Do all people know how to control dreams? How to make your sleep manageable

Sleep, a state well known to everyone, is necessary physical body and the mind for rest and recovery. We can give the following definition of sleep.

Sleep is a naturally occurring, repetitive state of mind and body that is characterized by an altered state of consciousness, decreased sensory activity, suppression of almost all voluntary muscle activity, and decreased interaction with the environment.

Every person dreams, regardless of whether he remembers them or not. A person begins to dream in infancy and continues to dream until death. The average person spends a third of their life sleeping, which is between 25 and 30 years.

Every night we find ourselves in the unknown world of dreams. Moreover, in a dream we can be ourselves or someone completely different. We can see in a dream both familiar places and people, and places and people that we have never seen while awake.

And there is hardly a person who, at least once in his life, has not had fantastic or fabulous dreams that he could not invent in a waking state of consciousness.

Despite the fact that for the last 150 years psychologists, doctors and neuroscientists have been actively trying to unravel the phenomenon of sleep, this condition, familiar to every person, is still fraught with many mysteries.

At the same time, the secrets and possibilities that sleep brings with it have been known since ancient times. The Bible and other sacred books describe many stories in which miraculous or prophetic dreams had a great influence on the development of history.

Expression, prophetic dream, is present in every culture. In ancient times, people capable of interpreting dreams were in every royal or imperial court and were revered on a par with sages.

In the Western tradition, working with dreams in to a greater extent is associated with psychology and is based on the interpretation of the plot and meaning of dreams. In this relatively modern tradition, the nature of the dream itself is rarely explored. At the same time, it is the nature and character of dreams that influence decisive influence on the plot, symbols and meaning of the dream.

At the same time, in Eastern culture and in the traditions of many indigenous tribes of America, shamanic traditions, dreams were used as a very powerful tool for gaining knowledge, personal and spiritual development.

Eastern traditions and traditions of the indigenous Indians gave modern culture knowledge of lucid or controlled dreams. Some of the most famous techniques for consciously working with dreams are Tibetan dream yoga and lucid dreaming. And in the tradition of the Yaqui Indians. The latter gained its popularity thanks to the books of the famous anthropologist Carlos Castaneda.

In the Western world, one of the pioneers of the practice of lucid dreaming and out-of-body travel is Stephen Laberge and Robert Monroe. We want to talk about the above methods in more detail in our article.

But before moving on to their description, I would like to dwell in more detail on why you need to pay such attention to sleep. Some people may have a completely natural question: if sleep is, first of all, rest for the mind and body, then what is the point in continuing to do something in a dream?

Isn't it better to just make sure that your sleep is healthy and sound? Certainly, healthy sleep in itself is a great benefit for the human body. But giving away 25 years of your life to just sleeping unconsciously is like keeping all your savings in a jar buried in the yard.

In this way, of course, you will preserve your wealth, but you will not be able to increase it. In a sense, this is a talent buried in the ground.

But the truth is that lucid dreaming can not only be used to gain more effective use knowledge and skills, but also contribute the best holiday and even healing the body.

And this is due, first of all, to the fact that during sleep the connection between the mind (soul) and the body weakens. Therefore, while the body is sleeping, the soul can calmly travel through the worlds, receive the information it needs, communicate with ancestors, angels, teachers and bring this knowledge into everyday life.

Thus, a person can not only use the time allotted for sleep more effectively, but also free up waking time for those activities for which there was not enough time before.

According to the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, not all people are equally likely to experience lucid dreams. Among the total number of people, he identified the so-called “dreamers,” people who from birth have a tendency to see lucid dreams.

Tibetan dream yoga also distinguishes people with average and high abilities to become aware of themselves in a dream. However, every person can develop this ability, it just may take more time and effort.

Conscious dream

What is a lucid dream and how does it differ from normal sleep. The answer to this question is in the title itself. If we try to give a definition, it might sound like this: a lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer (the person seeing the dream) realizes that he is seeing a dream and is able to consciously participate in the events occurring in the dream.

