Lucid Dreaming

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Part 8

Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

Once practised in the art of lucid dreaming you will start notice many different, life enhancing, qualities. Below are a selection of benefits which can be derived from lucid dreaming:

Self Empowerment: This is one of the main benefits I find in lucid dreaming. Most of us go through our lives without really knowing where we are going. We plod on from day to day waiting for something special to happen. Well imagine taking control of ourselves, we make plans, we carry them out, we are excited by the new possibilities that each day brings. Lucid dreaming gives us a chance to bring control in our lives, control of our own minds. We sleep for 30% of our lives and dream about 10% of our lives. Taking control of that 10% would have an amazing effect on our waking life. Once we have control in one part of our life it spurs us on take control over other parts and it now balls from there. So taking control over our dreaming life, empowers us and inspires us consciously and unconsciously to take control of our waking life, therefore having tremendous benefits in every way.

Overcoming Nightmares: Everybody at some stage in their lives have suffered from nightmares therefore everybody knows how terrifying they can be, even although they can seem ridiculous when we wake up. By practising lucid dreaming we can learn to deal with nightmares effectively by confronting the terrifying images within our dreams. I recall a nightmare from a few years ago in which I was suffering from recurrent nightmares about ghostly shapes and poltergeist chasing me and throwing me about the place.

One night I dreamt I was in a wooded area and a ghostly figure was chasing after me and making a terrible groaning sound, I tried to scream and it wouldn't come out. I realised this was my dream cue to wake up within my dream. As soon as I realised I was dreaming I confronted the figure and stood my ground, instead of running away. Immediately the figure stopped chasing me and took on a friendly manner as if to say I shouldn't have ever been afraid. I woke up feeling ecstatic and the feeling of elation and empowerment stayed with me for a long time. So lucid dreaming can help overcome those nightmares and even gain an insight as to why we were having the nightmares in the first place, by asking our dram characters questions.

Creative problem solving: When we work on a problem in our waking lives, we are mostly using the left hand side of our brain i.e. the logical, mathematical side. This is the way we have been taught at school and brought up, how many times were you told to stop daydreaming, or get your head out of the clouds? When we are dreaming we are using all of our brain, the right, imaginative, creative side and the left, the logical side. If we have a particular problem during the day we can use dream incubation to try and solve the problem that night, in our dreams. We have all heard of examples
of historical figures having dreams which solved particular problems they were having. For example: Frierick Kekules dream discovery of the benzene molecule structure, Robert Louis Stevenson who attributed his dreams to having inspired 'The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' , Composers like Mozart and Beethovan have also attributed dreams as having inspired some of their works. In lucid dreaming we can awaken our inherent imaginative brain and use it to solve many problems in our lives.

Peak Performance: Over the last decade or so there has been a tremendous interest in the subject of peak performance and on using mental imagery to enhance performance in sports, mental activities, and activities involving skilled practice. It has been shown, particularly in the field of sports that by using mental imagery and developing a positive, optimistic attitude we can enhance our performance in almost any skill. Lucid dreaming is the most potent of mental imagery techniques as they are much clearer, sharper, focused and interactive than normal waking imaging practices.
Thus we can utilise this to enhance our performance in sports, public speaking, work performance, musical abilities etc the list is almost endless.

When we are practising in our minds we are also training our muscles to react correctly in the various types of situations. For example, if we practice our tennis swing in our lucid dreams we are really developing our motor skills and training our muscles to react to the different sets of skills. This may sound far fetched, however studies have shown that by practising sit ups in our minds it can have a beneficial effect on our stomachs are the muscles in our stomach are still reacting to the images in our heads.

Fun: This, I feel, is one of the most important uses of lucid dreaming. Sheer unadulterated fun. Whether it be flying across the Sahara deserts, swimming with dolphins in the Atlantic ocean, having sex with your favourite film star, or taking a ride on the worlds largest roller coaster stopping in every country in the world. Lucid dreaming is about developing oneself, but it doing this we also have to develop our sense of fun and relaxation and this is the perfect opportunity to do this, as many of us do not get a chance to do it during the day in our normal waking lives. Lucid dreaming can be the ultimate stress buster, therefore enhancing our mental health as well as our physical health. So if you don't use lucid dreaming for anything else, use it for fun and enjoyment.