How I learnt to lucid dream (and you can too!)

 

Lucid dreaming is a term I became aware of when I was 11 years old. I had been lucid dreaming for years... I just didn't know there was an official title for it, you had the ability to change the dream, and not everybody knew how to do it. 

When I do Entity Release for someone, one of the questions I ask on the questionnaire is, Have you had any traumatic experiences in the lower astral whilst sleeping? This is the reason I took it upon myself to learn all about lucid dreaming at the tender age of 11... so I could control what I was seeing.

I grew up with a very spiritual family. Everybody believed and everybody had a story to tell of their experiences. My great grandfather was the founder of our local Spiritualist Church (that still runs to this day). One of my grandmothers has seen so many things it would often make your hairs stand on end to hear her recollecting the incident, and I grew up with something/someone in our home that would take objects from our house and put them in my grandmothers house in another street. If my dad ever lost his pen, he would just ring her and ask her was it there. It always was!

So my point here is, I was always brought up not to fear it all. My mam would always say, "It is the living that will hurt you Claire, not the dead", but what happened in my dreams scared the living daylights out of me.

My first recollection was the spiders. I was maybe around 5 years old and I would dream that my brother had thrown a huge sack of spiders at me. The bag would open and they would be crawling out of the sack and all over me. I would wake up screaming and my parents would rush into the room putting the light on and the spiders were everywhere.. crawling up my legs and I would scream uncontrollably. They couldn't see them... why couldn't they see them? They were there plain as day and I was wide awake so why couldn't they see them? I believe this is probably what started my constant sleep walking. It got so bad my parents would hide the key to the front door because one day I was off and out of the house, walking up the street in the middle of the night. I can remember waking up outside because my feet were cold and I stood under the lampost with my mam telling me I had to go back to bed. They were petrified I would do it when they didn't see, so the door from that moment was locked and the key was hidden away every night. I had lots of incidences of sleep walking for years.

At the same time of all of this going on, I would have a recurring dream. I always knew I was dreaming and I always knew what was going to happen. I was petrified and felt I had no control over the dream (which at the time, I didn't). If you had asked me back then (and possibly even up to around 5 years ago), what was so scary? I would have told you that there was a windmill at the top of a street close by our family home. At the top of the windmill a monster threw my nana out to her death. I would rush to the opening at the top of the windmill to try and stop the monster but I always failed. The constant fear kept me in a state of panic every time I was going to bed. Now that I am older, wiser and know much more about the subject of monsters in dreams, I can say confidentally it was a Draco Reptilian. As old as I am now.. I still shudder writing that, as it is sadly not my only experience of them.

So what did I do? I was a resourceful kid and would often look in books. My aunty was a librarian (also a believer) and she would help me find books that I wanted to read. It is in her library I found the secret to ending my recurring dream. It was called Lucid Dreaming, and it is where you know you are dreaming. So you change a part of the dream to break the cycle. 

That night... sure as a sure thing, I am at the windmill. The "Monster" is scary as hell looking and it takes me a moment to remember what I am supposed to do. By the time I collect my thoughts he has already chucked her out of the top. I rush over and from the recesses of my mind I shout for Gloop. Gloop was a character in a sci-fi cartoon called The Herculoids. Gloop could shape shift into anything and so I shouted for him to be a big cushion. Looking down I watched my nana land safely on the floor, via Gloop the now cushion... alive... and I never dreamt about it again. So you can see how powerful lucid dreaming is!

However, I, like most adolescents, became lazy and stopped practicing lucid dreaming, often taking for granted how powerful it was and thinking, What's the point? So... fast forward to my 50's and other things started to happen in my dreams and so I wanted to try to remember how to do it. I will say it's much harder when you are older. Children really are much more open and susceptible to these things but I did manage to learn how to do it again. I'd like to share my experiences so you can try it for yourself without paying some extortionate fee for some course how to do it (yes... I did that, and then I found my own way!)

So, firstly, you must get enough sleep. If you are too tired you won't manage the REM stages because your body will want you to recover and put you in a deeper state of sleep. 

Secondly, you never remember your dreams? Start writing what you have dreamt about the second you wake up. Start with the last thing you remember from the dream. Sometimes you can only remember a tiny bit but writing that down will trigger the previous scene. A good tip for this is your sleeping position. If you were laying on your left and turn to your right you will forget the dream quicker. I have often tuned back to the side I was sleeping long enough to get the last scene details enough to start writing things down. I read somewhere it was something to do with the fluid in your brain moving that caused this but all I can say is, it definitely helps to stay in the same position as you start recalling the dream. If you get up the next morning and just see scrawled writing all over your notepad that seems almost illegible... welcome to my world! It doesn't get neater as you get better at it! If you keep doing this and try to recall as much detail as you can about your dreams, after a few weeks you will notice you get better at remembering huge sections of them much easier. Don't make my mistake though (and I still do this)... don't think... oh, I am very unlikely to forget that, I'll not write that down because I'm too tired. YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER IT... I promise you that! Write down everything! Every detail!

If you have done those two things, then you need to start doing reality checks. You start reality checks in your day to day life because if you do something enough, you automatically bring that into your dreams. There are a lot of reality checks out there and I will give you some examples that work very well for other people but didn't personally work for me. 

Looking at your hand - This is a very popular one. Look at your hand, turn away and then look back at your hand again. Your brain in dream state finds it very difficult to replicate the same image in quick succession. Your hand in the first glance will look like a hand, the second time it can look like anything... too many fingers for example. This works really well for lots of people. I must have a weird brain as my hand is perfectly simulated no matter how many times I try to see something different.

Digital Watch - I had read this is why quite a few people wear a Casio watch other than loving retro fashion (however true that is!) Same principle... look at the time, look away, look back... your brain can't replicate the same digital numbers quick enough.

Palm Push - Take your finger on one hand and push it through the palm of your other hand. If it goes through, you're dreaming!

Realising something is just not right - I often start my lucid dreaming with this method and then I will go on to do a reality check of a nose pinch (noted below). For me, I will become aware I am dreaming because there is something odd about the dream. For instance my car will drive backwards or sideways, I will run up a really long steep hill and not be in the tiniest bit tired, somebody will look a weird body shape... you get the idea! If in your waking life something really weird happens, do another reality check to confirm if it is real or not. The more you do this, the better your chances of lucid dreaming.

My favourite - The Nose Pinch - So this is the one that works for me every time. Throughout the day, pinch your nose and try to breathe. I always say to myself, "I can't breathe, so I must be awake" I do this at least 10 times a day. If you stop doing these checks for any reason, it will be harder to realise you are dreaming. The technique fades fast if you don't keep it up. Once you nip your nose and try to breathe and you can still breathe, you know you are dreaming and can take the dream from there. Some people move from lucid dreaming into the astral (I have done this myself) and some people work something out in a dream, just as I did as an 11 year old. I will often dream something about some of the clients I do sessions with, which is always fascinating to disclose that information to them. My son had a lucid dream once and said he flew around and it felt amazing, so the dream world really is your oyster. (Just remember to please always keep your integrity, dream or no dream!). 

So... good luck, I hope some of these work for you. It won't be instant though. If you're an Aries like me and have the huge lack of patience our star sign denotes, just bear in mind it won't happen overnight. Another thing I will mention is that my best chances of having a lucid dream are nearly always when I am sleeping later than usual. I hope that helps. 🩷

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