Perhaps some of our readers immediately recalled one or more dreams from their lives in which they realized that they were dreaming and dreaming. Spontaneous lucid dreams are not such a rare occurrence.

You've probably seen the science-fiction thriller "Inception" or at least "The Matrix." Both films clearly illustrate how lucid dreams work. Remember how he realizes that since he is actually sleeping, that means the spoon does not exist, and it can be bent with one effort of thought; or how the promising architect Ariadne in her sleep changes the force of gravity, folding the road in half right above her head. The same effect can be achieved in a dream by any person who sufficiently trains his self-awareness.

Phenomenon in science

The term “lucid dreaming” was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden (1860-1932). It denotes an altered state of consciousness in which a person is aware that he is dreaming and can control the content of the dream.

However, another scientist, Stephen Laberge, who dedicated this issue several scientific works. His scientific experiment proved the real possibility of clear self-awareness while watching dreams. At the moment when the instruments recorded the phase REM sleep, the subject gave conditioned signals by moving his eyes - for himself, these movements were carried out in a dream (he remembered the need to do this), and physically the eyes moved synchronously with his dream - which could be observed from the outside.

You can become aware of yourself in a dream not only during normal sleep, but also during “waking sleep” - this occurs due to atypical strong inhibition of the cerebral cortex. Attention and concentration fall, and the person himself does not notice that he is frozen with with open eyes and sees a dream (hallucinations - if you want).

Applications of lucid dreaming

Why is this necessary - to train and strain your thinking even in your sleep, instead of resting normally?

Of course, the first thought is hurray! - it will finally be possible to eat imaginary cakes and ride pink unicorns. But this is far from the only advantage of lucid dreaming.

The ability to “wake up in a dream” is not easy and does not come right away - but it will help you learn to “wake up” in time in reality. That is, to distinguish when something lacks logic, someone is deceiving you, or you are too carried away by something and have crossed the boundaries.

In our dreams we encounter many different situations- and this is a great trainer! We learn to find a way out, but, realizing the unreality of the situation, we are not afraid to make a mistake. On the contrary, we allow ourselves to act in a more wide range options, thereby developing and evaluating their new reactions. Once you wake up, you can use the information received for deeper self-analysis and correction of the way you act in general.

You can also train your will in a lucid dream, learn to do what doesn’t work (for example, instead of flying, you fall). Having dealt with the problem, you will feel a surge of self-confidence, transfer this confidence into real life and at the same time get rid of various fears or phobias.

It must be admitted that lucid dreams have not yet been sufficiently studied by modern psychology and medicine, and esotericists even talk about the dangers of such practice: who knows, what if you decide to visit in a dream, and then your soul will not be able to return? But one way or another, the practice of dream management is already used in psychotherapy to expand the tools of Freudian psychoanalysis.

How to control the plot of a dream?

The easiest way to train your mind to wake up in a dream is self-hypnosis or listening to hypnosis audio recordings before bed.

P.S.- I’ve heard about lucid dreams more than once, but after writing this essay I went to bed and... it worked! True, not completely: I began to check whether I was sleeping and tried not to breathe. But bad luck, it was terribly unpleasant, just like in life. I barely caught my breath and thought: “I give up, this is all for real”... :) On next night I remembered again and decided, therefore, to repaint the moon. The moon was indignant and woke me up. These are the pies... Have you ever managed to wake up in a dream? Or dreaming in reality? It’s strange, but over the past two days I’ve managed to try this on myself, completely by accident. This has happened before, but until you know what it’s called and how it works, you just don’t pay attention.

Surely, sometimes in a dream you had the feeling that you were dreaming. This sensation is called lucid dreaming, during which you clearly imagine that you are in in my own dream. If you master the technique of such a dream to perfection, then you can soon learn to completely control yourself in a dream, i.e. control it the way you want.

