How to Stay Lucid

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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5,049
How to Stay Lucid
Most beginning lucid dreamers have trouble figuring out how to stay lucid. This isn’t a failure on their part or anything. It’s totally normal. How to stay lucid has been a big question for lucid dreamers across history. Especially at the beginning, learning how to stay lucid is tough.

Why is figuring out how to stay lucid so hard? The main reason is that when you get into a dream and realize you’re lucid, your emotions can get in the way and essentially wake you up or shut off the lucid, thinking part of your brain. Also, when you first start becoming lucid, you’re likely to begin lucidity at a point where you’re close to real consciousness, anyway. You may already be waking up, so it can be hard to stay asleep and stay in your dreams.


Some people have trouble learning how to stay lucid, though, even when they aren’t waking up. For instance, they might realize they’re lucid, stay lucid for a few seconds, and then get distracted and forget they’re dreaming, losing their lucidity. This is a less common problem, but it’s still a possibility.

I’ll deal with these problems separately, since the ways you learn how to stay lucid in each situation are slightly different.

How to Stay Lucid When You’re Waking Up
If you’re constantly waking up right after you become lucid and are wondering how to stay lucid when you’re waking up, the first thing to do is relax and cut yourself some slack. Basically, you’re probably already close to waking up by the time you achieve lucidity. As you become lucid more often, you’ll naturally start achieving lucidity earlier in your sleep cycle, allowing you to stay asleep for longer.

Also, though, you can practice anchoring yourself in your dream, which can keep you asleep and lucid for longer. One of my favorite ways to anchor myself when I was learning how to stay lucid was to rub my hands together. The physical sensation of rubbing your hands together combined with the detail you can see when you’re closely examining your hands can make the whole dream seem more real.

Another way to learn how to stay lucid is to simply focus hard on the dream. Sometimes this can draw you back down into the dream, preventing you from waking up. Check out the details of your surroundings, and notice as many details as you can. Start interacting with your dream environment in a calm, collected way as soon as possible. Standing in one spot wondering what to do next is almost guaranteed to help you lose lucidity!

One final idea for those who are struggling with how to stay lucid when waking up is to simply go back to sleep. When you awaken, don’t move or open your eyes. Instead, try the WILD technique, and you may fall back into your lucid dream again.

How to Stay Lucid When You’re Simply Losing Lucidity

I’ve talked with some lucid dreamers who will become lucid only to forget they’re dreaming a minute later and to not remember the rest of the dream. The best way to overcome this is to do frequent reality checks after you’ve established lucidity. I also like waking up the part of my brain that thinks logically by doing math problems in my head, though math isn’t my strong suit.

Continuing to perpetuate lucidity is the most basic technique on how to stay lucid when you keep losing lucidity. Don’t get distracted and forget that you’re in a dream. Instead, constantly check and re-check reality so you continue to understand you’re dreaming throughout the rest of your dream.
 

Num7

Administrator
Staff
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12,376
I have those lucid dreams on rare occasions but they never last long. I wished I had more of them more often.

I'm not able to make them last very long and I'm not sure why. I agree with the points above, but I can't figure out how to make use of these advices while I'm inside a dream that became lucid. Yeah it's lucid, or so do I think. Perhaps those dreams I have sometimes, are not lucid enough yet?
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Numenorean7 Check Out: How to Shapeshift

Shapeshifting in lucid dreams is one of the ways in which you can have a great time with your dreams. It’s also one way to conquer your fears, since you can become what you fear or the enemy of what you fear and lessen your fear of it. Another reason to shapeshift is to make things like flying and breathing underwater simpler and more natural in your dreams.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
This posting is for those members that are serious about lucid dreams and out of body travel.

Please check out the following link: http://obe4u.com/ (great video instructions)

and also: http://research.obe4u.com/practical-guidebook/ (227 page long)

This link has a free e-book called “a practical guide” for astral travel. It has all the techniques in a PDF form. It is a must-have for the serious minded members.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Inside The Mind Of Lucid Dreamers:
People Who Can Control Their Dreams And Perform Actions

30 July, 2012

Have you ever experienced that you know you are dreaming although you sleep? This is a hybrid state between sleeping and being awake. It is called lucid dreaming and it can be a somewhat awkward experience.

During lucid dreaming you can take sometimes control of your dreams and perform various actions.

Scientists have long wondered what is happening inside the brain of a lucid dreamer. What role does consciousness play?

What was know from a scientific point of view, was the fact that lucid dreamers are people who can become aware of dreaming during sleep, but the process that caused this state was unknown.

The term lucid dreaming was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860-1932) in his 1913 article "A Study of Dreams". At the time, his paper was not embraced by the scientific community. The situation has changed much since then, In modern days, lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established

What is happening inside the brain have you experience lucid dreaming?

Which areas of the brain help us to perceive our world in a self-reflective manner is difficult to measure.


During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves. In sleep, however, we are not.


lucidreaming.jpg


Lucid dreaming is an unusual phenomenon in which some people are able to "wake up" while still in a dream. Though the dreamer is technically asleep, they are aware of their situation and are able to control the content of their dreams.

Studies employing magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) have now been able to demonstrate that a specific cortical network consisting of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar regions and the precuneus is activated when this lucid consciousness is attained. All of these regions are associated with self-reflective functions.

The human capacity of self-perception, self-reflection and consciousness development are among the unsolved mysteries of neuroscience.

Despite modern imaging techniques, it is still impossible to fully visualise what goes on in the brain when people move to consciousness from an unconscious state.

The problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to watch our brain during this transitional change.

Although this process is the same, every time a person awakens from sleep, the basic activity of our brain is usually greatly reduced during deep sleep.

This makes it impossible to clearly delineate the specific brain activity underlying the regained self-perception and consciousness during the transition to wakefulness from the global changes in brain activity that takes place at the same time.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry in Munich and for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and from Charité in Berlin have now studied people who are aware that they are dreaming while being in a dream state, and are also able to deliberately control their dreams.

Lucid dreamers can control their actions

Those so-called lucid dreamers have access to their memories during lucid dreaming, can perform actions and are aware of themselves - although remaining unmistakably in a dream state and not waking up.


lucidreaming2.jpg

One of the most fun things to do in a lucid dream is to fly.

As author Martin Dresler explains, "In a normal dream, we have a very basal consciousness, we experience perceptions and emotions but we are not aware that we are only dreaming. It's only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state." By comparing the activity of the brain during one of these lucid periods with the activity measured immediately before in a normal dream, the scientists were able to identify the characteristic brain activities of lucid awareness.

"The general basic activity of the brain is similar in a normal dream and in a lucid dream," says Michael Czisch, head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry.

"In a lucid state, however, the activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex increases markedly within seconds.

The involved areas of the cerebral cortex are the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to which commonly the function of self-assessment is attributed, and the frontopolar regions, which are responsible for evaluating our own thoughts and feelings. The precuneus is also especially active, a part of the brain that has long been linked with self-perception." The findings confirm earlier studies and have made the neural networks of a conscious mental state visible for the first time.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Brain Zap Could Help You Control Your Dreams
By Maggie Fox

140509-sleep-study-02_8bae28743c632b5fe3ffc8ffc240517a.nbcnews-ux-800-520.jpg

Michael P. King / AP, file

The Link: Brain Zap Could Help You Control Your Dreams - NBC News

A participant in a sleep study at UW Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers have found they can induce lucid dreaming with precise electrical stimulation.

How would you like to control your dreams?

Researchers who zapped sleepers with a very gentle, targeted electrical current were able to send them into a state of lucid dreaming — when they knew they were dreaming.

They hope the technique might be used to help people with mental illnesses such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and some types of schizophrenia.

Their study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also offers an opportunity to study human consciousness.

True lucid dreaming is rare and has intrigued philosophers for centuries. Experts have also thought that if people could harness it, it could be a powerful tool for therapy.

“Sometimes the dreamer gains control over the ongoing dream plot and, for example, is able to put a dream aggressor to flight,” Ursula Voss of J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany and colleagues wrote in their report.

Voss’s team knew that brain waves change during lucid dreaming. They’re often accompanied by waves in what’s called the lower gamma frequency band — around 40 Hz. But it’s not clear which comes first — the dream, or the brain wave activity.

“Does lucid dreaming trigger gamma-band activity or does gamma-band activity trigger lucid dreaming?” they asked. “Perhaps the capacity to generate gamma-oscillatory activity sets the stage for lucid dream.”

So they got 27 young adults to volunteer for a dream study, pulsing their heads with various frequencies, from 2 Hz to 100 Hz, using a technology called frontotemporal transcranial alternating current, or tACS. Electrodes are put on the scalp to deliver the current. They also did a sham treatment.

They woke up the volunteers at various phases of sleep and asked about dreams.

Delivering 40 Hz and, to a lesser degree, 25 Hz did cause lucid dreams, they reported.

Here’s what one looked like: “I was dreaming about lemon cake. It looked translucent, but then again, it didn’t. It was a bit like in an animated movie, like the ‘Simpsons,’ ” the dreamer reported. “Then I realized ‘Oops, you are dreaming.’ I mean, while I was dreaming! So strange!”

Treatment with this kind of stimulation might be useful for some types of schizophrenia, the researchers said, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Finally, promoting gamma oscillations during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep in post-traumatic stress disorder with reemerging nightmares might trigger lucid dreaming and eventually enable active changes in dream content,” they said.
 

Einstein

Temporal Engineer
Messages
5,363
I've had a few lucid dreams myself. But a machine that could stimulate lucid dreaming would have market potential. A lucid dream could be a doorway to an out of body experience. Maybe with a machine like this, one could harness this latent ability. Perhaps we should contact Steven Gibbs and see if he could come up with a marketable device using the 40 Hz and 25 Hz frequencies.
 

Ayasano

Member
Messages
407
I've had a few lucid dreams myself. But a machine that could stimulate lucid dreaming would have market potential. A lucid dream could be a doorway to an out of body experience. Maybe with a machine like this, one could harness this latent ability. Perhaps we should contact Steven Gibbs and see if he could come up with a marketable device using the 40 Hz and 25 Hz frequencies.

Such a device already exists.

The NovaDreamer Lucid Dream Induction Device

It works on the principle that the stimulus is strong enough to be translated into your dream, but weak enough to not wake you up. Sort of like when you hear the beeping of an alarm clock in your dream right before you wake up. You have to internalize the idea that the flashing lights and sounds occur while you're sleeping. It's like a reality check, but you have way more control over it. (And it still won't benefit you unless you have good enough dream recall to actually remember your lucid dreams, so some work is required)
 
Messages
391
I have a NovaDreamer. I never quite got used to the pressure from the headband, and if it was too loose it would just slip off in the night..

The eye motion detectors worked fine, though.
 

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