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How to have lucid/vivid dreams(?)

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Gareth

Gareth

Nothin' to see here
So I was wandering if anyone knows of any techniques or herbs or anything that can lead to having lucid dreams?

When I was partying a lot (using something that affected serotonin) I used to use this supplement called 5-HTP. 5-HTP is supposed to help the body create more of the precursors to serotonin and thus help with recovery after big weekends. Anyway, whenever I took this stuff I always had really bizzarre and lucid dreams. I cant remember any actual dreams I had but I do remember that I would drift off to sleep without knowing it be in some crazy bizarro dream world then snap out of it thinking Id been in bed for at 5hrs. However every time Id check the clock to see Id been asleep less than 30min - 1hr.

So later I was told that mugwort can also aid in creating really vivid dreaming. So I ordered some dried mugwort online and drank it as tea. It tasted absolutely horrid and did have some effect, but I think that fact that it was dried took some of the potency out of it.

So I was wandering if anyone has any other tips or ideas that can create consistent lucid dreams? (legal of course)
 
English Blue Stilton Cheese before bedtime always has the desired effect for me. I love the stuff and always remember having Lucid dreams(not only 1 dream but 3 or 4) when I have woke up.

I would suggest any kind of Cheese that Stinks and is ecrusted with veins of mould.
 
Tks I may try that cheese thing.

Apparently lucid dreaming is the way into astral projection / or OBE's. Basically youre supposed to somehow keep youre awareness while you go into a lucid dream and without totally pulling yourself out of the dream you basically project where you wanna go.

Theres a lot more to it than that obviously and theres much info to be found elsewhere on the web. It seems like a technique that could work, considering the types of experiences Ive had lucid dreaming. I imagine that the difficult part would be keeping awareness whilest lucid dreaming and not waking yourself up, or pulling yourself out of the experience.
 
I have been able to have lucid dreams and OBE's as long as I can remember. Most of the OBE's are spontaneuos so I have no idea what factors are involved.

I don't know if this is a factor or not but my sleep is interrupted on a regular basis for different reasons. Just as a test you might try to wake your self up several times during the night and see if your morinng dreams are easier to remember and thus become lucid...just a thought.
 
A good technique for having Lucid Dreams can be found in Carlos Castaneda's book "The Art of Dreaming".

Before going to sleep you should take a few minutes to stare at your hands.This will eventually result in seeing your hands in the dream state,and thereby triggering the analytical part of the brain.In other words;waking up in the dream state.

I have written about this technique and others in the thread "Journeys out of the Body",which is in the "personal experiences" section.
 
Although I've been able to dream in a lucid manner, (and change the dream to my advantage) I'm not self-taught. It just happened. I woke up very dissatisfied with the dream and decided to go back to sleep to correct it ... and I did.

As far as I can tell, I'm not in a deep sleep while dreaming and becoming lucid during too many dreams leaves me really tired. Gotta have more of the deep, seemingly dreamless sleep. Or maybe there are just dreams I don't remember because I'm in a deep state of sleep. Doesn't matter. Just directing my intention to remember my dreams causes me to be tired.

The point of learning to dream in a lucid state is to alter dreams to the advantage of the dreamer. Learning to control in dream reality is supposed to affect the dreamer in an awakened reality. I'm sure it works to some extent, but it leaves me to tired to explore it much.
 
GSB said:
So I was wandering if anyone knows of any techniques or herbs or anything that can lead to having lucid dreams?

When I was partying a lot (using something that affected serotonin) I used to use this supplement called 5-HTP. 5-HTP is supposed to help the body create more of the precursors to serotonin and thus help with recovery after big weekends.
...
Click to expand...

Don't get too caught up in the hype of the snake oil salesman. Do you know what precursor means in that context? It just means that it is PART of what produces serotonin. That is all. It can be one of 10 things, one of two, you have to look that up and figure it out.

St. Johns Wort MAY also be useful to promote well-being and internal peace. That's all this is about. Good Serotonin levels will keep you from getting depressed, they'll make you feel happy and safe. That's all you'll get out of it, which is nothing to sneeze at.
 
