Anya Zhukova · September 13, 2020 · 6 min read Today you have many devices designed to reduce digital eye strain caused by staring at screens all day and to improve the quality of your sleep. Yet do you ever feel like you’re wasting time while sleeping?
If you get around 8 hours of sleep daily, does that mean you spend a third of your life doing completely nothing?
All that time doesn’t have to go to waste thanks to lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are all about being aware that you’re dreaming and in a sense being awake while sleeping. If you learn to induce lucid dreaming, you can take control of your dreams and even learn new skills while your body’s getting rest.
Here’s everything you need to know about lucid dreaming and how to induce lucid dreaming using mobile apps.
What Is Lucid Dreaming?
Do you ever wish you could turn your dreams into fun adventures and choose where and when those adventures take place? Apparently, this is possible with lucid dreaming. You can fly, go to space, become a record-breaking athlete, and talk to your dog – all while you’re sleeping. It’s like virtual reality, except there’s no limitation to where your mind can fly.
A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you’re dreaming. It’s not an usual state for the human mind. That’s why people tend to wake up from lucid dreams. Although at its core, the practice of lucid dreaming is about staying in this self-aware dreamstate and exploring it further.
What Are the Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?
Inducing the state of lucid dreaming can take a lot of time and patience, especially if you’ve never experienced anything like it before. However, it’s worth it for the potential benefits that lucid dreaming can bring.
Aside from having fun while you’re sleeping, you can use lucid dreaming to overcome past trauma or a phobia and forget about having nightmares. If you’re inclined to depression, lucid dreams can help you deal with it through improving your self-awareness.
While you’re dreaming, there’s no limitation to your imagination, which in turn will increase your creativity and original thinking in real life. It can also have beneficial effects on your physical skills – you can try new things while lucid dreaming without any risks, which will remove or at least reduce the fear of trying it in real life.
How To Induce Lucid Dreaming
The idea of taking full control of your dreams couldn’t be more appealing. Imagine using all of that extra time that you spend sleeping to improve your real life skills and talents. There are many different techniques that you can use to induce lucid dreaming. And of course since it’s the 21st century, there’s an app for that.
Lucid Dreamer – For Performing Reality Checks
Reality checking is one of the most important aspects of lucid dreaming. Every now and then, you need to ask yourself whether you’re awake or dreaming, even during the day. Then you should perform a reality check. If you fail the reality check, you’ll realize you’re dreaming and can try to take over that state.
Lucid Dreamer is a free app that has a built-in Reality Checker. It will give you certain tasks like looking at yourself in the mirror, reading a book, or moving objects. You’ll get notifications to perform the task during the day to do it regularly. Once you build the habit out of it, when you’re alerted by the specific sound or vibration from the app you will perform the reality check in your dream and trigger the lucid dreaming state.
Download: for iOS, Android.
Dream Journal Ultimate – For Keeping Your Dream Journal
One thing you’ll need to learn to do if you want to become lucid is to remember your dreams. Dream journaling can help you there.
Dream Journal Ultimate is a free app that can help you track and analyze your dreams. You can keep your entries private or share them with the community. The app allows you to add tags and view dreams that are similar to yours. It can help you identify patterns and perform better reality checks the next time you’re dreaming.
You can also use Dream Journal Ultimate to interact with other users and exchange your lucid dreaming experiences with them.
Binaural Beats Therapy – For Exercising WILD Technique
One popular lucid dreaming technique is called WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming) and it implies initiating a lucid dream as soon as you go to bed. Listening to binaural sounds or white noise right before you go to sleep can help you with that. It helps you fall asleep faster while keeping your mind conscious at the same time.
Binaural Beats Therapy is a free app that has different sections with binaural sounds specifically meant to induce lucid dreaming, to help you relax during air travel, or to inspire creativity.
For better results, try listening to different sounds for a few nights and choose the one that feels most comfortable to you.
Download: for Android.
Simple Habit – For Guided Meditation
While meditation isn’t directly related to lucid dreaming, since you need to stay conscious to become lucid, it can still help you in the beginning. Practicing meditation can make you more self-aware and help you not freak out and immediately wake up when you realize you’re dreaming.
Simple Habit is a free app for guided meditation. It offers audio recordings of meditation sessions of various lengths organized by themes and different goals. You can use the app to set the reminders to meditate daily or use its On The Go mode to hop on a quick session whenever you have a free minute.
Take Up Video Gaming For Better Lucid Dreaming
Playing video games to induce lucid dreaming probably isn’t the advice you expected to hear. Yet it’s one of the best ones. When you’re playing a game, you submerge into a virtual reality where you learn to control your movements and decision to progress in the plot. Lucid dreaming happens to require the same skillset. Pick your favorite games and start practicing.
Are you interested in lucid dreaming? Have you tried taking control of your dreams before? Share your lucid dreaming experiences with us in the comments below.
