Lucid dreaming

[emjay]

I've never learnt to do them on command, and I haven't had one for a long time, but I used to have them all the time back when I had interrupted sleep patterns. I found that if napped a couple of hours in the afternoon and had the rest of my sleep at night I was very likely to have a lucid dream. I miss them so much - they were some of my best experiences in life and just as memorable as anything that happens in waking life. In theory, at least when I was reading about it, two ways to train yourself to have them are to a) make it a habit in waking consciousness to check 'am I dreaming?' so that that habit will pass into the dreamstate and allow you to realise it's a dream and take control, and b) as you're going to sleep try to remain aware and keep repeating to yourself 'I'm dreaming' until it is true because you are. And one other way I can think of, if you're too lazy, like me, to learn any of these methods is to set an alarm to interrupt you in your sleep. And if that alarm happens to, or can be arranged to, coincide with a period of REM sleep I think it's likely that you'd get a lucid dream.