Many people report having experienced a lucid dream during their lives, often in childhood. Children seem to have lucid dreams more easily than adults. Over time, several techniques have been developed to achieve a lucid dreaming state intentionally. The following are common factors that influence lucid dreaming and techniques that people use to help achieve a lucid dream:
Dream recall
Dream recall is simply the ability to remember dreams. Good dream recall is often described as the first step towards lucid dreaming. Better recall increases awareness of dreams in general; with limited dream recall, any lucid dreams one has can be forgotten entirely. To improve dream recall, some people keep a dream journal, writing down any dreams remembered the moment one awakes. An audio recorder can also be very helpful.[27] It is important to record the dreams as quickly as possible as there is a strong tendency to forget what one has dreamt.[28] For best recall, the waking dreamer should keep eyes closed while trying to remember the dream, and that one's dream journal be recorded in the present tense.[27] Describing an experience as if still in it can help the writer to recall more accurately the events of their dream.[citation needed] Dream recall can also be improved by staying still after waking up.[28] This may have something to do with REM atonia (the condition of REM sleep in which the motor neurons are not stimulated and thus the body's muscles do not move). If one purposely prevents motor neurons from firing immediately after waking from a dream, recalling the dream becomes easier. Similarly, if the dreamer changes positions in the night, they may be able to recall certain events of their dream by testing different sleeping positions.[citation needed] Another easy technique to help improve dream recall is to simply repeat (in thoughts or out loud) "I will remember my dreams," before falling asleep. Stephen LaBerge recommends that you remember at least one dream per night before attempting any induction methods.
Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams operation (MILD)
The MILD technique is a common technique developed by Stephen LaBerge used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming or to remember to look for dream signs when one is in a dream.
One easy-to-apply method is to count yours or other people's fingers during the day, making sure it is done diligently and reaches the expected number. If this is done frequently when awake, similar behavior continues into the dream, where by some discrepancy from reality, the dreamer will realize he or she is dreaming and the dream will become lucid.
Another method is to look at text (such as a digital clock, or a road sign), turn away, and then look back. If the person is dreaming, the text will change to something else. The dreamer will realize he or she is dreaming and the dream will become lucid.
A key element in MILD is reviewing in memory the dream from which one has just awoken. When a point is reached in the dream at which an obvious dream sign occurred (e.g., a man with two heads walks past) individuals performing this technique depart from actual memory and instead imagine they became aware they were dreaming. Upon returning to sleep, these individuals will often find themselves back in the same or similar dreams, sometimes even encountering similar dream signs—a situation that can improve the odds they will remember their intention to question whether or not they are dreaming, and thereby achieve lucidity.
Wake-back-to-bed (WBTB)
The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to encourage a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep tired and waking up five to six hours later, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming while staying awake for an hour, and going back to sleep while practicing the MILD method. This technique has had a 60% success rate in research.[29] This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a lengthier lucid dream.[29]
Wake-initiation of lucid dreams (WILD)
The wake-initiated lucid dream "occurs when the sleeper enters REM sleep with unbroken self-awareness directly from the waking state". There are many techniques aimed at entering a WILD. The key to these techniques is recognizing the hypnagogic stage, which is within the border of being awake and being asleep. If a person is successful in staying aware while this stage occurs, they will eventually enter the dream state while being fully aware that it is a dream.
There are key times at which this state is best entered; while success at normal bedtime after having been awake all day is very difficult, it is relatively easy after sleeping for 3–7 hours or in the afternoon during a nap. Techniques for inducing WILDs abound. Dreamers may count, envision themselves climbing or descending stairs, chant to themselves, control their breathing, count their breaths to keep their thoughts from drifting, concentrate on relaxing their body from their toes to their head, or allow images to flow through their "mind's eye" and envision themselves jumping into the image to maintain concentration and keep their mind awake, while still being calm enough to let their bodies sleep.