How to control yourself in a dream

1. Tune in to a lucid dream. To do this, remember the feeling of being aware of yourself in a dream and do not let go of it for as long as possible. Before you go to bed, think about what you should dream about and how you should behave.
2. Come up with some trick or trick that you can only perform in your sleep. For example, do a somersault or take off. This will help you for awareness.
3. Imagine that you can do anything - of course, when you find yourself in lucid dream. That you are a wizard, a magician, that everything in the world around you obeys, because that’s how it is, your dream is a whole universe that cannot exist without you, since you created it.
4. Transfer the feeling of your dominance over the world into reality, this will help you train your consciousness. You need to remember this feeling well and be able to evoke it at any time.
5. Start controlling your dreams small. Having realized yourself in a dream, first look around, take a closer look at what your subconscious has created. And then practice controlling your body. Do you like flying in your dreams? Fly, it will serve as a good workout for both the “body” and the mind, because you can fly wherever you want.
6. Evoke any image you wish. For example, make you dream about your friend. After single images, move on to their aggregates - through the effort of consciousness, you are transported to various places familiar and unfamiliar to you. Once you have mastered the control of images, you can easily control the entire development of action in your dream.

How to be aware of yourself in a dream

1. In lucid dreams, a person can be anyone, do anything. However, our brain quickly reacts to such “mistakes” and returns us to an unconscious dream. How to prolong this amazing feeling?
2. First of all, try to look at your hands while sleeping. As soon as they begin to blur, move your gaze to another object. Concentrating on one object in a dream will lead to “throwing out” of the lucid dream. People who enter a lucid dream lose it as soon as they concentrate on the idea that it is a lucid dream. Over time, you will be able to spend more and more time in such a dream. From your hands, move on to reviewing other images in your dreams. Try to summon unusual abilities. For example, lift a stone or a car with your mind.
3. Over time, you will learn to be fully aware and in control of your sleep. To different people required to achieve success different time. In any case, after three months of practice you will achieve success.

How to induce lucid dreams

Almost every person has moments when in a dream he realizes that he is dreaming. Similar cases Spontaneous awareness is very rare, but there are special practices that allow you to learn to have lucid dreams almost every night.
There are several variants of lucid dreams, differing in the quality of awareness. In particular, in the Russian environment, dreamers are often divided between lucid dreams and lucid dreams. Terminologically, this is not entirely correct, since lucid dream, or lucid Dreaming, translated from English is a lucid dream. But division has taken root and is often used in communication between dreamers, so it should be taken into account to avoid confusion.

So, lucid dreams are often understood as lucid dreams with a weak degree of awareness. In such a dream, you understand that you are dreaming, but you are drawn into what is happening, you are a participant in the plot.

In a fully lucid dream, your degree of control over what happens is very high. The plot of the dream no longer affects you, you do what you want and how you want. Your consciousness works almost as well as in reality. You know that you are dreaming and you are dreaming everything that surrounds you.

How to learn to lucid dream

You can find a lot of advice on the Internet on how to learn to dream. But this usually does not take into account the main thing: dreams are possible only with a high level of energy. It is no coincidence that most spontaneous dreams occur between the ages of 15 and 25-30, that is, during the period of maximum sexual activity. High levels of sexual energy allow some people to dream without any practice. But later the dreams disappear - the level of sexual energy drops, and there is no ability to accumulate and use other energy.

This is why it is very important to learn how to save energy. Stop being nervous over trifles, getting angry, swearing, worrying - it is with emotions that the maximum amount of energy needed for dreams is spent. Eliminate all unnecessary things from life - hours of communication in in social networks, watching TV for a long time, frequenting entertainment events, etc. - that is, everything that actively attracts your attention and forces you to react emotionally.

The second condition for the rapid appearance of dreams is the intention to perform some action in a dream. For example, find a person, fly, go through a wall, look at hands in a dream, etc. If you just want to dream, nothing will happen; what is needed is the intention to accomplish something in a dream. The action can be absolutely anything – it’s not the action that’s important, but the attraction of your intention.

