About The World of
Lucid Dreaming

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real,
and you're just a reflection of him?

~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Hello and welcome to the World of Lucid Dreaming. My name is Rebecca. I'm a big fan of science and all things unexplained.

I've always been interested in dreams. I remember some bizarre dreams right back to when I was just 4 or 5 years old. Back then I distinctly remember dreaming in cartoon!

Growing up, I was fascinated by the dreamworld. Why is it that some people dream in color, while others dream in black and white? Why is it often hard to read language in a dream, or tell the time from the face of a clock? Why do some dreams appear to come true? For me, the dreamworld was a captivating glimpse at what an alternate reality might be like.

My First Lucid Dream

When I was 14 years old, I stumbled upon the concept of lucid dreaming in a science fiction magazine. According to the article, you could take control of your dreams and do absolutely anything in an authentic virtual world. WOW - freedom or what?! I was immediately excited by the idea, and bought a self-hypnosis tape for inducing conscious dreams.

I listened to the tape every night before I went to sleep. It was a 20 minute guided meditation, and I had usually fallen asleep before I got the the end. But that didn't matter. Because under hypnosis, the tape planted a single objective in my subconscious: to realize when I was dreaming.

The tape also encouraged me to perform reality checks during the waking day. One simple and discreet way to do this was to try to push two fingers of my right hand through the palm of my left hand. I did it a dozen times throughout the waking day, while asking myself "is this a dream?"

After several weeks, I gave up on the tape. It was a simple speech by a hypnotist - none of the soothing music or binaural beats that you can get today. But I kept up with the reality checks and continued to read about lucid dreaming. It was not long before I woke up in a dream...

I was standing in an empty room. It was painted off-white, and completely bare like a new house. The complete lack of content made me curious... what was this? Suddenly, instantly, I realized: 'this is a dream!'

I performed my reality check instinctively and my fingers pushed right through my hand. That felt odd! What next?

I was so excited, I ran out the door, looking for other people. I found a woman who I didn't recognize and shouted excitedly in her face. 'I'm dreaming! I'm dreaming!'

It was like a light bulb had turned on in my head. Suddenly I was in a new reality. Like a dream, but not quite. Like reality, but not quite. What was this phantom place?

Being inside a conscious dream is an utterly new experience. You are free of all physical restraints - you can bounce, fly, teleport and run at lightening speed. But you are also free of emotional restraints too - you are not self-conscious, tired, stressed or nervous. Lucid dreaming is simply... complete freedom from real life.

Needless to say, I was so excited about having my first lucid dream that it only lasted a few seconds. I was totally overwhelmed because I had been building up to this breakthrough moment for weeks. The fact was - I wasn't prepared for what to do next. The surge of adrenaline woke me up. (Real adrenaline? Or just dream adrenaline?)

This is a textbook error. There are some things that every dream explorer must know. As I researched more about lucid dreaming, I learnt how to fly in dreams, how to manipulate the scenery and - most importantly - how to stay lucid. That is one of the aims of this website: to teach you everything you need to know to have lucid dreams.

My Lucid Dream Life

After that, I continued to have lucid dreams quite randomly. Sometimes I would stop my reality checks and have nothing for months... Then I would pick them up again and have lucid dreams every other night for a week. There is no sure-fire way of having instant lucid dreams. But some methods are certainly better than others. And the more determined you are, the more likely it is to happen.

When you first start to have lucid dreams, the most exhilarating thing you can do is fly. I had some amazing lucid dreams flying above the fields of my house in the south of England. One time the sky was blazing red like the atmosphere of Mars... I have yet to see anything as dazzling as this in real life! The feeling of weightlessness was wonderful.

And most of all it felt real.

This is the really interesting part. I have never experienced weightlessness in real life. Few people have. Yet I know what it feels like. In the dreamworld, I genuinely had the sensation of lifting off the ground, rising into the sky, and dancing among the clouds.

Lucid dreaming is nothing like day dreaming... True, they both require imagination. But in a day dream your mind and body are active. You still react to external stimulus and your brain sends signals to your body like: 'you are firmly on the ground', 'your legs ache', or 'your skin is cold'.

During REM sleep, you enter sleep paralysis to prevent you from acting out your dreams. The only parts of you that can possibly move are your eyes, mouth and maybe the tips of your fingers.

As far as your sensory system goes - you are shut off to the outside world. So in a lucid dream, your senses can receive imaginary impulses from your brain that seem real. All feelings are generated from within the body. That is what makes lucid dreaming so vivid.

Your Gateway To Lucid Dreaming

Some people discover how to have lucid dreams naturally when they are children. Others go their entire lives without ever waking up in a dream. Now that you have discovered lucid dreaming, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to experience it.

Lucid dreams have many applications. Sure, it is fun and exciting to play around in a virtual reality world. Some people call that escapism. But conscious dreams are also good for:

• Problem solving
• Facing your fears
• Improving confidence
• Inspiring creativity
• Exploring the nature of reality

I don't know about you but that gives me plenty of motivation! Not to mention that attaining lucidity is like opening a gateway to a new world... Your inner world... full of anything you desire.

So go ahead and give yourself permission to indulge in something that could change your perception of reality forever.

Virtual Reality

Earlier on, I mentioned that I am drawn to the unexplained. That's not to say that I believe in aliens or ghosts or pixies or anything which requires some element of idle faith. I don't take anything at face value. That's just me. I have no problem with what other people believe - after all, we each make our own choices. That is what defines us.

Being a skeptic doesn't equate to being closed-minded. I am probably the most open-minded person you know. If you introduce a new concept, my instinct isn't to shoot it down. But equally, I won't accept your word for it. That is the beauty of true scientific enquiry. It is about questioning your reality... The exact same mindset as a lucid dreamer!

As a result, you may find pages on this site that don't sit comfortably with your existing view of reality. I will openly discuss topics like astral projection and mutual dreaming. Ideally, you won't accept these ideas at face value. Instead, you will form your own line of enquiry. I write about these topics because they interest me and I believe they hold potential to better our understanding of reality. Potential, not proof ;)

So read on, curious bears, and explore the world of lucid dreaming...

Best wishes

Rebecca

PS - Discover how I built this site with virtually no knowledge of design, HTML or web hosting using a step-by-step guide called Site Build It! If you want to earn extra money online, this is a great way to do it.

PPS - Around this site you will see some amazing 3D artwork by the award-winning graphic artist, Dawid Michalczyk. Visit his website for more sci-fi, fantasy and space art that you can use as your desktop wallpaper.

PPPS - Sign up to my monthly lucid dreaming e-zine. It's free and gives you great new inspiration for lucid adventures and dream exercices, plus reviews of lucid dreaming kits and experiments.

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