During the actual transition into the dream state, dreamers are likely to experience sleep paralysis, including rapid vibrations, a sequence of loud sounds, and a feeling of twirling into another state of body awareness, or of "drifting off into another dimension", or like passing the interface between water into air, face front, body first, or the gradual sharpening and becoming "real" of images or scenes they are thinking of and trying to visualize gradually, which they can actually "see", instead of the indefinite sensations they feel when trying to imagine something while wide awake.
As with any language, there are steps that may be employed in order to gain understanding of the tongue of dreams. Understanding dreams, while it involves interpretation, is a process that involves various other steps in order to achieve comprehension.
First, one must apprehend the signs, symbols and sounds that have been generated in a dream. This means to take hold of what has been produced in the dream. On a literal level, apprehension means to take the contents of the dream into one’s conscious custody. The utterances, images and sounds produced by a dream must not be allowed to slip away. On a more abstract level, it means to become conscious of dream content, to engage in perceiving sleep dream, rather than blithely forgetting them. To some degree, dreams are always apprehensive, they expect and hope to be remembered.
Next, one must translate the apprehended dream. Translation is the process of restating expressions from one language into another language. Often this involves translating ephemeral and rich visual communication of sleep dreams into words. This may involve focusing on meaning, but dream translation primarily strives to find the appropriate words to get across the intangible experiences of a highly personal and internal experience that is a sleep dream.
Then we interpret the sleep dream. This is where we take the signs and symbols of the dream and engage in the process of making sense of them, of assigning a meaning to them. In the realm of sleep dreams, their interpretation has been a goal since the dawn of spoken language. We look at possibilities and options. It could be this, and it could be that, and then again the third thing. The often extremely puzzling language of sleep dreams, with its high emotional charge, has had people searching out what they mean, what their implications are for the dreamer. All too frequently, sleep dream interpretation has involved the aspect of one-answer-fits-all: this image means such and such a thing. It has involved turning to Experts to relay to the dreamer What It Means. Interpretation explores the various possibilities of what each dream utterance and sign might mean, what it has meant to others.
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First, one must apprehend the signs, symbols and sounds that have been generated in a dream. This means to take hold of what has been produced in the dream. On a literal level, apprehension means to take the contents of the dream into one’s conscious custody. The utterances, images and sounds produced by a dream must not be allowed to slip away. On a more abstract level, it means to become conscious of dream content, to engage in perceiving sleep dream, rather than blithely forgetting them. To some degree, dreams are always apprehensive, they expect and hope to be remembered.
Next, one must translate the apprehended dream. Translation is the process of restating expressions from one language into another language. Often this involves translating ephemeral and rich visual communication of sleep dreams into words. This may involve focusing on meaning, but dream translation primarily strives to find the appropriate words to get across the intangible experiences of a highly personal and internal experience that is a sleep dream.
Then we interpret the sleep dream. This is where we take the signs and symbols of the dream and engage in the process of making sense of them, of assigning a meaning to them. In the realm of sleep dreams, their interpretation has been a goal since the dawn of spoken language. We look at possibilities and options. It could be this, and it could be that, and then again the third thing. The often extremely puzzling language of sleep dreams, with its high emotional charge, has had people searching out what they mean, what their implications are for the dreamer. All too frequently, sleep dream interpretation has involved the aspect of one-answer-fits-all: this image means such and such a thing. It has involved turning to Experts to relay to the dreamer What It Means. Interpretation explores the various possibilities of what each dream utterance and sign might mean, what it has meant to others.
