Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreaming

Imagine soaring through the air at outstanding speeds, pretending to be Superman with a red and blue cape, then deciding to become Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun, flying an F14 at two-hundred miles an hour over the Arctic Ocean.

Suddenly, you wake up and you think to yourself: “Wow, what a dream, I did what I wanted to do,” not knowing what you’ve experienced is a Lucid Dream.

According to the Institute of Lucidity, the term Lucid

Dream means, “Dreaming while knowing you are dreaming” (4).

Knowing that you are dreaming will allow you to guide your dream in the direction you want to go. The realization of lucid dreams is done by the dreamer, when he or she notices what they’re doing is impossible to do in reality.

Anyone can lucid dream. There are techniques and devices if one wants to lucid dream, like remaining conscious until one starts dreaming. Telling yourself I will dream tonight, I will dream tonight and thinking about what you want to dream about during the day. There are also herbs and drugs that can help you become more consciously aware of your dreams. Lucid dreaming usually occurs in the

REM(Rapid eye movement) stage. It takes about 90-minutes after you sleep to get to the REM stage. The more you sleep, the more time you’ll be in the REM stage, and the more likely you’ll have a lucid dream.

There are many reasons why we lucid dream, but the most common reasons are in categories. First, there is

“Excitement and Exploration”, “Social Practice” ,”Silencing

Nightmares” , and “Problem Solving” (2). Excitement and exploration is knowing you have the freedom to do what you want in your dreams. With excitement, you’re excited you can do whatever you want. With exploration, you’re exploring what you can do, or what you’ve always wanted to do. Instead of driving to work, you can fly. While flying you can decide to do something else like, fly at impossible speeds, explore your surroundings, and doing jumping jacks in the air if you want to. You might think of a character