What is Lucid Dreaming?
A lucid dream is simply a dream in which you are aware you are dreaming.
Because of this awareness you have the ability to consciously control your dream. If you think of a regular dream as being like a movie, then a lucid dream puts you in the director’s chair. You can choose everything that happens; not just controlling your own actions, but creating other characters, objects, events, and plots all set against any backdrop you can imagine.
Lucid dreaming is also an altered state of consciousness, effectively your brain is behaving exactly as it would when you are awake rather than how it usually does while you are asleep. This brings online your self awareness that is usually turned off for the night. This has the added bonus of not only giving your control of your dream but also making it sharper and clearer, more like a real experience than the fuzzy, blurred experience that regular dreams can often be.
When you are awake during the day your experience is constantly being shaped by thesensory inputs coming from your external environment, i.e. through your eyes, ears and the rest of your senses. When in a lucid dream your conscious and subconscious work together to internally produce these sensory inputs. This means you have the full range of senses just as you do when you are awake; you can see, hear, feel, smell and taste whatever your mind creates. It is an incredible world where you can live out any fantasy and are only limited by your imagination.
Is Lucid Dreaming Safe?
When first hearing about lucid dreaming, this is usually the very next question, after the obvious ‘What is Lucid Dreaming’ that anyone asks. Fortunately it has a very simple answer. Lucid Dreaming is completely safe. It is a natural state of mind, which can either come about by itself (most people have a few lucid dreams throughout their life whether they try to or not), or be induced more regularly using various techniques.
Lucid dreaming can be confused with Out of Body Experiences or Astral Projection, which may lead people to question if it is safe, or even if it is real. Lucid dreaming is neither of these things, when you have a lucid dream you never leave your bed, all the experiences you have take place within your own mind.
Is Lucid Dreaming Real?
There is a long history of lucid dreaming, Tibetan Monks have been training themselves in Dream Yoga which includes the practice of lucid dreaming for over two thousands years. Although evidence further back in time is harder to find, human beings have in all likelihood been having lucid dreams for much longer.
More recently the work of scientific researchers, most notably Stephen LaBerge have proven lucid dreaming exists beyond any doubt. Since British research Hearne's pioneering experiments in the late 70’s,and, closely followed by LaBerge, hundreds of studies on lucid dreaming have shown us not only does it exist but also many of interesting features. Not to mention developing some reliable techniques for inducing lucidity.
Ok, so now you know what lucid dreams are, you know that they’re real and that they’re safe, but perhaps the most important question is still to come, why would you want to lucid dream?
