How to have lucid dreams.
How I did it: My first lucid dream was during the summer of 2007. I've had flying dreams since I was a little kid, but in this one, it was the first time I was aware I was dreaming and felt like I could make decisions. I was flying with my eyes shut tight, and it was totally dark, and then I decided that I simply must open my eyes, or else I'd wonder for the rest of my life what had been there. I opened my eyes (in the dream) and saw the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a really life-changing experience. Over the next year or so, I became kind of obsessed with my newfound skill. I tried to sleep during the day more (because I had much more, much better lucid dreams in the afternoon than at night) and read everything I could find on the subject. After a few months of "hard work," I figured out that I was more likely to have a lucid dream if I was falling asleep in mid-afternoon, and it was really hot in my bed. Like, the heat turned up, wearing a sweatshirt, under a huge down blanket. There have been a number of times when I let myself know that there's no point in taking a nap if I'm not going to have lucid dreams, so it would be nice if my brain could get it together and cooperate. During these afternoons, as I feel myself fall asleep, I'll put pressure on my eyeballs with my eyelids, and as I feel the pressure on my eyeballs (not in the way that would give one a headache... it's a very comfortable sensation) I "force" myself into a lucid dream. The beginnings usually consist of feeling my "real-self" body and kind of stepping out of it with my "dream-self" body. Sometimes my dream-self will open the door of the room that my real-self is in, and will summon people I want to dream about, and manipulate the dream so that I'm in a fantastical place that I want to be.
I also have lucid dreams in the late morning, when my brain knows I'll be waking up in 10 minutes, the part of my brain that lucid dreams will wake up early and get to work.
I used to call lucid dreams "hallucinations inside my eyelids" or else I'd just explain it to people as "fever dreams." When I read more about it, I found out about what part of my REM cycle I'm more likely to lucid dream during, and I did experiments on myself, landing on the perfect formula for my lucid dreaming fun.
Not only is everyone in the world different, everyone's REM cycle is different. It takes a very lucky person to have one lucid dream, but it takes a very skilled person to have two.
