Want to Experience the Best Night of Your Life? Well Now You CAN!!

So I realized today that I used to do some pretty fun, entertaining blogs about random topics I come across in life.  I also realized I don't do that anymore!  The reason is probably along the lines of me always chronicling my day or some adventure I've had.  And let's face it, it's just not as fun.  Even I don't like reading about my own life that much.  So in honor of myself and in the spirit of the upcoming A to Z challenge, I will be attempting to do more blogs about topics rather than experiences.  That's not to say that I won't do any experiential blogs, because I certainly will, only that they won't rule the Hootenenny any more.

So, to embark in this new endeavor I will begin with the topic of lucid dreaming!  So let's start with a definition.  A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming.  Ever had one of those?  In all of my outrageous dreams (you can view some here) I never really came across this situation.  That is until about a month ago.

I happened to be dreaming about drum corps, as you do, and as with most of my other drum corps dreams, I was on the field performing a show, with no idea what the work or the drill was.  And so I figured I would follow the form, there wasn't much work to spin anyways.  The only thing was, the rest of my drill form didn't remember the end of the show!  So we marched straight off the end of the field while the rest of the corps was performing.  And then the visual caption head came running over to us demanding to know what was wrong, and why weren't we on the field finishing the show?!  The only thing I could say was I don't know.  It was then that I knew I was dreaming.  And I almost told him in the dream, except I didn't want to sound crazy.  But really, what other reason would I forget all of the work for a show.  It only ever happens in my dreams! 


Not long after this not so unique dream of mine I was listening to a Radiolab podcast (website here) where they were discussing lucid dreaming.  I love it when that happens.  Anyways, the concept and practice of lucid dreaming is really very interesting, so I thought I should share such things with you.

Some of you may have seen Inception, and more likely than not your minds were totally blown.  If you haven't seen it, you totally should and it might make a little more sense to you after reading up on lucid dreams.  Anyways, so in the movie Leonardo DiCaprio and all his buddies are in the business of entering people's dreams and changing them.  The concept is more science fiction than reality but it's still really cool.  The thing with lucid dreaming that I find most interesting is the fact that some people who experience this phenomena can actually alter their own dreams!

Now, you must understand that dream lucidity and dream control are not strictly related, but the idea of it is still super awesome, for lack of better words.  There are multiple stages of lucidity, ranging from minimum awareness, where something odd triggers the sense that it's not real, or full blown awareness that hey, this is clearly not real life.  It is at this stage that people can actually take control of their dreams.

So on the podcast I listened to, the hosts talked to a man who discussed the concept and the original 'founder' (in terms of scientific experimentation) of the phenomena.  He also mentioned that one can attend classes in order to make oneself realize that he/she is in fact in a dream and possible change the outcome.  Now, I don't have the money for anything this cool, but I do have the use of the internet.  And through this marvelous tool of the future I found a site that lists some steps to lucid dreaming and dream control - How to Lucid Dream.  And of course there are more sites all over the internet, and I'm sure a fair amount of books by now.

Now take just a minute, stop reading this lovely blog and think about this concept!  You can control your own dreams!  You can choose to fight dinosaurs or experience the zombie apocalypse, conquer your nightmares, be a world- renowned artist, or have some mind-blowing sexual adventures (need I say more?).  You can do anything you set your mind to, and it will be totally real to you, only in a dream.  I don't know about you but I have so many things I would love to experience, even if it is only a dream (cough go back to New Zealand cough). 

I hope this post has intrigued you.  Hopefully enough so that you go off and look it up and maybe discover some more really interesting things that the brain does just because it can.