If you save energy and every night, when you go to bed, you intend to perform your intended action in the morning, all you have to do is be patient. This is what is usually missing; after a week or two, the practice of lucid dreaming is safely abandoned. To prevent the same thing from happening to you, keep a dream diary. Write down your dreams in it, make notes every day. This focuses your attention on your dreams and allows you to continue your practice. It may take from several weeks to several months before you have your first dream.

Moment of lucidity in a dream

Realization comes at the moment when in a dream you suddenly remember that you wanted to do something. Or you do it, and remember that you were going to perform this action. For example, you are flying - and during the flight you remember that you wanted to fly. At the same time, you seem to wake up, your awareness takes over. Sleep stops, dreaming begins.
The duration of the first dreams is usually a matter of seconds, less often minutes. Experienced dreamers can dream for hours, but this is very high level, which only a few achieve. Continuing the dream practice depends only on the energy level. Energy levels decrease and dreams disappear.

As you know, all people spend about a third of their entire lives sleeping. But no matter how much someone wants to save their time and not waste it on night rest, it is unlikely that this will be possible to do without damage to own health. However, you can learn to control the plot of your sleep and control your dreams. Herodotus also said: “...Usually people see in their dreams what they think about during the day...”.

This ability will help you diversify your actions in your own dreams. It will be possible to lead people, manage the current situation, while analyzing everything that is happening in detail - to the point that you can radically change the plot and turn of events. Meanwhile, to be more precise, the goal of achieving such a skill is not control over the “night movie”. In-depth awareness in a dream will significantly affect the behavior and response of the sleeper to the circumstances, actions, and situations that arise in the dream. Having mastered at least one of the methods of dream regulation, the remaining techniques will be comprehended much faster. In addition, on this moment There are plenty of such methods, among which the most common are:

resorting to the help of self-hypnosis and conscious intention;
wanting to achieve something specific;
changing the internal state;
using certain verbal formulas, etc.

Scientists involved in scientific research in the field of oneironautics, the effectiveness of the method of controlling dreams with the help of desire has already been confirmed. Some of them, through self-experimentation, became convinced that this technique allows them to move around and independently change the situation in colorful dreams. Oneironauts believe that events in a dream will occur in accordance with internal state dozing man. For example, if in a dream he is fearless and ready to accept something threatening, then the danger basically disappears and dissipates. But in the opposite case, when fear takes possession of the sleeper, the apparent threat also increases.

The important meaning of a dream lies in the gaze, which can also control what is happening. This means that having experienced fear from potential danger, which in most cases has its own personification, you need to look straight into the eyes of the threat in a nightmare.

Dreams governed by verbal formulas can be controlled somewhat differently. Having the opportunity to significantly change the appearance and behavior of any “hero”, you just need to address him correctly and start a conversation. For example, you can reacquaint yourself with a friend you met in a dream. The need to learn something new about yourself or about your friends will help you see the whole meaning of the dream and realize what it symbolizes.

Mindfulness will help you master moving in the world of dreams. By learning to manage this advantage, a sleeping person opens many doors. After all, it happens that even in a dream you need to be in the right place, based on the situation. This is where volitional intention comes to the rescue. It will also allow you to see a specific plot determined by consciousness. The name of this technique is known as intentional sleep.

In numerous ancient cultures, this ability to deliberately fall asleep was revered and seen as a fundamental sign of wisdom and self-control. In the territory Ancient Greece Some memorable temples of dreams have even survived to this day. People who visited such places tried to find answers to questions during their dreams. exciting questions. Perhaps the temples actually helped in concentrating one's attention to focus on a specific goal. However, in modern world there is no need for them. After all, now, in order to consolidate the desired result in the mind, you just need to pay attention and introduce into the subconscious a common phrase that describes what you expect to see. Dreams driven by the intention of personal awareness of oneself will necessarily require a large expenditure of mental energy.

Intentional sleep: how to achieve it?

