Perhaps more commonly known as lucid dreaming, conscious dreaming includes the ability to realize that you are dreaming while you are doing so and the ability to take control of your dreams, dictating the happenings. Once you are able to realize that you are dreaming, you can go anywhere or do anything in your dream.
While having the ability to control your dreams may sound farfetched, it?s actually something which is within your reach. Lucid dreaming isn?t that hard to do and these dreams are a great place to express your true self and your desires. There are techniques which have proven effective at producing lucid dreams.
The first thing you should do is to figure out what your goals are in learning conscious or lucid dreaming. Do you hope to have more enjoyment from your dreams, or is conscious dreaming a vehicle for you to achieve some of your other life goals?
After you define the reasons for wanting to learn to dream consciously, you can learn the steps to get your mind on the right level. You need to be in the right state of mind to be able to lucid dream. A good place to start is recalling your dreams. This means to remember any dreams you have had.
Remembering your dreams is the first step in having conscious dreaming experiences. The easiest way to train yourself to do this is to keep a dream diary. Keep your dream diary right by your bed and as soon as you awake from a dream, write down everything you can remember about it.
You will soon find you are remembering your dreams more clearly and in more detail. You can use your journal to help you remember more. Once your mind is used to remembering your dreams you are ready for the next step and that is to be aware you are dreaming. You may wake up in a dream so to speak but still know it is not real and only a dream.
Together with a dream diary or by itself, hypnosis can be a valuable tool in dream recall and conscious dreaming. In just a few sessions of hypnosis, most people find that they can remember each and every little detail of their dreams. After this can be done, conscious dreaming will start to happen more readily.
You may wake up suddenly when you are having a conscious dream in the beginning. This is not unusual. Go over the events in your dream as you drift back to sleep. If you focus on them hard enough, you will go back into the same dream and perhaps control the events and the outcome of them.
A third way to train yourself to conscious dream is to awaken yourself a couple of hours earlier than normal, then falling back to sleep. You are able to stay more aware in your dreams in this period of sleep, in fact you may feel you are half-awake and half-asleep. You may feel as if you are lying in bed thinking or daydreaming. If you are able to do this regularly, you will find lucid dreaming will come easily.
Be aware of your sleeping habits. You?ll be able to determine when you are most likely to have lucid dreams. However, don?t lose too much sleep ? fatigue and conscious dreaming don?t mix.
You will be happy to know that lucid dreaming is helpful for insomnia as well as other sleeping disorders. If you can dream consciously, you can condition yourself to turn off nagging thoughts that keep you awake at night.
You may think that learning lucid dreaming takes years of practice, but in fact it?s not so hard at all to learn ? with just a little practice, you can be a conscious dreamer too!
In fact, conscious dreaming is something that everyone can do. Just practice and use these techniques to develop your own lucid dreaming abilities ? you?ll find that it has a lot to offer.
