LUCID DREAMS

To be lucid in dreams, it is just to dream being aware to live a dream. Unlike the common dreamer, the lucid dreamer takes his dream as it is : an hallucinatory/inner experience lived in a dream state and not an inner experience lived in waking state.
 

To reach self-awareness in dream, you can use the proven method described underneath, based both on the Mild method described by the american Stephen Laberge in his book Lucid dreaming and the reflexive technique elaborated by the german Paul Tholey.
The method puts together three types of exercises : during the day, before sleeping and after a nocturnal awakening.

Exercise in waking state
1. Before formulating your intention to dream lucidly, and as often as possible (at least three times a day), ask yourself the question : «Am I dreaming ?»
Test the stability of your current perceptions.
- Observe an object noticing its characteristics, then look elsewhere; observe it again. Is it the same ? For example, does the room keep the same shape and the same dimension ? Check the good functioning of your memory ?
- Back up mentally the course of the events you just lived. Are you prone to be forgetful ?
2. After this meticulous "reality test", imagine as intensely as possible that you are really dreaming. Imagine yourself in a dream in which you are conscious to dream.
3. Then, say to yourself with determination : Next time I am going effectively to dream, I absolutely want to remind that I am dreaming It is advised to choose in advance certain opportunities to practice the exercise in waking state. For example, you could ask the question to yourself the question «Am I dreaming ?» when you use the key of your house or the one of your car...
The visualization helps to remind the circumstance associated with the question. If you have the intention to test the reality when you are using a key, imagine yourself at that time reminding your intention and effectively carrying out this verification.

Exercise before sleeping
1. Into bed, take some minutes to completely relax and appeal to one or the other of the following methods :
- Yoga or other exercises of relaxation, among which the swedish gymnastic.
- The progressive relaxation. During ten seconds or more, tighten and successively relax shoulders, hands and arms, feet and legs, pelvis, abdomen, neck, cheeks, jaw and brow muscles.
2. Try to forget your daytime worries. Deeply breath and let enter in yourself calming and peace at each expiration.
3. Remember a recent dream.
- Imagine yourself in this dream and notice any unusual thing that identify it as a dream.
- Think the next night to pay attention to such anomalies, considered as indications of your dream state.
For example, if you speak to an animal, think to notice the strangeness of this conversation, and say to yourself : That's strange, animals don't speak. I must be dreaming
With determination, say to yourself : In my next dream, I will be conscious that I dream It is better be to repeat it.

Nocturnal exercise (after an awakening from a dream).
It is important to practice this exercise after each awakening, otherwise it reduces the worth of the other exercises.
1. Do not move a muscle during a minute or two in order to facilitate the dream recall.
2. To awake completely. Rinsing ones eyes with a wash glove can be sufficient to awake you enough to practice this night exercise.
3. Carefully memorize everything you can recall of the dream.
Examine it in detail and remember as clearly as possible the feelings that you experienced.
4. Switch on the light and devote yourself to reading or meditation during five or ten minutes, so as to awake you completely and to make work at full capacity your mental faculties.
5. When you are going to fall asleep again, tell yourself : During my next dream, I will be conscious that I dream
6. Then, as intensively as possible, visualize your sleeping body lying on the bed.
Imagine yourself in the reminded dream, realizing that you are dreaming.
The most you will repeat this visualization the better it would be.
7. Tell yourself again : In my next dream, I will become aware that I am dreaming
 

Among the several possible applications of dream lucidity, we can underlie among others :
- Nightmares and phobias therapy : instead of avoiding one's enemies in dream, the dreamer confronts them, unmasks them and transforms them in allies.
- To live pleasant adventures of his choice, such as to free oneself from gravity and relax, to find oneself in a magical and enchanting world, to live new sexual experiences, etc.
- To develop and take advantage of one's general and artistic creativity.
- To find solutions to our personal problems and assistance for taking the good decisions.
- To use the dream state as an inner space for personal development and transcendental experiences.

Persons willing to participate to different researches on an european basis (non lucid dreamers, novices or experienced lucid dreamers), through questionnaires in particular, are invited to contact the association sending an email to Oniros indicating the research program they wish to participate among the suggested topics under (or another research subject topic) :
- Influence of olfactory stimuli and lucid dreaming;
- Therapy of nightmares and phobias (second phase of a research set out by the Oniros association).
- Induction of lucid dreams under hypnosis (Stephane Prebost).

- Stephen LaBerge, Le Rêve lucide - le pouvoir de l'éveil de la conscience dans vos rêves (éd. revue et corrigée), éd. Oniros, Ile Saint-Denis, 1997.
- D'Hervey de Saint-Denys), Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger - Observations pratiques, ed. Oniros, Ile Saint-Denis, 1995.
- Collectif, D'Hervey de Saint-Denys - Biographie, Correspondance familiale. L'oeuvre de l'onirologue et du sinologue, ed. Oniros, Ile Saint-Denis, 1995.

To order these books, go to : Editions Oniros