In order to learn how to manage the above-mentioned method of intentional dreaming, the first thing you need to achieve is to correctly formulate your intentions. It is enough to simply say your desire or question immediately before falling asleep. It is advisable to write down this phrase on a piece of paper and illustrate it with an associated picture. Next, you must remember the entry. The constant formulation of one’s own intentions is aimed at expressing a specific desire in dreams.

Then you need to go to bed. Without being distracted by other thoughts, without loading your mind with thoughts about problems and worries, just turn off the light and get ready for sleep in bed.

Again remember your desire expressed in the recording and focus on intentional awareness of your personality in the upcoming dream. You need to imagine as if the dream has already begun and what is happening is exactly what was planned. The main thing is not to lose from your imagination the idea of carrying out a non-abstract, clear action. You should not allow extraneous distracting thoughts to interfere until you fall asleep. Meanwhile, this is not easy to achieve; many beginners who study the features of this technique have difficulty coping with absent-mindedness. In this case, you should go back and do it all over again. Re-formulate the desire for your own awareness and focus on what you want.

You can’t stop just at this stage. Having plunged into a lucid dream and being inside a well-thought-out plot, it is most difficult to implement the planned action. To do this, it is important to remember the decisive phrase once again. You may need to express yourself in a special way and find a suitable way to do this, change your behavior pattern and perform deep Scan surrounding environment in a dream. In addition, it is worth remembering the sensations during such a dream.

The successful completion of all work done will be facilitated by a mandatory reminder of what you saw after waking up. The final result of the entire process will be to obtain a clear answer to the question, which was key and required enormous concentration. You need to consolidate the effect of an intentional dream by immediately writing down the entire dream you saw, or at least its main part. You should record a lucid dream even if the main event never happened. Perhaps significant information was hidden in other nuances that were not initially given due attention.

Creating a new storyline in a dream

You can see what you desire in your dreams in a different way. Having created the ground for the emergence of lucid dreams, there is a chance to independently evoke or find what you want. In addition, such decisive changes, affecting the entire atmosphere of sleep, influence the emergence of powerful feelings over the created world of illusions. Having acquired the skills to manage “life” in a dream, traveling in dreams will become commonplace. Here everything directly depends on your imagination and your goal. And since human possibilities are practically limitless, anything the sleeping lord of dreams wants can happen. The techniques below will help you learn to regulate and manage your dreams and everything that happens in them. However, this technique can only be considered as advice, because an absolute mechanism for controlling what is happening in the world of dreams has not yet been found.

Firstly

First you need to decide on the goal. Before going to bed, you need to imagine people, the place and time of meeting them. It doesn’t matter whether it is a non-existent fairy-tale character or a distant relative from the outback, whether he lives now, lived a very long time ago, or has not yet been born at all.

Secondly

It is strictly necessary to create a special installation that will program to achieve the set goal. The old advice of writing down a phrase that represents the main intention will help you achieve this. Then, of course, you should imagine the feeling that would be present if you received the long-awaited result.

Third

Developing your goal in a lucid dream will be especially helpful. To do this, it is enough to associate the origin of additional events with the object of the dream. It is possible that the task will be completed only with the help of strong intentions. Because it is most likely to achieve success by first realizing the state of sleep. And most importantly: if you feel that awakening is imminent, it is advisable to repeat your establishing words until the awakening comes. next dream, perhaps even according to a scenario thought out in advance.

Fourthly

in order to radically change the general atmosphere of a situation or a particular environment, it is not necessary to move somewhere. You can change everything on the spot, starting the process with some of the most insignificant details, and continuing with the transition to more serious things. The intensity of actions aimed at correction should increase gradually, appearing barely noticeable at first. IN in this case, the surroundings look like a kind of “plasticine” from which you can sculpt whatever your heart desires.

Conclusion

The modern rhythms of each person set many restrictions and boundaries. And it’s not always possible to do as you would like. This easily explains the priority of lucid dreaming, which is not difficult to learn to manage if you immerse yourself in this process concentrated, listening to your consciousness.

