 LOG IN


LUCID DREAMING TECHNIQUES

How to Improve Your Self Awareness

By Rebecca Turner - take our free lucid dreaming course.

Ad Google Ads - Sitio O cial

Google Ads
MÁS INFORMACIÓN

Self awareness: the mental ability to recognize

who and what you are - namely that you are distinctly separate from other people and your
environment.

This knowledge enables you to consciously realize your own personality, feelings and desires
- allowing you to have abstract thoughts about who you are, and things you have done in the
past or will do in the future.

Humans have a high capacity for self awareness - though we are discovering that more
animals qualify for self awareness too. It's especially helpful in lucid dreaming; converting
the passive dreamer into a consciously thinking individual, with the power to explore and
manipulate their dream world at will.

To be habitually self aware in waking life means to be more self aware in your dreams. This
will produce many more lucid dreams because you'll be able to recognize when you are
dreaming (that it is a separate place from waking reality). What's more, those lucid dreams
will be more vivid and intense, more malleable and long-lasting, thanks to your heightened
sense of self awareness.

Developing a more self-aware mind set doesn't happen overnight but can have a signi cant
impact on your lucid dream life over time.

Here are ve ways to improve your self awareness and become a more thoughtful observer
of your reality, both while awake and while dreaming.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." ~ Anais Nin

Self-Awareness Exercise #1

Observation
Let's start with a simple observational exercise in self awareness.

O Melhor Telescópio Portátil

VER MAIS

Ad

Go to a quiet place - indoors or outdoors - where you can be left alone for a while with no
distractions. Sit down and take some slow, deep breaths. Allow everything to slow down
while you attune yourself to the environment.

Focus on what's going on around you, as opposed to what's going on inside your own head.
Most of us go about our days jumping from one distraction to another and pay little
attention to our surrounding environment. Instead of ignoring the background noise let's
tune it in and see what it's doing.

Look at any inanimate object that catches your

gaze and that you can see clearly. Study its shape - is it at, straight, jagged, curvy, round?
And the texture - is it rough, smooth, rippled, soft, hard, solid? Notice how it is hit by the
light; whether it is light or dark, dull or re ective, colorful or bland.

Now get a sense of its depth and position in space. Is it real or imaginary? In your mind's eye,
isolate it from its environment completely. Imagine what exists behind the object in the
space you can't see. Did it ever look different? How was it created? What will it eventually
become?

Without even touching the object we now have a much more profound awareness of how it
appears to us in waking reality.

This will come in very handy when you're dreaming tonight.

By paying close attention to even the blandest objects in your environment you are picking
up on subtle but important clues that distinguish dreams from reality. To instinctively
analyze the same object in your dream tonight would almost certainly yield a lucid dream.

Repeat this exercise with more features in your environment whenever you have a calm,
re ective moment. There are no limits: you can do this exercise with a mug or with a
cloudless sky. Test yourself.

For lucid dreamers, the palms of your hands are a good observational
target simply because your hands are your own; they are always present
in the dream world and provide the realization that you have a body - a
self.
You can study your environment with any sense (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch... and
beyond: temperature, pressure, weight, and so on). Use all your senses -- or use sight alone
to retain your complete focus on the experience.

Sometimes though, different objects trigger different senses (eg, birdsong, distant thunder,
the smell of home cooking, the touch of grass underfoot) so focus your awareness in the
manner most conducive to exploring the object at hand.

Self-Awareness Exercise #2 Imagine The Impossible

This exercise is based on a well known lucid dreaming technique called reality checking or
reality testing.

Take any object from the rst exercise (eg, a glass of water) and, having studied and
experienced it in full, now imagine the impossible. With your eyes open and looking directly
at the glass, visualize it melting into the table.

Now imagine it shattering as if spontaneously fractured by a high pitched sound.

Imagine it levitating and oating an inch up in the air.

Now imagine the water coloring itself with a deep red dye.

There are countless ways to imagine the glass of water changing in unlikely or impossible
ways. All these sorts of surreal events happen in dreams and by imagining them and
analyzing them in reality, we trigger a level of awareness that causes us to ask the question:
"This can't be real - am I dreaming?"
This exercise provides a training ground for us to stop sleepwalking through our day, study
and observe our reality, and question whether it is real or not.

And when you determine your world isn't real, you become lucid...

