Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not yet understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is known as oneirology. Throughout history, people have sought meaning in dreams or divination through dreams. Dreams have also been described physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep; psychologically as reflections of the subconscious; and spiritually as messages from gods, the deceased, predictions of the future, or from the Soul. Many cultures practice dream incubation with the intention of cultivating dreams that are prophetic or contain messages from the divine. Recent studies indicate that dreams could be controlled by a learning response. Just imagine that for an instant. It looks feels and sounds exactly the same as ‘normal’ reality, except that you know that it isn’t. You know that you are perfectly safe; you cannot die or get injured, that is Lucid Dreaming. There are no normal rules and regulations about what you get up to! It is truly your own ‘Individual Virtual Reality’, with a depth of realism far beyond the most sophisticated computer imitation. Let’s see how.

You can have more success with certain sleep postures over others. Best would be the common fetal position (on side, with knees and elbows tucked in) as well as flat on back. It can be strange to be walking around in a lucid dream one moment, then lying curled up in bed the next. Sometimes you even wake yourself up because you’ve moved your arm in the lucid dream and accidentally triggered real life arm to move and hit the bed. This can be disorienting and cause a sudden shift in awareness from one body to the next, but if you stay still and close  eyes again, you can often return to the same lucid dream from the exact same place you left off.

This technique is great for a first lucid dream. Doing reality checks programs self awareness into your regular dreams, thereby creating spontaneous lucidity. A reality check is simply trying to do something impossible in the real world – like pushing your hand through the wall. Making this a force of habit will create reality checks in dreams, giving you the opportunity to recognize the dream state. (In a dream, if you try to push your hand through the wall, it will go straight through.) Reality checks are probably the easiest way to have lucid dreams. They are not the only way – and certainly aren’t 100% reliable – but they don’t require any skill and quickly teach your subconscious mind to learn lucid dreaming. Using this system, you will never wake up in a dream! Your subconscious mind can’t test the same principles as your logical conscious mind. It’s the reason you have normal dreams every night, instead of clear, conscious dreams. In order to have self awareness in a dream, you need to have that “eureka!” moment. Something that jogs your conscious mind into waking, so you have the capacity to say “hang on, this is a dream!” Reality checks will provide that cue. Perform your reality checks every couple of hours throughout the waking day. It’s best to combine two together. Soon they will occur in a dream automatically, and when they do, you will become fully lucid. You may even lucid dream tonight. Some examples are:
Breathing – can you hold your nose and mouth shut and still breathe?
Jumping – when you jump, do you float back down?
Reading – can you read a sentence twice without it changing?
Vision – is your vision clearer or blurrier than normal?
Hands - can you push your right fingers through your left hand?
Time – can you read a clock face or digital watch?
Magic - can you fly, shape shift, or walk through walls?
Lights - do light switches work properly?
Mirrors – does your reflection look normal in the mirror?
Memory – what day is it and what are you doing now?
Logic – can you add up two numbers for a correct answer?