While dreaming can be broadly defined as any kind of mental activity occurring in sleep, most people and most brain scientists are interested in a more specific state of mind that is normally unique to sleep. When we say ‘I had the craziest dream last night’ we refer to a conscious experience during sleep marked by visual imagery, delusional misidentification of our state as waking, difficulties with thought processes, emotional intensification, and very significant recent memory loss. It is important to emphasize this particular definition of dreaming for two reasons. The first reason is that this kind of dreaming is so highly correlated with the physiology of the stage of sleep known as paradoxical or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep as to invite an integration of dream psychology with the specific brain processes of REM. The second is that this kind of dreaming shows many of the formal features of such major dysfunctional states as schizophrenia, manic depression, and organic psychoses. But even these intense dreams are not restricted to REM sleep. Furthermore, many other cataclysmic states of mind, like the night terrors of normal children and the horrifying replay of experiences in people who have been brutalized or traumatized, occur almost exclusively in other, non-REM stages of sleep (NREM).
Until recently, the traditional approach to understanding dreaming has emphasized its narrative or scenario-like character and attempted to elaborate an interpretive scheme that could bring order to the emotional and cognitive chaos of dreaming. The most famous approach of this type is the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, who abandoned his early hopes for a brain-based approach because the necessary neurophysiological data were then non-existent. Freud was therefore obliged to account for all of the formal properties of dreaming in psychological terms, a heavy burden, which caused his ingenious speculations to become Byzantine in their complexity and comical in their interpretive oversimplification.
Dreaming is a mental state associated with sleep whose characteristics have important implications for theories of normal consciousness as well as for its extreme derangement in major mental illness. The advent of modern sleep laboratory science has provided an objective aspect to the study of dreams and has opened the way to a brain-based theory of dreaming. Recent excitement about the prospects of this agenda stems from the application of brain imaging techniques that allow dream activity in humans to be correlated with the selective activation and deactivation of various brain regions. The modern scientific study of dreaming thus provides an avenue of access to the mind-body problem, one of the most obdurate philosophic conundrums of human history.
Read more!
Until recently, the traditional approach to understanding dreaming has emphasized its narrative or scenario-like character and attempted to elaborate an interpretive scheme that could bring order to the emotional and cognitive chaos of dreaming. The most famous approach of this type is the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, who abandoned his early hopes for a brain-based approach because the necessary neurophysiological data were then non-existent. Freud was therefore obliged to account for all of the formal properties of dreaming in psychological terms, a heavy burden, which caused his ingenious speculations to become Byzantine in their complexity and comical in their interpretive oversimplification.
Dreaming is a mental state associated with sleep whose characteristics have important implications for theories of normal consciousness as well as for its extreme derangement in major mental illness. The advent of modern sleep laboratory science has provided an objective aspect to the study of dreams and has opened the way to a brain-based theory of dreaming. Recent excitement about the prospects of this agenda stems from the application of brain imaging techniques that allow dream activity in humans to be correlated with the selective activation and deactivation of various brain regions. The modern scientific study of dreaming thus provides an avenue of access to the mind-body problem, one of the most obdurate philosophic conundrums of human history.
Any parent should know that good quality baby sleep is essential for a child's future health and development. When a parent see their baby sleep, they feel great pleasure but when the baby is crying because she can't sleep is torture.
It is so important to get your baby into a regular, fuss-free, sleep routine to help you solve your baby's sleep problem.
You should seriously considering establishing some sort of bedtime routine for you baby if you haven't done so yet. Once you have established a sleep pattern, your baby will be happier, more content and probably sleep right through the night.
There are many things you can do to establish a bedtime routine for your baby. Below are just a few:
Most of us have some kind of winding down routine before we go to sleep and this should be no different for your baby. Perhaps the sleep routine could begin with a bath, followed by a slow dimming of the lights (so they realize it is getting near to sleep time), then a change of nappy or diaper, putting them in the crib or cot and finishing with a bedtime story or lullaby.
If you don't want to follow the routine mentioned above to the letter, then you don't have to. Remember that you can change the order the routine I mentioned or you could change the whole routine entirely. You might want to include a baby massage before putting your baby to bed or put on some soothing music. The important thing to remember though is that you have to create the bedtime routine and then follow it night after night to the letter until it becomes a habit for your child.
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