Determine your own (fantastic) dreams

In lucid dreams, as you can also call lucid dreams, you have control over your dreams. You decide what happens. It allows you to overcome fears, vent frustrations or practice new skills. You can also effectively combat nightmares with it. It is also quite possible that you already have (had) lucid dreams. You just don’t know that anymore. That is why it is important to train yourself first in dream recall.

Am I dreaming now or not?
If you want to train yourself in lucid dreaming, it is recommended that you seriously ask yourself whether you are awake or dreaming a few times a day. Very occasionally you may have those ‘pinch-me-on’ moments, but now it’s about something else; act consciously. So, for example, when you lock the door you ask yourself ‘Am I dreaming this, or is it real?’ To that you seriously answer: ‘I dream (not), because …’ with good reason. In this way you train yourself to ask the same question when you dream.

Stages in your sleep
To understand something about (lucid) dreams, it is interesting to know how your sleep progresses. Shortly after you fall asleep, the actual (light) sleep begins. It takes 10 to 20 minutes. You will then sleep very deeply for about an hour and a half. Then you go back to the lighter phase with dream sleep, also called REM sleep. The longer you sleep, the longer and more intense the dream sleep phase becomes. That is why you remember your dreams more often and better when you sleep in.

Remembering dreams
To remember dreams, you must make a conscious intention to remember your dreams before going to sleep. It helps to write down the dream (pen and paper on the bedside table) right after waking up. This is how you train yourself in remembering dreams. In this way you can keep a kind of log. At some point you can always remember one or more dreams every night. Dream signals
Then you will analyze your dreams. You then list the so-called dream signals. These are characteristics by which you can tell that you are dreaming and not awake; things that really can’t be done. Like flying. Remembering and recognizing these dream signals will help you learn the art of not waking up and staying in the dream (am I dreaming or not?).

Consciously changing your dream
The moment you remember lucid dreaming every time you wake up, you are ready to try to control your dream. You are consciously trying to determine the situation or what you are doing in your dream. This requires a lot of patience and practice. In the beginning there is a good chance that you will wake up, because you sleep very lightly.

Keep dreaming
Techniques have been devised for consciously staying asleep while dreaming. It sounds crazy, but the advice is, for example, to consciously do a somersault in slow motion in your dream or to do something else that is not possible in reality. At that moment you are sure that you are dreaming and you immediately regain control to keep dreaming.

Decide for yourself what you dream
For the very advanced lucid dreamer it is possible to go one step further. You decide in advance what you are going to dream about. You always decide for yourself where you are going in your dream world and what you are going to do.

More information
The fact that lucid dreaming never really broke through is undoubtedly due to the great effort and time it takes. It’s not something you just try out. In addition, for many people it has an atmosphere of mystery and ‘smoothiness’. Still, lucid dreams have been scientifically researched.

In the 1990s, research was conducted into the phenomenon that was first described about a hundred years ago. On the internet you can find scientific publications, but also extensive manuals and background information. A number of websites also offer the possibility to exchange experiences and to keep a ‘dream log’.