Lucid Dreaming Checklist
I. Step One - Remembering Your Dreams
Depending on your abilities, lucid dreaming can be a little bit of work. Although you want it to be as fun as possible, you also must be patient. Your first task is to make a habit of remembering your dreams. Every person dreams several times every night, but the average person remembers few if any dreams the next day. How many times has someone said something that triggered a memory of a dream that you had the night before and you awoke from determined to remember it in the morning. Forgetting your dreams is a normal process that occurs in the brain. The dream process is something like a cleaning crew that comes in at night and tidies things up, straightening the furniture and restocking the shelves. It leaves everything in your brain ready and refreshed for the next day. You awake in the morning unaware of all the processes that have gone on the night before. In the dream state, your brain has wrestled with your fears, worked on solving problems of relationships, attitudes, and self image. Remembering all of these things the next day would not only clutter your mind, but also make the dream processes less effective. In order to take more control over these processes, though, you will have to teach your mind to be more aware of them. In order to do this, you must lie still when you wake up in the morning. If you begin to move your muscles and participate in the world around you, even by listening to a song on your clock radio, the dream state and its memories will recede far away from you. A good habit, therefore, is to remember your dream and then as quickly as possible, write it down in a journal that you keep. You can do this by keeping a pencil and paper by your bed, or even a tape recorder. This practice will help you become more aware of your dreams.
II. Step Two - Mentally Prepare Yourself
In order to get yourself ready for lucid dreaming, you must use some self-hypnosis. You want to implant the suggestion in your mind that you will be aware that you are dreaming. The process is similar to the times when you are afraid that you will oversleep and you tell yourself that you must awake earlier in the morning. Your brain responds by waking you up in the morning, some times with uncanny accuracy. in the same way, you must serve notice to your brain that you want to be lucid during your dreams. This will help set the stage for the desired effect. The best time for lucid dreaming, however, is in the morning. repeaating to yourself as you fall asleep that you want to remember your dreams will help you to remember your mission when you awake, if not during the dream. Our drerams occur during REM sleep. These REM periods occur in 90 minute cycles after about four hours of sleep. If you are really serious about trying to induce lucid dreaming, you can set your alarm, preferrably not a clock radio alarm, to go off during these times. When you awaken, you should try to remember the dream you were having and try to return to the dream, all the time saying to yourself that you will be aware this time that you are dreaming.
III. Make It a Practice
Because lucid dreaming is a process, you should expect to spend some time getting proficient at it. Admittedly, some people will naturally be better at it than others, but don't get discouraged. I am not able to have lucid dreams very often. Relax and enjoy the process.
