What are lucid dreams?

While your slumbering, having the control to do whatever you desire. Google defines it as "A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware of dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment." Essentially with the help of techniques and supplementation to increase the chances of lucid dreams is possible. Lucid dreams can be a holy place where you do deep meditation and also personal reflection. An secluded place, to have an chat with your true being and pondering of big decisions without any distraction. Studies have showed that if you could practise something in your mind mentally, rather then physically, it can also improve your performance in real life doing so. Such dreams can be a place to try real-life activities trying to replicate and re-enact past events. A world of dreams, with a ton of things that you could do, whether it is going over an big presentation that you have coming up, or even revising for your studies before an national examination. If you are an artist, an creative person lucid dreams are even more so beneficial for you as it can be a large source of artistic inspiration. Think of your dream as it it was an canvas and you can create whatever you want on it with full control. And lastly, dreams are a safe place. No matter what you do in your dreams, the chances of you hurting yourself are almost null. Although, there are rare cases of dreams causing harm to someone. Nevertheless, dreams are an safe place to experiment whatever you desire and to overcome your fears. You can stand up to your fear of stage fright, give a speech to an large audience or even stand up to an bully, if you are an victim. With anything in life, there is some extent of risks involved. Lucid dreams are not an exception. One caveat of lucid dreams is that you will have sleep paralysis. It occurs to the majority of the population when they are in the REM Phase of sleep. Cases of people experiencing a state that’s in between dreaming and waking when they attempt lucid dreaming. Sleep paralysis can be very scary, your paralysed and your desire to call for help but to no avail you can't speak. Even more so when you have hallucinations when your brains start to associate fear with other things, like devils and monsters. Lucid dreams are very realistic, sadly its greatest benefit is also its greatest disadvantage. Why? Realistic moments in lucid dreams, can be perceived in pleasure and happiness, that means that things that are on the other end of the stick can happen as well, sadness, fear and pain of an event are all possible factors. When there are positive feelings, there are also negative ones. One of the ways to induce lucid dreams is to keep an dream journal. You want to develop an dream memory, in other words you want to improve the memory of your dreams. We can do that by having an dream journal and maintaining it consistently. When you were an baby, before you learnt to walk, you had to learn to stand first. Baby steps, baby steps. Often times your brain forget dreams almost automatically, i'm sure all of you have experienced this. This is one big hurdle we have to get pass, and we can do that by maintaining an dream journal. Always keep pen and paper near you at all times before you goto bed. It's easier to reach and take to take down what you have experienced quickly. Writing has proving itself to improve your memory of something when you write it down, it helps you commit it into your memory as well. And even more so if you are an creative person, you have artistic skills to draw them out and that would be even more better. Having consistent restful sleep of at least 7 hours will very much increases your chances of lucid dreams too. If you have an alarm, turn it off. Of course, there are other way to insude lucid dreams, they are supplements. Herbs like mugwort and valerian root will help tremendously but you have to be aware and suppress the side effects. Try to goto sleep and wake up at the same time every day, it will help to set your body's wakeup protocol. DREAM ON!