Lucid Dreaming

Nevin McCone won the recent Second Form Public Speaking competition, and here is the text of his speech under the intriguing heading 'Lucid Dreaming':-

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, today I would to share my knowledge and experience on lucid dreaming.

So what is lucid dreaming? It is when you know you are dreaming, in a dream.  This enables you to control your dreams and therefore do whatever you want in them.  How many of you dreamt last night? Well as a matter of fact all of you did. Everybody dreams every night but some people may remember their dreams. This is because your brain makes you forget your dreams after you wake up. 

Dream recall is one of the key things involved with lucid dreaming. As soon as you wake up in the morning think hard about what you dreamt of when you were asleep. Then write you down the details on a piece of paper. With practice this will significantly improve your dream recall. 

So how many people here can control their dreams? Most people can’t do it. Being able to control your dreams is called lucid dreaming. This can have some very positive effects. For example let’s say you are worried about a speech that you have to present. In your lucid dream you could dream about being in the Colisseum in Rome with a full house. Then, because it is your dream you can dream that the speech went perfectly, giving you the confidence to perform your speech when you are awake. Also, let’s say you had a fear of spiders, you could dream that you faced your fears and overcame them. 

So how do you lucid dream? The most essential part of lucid dreaming is being aware that you are dreaming when you are in your dream. Some people are just able to do it. Is there a technique that makes you realise that you are dreaming in a dream? Yes. The easiest technique involves performing reality checks. Reality checks distinguish the dream world from reality.  For example, the reality check that I use is to look closely at the palm of my hand. In the real world your hand looks normal but in a dream your hand looks blurry. If you keep looking at your hand and asking yourself if it’s blurry and if you are dreaming, then eventually you will do subconsciously in your dreams, but this time your hand will be blurry and you will realise that you are dreaming.

So what is it like to be lucid? I am able to lucid dream and have experienced lucid dreaming twice. Lucid dreams are much more realistic than normal dreams. As soon as you gain consciousness in your dream everything becomes much clearer and comes into focus. And if you don’t find it clear enough you can demand to make it clearer because it is your dream. Also at the start it isn’t easy to stay in a lucid dream for long. This is because you start getting excited in the dream because you have finally achieved lucidity. You know you start to wake up when the world starts to shake and things get blurry. Then you feel like you are being put to sleep and your eyes close. When you open your eyes you are awake.