lucid dream tonight."

One of my friends gave me a suggestion too.  He said, if you ask yourself if you are dreaming when you wake up each morning and when you wake up in the middle of the night than you may start saying it when you wake up in a dream, therefore realizing you are dreaming.

Whether these simple tricks work or not, they don't take much time.  Even if none of these things work, there is no harm done, right?

So far, I have used the first tip for the past couple of days and no lucid dreaming yet but I have remembered all of my dreams since I have started!

I am not sure if dreams and this type of thing interest you as much as it does me but still, thank you all for reading and supporting my love of writing and for hearing about my plan to teach myself how to lucid dream.

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