Lucid dreams are dreams that you can control. They are defined as dreams that you are aware they are dreams. While you have lucid dreams, you are still conscious. It permits you to control your dreams and do whatever you want. Some can escape their body and travel with their mind. What is interesting, it is that you have the possibility to see the real world (in the case of Out of Body Experience) and not only an imaginative world. You can imagine that you have special abilities and for example read books very quickly. Lucid dreams are rare but you can achieve more often lucid dreams if you practice some proved methods. They are quite easy.
Remembering the normal dream is necessary before experimenting lucid dreams. One good way to remember more easily normal dreams is to write a dream journal noting all of your dreams just after waking up. The first advice to achieve lucid dreams is to believe in them and read about them. You can also during your waking state, do what it is called “Reality tests”: You ask yourself if you are dreaming or not by watching the time or other techniques that will prove that you are dreaming or not. If it behaves correctly, it is a sign that you are not dreaming. When you are dreaming, usually you think about what you thought during the day. It could happen that you do a reality check while you dream and then if you are witness of a strange behavior, your conscious can wake up and you achieve a lucid dream. It is here you can exercise to control your lucid dream to do whatever you want. At the beginning you won’t control so many thing. Experience will bring you more possibilities.
You can also use the technique known as “Mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming”. You set a sign which indicates that you are dreaming just before going to sleep. Then while you are dreaming, the sign (if it appears) can wake up your consciousness too without waking up your body. There is also the “Wake Back To Bed induction technique”. In this case, you sleep for 5 hours and then wake up. At this time you concentrate your thoughts on lucid dreams only during one hour then you go back to sleep. There should be more chance to have a lucid dreams because at this time, your brain will be in a state where dreams are more frequent to occur. Another technique called “Waking induction of lucid dreaming” is often used by lucid dreamers too. You enter in your dream directly from an awake state. It works good when you take a nap for example. There is also the “Aural Focusing technique” in which the person listen radio or television very carefully while imagining himself climbing infinite stairs. The sound must be very low. Then the person will sometimes imagine to be in the same room as he was in the awake state but with small differences. Then he will be conscious that he is dreaming.
