Find Out Your Dreaming

Every night before you go to bed, train yourself to take several deep breaths and relax. Then say to yourself:” Tonight I want to remember a dream and I will remember a dream. As soon as I wake up, I must write it down.” Go to sleep with a pad and a pencil beside your bed, expecting to remember. It may sound silly and you may say, “You can’t be serious!”, but it actually works.

If you don’t normally remember your dreams, you often wake up with only the feeling of what you dreamed about- for example, anger or calm- but you must still write down your feelings. After a few weeks, this routine will start producing results. Then, you can look back at what you’ve written and try to match what happens in your life with the dreams you’ve had. Yet, not many people remember their dreams.

For most of people, dreams disappear as soon as they wake up. However, according to Stephen LaBerge, with practice we can put ourselves into a state where we know we are dreaming. Stephen has called this state ‘lucid dreaming’. It means that having a dream is just like watching a film, but with one big difference- you are in control.

Many artists have used lucid dreams to experiment with shapes and colours, while writers can try out plots and dialogues. It is similar to day dreaming except that it’s much more powerful. However, Stephen admits there is a problem. “Learning to lucid-dream can be quite hard,” he says. “You have to follow a series of exercises to become aware that you are dreaming, and that can take months.” So he has invented a device to train you to recognize a lucid dream straight away. It’s called ‘DreamLight’ and is a mask worn over the eyes. “When you start to dream it recognizes your rapid eye movements and a light begins to flash inside the mask. When you see the light in your dream, you say to yourself:
“Aha! The DreamLIght! That means I’m dreaming.”