Most spiritual traditions recognise the importance of dreams and dreaming and often there is a method for using dreams to further explore and develop oneself. I’ve always loved the term Dream Yoga; for some reason it sparks my imagination. Most Dream Yoga, be it from the Tibetan Buddhist traditions or from the Yogis or just from the good old New Age world comes down to finding a way to have Lucid Dreams. For those of you who are not familiar with Lucid Dreams and Lucid Dreaming, these are dreams which you consciously control. That sounds strange to a lot of people who have no experience with lucid dreaming, and some may find it incredible to think that they could actually control their dreams. But that’s exactly what lucid dreaming allows you to do.

Although the term lucid dreaming was only coined in 1913, lucid and conscious dreams have been referred to throughout history. Probably the earliest written mention of conscious dreaming is in a letter written in 415AD by St. Augustine of Hippo. Later, Sir Thomas Browne and Samuel Pepys both wrote about lucid dreaming. And, of course, delving into lucid dreaming, one will undoubtedly come across Carlos Castenada and his tales of Yaqui Indian spirituality. Despite the controversy about the authenticity of Castaneda’s experiences and teachings, his book The Art of Dreaming undoubtedly kindled many people’s interest in lucid dreaming.

So, how do you go about lucid dreaming. Well, the first step is to actually remember your dreams. If you don’t yet remember your dreams, now is the prefect time to read up on how to remember your dreams. Once you have a good dream journal and you are remembering your dreams in vivid detail, you can start exercising conscious control over your dreams. To start lucid dreaming, you must start noticing when you are in a dream state and when you are awake. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds, and there are various methods of doing this. One of the most common methods is to start asking yourself if you are dreaming or not when you are awake. But not just randomly, you should pick a particular object or place where you always ask yourself the question. A good place to start is looking in your dream journal. If there is an object in your house that often makes an appearance, or a place where you often find yourself in your dreams, then you have found your trigger.

So, for example, if you often dream and see your bathroom mirror, then every time you see yourself in the bathroom mirror at home, you should ask yourself if you dreaming or if you are awake. If you continue doing this often enough, you will eventually ask yourself the same question while you are dreaming. Once that happens, you become conscious of the fact you are dreaming and you enter into the world of the lucid dream!

Often, the first few times you become conscious of yourself dreaming, you will get excited and wake up, breaking the magical state! To overcome this, you should immediately relax when you become aware that you are dreaming. That way, you stay in the lucid state and can enjoy your dreams. One of ways of staying in the lucid dream and relaxing into the dream is to grab hold of an object in the dream. That way, instead of the dream fading away and slipping from your grasp, you have a firm hold of it.

Enjoy your dreams.