At the beginning of January I decided that I want to have lucid dreams. Lucid dream is a dream in which you realize that you are dreaming, you are aware that you are dreaming. In this state you can create your own dream, you can consciously participate in the dream and the dream (environment, colors, people, …) is much more vivid than “normal” dreams.

Here I want say some things about dreams and describe my experience until now.

Why do people want to have lucid dreams?

• experiencing more flexible (loosely coupled) environment - not bound by the physical world, you can feel yourself free to do things, that right now are not possible when you are awake.
• often these dreams are very beautiful and memorable
• knowing that you create your dreams, you can do the things that you want to do, it is up to you
• sometimes dreams can bring us some kind of messages
• how do you spend 1/3 of you life? You are asleep and you dream. Why don’t we use this time?

Good to know:

• Dreaming is like going into your own subconscious. What you dream may mean one thing for you, but another thing for somebody else. That’s why it is better to trust your own interpretation of the dreams.
• When you remember your dreams, you can decide how much attention you want to pay to them.
• To have lucid dreams does not mean to get away from physical reality, but to experience our dream reality more consciously.

How to have lucid dreams?

• There are many techniques that can help you to have lucid dreams, but before using them one should be able to remember the “normal” dreams. If you can’t remember dreams, how would you be able to remember lucid dreams? And this is the first step and this is what I can share as experience.

So how can you remember your dreams?

In January I remembered my dreams almost every day. Here is what helped me:

One of the most important things is motivation. If you don’t want to remember your dreams, then so it will be. But if you want to, then so it will be. If you make some effort, then you will get something out of them. I was really motivated and I think that helped me a lot.

When you go to bed it is better if you are not tired. You can do some easy exercise to relax yourself and stop thinking about other things and concentrate on the act of relaxing your body and dreaming.

Before you fall asleep it is good to say to yourself that you will have dreams and you will remember them. This is known as autosuggestion. You put your wish into your subconscious and the possibility that it will happen is bigger. I’ve said such things to myself and also wrote them down.

While dreaming, I can’t suggest something to remember your dreams, but when you feel that you wake up from a dream, it is the most important part of remembering the dream. In most cases this is the moment when you can remember your dreams. It is better if you don’t open your eyes and don’t move, because by looking through your eyes and moving your body you start to experience the physical reality and it is very likely that you will start to forget your dreams. Now is the best time to try to remember all you can from the dreams. Ask yourself “What did I dream about? What were my dreams?” and don’t try too hard. Do it easy. When you remember some parts of the dreams you will see that you can remember also the rest of them, the dreams are unfolding to you. If you can’t remember your dreams, then guessing what have happened may help - “I was there, I was doing this, …”. When you remember your dream it is good to replay it several times in your head in order to not forget some parts of it. By experimenting you will find a way that is good for you.

Many people say that it is good to have a dream journal. This is a place where you can write your dreams, it can be paper or computer. I have paper sheets beside my bed with a pen and when I wake up I write down my dreams. Why is that necessary? By writing down your dreams somehow you establish a better connection with your will to dream and you can review your dreams after months. It can help you identify your dream signs (things by which you know that you dream), which can be useful when you try to have lucid dreams.

In January I had many dreams, averagely 2 dreams per night, and at the end of the month I had one lucid dream. Now reviewing my dream journal, in most of the dreams I am flying in some way or levitating. Some of my dreams have something in common with what is going in my life. In January I decided to become vegetarian and I had 3 dreams with this theme :). In another dream some people wanted to kill me, but then I remembered that if I love them, then it will be okay, and so it was. One dream was very alarming - a friend of mine would go away for a long time and we didn’t meet each other. The night before he left I received a warning that I should see him and I did it on that day.

One of the last dreams in this month was my first lucid dream. I don’t know how I become aware that I dream, but it happened. I felt that my heart was expanding and beating faster and I knew that I have to calm down in order to continue my dream and I said to myself, “okay, I’m dreaming, it’s okay, easy now”. Then the environment changed but it still seamed blurred to me. I went to a club and as I managed to enter the club I saw these vivid walls with green and white colors, the people and I thought, “This looks so real”. Then I wake up :)

Another interesting thing that I learned from this month is that we always dream, but we may forget what we’ve dreamed. Two times I woke up and couldn’t remember anything. In such situations I don’t get much upset and try to remember what I’ve dreamed, but in these cases at first I just couldn’t. Luckily after some time the memories came and I laughed how could I think that I didn’t dream anything.

In February I didn’t put much effort in dreaming, and I didn’t remember many dreams. I had 10 dreams written down and I had some that I didn’t want to write down. Some of these dreams had also a connection with my life. And I noticed that while we are in the dream state we are much more … open and we can feel stronger what is happening around us. For example as I woke up one night I heard a sound from my mobile phone and it was like my whole body felt that sound, not just my ears. When I’m awake I may not even hear that sound, and if I hear it, then I don’t feel it so intensively.

So why not spending some 20-30 minutes from our life to enrich 1/3 of it?