How to control your dreams

Wouldn't it be cool, the ability to control your own dreams? I myself have tried these steps and I'm noticing a bit of progress.

1. Remember your ordinary dreams.

A lot of people say ‘I don’t dream’, everybody dreams, whilst you may not remember them you still dream. To start remembering your dreams try this simple technique.

Each night before drifting off to sleep repeat the phrase ‘I will remember my dreams as soon as I wake up’. Say this phrase over and over until you fall asleep, after a few days you will start to remember your ordinary dreams.

2. Keep a dream journal

This can be tedious but it’s well worth the effort. Even writing a few short sentences about your dream is enough. This will get you into the habit of remembering your ordinary dreams and to start looking for dream signs within your dreams. It can also be a tool to analyze your thought processes.

3. Pick out dream signs

A lot of your ordinary dreams will have objects or people in them that could act as a cue to you waking up in your dreams. For example if you regularly talk to ‘Elvis’ in your ordinary dreams this is an obvious dream sign and can be used to ask yourself if you are dreaming because you know Elvis is dead.

4. Notice your waking world

To be conscious in your dream world means you have to be conscious in your waking world. That might sound crazy, as you are conscious when you are awake. However what I mean is ‘consciously focused’ . For example you are consciously focused when learning a new task, you are thinking about every action you are taking to get the right steps. When you have learned the new task you no longer have to focus as intently as you did when learning it. Being consciously focused means looking around you and saying what you see, feel, hear, smell and touch and voicing it. This has the added benefit of being in the moment and can help you to inner calmness, it’s almost zen like.

If you start to consciously focus on the world around you, you will carry this over into the dream world.

5. Ask yourself; ‘Am I dreaming?’

Ask yourself just now ‘Am I dreaming?’. Your obvious answer is to say no, of course you are not dreaming. How do you know? Don’t just say; because I know, try and think about why you are not dreaming. For example you could say if I was dreaming I would be able to fly. When you are dreaming you cannot read text for longer than a few seconds, so try reading text to prove to yourself you are not dreaming.

This again will carry over into your dreaming world and you will start asking the same questions in your dreams which can turn into a lucid dream.

6. Your first lucid dream

Many people have their first lucid dream simply by reading about it. You might find that you become over-excited and lose the lucid dream however, you first lucid dream will be remembered for years to come.

7. Staying lucid

I have used different techniques to stay within a dream however by far the best one is calming myself down with self talk and dream spinning. If you find that you are losing your lucidity you can talk to yourself to calm yourself down and just start noticing the things around you in your dream.

Dream spinning is when you feel you are losing control of your dream you mentally spin like a tornado to stay within your dream. This is focusing the mind on staying lucid.

From: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/7-steps-to-start-lucid-dreaming.html