Live at the Witch Trials said:
English Blue Stilton Cheese before bedtime always has the desired effect for me. I love the stuff and always remember having Lucid dreams(not only 1 dream but 3 or 4) when I have woke up.

I would suggest any kind of Cheese that Stinks and is ecrusted with veins of mould.
Click to expand...
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Charles Dickens
 
I found that the better I became at meditation, the better I became at lucid dreaming. Practice helps too. Use creative vizualization and create your own dreamtime world.
 
digigeek said:
Don't get too caught up in the hype of the snake oil salesman. Do you know what precursor means in that context? It just means that it is PART of what produces serotonin. That is all. It can be one of 10 things, one of two, you have to look that up and figure it out.

St. Johns Wort MAY also be useful to promote well-being and internal peace. That's all this is about. Good Serotonin levels will keep you from getting depressed, they'll make you feel happy and safe. That's all you'll get out of it, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think you misunderstood the reason that I was using 5-HTP. Thats ok, this really isnt the forum for that.
 
Hello

Not sure if it's bad etiquette to reply on a thread that's been inactive for so long. If so, my apologies. I recently became interested in this topic so I decided to look for previous threads. I have a suggestion based on advice I recently received from a friend. He recommended I try melatonin supplements to experience lucid dreams. The website WebMD lists one of the "side effects" as vivid dreams. Melatonin taken in small doses actually seems to be quite beneficial to health. I don't have first hand experience... yet. I plan to give this a try very soon.

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview

Also, something on a related note. The thing that sparked my interest in the first place was running across videos from Stephen Berlin. Has anyone else watched these or know anything about him? I was very impressed. He seems knowledgeable and doesn't push a particular interpretation.

http://stephenberlin.com/blog/

Last point, I recently watched an episode of Nova which covered dream research. Particularly interesting to me was how stages of sleep produce different dream experiences. Notably, REM sleep is the only stage in which the amygdala becomes active. This causes characteristics of the dreams to change quite dramatically. I can't seem to find a streaming version of this episode, but here is the website on that episode.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dreams/
 
nicotine supposedly leads to vivid dreaming, the research I remember studying had people go to sleep wearing nicotine patches.
 
I remember the only time I've ever come close to lucid dreaming was at a 3-day Rave a long time ago where I took mega doses of mushrooms combined with MDMA. I realize that I wasn't dreaming at the time but it completely felt like I was in a dream-like state with a completely warped perception of reality. It sounds weird but I thought that I was actually able to perceive people's thoughts and emotions.

I remember reading an article a few years back about research conducted into lucid dreaming. I remember they had special glasses that they put over your eyes that monitored your REM. Once the REM was detected the glasses were equipped with LED lights that started blinking making a person aware that he or she was dreaming and thus becoming aware. Don't know if any conclusive study was ever made from that research.
 
Ah, dreams. Where have art thou been? I honestly cannot remember ever having a lucid dream before. There have been cases in my youth where I would realize I was dreaming, but I would wake up shortly after, completely stalling any possibility of guiding the dream with my own will. That has always intrigued me, and for the last few years I've rarely dreamed at all, or haven't been able to recall any upon waking. I've attempted to look up and research what a lack of dreams could mean, but I can't say I've found anything particularly illuminating. On par with the subject though, I have both read and heard from many people that meditation can be a great key into the dream world, be they lucid or otherwise.
 
Hey Gareth,

I remember hearing the one about eating a little salt before bedtime. I think the aim of this is to make you thirsty enough to want to get up and get a drink, though you musn't. You could even have a glass of water next to the bed but you mustn't drink. The point being by creating a need/desire for something in the waking realm,that's WAKING, you are driven to seek out that which you need, if not conciously then eventually unconciously.

I have also heard that if you make it far enough and realise you are dreaming, another useful technique to sustain the experience is to look for your hands. Never tried either tip but I sorta see the logic.

Here are some people you might want to look into,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvan_Muldoon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Monroe

Sweet dreams,

Mark
 
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