Here's a classic lucid dream reality check that involves the hands. After
studying your palms in detail as per the first exercise, try pushing two
fingers from your right hand through the palm of your left hand.

Now imagine the impossible: pretend to see your fingers passing right
through your palm. How does it look? How does it feel? How is it possible?

In a dream, simply expect your fingers to pass through your palm, and
they will... By imagining the impossible you are teaching your mind to
expect the impossible, which is essential for your reality check to prove
false in the dream world.

Self-Awareness Exercise #3

Observe Your Self

The rst two exercises explore our perception of the external environment. Now we'll
enhance our self awareness from within.

Practice this during meditation. If you don't meditate, try this while falling asleep tonight (it's
about the closest thing without calling it meditation).

If you want to start meditating on a regular basis (and I recommend you do for lucid
dreaming) try listening to brainwave entrainment speci cally designed to aid lucid dreaming
practice.
When you are fully relaxed, lying down and with your eyes closed, focus your awareness
within and ask yourself: what does it feel like to be me right now?

Just as we did with the rst exercise, start with very basic awareness, such as the physical
sensation of lying in bed. Is the mattress soft or rm? Are the sheets cold or warm? Rough or
smooth? Does your body ache or are you completely comfortable? Do you feel heavy or
light?

Then move inwards. Take some deep breaths...

Do you feel calm or stressed? Why is that?

Can you remember a time when you were MORE calm or MORE stressed? What did that
calm/stress feel like?

How would you describe the feeling if you were talking to an alien who had never
experienced it before? Are there different layers to this feeling? Is it tangible? Can you move
it around, build it up, or sweep it away? What might it look like if you could see it?

Direct your focus to whatever emotion or state of mind you feel is strongest and probe it in
every way you can think. Like manipulating putty in your hands, try to manipulate any feeling
(happiness, peace, amusement, boredom, even pain) to get a better understanding of how it
affects your experience of reality.

To be self aware in the philosophical sense is to recognize your feelings as

they occur, to understand the impact they have, and perhaps even put
them to an effective use.

When dreaming, this improvement of your self awareness will help you
to recognize unusual or extreme feelings and thereby trigger lucidity.

For instance, it's quite common to have your first lucid dream via a vivid
nightmare which triggers lucidity. The feeling of intense fear from being
chased or attacked (or whatever your nightmare fodder) can provoke the
realization: "I must be dreaming!"

Self-Awareness Exercise #4

Visualize a Dream Scene

This is a lucid dream technique that invokes a stronger sense of self awareness.

If you spend every night visualizing a dream about riding on a giant water slide made of ice
cream, you'll actually dream about it sooner or later. For accomplished lucid dreamers it
happens quickly because it's second nature.

Children who lucid dream frequently use this method intuitively. They'll go to sleep thinking
about the amazing Candyland they just witnessed on TV and it'll suddenly become their next
dream reality.

Not knowing any better, they assume everyone does this...

The technique of "daydreaming yourself to sleep" is straight forward in its essence but there
are tricks to enhance the process and make it more effective.

So what's the best way to visualize a dream scene so it plays out sooner?

First, visualize in vivid detail, engaging as many senses as possible. Trick your brain into
believing that the experience has actually happened.

To your brain, the neurons fired during the experience of eating a

gourmet burger are exactly the same neurons fired when you vividly
imagine or dream of doing it. And since our dreams are mostly replays of
real-world experiences, we can program our dreams by simulating real-
world experiences in our minds.

Tonight as you fall asleep, put your awareness inside a desirable dream scene and explore
every element with your senses. Don't worry about planning the sequence of events so much
as setting the opening scene.

To enhance the visualization further, attach an emotion to it. You are more likely to dream of
an event if it was particularly emotional.

Unfortunately, negative emotions seem to penetrate our dreams more easily. Horror movies
can so easily trigger nightmares in some people, but for most it takes extreme situations like
grief or trauma to noticeably penetrate our dreams. The effect can be powerful and even
lead to recurring nightmares. This all supports the theory that dreams are a psychological
healing ground.
Nonetheless, many lucid dreamers incubate using only positive emotions, such as a deep
desire to experience a particular dream event. There is no need to spook yourself or re-live
bad memories for this exercise.

Here's an example of an effective incubation: visualize that you are

standing on top of the Empire State Building with someone who means a
lot to you. It is night time and the city is lit up. Observe the world below
before jumping, weightless, into the air and soaring over the city. Fly!

