All About Lucid Dreaming
By Camilla and Isaac Garrison
This summer, an article called “Lucid Dreaming” by Isaac Garrison was released giving a short overview of what that is. Later, Mx. Garrison and their sister had gained a lot of knowledge on the subject and when given an information writing assessment in school, they both coincidently chose to write about one of their favorite pastimes: oneironautics. These two essays came out very similar, even though neither Isaac or Camilla really talked about the assignment outside of class or at home. This article will hopefully be the beginning of a Harbor Pond Post Lucid Dreaming series/what would be column, enjoy!
Camilla Garrison’s essay
In this essay I will try to teach you all I know about lucid dreaming. Many people haven’t even heard of lucid dreaming, which is odd because it is a simple thing that anyone can do (even if you think you “can’t dream” or have misconceptions or trepidation about it. “Is it safe?” “I can’t possibly do that!”
What is lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming or oneironautics is basically having a regular dream except that you are aware you are dreaming. Once you know that, you open the door to infinite possibilities; it's all in your head, you can do anything! Lucid dreaming was only proven in the early 1970s, but the first record of anything mentioning lucid dreaming was from the philosopher Aristotle (he lived a very long time ago!) Proving this magical thing was a difficult thing to do, considering that it takes place inside one’s brain while asleep, but one of the most famous lucid dreamers, Stephen Laberge did it. It was proven in a sleep lab by asking the subjects to perform specific eye movements when they realized they were dreaming during the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep stage.
How to start lucid dreaming?
You might be wondering how to have a lucid dream, it all sounds so unimaginable and surreal (almost dream-like!) but how? Well, let's start from the very beginning, most people I know remember their dreams every once in a while, and some think they “don’t have dreams” because they sleep too lightly, don’t get enough sleep or some other random excuse. I was one of these people. Until I started researching lucid dreaming, I said “I never have dreams.” when really, everyone dreams (up to six dreams a night!) but the fact is that some just don’t remember their dreams. That means the first step towards lucid dreaming is to work on your dream recall. Start by keeping a dream journal and recording any dreams you have, along with the date, you’ll use the recorded dreams later. As soon as you wake up, ask yourself “What did I dream about last night?” or “What was I just thinking about?” that usually helps me bring back whatever it was. Even if you can only recall one word or person or emotion even, write it down! The more you write, the more you remember, and this is actually a skill you can improve with practice. When you have a good number of dreams written down in your journal, it's time to start lucid dreaming!
You know how when you think about something in real life, it sometimes shows up in your dreams? Why would you ever realize you are dreaming in a dream when you never realize it in real life? That means to start becoming aware in your dreams, you need to start becoming aware in reality. You need to start testing reality! If you’ve ever pinched yourself or told someone “Is this a dream, pinch me!” you were very close, but that’s actually a myth. You can feel pain in a dream, but there are other ways to test… I use two kinds of reality checks. One reality check you can do is to look at numbers or text. In a dream, letters, words or numbers will never stay the same if you look at them multiple times. The second one I usually use is a kind of strange looking one to outsiders, but works really well. To do it, you pinch your nose, and then try to take a deep breath in through your nose. Really convince yourself that you might be dreaming and that you are testing to see if this is reality. In a dream, holding your nose does not work, and when you are able to breathe through your fingers, you’ll know you’re dreaming. So when do you do reality checks? Anytime you notice something strange or dream-like for instance if there is something out of your routine, or if you’re in an odd situation.
There are many different ways to induce lucid dreams using specific techniques like MILD, WILD, DIELD, DEILD and wake back to bed (WBTB). The most common one is MILD, which stands for the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams in which you meditate before bed on resolving that you will have a lucid dream that night. WILD stands for Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming where you enter a dream already knowing that you are dreaming through sleep paralysis/hypnotic (hypnagogic) imagery. You can use a technique, or make up your own. Once you have one, it’ll be easier to have more!
What to do in a lucid dream?
Anything you want. That is the answer. In a lucid dream you can do absolutely anything imaginable, but here is a little motivation of things to do to get you excited about it because if you want to lucid dream badly enough, you will. Sometimes just thinking so hard about dreams during the day can cause a lucid dream at night without even using a technique.
