For those who don’t know, lucid dreaming is the ability to control your dreams and guide them to be whatever you want, WHILE you’re asleep. But why would you want to lucid dream?
The basics of lucid dreaming are fairly easy to grasp, but it takes a fair bit of time. You may have heard your friend talk about lucid dreaming etc and just thought ‘Yes, but WHY would you want to learn how to lucid dream?’. Well, let’s get into it:
Reasons to lucid dream
Turns out there are actually a lot of reasons and benefits to lucid dreaming, so we thought we’d compare and list them all!
1: Lucid Dreaming makes you more creative
Everyone is creative in their own way but we all go through periods where we lack the inspiration and drive to create. The good news is that if you practice lucid dreaming, the source of inspiration need never dry up.
This is because lucid dreaming can be a wonderful space for you to explore new ideas. Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Daily and Albert Einstein all credited much of their creative genius with inspiration they received while in the dream state.
2: You can use it to master new skills
Whether you’re terrified of public speaking or trying to master a challenging new yoga pose, lucid dreaming can help you become better at whatever skill it is you wish to perfect.
Scientific studies have revealed that we can boost our procedural memory for muscle movements while we are inside a lucid dream. This means that practicing yoga or piano inside a lucid dream suggests that you will wake up demonstrating more aptitude in whatever area you practiced while you were dreaming.
Since it is like being in a video game where you can simulate reality, you can spend your hours between the sheets honing a new skill and wake up ready to kick some a**.
3: Practice real life stressful situations
Studies have revealed that lucid dreaming can be used to deal with anticipated stress in waking life. Every foreseeable physical, emotional or mental detail of a stressful event can be “rehearsed” in the lucid dream as if it were all happening perfectly.
By using the sheer positive force of the imagination you can pave the path to success by using lucid dreaming to transform each anxiety-provoking event into a success or milestone.
4: You can live out your wildest fantasies
We all have dreams and fantasies that we would like to act out. It might be flying for some, while for others it might be meeting a celebrity or being a millionaire. Lucid dreaming is a place for creating anything your heart desires so if you wish to make like an eagle and soar above the hills and mountains, you can do just that!
5: Lucid Dreaming helps mankind evolve
We all have our part to play in the evolution of mankind and if everyone suddenly started to tap into the unlimited possibilities of their unconscious by utilizing lucid dreams, the world would advance at a staggering rate.
Imagine what the world would be like if inventors, scientists, artists and designers were all suddenly tapping into their unconscious and finding new ways to solve problems in waking life?
The world would be a very different place indeed…
6: It helps your spiritual advancement
It is no coincidence that lucid dreaming has been used for 1000s of years and talked about in every spiritual doctrine throughout the ages.
For Tibetan monks and Indian yogis, lucid dreaming is one of the most profound and potent forms of spiritual discipline that can help you advance on your spiritual journey and with meditation.
For Indian yogis, lucid dreaming was a means for releasing past karmas, which would help propel their spiritual advancement to newer, loftier heights.
7: Re-connect with lost relatives or friends
If you’ve recently suffered the loss of a loved one you can use lucid dreaming to help you come to terms with your bereavement. If there is any “unfinished business” between you and the departed, you can use lucid dreaming as a way to talk through any burning issues.
Lucid dreaming can even be used if there isn’t any unfinished business that you wish to deal with. It can simply be a “place” for you to see a loved one again, which can ultimately help you move on.
8: Experience the ultimate freedom with lucid dreaming
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”
Kris Kristofferson was onto something when he penned those immortal lines back in the 1960s. Freedom means that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain and lucid dreaming is one of the best places to experience ultimate freedom. You can do anything, go anywhere and be anyone you choose. The freedom to do what you want is limitless…
9: It’s the ultimate form of escapism, and it’s free!
If you are stuck in a lacklustre or less-than-great life situation, lucid dreaming can help you escape the drudgery that comes with paying the bills, 9-to-5 routines and unsatisfying relationships.
The best part is that once you have been lucid dreaming long enough, you can actually use the lucid state to rise above your problems and find solutions that can help you move past any obstacles and lead you to a full, satisfying waking life.
10: You can unlock your mind and the power of your subconscious
When you are smack bang in the middle of a lucid dream, you have the opportunity to experience a hyper-real yet unreal reality that will make you question the nature of…um… reality.
