Have you ever wished you could control your dreams? Well as it turns out, you can.
Lucid dreaming is what we call the act of being aware of the fact that we are dreaming when we are dreaming. It is not as easy to do as most might think and gives us some control over how our dreams play out. Science has been looking into this kind of thing for years and many different researchers have their own takes on the phenomena.
Dr. Denholm Aspy is one of those researchers and he has been working to combine techniques in regards to making this an easier process. He has found that a combination of reality testing, WBTB, and the MILD technique together. The MILD technique basically consists of setting alarms at five-hour intervals to wake the sleeper so that he or she can recite “the next time I am dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming.” MILD standing for Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams.
As reported by Science Daily Aspy’s methods for actually getting lucid dreaming to work for you go as follows:
1. reality testing — which involves checking your environment several times a day to see whether or not you’re dreaming.
2. wake back to bed — waking up after five hours, staying awake for a short period, then going back to sleep in order to enter a REM sleep period, in which dreams are more likely to occur.
3. MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams) — which involves waking up after five hours of sleep and then developing the intention to remember that you are dreaming before returning to sleep, by repeating the phrase: “The next time I’m dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming.” You also imagine yourself in a lucid dream.
If you do these things you have a much greater chance of getting lucid dreaming to work for you. He has noted an almost 20 percent success rate within just a week which is good numbers considering the results others find. The more you do this and the longer you keep at it the better chances you will have.
It is also important to note that those who seemed to have success with the MILD technique in itself also noticed significantly better sleep in general. They did not feel as deprived and were much more alert.
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