Self-Awareness Exercise #5

Practice Self-Awareness in Dreams

So far all the exercises take place in the waking world.

This one is for when you're next inside a lucid dream.

Using a combination of outside observation, reality checking, and exploring your own inner
awareness, you're going to maximize your self-awareness when lucid.

From the moment you become lucid, start exploring your dream world. Look around you,
turning 360 degrees slowly, before selecting an interesting target. It may even be your own
hands.

Study the object in detail, scrutinize its shape, texture, color, and so on.

Then expect it to grow or shrink (it will!)

Push your awareness into the object and observe it from the inside.
Expect the impossible... then see it happen.

Now ground yourself by observing your own thoughts and feelings within the dreamworld.
Are you happy? Excited? Playful? Can these feelings become tangible?

Of course! You are dreaming...

There are an unlimited number of ways to probe your lucid dream world, to see how it reacts
to you and vice versa.

By staying lucidly focused and in the moment you'll enhance your lucidity as you go,
signi cantly prolonging your lucid dream and thereby training your mind to have more lucid
dreams in future...

About the author

Rebecca Turner is a science writer, illustrator, explorer of consciousness - and
founder of World of Lucid Dreaming. She is currently studying for a biology
degree in Auckland and blogging at her site Science Me.

Learn how to control your dreams - with

daily lessons straight to your inbox.

10-Steps to Lucid Dreams

The most popular free lucid dreaming course on the web - enjoyed by over 30,000
lucid dreamers since 2013.

Enter your name

Enter your email address

GET LUCID!

LATEST
The Anatomy of a Dreaming Supplement
A lot has happened in the last 5 months. But how did we go from business as usual to
changing the face of the entire lucid dreaming supplements industry? It’s a story that I think
will interest you – and you might even learn a thing or two in the process. When I was rst
taken on-board as Chief Lucidity Of cer in 2016, one of the rst things I was tasked with
was taking a good look at our operations and giving things a bit of an overhaul.

LATEST

Mind Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness App

Want to become a skilled and knowledgeable Lucid Dreamer by taking a Mindful approach?
Awaken the potentials of your mind and integrate with your dreams through the guided
meditations in this truly awesome app. Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness actually share the
same origin.

FEATURE

How to remember your dreams

To lucid dream, I recommend being able to remember at least one vivid dream per night.
That will boost your self awareness in dreams (making lucidity more likely) and also means
you can actually remember your lucid dreams. Which is nice. Here are four detailed tips on
how to remember your dreams more frequently. And if you don't think you dream at all -
trust me, you almost certainly do. It takes an extraordinarily rare sleep disorder to deprive
someone of dream sleep.

FEATURE
What Do Lucid Dreams Feel Like?
Years ago, before I had my rst lucid dream, I had a very speci c idea about what a lucid
dream would feel like. I thought it would be intense and magical and a little bit spooky. This
turned out to be a pretty accurate representation. Becoming aware in the dreamstate is like
entering another world. One where physical laws can be manipulated (there is no spoon,
Neo) and your fantasies can come true in an instant. There's de nitely something magical
about that - and it's as if the lucid dream world is a living, breathing organism that can react
to your very thoughts.

FEATURE
How to have amazing lucid dreams
Experts agree that everyone is capable of having lucid dreams. Dreaming itself is a normal
function of the mind. We all dream every night, even if we don't remember. And we all
achieve conscious awareness while awake every single day. So what does it mean to combine
these states? Why, the amazing ability to have conscious - or lucid - dreams. Sounds simple,
doesn't it? So why do I keep hearing from people who say they can't achieve their rst lucid
dream?

FEATURE
Mugwort: Dream Sage of the Chumash Indians
It is estimated that these wise and wily Indians have been using mugwort in their healing and
ritual practices for 13,000 years, where it is known as the ‘dream sage’. They use the herb to
promote good dreams, which they consider an essential aspect of normal human
functioning! But that’s not all...
Google Ads -
Sitio O cial
Google Ads

De ne objetivos y
ajusta tu presupuesto
en cualquier
momento. Comienza
con Google Ads.

MÁS INFORMACIÓN

report this ad
report this ad
report this ad

report this ad
Copyright © 2008-2018 World of Lucid Dreaming. All Rights Reserved.

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Advertise

Contact

Af liates