5 myths of lucid dreaming

People who have never had a conscious dream before may have difficulty grasping its concept because many books and movies twist the truth to make their plots more dramatic. Wannabe lucid dreamers should be smart enough to separate fact from fiction. The following are the 5 myths of lucid dreaming popularized by the internet, science fiction, and others:

You are wasting your hours at night if you do not a lucid dream

Sleep is essential to your survival and is not time wasted. Sleeping occurs in phases, where lucid dreaming can only occur during REM phase, which last about 100 minutes during an 8 hours sleep. This is to say that even the most proficient lucid dreamer could only go lucid for a maximum of 100 minutes per night.

Only advanced practitioners/mediators can have lucid dreams

Meditation does help in priming your brain for lucidity. However, you do not need advanced knowledge in it to attain lucidity. Meditating simply means focusing your attention on your own train of consciousness in a state of calmness and peace. It will heighten your self-awareness while awake and ease the process of becoming lucid. Besides meditating, visualizing dreams before you go to sleep will help in the process.

Lucid dreaming is a new age fad

The ability to have consciousness while in your dreams has been subjected to scientific testing in the lab and is proven to be real. Brainwaves of lucid dreamers are found to be highly active in the gamma range, which is more active than your brain while being awake.

Only certain people have the ability to lucid dream

It is false to believe that only people with special mental skills who have years of training can lucid dream. Everybody has the ability to lucid dream. You just have to combine two mental states; dreaming and consciousness, both of which we already can master, separately. It is relatively easy once you know how to master a few techniques that will enhance your ability to become conscious within dreams. All these require patience and of course, practice.

When you die while lucid dreaming, you either die physically OR wake up

Lucid dreamers have died regularly in dreams and have never died in real life. Similarly, dying in a lucid dream does not result in waking up. Instead, you will just emerge in a new dream scene, either as a new character or whatever that my subconscious wants me to be. If you really want to wake up (e.g during nightmares), it is best to just shout “wake up!” while opening and closing your eyes.