Lucid dreams: what are they and how to achieve them?

Go to bed in an uncertain situation. This is when a phrase in a meme becomes a guide to action. It turns out that sleep can have a double benefit: with the help of sleep you can not only restore strength and energy resources, but also influence your life and literally meditate. Interesting story if you’re having trouble finding time for spiritual practices during the day.

This can be done if you sleep consciously instead of just sleeping as we are used to. This method is called lucid dreaming practice, which is gaining increasing popularity.

Lucid dreams raise many questions: How to enter this state? Can I apply this technique on my own? Are there any limitations to lucid dreaming, such as affirmations, that make it dangerous?

In this material, together with the master of the Ashram studio Vladislav Pirozhenko, we will tell you what a lucid dream is, how it works and what you should pay attention to before trying to immerse yourself in a lucid dream.

Vladislav Pirozhenko, master of Ashram studio

What is lucid dreaming?

The practice of lucid dreaming is the ability to understand when we are dreaming and to control sleep. Among modern researchers of spiritual practice, this phenomenon has become popular thanks to the books of Carlos Castaneda. With the help of lucid dreams, scientists can further explore the nature of our consciousness and brain.

Dream science is best revealed in Tibetan tantric Buddhism and the teachings of Bon. This is a broad range of practices known as “Dream Yoga.” Here, lucid dreams can be used to diagnose health conditions or evaluate the success of spiritual practices; Some signs of progress appear in dreams. These methods are used to gain consciousness at deeper levels that can only be accessed while falling asleep or in deep sleep.

In contrast, Taoism (the Chinese traditional teaching of Tao, or “the way of things”) does not attempt to control dreams or consider how to enter a lucid dream. Progress here is considered the highest level of meditation, where in a dream one can maintain a stable state, not allowing thoughts and dreams to manifest, nor dream visions to manifest in the same way. meditation. This allows you to save such precious life energy and not waste it without emotions even in a dream.

What is the difference between a lucid dream and a normal dream?

Lucid dreams are different from normal dreams; because during a simple dream you become like the hero in a movie that shows your consciousness. You do not understand that this is a dream and you do not influence the course of events.

By entering a state of lucid dreaming, you can keep its plot under control. You understand that all this is just an illusion, and you independently determine what will happen next. And here your possibilities are endless: you can influence not only your behavior, but also the actions and decisions of other people.

mysticism and scientific explanation

Normal sleep is divided into two stages: fast and slow; Fast sleep takes up only 25% of total sleep time and occurs every hour and a half. At this stage, our body relaxes, our brain, on the contrary, becomes active, and our eye muscles also tense.

In 1968, the Psychophysical Research Institute discovered that lucid dreams occur in the active phase. Later experiments were conducted that involved communicating with sleeping people and tracking their eye movements. The results of these studies showed that in lucid dreams we can perceive what is happening almost as it happens in reality.

The mystical explanation of lucid dreams presents them as gateways to other worlds and parallel realities. These worlds are permanent, but only those who are ready for this and have accumulated a sufficient amount of energy can enter them.

In the history of Russian mystical culture, there are references to “dream pirates” who believed that the parallel world was one and that anyone who entered it would end up in the same place. Thus, participants in this movement not only practiced lucid dreaming, but also recorded on paper what they saw in dreams. They drew a map of the region where the events in their dreams took place. This was done so that practitioners could hold general meetings in a parallel universe.

How to enter a lucid dream?

You can find the following tips online on how to achieve lucid dreaming.

1. Set an alarm for a time when approximately five hours have passed since you fell asleep.
2. When the alarm clock rings (if you wake up and do not turn it off until the morning), you need to concentrate on the dream you had before waking up. If you haven’t had any dreams, remember the last dream you remember.
3. Then you need to relax and tune into a lucid dream.
4. Imagine yourself in the dream you remembered at the second point. It is important to literally dive back into it and try not to lose the awareness that this is just a dream, not real.
5. Then you will slowly fall asleep.

It sounds simple and safe, but it is unlikely to succeed the first time. There is a possibility that you will not be able to sleep at all and the next day will not be easy for you. Therefore, you should not trust such advice one hundred percent. It is necessary and important that this be done under the guidance of a teacher who can carry out the application correctly and safely using traditional methods.

To study the subject independently, you can read Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s book “Tibetan Sleep and Dream Yoga”. It details techniques on how to enter a lucid dream. The author warns that these can only be accomplished after receiving initiation and instructions. Therefore, reading the theory is enough just to become familiar with the subject, and you should contact a professional in this field to try lucid dreaming.

Why should you practice lucid dreaming?

It is believed that an ordinary person, falling asleep, loses control over the body and mind, falls into an unconscious state. When we dream, we are often caught up in the images and the plot and are not aware of ourselves at all. Even if such a person has an occasional awareness in the dream, it usually fades quickly.

The lucid dreaming practitioner trains the body, clears the energy channels, and balances the meditative state of awareness so that while the body falls asleep, the mind remains clear and can experience deeper meditative immersion. Therefore, sleep yoga is one of the ways to take control of your energy and mind.

Having learned to control the mind in a dream, we gradually bring this ability to everyday life. Thus, advanced yogis do not interrupt their practice and meditate day and night.

Why is lucid dreaming dangerous?

If lucid dreaming is practiced outside of tradition and without a teacher, there is little danger of disrupting normal sleep. The main thing here is not to overdo it, practice regularly, but monitor your condition so that your body has time to recover. Motivation is also important – if we are interested in how to enter a lucid dream for the sake of entertainment, the desire to experience some worldly experience that is not available in life, then such practice will not be useful. Taoists also believe that lucid dreaming can expend primordial chi energy, which is the basis of our life and longevity. And from the perspective of Chinese medicine, prophetic dreams are sometimes (but not always) considered a sign of health problems. According to this theory, a part of the soul that should not leave the body is located in the liver, and this part can leave us during sleep and see the real world. Perhaps this is a medieval metaphor expressing some kind of nervous disorder and anxiety, but in general such things are difficult to convey in a language accessible to a European.

By practicing lucid dreaming, our energy becomes mobile and requires more control. Accordingly, the person must be completely mentally healthy and free from destructive situations, depression, anxiety, neurosis, panic attacks and other things. Otherwise, lucid dreams can worsen these conditions.

How often can you practice lucid dreaming?

Its frequency depends on the person’s own desire, the main thing is to do it regularly and for a long time. A serious practitioner practices sleep yoga all day, every day. To begin with, they learn to remember dreams, for this you need to wake up every time you dream and record it, write it down or tell it to someone. Then the habit of being aware of ourselves in a dream is created, dreaming that we are sleeping in life. For example, during the day you can pinch yourself, check whether it is a dream or reality, try to fly or try to walk through a wall.

Gradually, this habit spreads to sleep. Before going to bed, you must create a strong intention to remember yourself in a dream, and then different traditions use special visualizations and methods of concentration to evoke dreams of one nature or another. However, special permissions and initiations of authorized teachers are needed to practice. These are the little secrets of schools. If we sleep enough and are in a comfortable state of body and mind, we can practice every night. If not, at least a few times a week.