Electric Dreams
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An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange

techniques and technology with Kacper

Lucy Gillis 


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  Gillis, Lucy (2001 August). An Excerpt from the Lucid Dream Exchange: techniques and technology with Kacper. Electric Dreams 8(9). Retrieved December 30, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams 
 





You don't need to be born with any special talent in order to enjoy the wonders and excitement of being awake in your dreams. Lucid dreaming is a learnable skill. While some people are fortunate to be able to have lucid dreams at will, most of us have experienced spontaneous lucidity at least once in our lives. Today there are many methods in the literature and devices now on the market to help you learn to become lucid or to increase the frequency of lucidity in your dreams. In the upcoming issue of LDE, Kacper shares his experiences with four different lucid dream induction techniques. Here is a sample:

Effects of Pre-sleep Exercises on Dreams
By Kacper

These are several mental exercises that may boost progress of the practitioner. Some of them are extraordinarily proficient - and I have decided to write about them in the first place. Other exercises are those I have HEARD may boost lucid dreamer's progress - but I didn't find them effective. Some of them are usually not listed in main-stream lucid dreaming resources (both on- and off-line), some are. I would like to present my first-hand experiences with them and leave the choice of practicing them to the readers:

1. Visualisation. This is a very effective exercise, especially when practiced just before sleep. It involves concentrating on one object, just one object - and putting it into spinning-like motion, or imagining the object moving around the visual field. The trick is that the exercise combines focusing on the stable image and imagining motion, which solves the problem of not being able to focus on one mental image at a time. It is to be carried out nightly, regularly, in order to achieve effects (results).


The effects involve: increase in dream recall and hypnagogic phenomena experienced before sleep. Both can be very strong. Excessive practice may lead to less pleasant things - like myoclonic jerks (even during the day), and even auditory hallucinations. Best way to do it is to practice WITH YOUR EYES OPEN in complete darkness. Telling yourself you'll become lucid in the night while visualizing works well in inducing dream lucidity.

2. *Brainwave entrainment: Effects depend on frequencies you are using. Deep theta frequencies may enhance your dream recall, giving you very vivid, coloured and emotionally intense dreams the following night. Some of the dreams may have a transpersonal quality.

3. Self-hypnosis: The technique is simple. First you proceed with muscle relaxation via the progressive relaxation method (relaxing muscles from toes to neck), then you count down from some number (at least 21, maximum 100) to zero while telling yourself that you are relaxing deeper and deeper while counting, and zero is the deepest trance state. While in trance you can tell yourself to remember your dreams, and that you'll become lucid the following night.

First of all, I have been practicing it at bedtime, and I was usually falling asleep while deepening my relaxation. Second of all, I've never succeeded in inducing a lucid dream through that method. It helped me to attain better dream recall for a short period. However, some say that it's effective in inducing lucid dreams, so go ahead and try... Maybe you'll do it...

4. Remembering in reverse chronological order - remembering events from the day that just passed starting from now and ending in the morning. Said to be good... After doing it I've had only vivid hypnagogic hallucinations... And that's all. Maybe others have had success with this one; I've had none. However, go ahead and try...

From all these exercises only the brainwave entrainment and visualization method have my recommendation. The visualization method I described gives you more than one benefit: it can ameliorate dream recall, it can induce lucidity and gives you control over mental images. It's literally a must-do for a lucid dreamer, while others are worthwhile to try and experiment with.

*Brainwave entrainment is a technology, growing in popularity today, that enables one to reach altered states of consciousness using phenomenon called frequency following response. It can be achieved by photic or auditory stimulation of brain. Photic stimulation is flashing at certain brainwave frequency - for example 10 Hz - Alpha rate - a subject looking at the flashing light entrains his brain waves to this frequency - or synchronizes his brainwave frequency just by looking at the light. Auditory stimulation consists of putting different sound frequency into each ear, and the difference is a frequency to which brain entrains... Some links where you will find more precise explanation and products for entrainment:

www.hemi-sync.com
www.bwgen.com
www.mindmachines.com



The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly issue featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles, poetry, and book reviews submitted by readers. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange, send a blank email to:

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The LDE can be found under Sciences>Social Sciences>Psychology>Sleep and Dreams