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I'm teaching myself to have lucid dreams. I think it will help me to sleep better, or at least to have an interesting time while my brain is in sleep mode. I'm generally a bad sleeper, with easily disrupted sleep patterns, so I'm hopeful that any kind of systematic approach to sleeping will be helpful. And it's drug-free, which is the best kind of treatment.
The first thing you have to do, according to this website, is to increase your ability to recall dreams. Apparently you have around four cycles of REM sleep per night, and you should dream in each one. The brain likes to wipe the slate clean between cycles, so you should try to convince yourself to wake up after each one, so that you can remember all the dreams you have each night, not just the last one.
After my first night of trying to fall asleep while thinking "I will wake up at the end of my dream", I'm happy to report that I did have four cycles of REM sleep, and woke up after all of them. I only managed to write down the first and the last in my dream journal. For the middle two, I was so sleep-addled I couldn't get my carpal tunnel splints off to hold the pen, and I can only remember that one of them was about a giant snowflake.
Next, I have to practice making reality checks in waking time, so that I will be in the habit of making them in dream time. So, when something strange happens during the day, I have to ask myself "Is it possible I'm dreaming?", and then hopefully, when I next see a giant snowflake, I will be able to realise that I'm dreaming. Or, perhaps, that I am not.
The first thing you have to do, according to this website, is to increase your ability to recall dreams. Apparently you have around four cycles of REM sleep per night, and you should dream in each one. The brain likes to wipe the slate clean between cycles, so you should try to convince yourself to wake up after each one, so that you can remember all the dreams you have each night, not just the last one.
After my first night of trying to fall asleep while thinking "I will wake up at the end of my dream", I'm happy to report that I did have four cycles of REM sleep, and woke up after all of them. I only managed to write down the first and the last in my dream journal. For the middle two, I was so sleep-addled I couldn't get my carpal tunnel splints off to hold the pen, and I can only remember that one of them was about a giant snowflake.
Next, I have to practice making reality checks in waking time, so that I will be in the habit of making them in dream time. So, when something strange happens during the day, I have to ask myself "Is it possible I'm dreaming?", and then hopefully, when I next see a giant snowflake, I will be able to realise that I'm dreaming. Or, perhaps, that I am not.