Some fun things you can do are flying, talking to dream-people, going places you’ve seen pictures of, dream magic, eat anything and everything you can think of, go shopping with infinite money, ride a hot air balloon, rocket ship or motorcycle, talk to people who are deceased in real life, and much much much more. I once had a lucid dream in which I rode my bike down the highway and then rode into the ocean. Dreams make interesting stories!
So after all that, I hope you learned something about lucid dreaming, understand the process and possibilities. This is an important thing to know about since it is a thing any human can do with their brain. If it sounds interesting, I recommend doing some more research, especially reading the book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge which is probably the best one out there. Watching videos on YouTube is alright, but make sure to watch one of the reliable videos that aren’t claiming unimaginable things. Even if you don’t want to put in all that effort, keeping a dream journal is always entertaining.
Isaac Garrison’s Essay
What is lucid dreaming?
This is an interesting question, lucid dreaming is a lot of things. To many people Lucid dreaming is a form of dreaming in which the dreamer knows they are dreaming, this can lead to dream control, though dream control is not lucid dreaming. To some, lucid dreaming in an art form, a shaped dream and a powerful thing to be in. To most people who have lucid dreams, it is a fun way to do anything in a world more realistic than real life (with a few mistakes).
Dreaming
The average person doesn’t think twice about a dream or two, but to lucid dream you have to dream. You see dreaming is very complex, you have at least 5 dreams every night, you mostly have more than this on a average night I will have seven dreams every night and record about 5, one of the most important things in lucid dreaming is getting your dream recall stronger this will add some extra dreams and slowly you will remember more and have more.
What is the history of lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming was only proved in 1987, by dreaming expert Steven Labarge. Lucid dreaming the term was only created in 1912 in a newspaper. The original lucid dreaming art was Tibetan dream yoga. This is a very old art that originates with a darker backstory, to prepare for death you would lucid dream this is the original lucid dreaming. Many techniques have been made to help a person to lucid dream.
How to lucid dream
Now at the close to the end of this I will tell you how to lucid dream, this is a way of lucid dreaming but not as a technique, Reality checks are the bare bones to lucid dreaming so you must know it, as I mentioned earlier dreams have a few imperfections so lucid dreamers can use that to their advantage, reality checks are very simple, a few are checking a digital watch and looking away and at it again if you are dreaming the time should have changed. Another reality check is holding your breath and pinching your nose this way you should not be able to breath, if you can you can be sure that you are dreaming. You should do about fifteen each day. Once you get much better at this and have had at least three lucid dreams you can do this less frequently and do one whenever something is out of place or at all dream-like.
Now we can continue on to more techniques like things, in my personal opinion MILD is the best technique to lucid dream, MILD is Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams. This is a very simple but useful method, in MILD all you have to do is repeat to yourself a simple phrase such as “I will Lucid dream tonight.” this is MILD, pretty simple, I find that some variations work best for me. I have created some to help me. One of my strategies is to repeat your own name and is dreaming. This is a bit weird to talk in third person but it really helps so the phrase would be for me “Isaac is dreaming.” The goal is to fall asleep while this schema is open, this will carry into the dream and a character will say or you will think “(name) is dreaming.” then you will do a reality check leading into the next technique. The last beginner technique is Wake Back to Bed. This technique can skyrocket your lucid dreams and paired with MILD these two techniques will give you 60% chance to lucid dream, an important factor to this is how much you believe you can have a lucid dream.
Artificial Lucid Dreaming
Sounds great right? It’s not as good as it seems. Artificial lucid dreaming can make your normal lucid dreams less powerful, and all of its methods are not a hundred percent, one method is to put on a sleep mask that after a timer goes off will flash lights into your eyelids. The goal of this is to get the timer in your REM, so the flashing lights go off in a dream and carry over to your dream causing you to question reality. Compared to regular lucid dreaming this is much less consistent and could alter your lucid dreams, I believe that lucid dreaming should not be done like this.
Lucid dreaming is just as much an art as drawing or music, but in my opinion lucid dreaming can be more artful than either. Lucid dreaming is an amazing art. From this I hope you have learned about lucid dreaming and are now more interested in lucid dreaming, and may have learned more about dreaming from this MOY. Thank you for reading this, goodbye.