Saturday, March 20, 2010

Techniques to Improve Dream Recall

Since one of the steps to dream control involves remembering your dreams, you can use these tehcniques to improve dream recall.  Like any project, moving forward requires you break your goal into steps and tackle them one at a time.

Dream recall is different for everyone.  You supposedly dream an average of 5 times a night but many people will go months without realizing they've dreamed at all.  Dreams are really a great window into your subconscious and if you don't remember them you're missing a lot of messages that could be useful for self-improvement, decision making, and problem solving.  By problem solving, I don't mean you can use your dreams to give you the answer to that riddle your kid asked you the other night...I mean those day in and day out, fork-in-the-road kinds of problems that we you can't avoid when you're an adult.   You know, these kinds of problems:


Saturday, March 13, 2010

Dream Control Techniques

Twinkling your nose like Samantha in Bewitched might not work, so try these dream control techniques to make things happen in your dreams instead.

I always wanted to be Samantha.  She really had things all figured out.  No magic wand necessary to make her wishes come true.  A simple twitch-twitch and she was good to go.

To have that same kind of control in your dreams is as close as you can get.   Even better, the experience feels much more life-like than simply daydreaming that you could have that kind of control.

The following dream techniques should be practiced during the day to help you improve your control while you sleep.


Visualization
Use visualization to get what you want in your dreams.  To practice this technique, find a few times a day where there are no distractions and think of something you wish you could do or someplace you'd like to be.  Close your eyes and actually picture your goal taking place.  Keep your eyes closed the entire time but expand the detail of your vision as much as possible.  Are you inside or outside?  What's the weather, who is with you, what are you wearing, how do you feel, what do you see?  Try to put colors to the picture.  Just completely focus on your vision for several minutes.

This is a great trick that works well for meeting your real life goals.  If you can picture it, psychologists suggest you are more likely to make that thing happen.  The same works for your dreams.

Friday, March 12, 2010

How to Have Better Dreams

Ever had a dream so incredibly beautiful that all other dreams paled in comparison?  Learn how to have better dreams by taking control of what happens while you sleep.

The best dreams are when you are with a special person and there is a heightened sense of passion.  You could have an incredible date or a special night alone.  The feelings are intense.  Then you wake up and it's all gone.  For the next week, try as you might, you can't seem to make that dream happen again.

There are some tricks you can use to make things happen in your dreams.  First, always keep a dream book.  Take notes about your dreams when you wake up to help improve your ability to remember your dreams.  This will help you remember your dreams more often.

Can You Tell if You Are Dreaming?

Some people can tell if they're dreaming while they are in a dream.  This is known as a "lucid dream" because the person is aware of their surroundings.  Being lucid - or aware - in your dream is one step to being able to control your own dreams.

I was not aware of the term before I had a very interesting conversation with a friend about his dreams.  He explained that sometimes his dreams cause him to lose sleep because so much happens in his head while he's asleep.  He described his dreams in a very unusual way.  He said that most of the time, especially if he was going through some stressful situation in his personal life, his dreams were more working sessions.  He said he was always standing to the side watching his brain work.  He could see his brain working through whatever the problem was that was bothering him when he was awake.

Control Your Dreams While You Sleep

Did you know you could control your dreams while you sleep?  It's like being able to create your own world.  Imagine chatting with people you haven't talked to in ages or famous people you may never meet in real life.  What settings would you create?  What dreams would you have?

More importantly, how could you use that skill to enhance your own life?

Remember when the Second Life site was all the rage?  Maybe it still is.  I haven't been there in awhile.  I was fascinated with why other people found it fascinating.  Eventually, it became obvious - we all want to escape the life we have or work with it as if it were a hunk of clay and reshape it into something else.  Something more than we have now.

If you could do that in your dreams you'd have an even better experience to draw from than you would in an online network because your real self would be experiencing the actions and activities you create.  Just because it happens in a dream doesn't mean it doesn't feel real to you.  In fact, you already know that when you dream everything seems incredibly life like.  Sometimes you even wake up from a dream thinking it was so real that you find yourself checking your arms and legs to see if they are still there.