You don't need to be born with any special talent in order to enjoy the
wonders and excitement of being awake in your dreams. Lucid dreaming is a
learnable skill. While some people are fortunate to be able to have lucid dreams
at will, most of us have experienced spontaneous lucidity at least once in our
lives. Today there are many methods in the literature and devices now on the
market to help you learn to become lucid or to increase the frequency of
lucidity in your dreams. In the upcoming issue of LDE, Kacper shares his
experiences with four different lucid dream induction techniques. Here is a
sample:
Effects of Pre-sleep Exercises on Dreams
By Kacper
These are several mental exercises that may boost progress of the
practitioner. Some of them are extraordinarily proficient - and I have decided
to write about them in the first place. Other exercises are those I have HEARD
may boost lucid dreamer's progress - but I didn't find them effective. Some of
them are usually not listed in main-stream lucid dreaming resources (both on-
and off-line), some are. I would like to present my first-hand experiences with
them and leave the choice of practicing them to the readers:
1. Visualisation. This is a very effective exercise, especially when
practiced just before sleep. It involves concentrating on one object, just one
object - and putting it into spinning-like motion, or imagining the object
moving around the visual field. The trick is that the exercise combines focusing
on the stable image and imagining motion, which solves the problem of not being
able to focus on one mental image at a time. It is to be carried out nightly,
regularly, in order to achieve effects (results).
The effects involve: increase in dream recall and hypnagogic phenomena
experienced before sleep. Both can be very strong. Excessive practice may lead
to less pleasant things - like myoclonic jerks (even during the day), and even
auditory hallucinations. Best way to do it is to practice WITH YOUR EYES OPEN in
complete darkness. Telling yourself you'll become lucid in the night while
visualizing works well in inducing dream lucidity.
2. *Brainwave entrainment: Effects depend on frequencies you are
using. Deep theta frequencies may enhance your dream recall, giving you very
vivid, coloured and emotionally intense dreams the following night. Some of the
dreams may have a transpersonal quality.
3. Self-hypnosis: The technique is simple. First you proceed with muscle
relaxation via the progressive relaxation method (relaxing muscles from toes to
neck), then you count down from some number (at least 21, maximum 100) to zero
while telling yourself that you are relaxing deeper and deeper while counting,
and zero is the deepest trance state. While in trance you can tell yourself to
remember your dreams, and that you'll become lucid the following night.
First of all, I have been practicing it at bedtime, and I was usually falling
asleep while deepening my relaxation. Second of all, I've never succeeded in
inducing a lucid dream through that method. It helped me to attain better dream
recall for a short period. However, some say that it's effective in inducing
lucid dreams, so go ahead and try... Maybe you'll do it...
4. Remembering in reverse chronological order - remembering events from the
day that just passed starting from now and ending in the morning. Said to be
good... After doing it I've had only vivid hypnagogic hallucinations... And
that's all. Maybe others have had success with this one; I've had none. However,
go ahead and try...
From all these exercises only the brainwave entrainment and visualization
method have my recommendation. The visualization method I described gives you
more than one benefit: it can ameliorate dream recall, it can induce lucidity
and gives you control over mental images. It's literally a must-do for a lucid
dreamer, while others are worthwhile to try and experiment with.
*Brainwave entrainment is a technology, growing in popularity today, that
enables one to reach altered states of consciousness using phenomenon called
frequency following response. It can be achieved by photic or auditory
stimulation of brain. Photic stimulation is flashing at certain brainwave
frequency - for example 10 Hz - Alpha rate - a subject looking at the flashing
light entrains his brain waves to this frequency - or synchronizes his brainwave
frequency just by looking at the light. Auditory stimulation consists of putting
different sound frequency into each ear, and the difference is a frequency to
which brain entrains... Some links where you will find more precise explanation
and products for entrainment:
www.hemi-sync.com
www.bwgen.com
www.mindmachines.com
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly issue featuring lucid dreams and
lucid dream related articles, poetry, and book reviews submitted by readers. To
subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange, send a blank email to:
TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Or join through the Yahoo Groups website at http://groups.yahoo.com/
The LDE can be found under Sciences>Social Sciences>Psychology>Sleep
and Dreams
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