And if you look around you right now and see everything in excruciating detail ask yourself how you know if it’s real or not… You may find that you never solve this eternal riddle and that’s fine… That’s what makes lucid dreaming so fun, fascinating and compelling!
11: Communicate directly with your subconscious mind
All your hidden potentials are hidden in the depths of your unconscious waiting to be explored, unearthed and used by the conscious personality.
When you are in the lucid state, your mind is extremely receptive and you can use this time to cast positive and life-affirming impressions on it.
They say that all our subterfuges and self-sabotaging tactics are down to unconscious fears that hold us back. So if you use lucid dreaming as a way of resetting your unconscious mind, you can then make it your friend rather than your foe.
By retraining your unconscious mind and rooting out all that is negative in your life, you will have a better understanding of your fundamental nature and can start sowing the seeds of change in your waking life.
12: You can experience a lucid dreaming ‘high’
Just waking up in a dream and realising that you have been successful in entering the lucid state is enough to make you high as a kite.
But there’s more to it than that.
Since you can create your entire reality while you are in the lucid state, you can choose to simulate any ecstatic or blissful event you choose. The possibilities are endless!
13: It helps you integrate both sides of your brain
In many spiritual doctrines, the balance of our brains isn’t just about achieving personal equilibrium, it’s also about spiritual advancement and the evolution of the soul.
Left/right brain integration isn’t just a goal for spiritual aspirants, however, and has been a proven to boost learning and cognitive functioning in humans.
When we are in a lucid dream, the signals that are being received by the subconscious mind are being restructured and reorganised in such a way that the whole mind is receptive to them. This is means that far more of the total brain is focused effortlessly on learning.
14: Lucid dreaming improves your memory
As mentioned in #13, lucid dreaming helps integrate both hemispheres of the brain and so the logical left hemisphere and the subconscious right become active in integrating and expressing any newly attained knowledge.
By uniting the logical and non-logical sides of our brain, we become better learners, not to mention better at retaining new knowledge.
15: It boosts your psychic development
Studies have revealed that when you have been lucid dreaming for long enough, you are generally more relaxed and have the ability to tackle stressful situations with more ease (see #16).
Studies have revealed that psychic receptivity is found to increase with the level of relaxation one feels in one’s life. This is also because the third eye chakra is said to be stimulated when you are in the lucid state.
The third eye chakra is the seat of our intuition and psychic abilities so the more activities you do that emphasise third eye chakra use, the more efficient it becomes.
16: Experience much less stress and feel better
Lucid dreaming can be used as a preventative and curative therapy to counteract the damaging effects of stress. It also helps counteract the psychosomatic symptoms that are part and parcel of stress and anxiety.
Because lucid dreaming is subjectively oriented and internally directed, you can create your reality afresh, starting by eradicating stress from your life.
17: It helps you become more mindful
Mindfulness is rapidly decreasing in this modern age of instant gratification. Because you are so present and focused when you are in the lucid state, you can’t help but become aware of everything around you.
Not only does mindfulness increase while you are asleep, it also has a way of spilling over into your waking life, with many lucid dreamers reporting increased mindfulness in everything they do.
18: It can cure insomnia so you can sleep better
Lucid dreaming may be the ultimate cure for insomniacs with many sufferers claiming that it decreases the time they need in which to fall asleep.
Being able to take control of the dream state also allows them to get to the root of their problem by actively seeking out preventative measures and healthy solutions while in the lucid state.
19: Lucid Dreaming can help you get over an addiction
Lucid dreaming can be used in conjunction with traditional therapy or as a standalone modality to help people overcome addictive behaviour patterns.
Since we control our environments when we are in the lucid state, we can literally “become” whatever we desire and if a recovering addict truly wants to become a new person, lucid dreaming can help them do that.
Also, because lucid dreaming helps to reduce deep-seated conflicts and tensions, it promotes a feeling of wellbeing, which helps to curb the excessive consumption of addictive substances.
20: Lucid Dreaming can relieve pain
Lucid dreaming has successfully been used to help relieve people of pain because it stimulates the pituitary gland to release its own pain-suppressing compounds. Research has revealed that these compounds act centrally within the brain to transform the perception of painful stimuli, which reach consciousness after being released from the diseased part of the body.
Want to start lucid dreaming?
If you want to get started lucid dreaming you can either read our guide on how to lucid dream tonight or you could check out this online course!