A significant advantage that is available to those who have mastered the technique of intentional sleep is freedom, incomparable to real life, complete absence restrictions, limits and limits - in the world of dreams you can do anything and be anyone.

When trying to bring yourself to perfection, you need to engage in self-development, and it does not matter how you move towards your goal. For complete happiness, a feeling of complete satisfaction in life, it is not enough to simply have a healthy body and read a lot of books. Problems in relationships with people, energy, and tragic events can be directly dependent on the mental level of development.

Sleep is one of the most interesting and unexplored phenomena. Some people see bright color images, while others see black and white images. It used to be that dreaming was simply a way for the brain to rest. However, later researchers from the University of Chicago found that sleep turns into an active process for a few minutes during the night.

Have you ever heard that you can control this process? Do you think this idea is just fantastic? In vain! It turns out that you can learn to control your dreams. How can you manage your sleep? Today we will talk about this.

Controlling your dreams is useful

While in this state, we receive a lot of information from our subconscious. The brain sorts this information and remembers what is useful.

Lucid dreaming allow us to go anywhere, to experience moments that we cannot experience in real life. And this limitless possibilities, because we can practice the skill of communicating with a foreigner or consolidate the acquired knowledge about driving a car. Now imagine how useful it is to manage your sleep.

Can this be learned?

How can you learn to manage your sleep? Here are instructions that will help:

How should you fall asleep to manage your sleep? First you need to feel yourself in a dream. That is, you have to kind of wake up there, understand that you are not awake;
then you need to learn to concentrate on objects or creatures. As soon as the picture begins to blur, you need to move your gaze to another object, and then return to the original object. Gradually you will learn to focus your gaze;
the next step is to remember everything. Often a person remembers that he dreamed about something, but cannot specifically tell. So this is what you need to learn;
the moment of awakening is very important. You need to lie down for some more time, feel where you are - whether it’s reality or a dream;
notebook. Get yourself a notebook or notepad where you will write down everything you remember: events, feelings and emotions;
During the day, remember your feelings and compare them with reality.

In order to control your dreams, you will have to practice a lot. When you learn how to do the above exercises correctly, move on to the next, more complex ones.

How to control dreams at home

To learn how to really use those limitless possibilities that we talked about, you need to do the following exercises:

Before you fall asleep, set yourself up for a certain story: visit a familiar place, for example;
Think in great detail about what you want to see, who to meet, what should be around. The more accurately you think through everything, the easier it will be for you;
give an instruction - why do you want to see these particular images;
when you feel like you are falling asleep, feel yourself there, and then repeat the installation to yourself;
After waking up, you need to remember everything.

Sleep is a very mysterious phenomenon. For anyone to be able to control it, one has to work hard. Of course, it won't work the first time. Don't be discouraged, you have to try again and again.

When the exercises become easy, you can try another technique. It is much more complicated than the previous one.

Its essence is to change what is happening there with the help of willpower. That is, you need to wake up, imagine what exactly you want to change and fall asleep again. You have to go back to the same situation and change it.

Fighting fears

Having learned these techniques, you can try to fight your fears. You can't run away from your fear. We need to meet him face to face. Explore it and get to know it. Try to talk. It's even better if you make friends.

This is how you can get rid of your phobias:

think in advance what you want to see, give yourself a set;
if it’s already getting scary, feel that it’s not real and you will feel better;
find your fear, all the time remembering that it is a fantasy;
sit next to you, get used to it, understand that you are sleeping and can leave at any moment;
talk and see how things develop further.

Perhaps you will feel funny, or maybe you will become best friends with your fear. The main thing is that you will stop being afraid of something and become freer.

Try to learn to listen to dreams

When you wake up, you absolutely do not understand what and why these pictures were given to you. However, this is all superficial analysis. We need to be deeper.

First of all, think in images. Don’t try to squeeze everything you saw at night into a rational framework during the day. When you think about night images, focus on internal sensations: where during the memories you feel warmth, and where you feel cold and discomfort.