Chances are that you have been in a state of dream where you are very aware that you are dreaming. This is a state of lucid dreaming where you experience very vivid dreams. During lucid dreaming, your human senses are more sensitive, you have as much control over your thoughts and emotions as you would while you were awake and active. People experience lucid dreams in different ways and it is a random occurrence for some.
Your Influence in the State of Lucid Dreaming
Our brains are quite active when we are asleep, wandering around both in the rarely rapid eye movement state and the more experienced state of non-rapid eye movement. Lucid dreams often occur during rapid eye movement sleep.
In this state, you become quite aware of what is going on.
Some people train themselves to start dreaming logically and try to have some degree of influence and control. With this control, the endless possibilities enable you to inspire your actions within the dream and even end up applying whatever your dream story is to create a pleasing experience. There are also instances when you can instantly wake up upon realizing that you are dreaming.
Sleep Patterns Suitable For a Lucid Dream
How do you master the art of rapid eye movement to achieve a state of lucid dreaming? The answer lies in your sleeping patterns. Get enough sleep and make it regular enough to achieve the four stages of sleep. Include the step below to bring you closer to REM sleep.
- Have routine exercise.
- Avoid alcohol or coffee before sleep time
- Stay away from electronics before sleep time
- Maintain a regular sleep pattern
- Create a soothing sleep environment
This training could take years to achieve the desired result where you have control anytime that you chose. There’s no guarantee that if you get these steps right, you will be able to achieve the lucid dream state. For a start, it only happens when your REM cycle happens in your sleep.
Applications of Lucid Dreaming in Our Lives
Imagine having the kind of dreams that can have an actual positive impact on your life. That is the connection that lucid dreaming has concerning the quality of life.
A lucid dreamer can have an adventure and interact with people, animals, and non-living things in a way that is not possible in their real-life situation. Through interaction, your nightmares or bad dream change course to become pleasant and tolerable. You can also get better at solving problems, or becoming quite creative, and putting into practice the skills that you acquired from the dream.
Women experience lucid dreams more often than men do and they manage to work on bad dreams and solve problems that affect them. It turns out that lucid dreaming is a better way of improving one’s life in many different ways. Some research is required to demonstrate the importance of lucid dreaming in our lives, particularly in overcoming bad dreams and enhancing motor skills.
Merits of Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreams help people in many ways.
- It can help you to overcome fears and phobias. When you lucid dream, you will have all the courage to jump out of a flying airplane for example. Being that you will be safe and slow enough you will have full control of your fall as you gradually dock on the ground.
- It can also help you better understand and to solve many of your problems. This problem-solving ability can help you to directly relate a real-life problem with a similar dream that you had in while lucid dreaming. Through this, it brings about different stages in your brain, which creates many solutions and ideas to help you solve dynamic problems.
- It can also enable you to find out how each of the solutions identified impacts your life as an individual. You will be able to come across many relatable dream-related events in your life.
- This state of dreaming can help you practice and improve your real-life skills. For example, you can sharpen your driving skills without necessarily attending a driving school. Mastering these driving skills without formal training means you get to learn to drive faster than the time it would have taken you if you went through normal life steps.
- Finally, through lucid dreaming, you may stop or overcome nightmares. You will be able to go overcome the nightmares once they occur and manage to change the nightmare into a positive outcome.
Demerits of Lucid Dreaming
Despite the positive merits of lucid dreams, the demerits pose some concerning risks;
- People with mental health disorders may have an unpleasant experience from lucid dreaming.
- Some people, unfortunately, lose sleep immediately they slide into a lucid dream state resulting in loss of sleep.
- Lucid dreams create overlapping scenes in our minds which result in disconnect with our surroundings. Over time, you might be unable to differentiate what is real and what is not.
- Sleepwalking in a dream state is another demerit. You experience hallucinations in a motionless state since you believe that you are awake.
- You do not recognize that you are having a dream while in the state of lucid dreaming.
The clarity with which your body acts out a lucid dream can be disturbing to many. Since every action is realistic in your sleep, your subconscious mind somehow prevents your body from physically acting out the events unfolding in your dream through a state called sleep paralysis. You feel helpless and motionless but your brain is fully aware of what is going on, in a state of sleep.
Several events occurring creating realistic feelings while experiencing lucid dreaming can be associated with sleep paralysis. For example, having a sad dream where you end up crying and tears roll down your cheeks but you are unable to wipe them away or being ecstatic about acquiring something in the dream bit then waking up only to realize its actually not the case.
Conclusion
Lucid dreaming is a state of uncertainty in the sense that you might practice and master the habits conducive for achieving it but end up with an undesirable result. Consult asleep therapist if you have sleep or mental disorders and you experience lucid dreams.
