Tuesday, August 07, 2007

lucid dreaming

oh yeah, did you see today's "how-to" from wikihow? my favorite section of how to lucid dream are these, steps number four and five:


*Establish a habit of reality checks. In a dream, these will tell you that you are sleeping, allowing you to become lucid. But in order to do one in a dream, a person must first establish a habit of doing reality checks in real life. A reality check includes looking for "dream signs," or things that would not normally exist in real life. When these actions become habit, a person will begin to do them in her or his dreams, and can come to the conclusion that he/she is dreaming. Some tactics include:

* looking at a clock to see if it stays constant;
* looking at a body of text, looking away, and then looking back to see if it has changed;
* flipping a light switch;
* looking in a mirror (your image will most often appear blurry in a dream);
* pinching your nose together and trying to breathe;
* glancing at your hands and asking yourself, "am I dreaming?" (when dreaming, you will most often have greater or fewer than five fingers on your hand);
* jumping in the air;
* pinching or poking yourself; when dreaming, you usually do not feel any pain, and your "flesh" might be more elastic than in real life;

*Prolong lucid dreams by spinning your body in the dream (suspected of prolonging REM), and rubbing your hands (prevents you from feeling the sensation of lying in bed).


isn't that all so evocative of waking life?! don't you want to take a nap?? speaking of which, i took a short nap today and had a non-lucid dream in which i caught a guy in casco bay books stealing a bunch of cassette tapes from a set called "arthur learns to read, part four." he had them in his backpack, and i looked him calmly in the eye and said something like, "isn't this a cool store? you can't steal stuff from us if you want us to continue to be here." he sighed and handed the tapes over, and then he said, "yeah, the store is cool, but your parking lot sucks." somehow, i awoke triumphant.

4 comments:

Mary said...

ah! now i know what all those interesting folks i see in central square are doing; reality checks !!

Anonymous said...

Or you could do what my nephew's wife did recently, which was sleepwalk her way to the top of a staircase and fall down it, resulting in a trip to the ER...a little too much reality, I guess.

Liz Woodbury said...

yikes.

hey, i think there are lots of people on congress street here in portland also performing reality checks!

Mary said...

i LOVE wikihow !