How does meditation affect your ability to experience a lucid dream? 

A Quick Guide

Can you imagine a world of your own making, where you are free to do as you please without the usual barriers weighing you down? There is a good chance you have already experienced it once in your life. You may not have known what it was at the time, or you may have been aware of this interesting phenomenon. Well here, we are gonna try to understand it. It is called lucid dreaming. This is a very popular phenomenon, especially among young teens who are starting to delve deeper and deeper into the realm of lucid dreaming. In this article, we will discuss how you experience it and what has mediation got to do with it. 

How do you experience a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is a state of dream in which you are conscious of the fact that you are dreaming. You may even be able to control some aspects of this dream. Initially, it is important to understand that our dreams come from our subconscious minds. And oftentimes, we do not have any control over what we may dream. Furthermore, we even tend to forget about our dreams when we wake up. 

So then why is it that some people are aware and can control their dreams? 

So studies have shown that there is a clear-cut link between higher awareness and lucid dreaming. When you are more aware of your thoughts, and feelings including your subconscious mind. That is what leads you to be able to experience a lucid dream. 

So now let us talk about how you can achieve this higher level of awareness. It’s mostly done through different types of meditation training. In fact, meditation has been used to achieve meta-awareness for millennia. 

What are the effects of meditation?

There have also been speculated connections regarding lucid dreaming and meditation, such as a spectrum of self-awareness that dreams and waking experiences might be placed on that is thought to be affected by meditation.

Moreover, several of the main skills developed in meditation practice, especially open monitoring or focused attention meditation, are thought to be helpful in creating and maintaining lucid dreams. These skills include attention stability and the capacity to observe one’s present experiential state also known as meta-awareness.

The link between meditation and lucid dreaming

Research indicates that long-term meditators have lucid dreams more frequently than meditation beginners. Additionally, lucid dream recurrence in long-term meditators was connected with the observant and decentering aspects of trait mindfulness. Whereas lucid dream recurrence in meditation beginners was related to the ability to express experience. 

And so, these findings suggest a link between meditation training and meta-awareness, as well as a continuity between enhanced awareness of awake and asleep states. They also suggest a link between mindfulness meditation and lucid dreaming, though the precise nature of this association is still unclear. Hence we need more research.

How to get started with lucid dream meditation?

You may actually benefit from a guided meditation for lucid dreaming. This is how you can get started:

1. Lay down in a comfortable position on your back
2. Focus on your breathing, keep your breathing slow and deep. You may notice that you are getting occasional thoughts, try not to linger on them and simply let them pass by.
3. Eventually, as your mind calms down your body will relax further.
4. Now you start visualizing. You can visualize a calm natural setting like a beach or a forest. 
5. Explore your surroundings within what you have visualized for as long as you like. 

Now there is a chance that you may physically fall asleep while doing this meditation. This is termed wake-induced lucid dreaming WILD. This can allow you a deeper awareness of your visualization. 

We hope you found this article helpful in learning more about the link between meditation and the ability to experience a lucid dream.