How do you have Lucid Dreams?

Question

How do you have lucid dreams? If you have one once, will you have them for the rest of your life or will you have regular dreams too? I am just curious to how lucid dreaming happens.

Answer 1

I have been a lucid dreamer all of my life and never knew that it was out of the ordinary until I read an article in TIME magazine regarding the topic.
Lucid dreaming is an awareness that you are in fact dreaming and can manipulate your dreams or experiences. There are limitations of course, as the harder you try to become conscious and participate, the less likely you will be able to manage the experience. It is more like a vicarious experience. You do manage some of the conditions, however only by suggestion and not by logic.
It is said that lucid dreaming can be "taught". Patience and experimentation is of course paramount. I find that lucidity comes more easily when I am not overly tired, have consumed alcohol or am overly stressed. Relaxation is most probably the key. Introduce it by thinking of it. Go with the pre-sleep manifestations and attempt to sway the outcome. Practice makes perfect, eh?
My thoughts are with you. It is honestly an experience worth having! Wish I could enlighten more! :)
Good luck! :)

Answer 2

www.dreamviews.com is a good resource for lucid dreaming.

Sometimes I lucid dream, more often I don't. Like the other poster, I think stress is an issue, and more often I am a bit stressed and overtired. When I do "wake up in a dream," it is outstanding. Mostly it involves flying, that's the biggest thing that helps me notice I'm dreaming. Once I do, I can fly at will and tend to fly around all the time (who wouldn't?). But my everyday dreams are rather ordinary, I don't realize I'm dreaming, I just kind of go along like a dope, and wake up unsatisfied with the experience.

My son could lucid dream from the age of 5 or 6 until his early teens (it was obviously a gift, no one had every discussed it with him). He got himself out of his own childhood nightmares, it was amazing! When he lost the ability, however, his dreams became very frightening for him. I don't know if he ever redeveloped the ability (he's 17 now), I will ask him this weekend when I see him. He doesn't seem overly troubled, so if he doesn't do it, at least his dreams probably aren't scary.

Answer 3

whats a lucid dream?

Answer 4

Lucid dreaming is a paradoxical state in which the window of consciousness is seemingly closed to the outside world but open to an inner one. Lucid dreamers know they're dreaming, and if truly adept can return to the same dream night after night and manipulate the content, all without waking up. Sounds like a nifty skill, and life-changing benefits are ascribed to it. But many people, like Anthony, have a more basic concern: far from having enough on the ball to dream-surf, they barely remember their dreams at all.

The best-known guru of lucid dreaming is Stephen LaBerge, author of several books on the subject and founder of the Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, California. LaBerge's qualifications are twofold: first, he's a PhD in psychophysiology who conducted dream research for many years at Stanford University, and second, he's a veteran lucid dreamer who over a seven-year stretch recorded nearly 900 lucid dreams.

Lucid dreaming--the term was coined by Dutch writer and physician Frederik van Eeden in 1913--has been known for centuries. But it had been largely forgotten until interest in altered states of consciousness perked up among certain scholars during the 1960s and '70s. LaBerge, for one, decided lucid dreaming offered a route to personal growth, vanquishing inner demons, etc. Here's his report of a lucid encounter with a scary dream genie: "Realizing that my fear had created his terrible appearance, I resolved to embrace what I had been eager to reject, and with open arms and heart I took both his hands in mine. As the dream slowly faded, the genie's power seemed to flow into me, and I awoke filled with vibrant energy."

Whatever. But LaBerge makes a good case that lucid dreaming isn't just aging hippies kidding themselves. The chief proof is his own research involving rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when most dreams occur. Knowing that REMs can indicate where the subject is "looking" in his dream, LaBerge and other lucid dreamers arranged to signal lab technicians that they were in control of their dreams by moving their eyes in a specified way. Sure enough, they were able to do so, even though instruments showed they were still asleep. From what I can tell, sleep scientists now generally accept that you can be aware you're having a dream.

Is lucid dreaming a gateway to a higher state of awareness? I'm skeptical, and when I queried him LaBerge said merely that it can be "one of many pathways to continued development." The simplest explanation for conscious control of dreams is that the dreamer is in fact close to consciousness, and that practitioners have merely mastered the art of dancing on the thin line between wakefulness and sleep. LaBerge doesn't buy this, telling me, "Our research indicates that lucid dreaming takes place during deep, intense REM sleep." We might debate whether higher central nervous system involvement = deep sleep, but let's leave that for later.

More relevant for present purposes is whether lucid dreaming can be learned. LaBerge says yes, but I'm not convinced it's something everyone can do. Even a casual reading of first-person accounts suggests that lucid dreamers have exceptional powers of recollection. One study found they're also more imaginative and inclined to mystical experience. A cynic might interpret that to mean they're more prone to being flakes, but let's be charitable and say they see and remember with a vividness about which the rest of us can, well, only dream.