Mar 11, 2010
© Vpvasquez8
Control your dreams at night easily with a few practice techniques that expand your ability to both recall and influence your dreams.
Being able to make things happen in your dreams gives you some amazing benefits. Not only can you use your dreams to do things you might not get a chance to do in real life, but your dreams are visions of your brain’s thought processes. Getting clues to what keeps your brain occupied at night can help you find out amazing things about yourself – self-esteem issues, fears, and phobias. Once you know what those things are and can tackle them in your dreams, your experiences can help you tackle those same things in real life.
In order to control your dreams, you need to have really good dream recall. The average adult dreams 4-6 times a night during their REM sleep. The Labratory of Neurophysiology, Dept of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School published a study in 1997 in which a number of students kept dream journals in an effort to measure the rate to which people remember their dreams. Comparing the number of remembered dreams to the average number estimated to actually occur, it appears people remember their dreams somewhere around 40% of the time. That would equate to recalling 11-17 dreams a week!
Your chances of being able to influence your dreams will be better if your dream recall is at least average, if not better. (For tips on improving dream recall see: How to Remember Your Dreams.)
The next objective is to be able to tell when you are dreaming while you are in the dream. This is called “lucid dreaming”. If you don’t KNOW you’re dreaming, how will you be able to have any impact on your dream? (For tips on lucid dreaming see: Lucid Dreaming Guide.)
Assuming you already have some dream awareness, the final step is to actually make things happen in your dreams. There are a number of techniques you can use:
Removing Yourself from Danger in Nightmares
Letting dreams play themselves out is really what gives you the clues to your inner self, however, sometimes dreams can get pretty scary. Yes – that’s what we’d call a nightmare….one, very, scary dream. Dreams are fun. Nightmares are simply terrorizing. I’m not sure I always want to know exactly what my head is thinking about when presenting a nightmare and so I’d rather escape. Once you can exhert a little influence in your dreams, you can remove yourself from dangerous situations. Hover or fly out of danger, rescue your family, put a wall up to block any beasty animals or wild creatures that may be chasing you.
Stop the Chase
There are times in your dreams when you’re chasing someone. Maybe you see a long lost loved one in the distance and it seems you can’t get close to them to talk to them. You can stop them from running or get yourself closer to them so you can actually stop the chase and get to the meat of the dream.
Talk to Famous Personalities in Your Dreams
Sure, it would be really cool to talk to the entire cast of your favorite movie, but some might prefer a chat with Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus. Before going to bed at night, read up on the person you want to chat with to try to induce them showing up. When you enter a lucid dream state, try calling out to the person you want to talk to or imagine a piece of technology you could use in your dream to reach them.
Expand Your Creativity
Have you ever had such a great dream that you knew if you could have captured it on film it would have been a blockbuster? When you are aware within a dream, you capture more detail for longer periods of time than if you simply woke from the dream and tried to grasp at it like an evaporating mist. Soon, you’ll be able to write down incredible journeys you’ve taken in your dreams with much more detail than you could before. Aspiring writers can unlock unique story concepts. Artists can envision new projects. Even scientists can develop new experiments and theories.
© paul (dex) busy @ work
There are a number of tools you can use to enhance the ability to control your dreams at night. Use sound and images to inspire your dreams. Immerse your awake self in what you want to do in your dreams to prepare your mind for such an adventure. If you want to journey to the moon in your dream, watch a video about walking on the moon right before going to bed, study NASA’s website, read books about the people you want to meet, look at pictures, use visual aids, listen to binaural beats to create a lucid dream state.
Mar 11, 2010
© Ramona Forcella
You can practice skills that will help you learn how to remember your dreams more often and use those dreams to help you solve challenges in your life. These tips will walk you through improving your dream recall skills.
Did you know that everyone dreams but not everyone remembers their dreams to the same degree? I remember my dreams several times a month, a friend of mine remembers his dreams several times a week, and my husband never remembers his dreams. The ability to remember your dreams is called “dream recall”. It’s a skill that can be improved over time if you work at it – like any new skill you want to develop.
What is a Dream?
A dream is a visual of your brain at work when you’re sleeping. There are different levels of brain activity that take place when you sleep. During one phase of sleep known as REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), your brain operates at a level similar to that of being awake. During REM, your brain is actively working away and you see your brain activity played out in symbols and pictures. If you remember that visual upon waking – you remember your dream.
If dreams are visualizations of your mind’s work, then being able to interpret those visuals into meanings can give you incredible insights into what problems you are facing, what type of stress they are placing on you, even clues as to how to solve those problems.
Dream Interpretation
Many people dream along a common thread, although the pictures and visuals may be different, the meanings are similar in nature. Over the years, collections of symbols in dreams have been documented to have a specific definition. For example, lots of people have dreams about snakes. This doesn’t mean they are afraid of snakes. Instead, a snake can symbolize a transition state or, in some references, might be representative of an evil or danger you sense close to you in your life.
There are tens of thousands of symbols in dreams that have been documented in collections and books you can use as reference guides for your dreams. This is the key to being able to use your dreams to gain information about what’s troubling you and how to resolve any issues you may be dealing with.
Review some of the best available reference guides here: Dream Interpretation Books
Dream Journal
Since everyone dreams, the fact that you don’t remember them or don’t recall them very often simply means you’ve trained yourself – subconsciously – to ignore those visions. To remember them more often, you need to train yourself to pay attention to them again.
Start keeping notes in a dream journal. Keep a notebook or tape recorder handy beside your bed. Journaling your dream memories should be the first thing you do when you wake up as the memories are fresh in your mind and can fade quickly. Even if you wake up in the middle of the night, make a note of ANY details you remember from dreams.
If you have really poor dream recall, it may take some time before you have anything to write down but having the notebook readily available does two things. First, it lets you take notes quickly (keep a pen or pencil tucked alongside). Second, it’s a visual reminder to your brain that you know you are dreaming and you’d like to be able to experience them.
Dream Recall Exercises
Have you ever tried to lose weight and reached what’s called a plateau? You’re zipping along losing a pound or two a week and then, no matter what you try, you can’t lose a pound for anything. Weeks go by and you’re stuck. That’s a plateau. To break past a plateau, experts tell you to shock your muscles. Do a new workout, try a new routine, change up what you’ve been doing. If you’ve been running a mile day, run two miles next time. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, you need to change things up.
If you go to bed without any background noise, try sleeping with the television on one night or with your radio on softly. If one type of music or television show doesn’t jolt a dream you remember, change stations. There are MP3 audio clips that are designed at certain frequencies to help induce a dream state. Put those on your iPod and fall asleep with headphones on. (You can get some free binaural beat audio clips to try at: the Unexplainable Store.)
You could also try sleeping in a different position or different place. Take a nap in the middle of the day outside on a patio chair (wait until the snow is gone!). The different noises you hear while being outside during daylight can jolt more vivid dreams.
Read a mystery novel while in bed right before you fall asleep. Make it one you can hardly put down so it’s the last thing you remember right as your eyes start to close. (A good Stephen King novel can do wonders for dreams!)
If you exercise your ability to remember your dreams, you will find they stick with you more often, no matter how little you recall them right now.
