Feb. 3, 2007 — For many of us, dreams are a strange other world — puzzling, terrifying and beyond our control. But some psychologists now say, under the right conditions, we can control our dreams to have fun or to learn from them.
One way to do that is through lucid dreaming, in which you choose what happens in your dream. You can fly through the air, swim with dolphins, tame the monster in your nightmares, speak to a dead relative — anything you want to do, all the while aware that it's a dream.
"Lucid dreaming is simply a dream in which you know you're dreaming while it's happening," said Dr. Stephen Laberge, founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University. "So you know, 'This is a dream I'm having,' and therefore, you can control, you can decide. You know it's all in your mind, so nothing can hurt you. You're free and you can experiment."
Recently, people come to the big island of Hawaii for a two-week session with Laberge, who is widely considered to be the country's pre-eminent authority on lucid dreaming.
Stephanie Smedes, an animal eye doctor, is here to learn how to have lucid dreams. One of her goals is to control her nightmares of being chased by an unknown figure, running from room to room.
Smedes hopes that lucid dreaming will "help me to be part of them and then switch them around so I'm not so frightened of them."
At its most basic level, lucid dreaming involves recognizing that you're dreaming while you're dreaming.
"The key to lucid dreaming is [to] remember to do something in your dreams, to notice that it's a dream," Laberge said. "So before bed, you set your mind. Say, 'Tonight, I'm going to be dreaming — and when I do, I want to remember to notice that I'm dreaming.'"
---'Morning fellers. Yep, still freezin ass cold here today and I now have a sore throat. I think controlling your dreams would be a pretty powerful chore and I imagine it takes a lot of time to be able to do it. Im pretty sure I dream every night, but a lot of days I awaken not being able to remember what I dreamt about. The article tells us to set our minds to control our dreams...yeah right, Im sure the last thing we are thinking about at the end of our days is dreaming.---
Sunday, February 04, 2007
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2 comments:
I used to control my dreams, and even remember then in the morning. However all that shit went out the window the day I went back to Collage, and it never returned when I finished. Kind of a bummer.
Thats really interesting Scott. Its weird that you lost that power with college. I would defintley considered you gifted to have that power though. I dont know of many that have the ability to control their dreams! I hope by some crazy fashion that it returns to you someday. One can hope!!!!
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