Ep. 4 How To Lucid Dream, Control Sleep Paralysis, & Overcome Dream 'Dry Spells'

In this episode, I share how to reach major dream milestones:

1. Achieve your first lucid dream
2. Control sleep paralysis
3. Overcome dream 'dry spells'

This episode will prove that dreamwork can truly change your life - while you're sleeping AND awake!

If you would like to experience your first lucid dream or transform your life using dreamwork and magic, I would love to connect with you! I offer 1:1 coaching and create programs specifically for you and your dreams. Please check out my magical personal development programs and book your first call for free!

Book mentioned in episode: The Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming

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Thank you so much for listening, it truly means the world to me. I would love to connect with you!

Instagram: @dreamlifeconnection
Website: Dream Life Connection
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Grateful for you. You are MAGIC! ✨

With love,
Andrea

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Dream Life Connection, your hub for Magical Personal Development. I'm Andrea Morrison. This podcast is a blend of whimsical and grounding topics that will help you live the life of your dreams. We'll talk about synchronicity, lucid dreaming, manifesting modern spirituality, journaling, mindfulness, paradigm shifts, subconscious programming, and even traveling. If you are a believer in magic and want to elevate your life, you were meant to be here. During each episode, we'll take a mini journey through a dreamy topic, learn some modern magic tricks, and I'll even share my stories as a traveling dreamer following her intuition. I would love to connect with you at @dreamlifeconnection on Instagram and dreamlifeconnection.com. I'm so glad we found each other.

Hello and welcome back to Dream Life Connection. So glad that you're here. I am in such a good mood right now. The sun is shining in Portomao and it's beautiful outside. The sky is bright blue. The birds are chirping. I don't know if you can hear them. I actually thought about not doing the podcast right now because it is so nice outside and I should go outside. But my boyfriend and I, we did do a big day out and about; adventuring in the little town and we went and we got some fish and it was delicious.

And it's actually our last week in Portugal. we booked our tickets to our next country. So as you know, I'm a traveling nomad, and that comes with a lot of ups and some downs. And the downs are not that down, but it does mean kind of shifting a lot and moving around while being in Europe. I can only be in certain countries for a certain amount of time if you know about the Schengen Area. So I have to leave Portugal after three months. There are ways to get visas and extensions, but just with everything that was going on with Covid and the way that I even got here in Portugal...and how expensive it is right now, it's crazy expensive. Everybody's coming here for the summer. So accommodation prices are just like jacked up through the roof.

So Ninh and I are going to be leaving Portugal next week. And our next country that we're going to is not really a country that most people put at the top of their list of countries to visit. The good thing about it is that it is outside of the Schengen area. So I can go for three months and we're going to see if we can stay even longer. But it's also very affordable and it's summer time now, so we're going to be in the mountains and it's beautiful. I'll give you a little hint as to which country it is. If you're a Potterhead, you will know. So if you know the character Victor Krum, this is where he is from. And that country is Bulgaria. So we will be going to the capital city Sofia next weekend.

And again, this podcast. I record it a little bit before it's released. So hopefully I'll actually be in Bulgaria by the time you listen to this. Go to my Instagram, maybe see some updates. It is just like kind of tricky. This world of travel right now, you never really know if you're going to be able to make it to your destination just with restrictions and just all the things going on with the world. So that is our plan. And we will go to the little mountain town of Bansko. And I'm super excited because it's actually a really big Nomad hub. So again, people are always surprised when I say that we're going to go to Bulgaria and that I actually want to because they're like, who wants to go to Bulgaria? But it's beautiful and I'm super excited. Hopefully, by the time you're listening to this, I'm up in the mountains enjoying the cute little town of Bansko.

Anyway, that's my little life update right now. I wanted to jump into this podcast episode about dreams. So my podcast is going to cover a lot of magical topics like manifesting intuition, subconscious programming, all that wonderful, wonderful stuff. My specialty. So I'm a certified dream coach and life coach. And what I love incorporating into my coaching is dreamwork. I feel like that's kind of my specialty. I've been exploring my dream since 2016, and I have gone through many courses. I've worked with mentors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. So I have a lot of examples and resources and tips when it comes to dreamwork. So this episode is going to be about dream milestones and how you can reach them.

When you're on the dreamwork path, you're going to hit a series of milestones. The first one being you remember your first dream. That's a big deal because a lot of people think that they don't dream or that they can't remember. So when you do remember your dreams, it's a big deal and it's really exciting and you should celebrate that. So I wanted to share a few milestones. One of them I had in the very beginning of my dream journey, and then the other two I've actually recently had, and I wanted to share them because they're a big deal. And I think that they could offer a lot of insight to you and possibly help you if you're experiencing one of them being sleep paralysis. Such a horrible feeling. I don't know if you've ever had sleep paralysis, but it's not the most exciting feeling. And I had a really crazy milestone this past week with sleep paralysis.

So like I always do, I'm going to open my little magic spell book and jump into this topic of dream milestones. So here we go.

The first milestone that I had, this was the most epic experience, not just in my dream life, but in my life in general. Seriously, I should have an entire episode devoted to this story because it was so life changing for me. And that was my very first lucid dream. Okay. Before I share my lucid dream story, I want to just explain the value of your dreams and especially lucid dreaming, because for me, when I started exploring my dreams, I started understanding myself better. It's almost a form of shadow work. It was pointing out the things that I view about myself kind of as flaws, I guess you could say. Challenges that I'm having, things I need to overcome, but also what I really value. And dreamwork is such a powerful way to understand yourself and your subconscious mind better.

Then when you step it up a notch and start lucid dreaming, you experience real magic. I mean, when you become lucid in your dream, it is as real as the phone or the computer that you're listening to this podcast on. It is as real as the clothes that you're wearing. You can feel things in these dreams. You can smell things. Like, I could feel wind as I'm flying. It leaves me speechless.

So when I woke up from this first lucid dream, my world completely changed because it made me realize that there is something going on in this universe that we cannot fully explain. Everything out there about dreams, they're all theories. There's not 100% scientific fact about what's going on. So I get like, I swear my heart just expands when I think about it because it just goes to show that you could read all these things. You could listen to me talk about lucid dreaming and all of that, but you won't fully understand the magic of them until you experience them.

So I started studying my dreams in 2016, January 2016. I read the book The Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, and I started kind of dabbling in dreamwork, and I had a little trouble remembering my dreams. Most of my first dreams are just like one sentence. I couldn't remember much, but I was really committed to this process, and I would write them down, and I still didn't become lucid, but I really practiced the techniques. And so I wrote down, let's see, about 18 to 20 dreams before I became lucid. I wrote my first dream January 21, 2016. Then I had my first lucid dream February 6, 2016. So not that much later. So I just want to share that because it might help you see that it is possible to start this process and become lucid within weeks. 

So the first lucid dream I wrote in all caps, "I DID IT. I LUCID DREAMED. WOW!!" And I remember that morning so well. I woke up and I practically screamed in my bed because I woke up and it felt so real, what I had just done. So I'll give a little rundown of what my lucid dream was. And then I'll explain how I got there.

So I woke up in my dream. I woke up in my bed, in my room, and it seemed like it was real life. And then I checked my hands, and that's one of the reality checks that you can do. You do this during the daytime in your real life, and you check your hands, and you ask yourself, am I dreaming? And it feels silly because you're like, obviously, I'm not, but you form the habit. And so what happened in my dream was I woke up just like normal, but I was actually in my dream. Then I checked my hands, and my fingers were all distorted and bubbling up. And then that's what sent the signal to my subconscious mind that was saying, hey, you're in your dream. And I was, like, trying not to panic, because if you get really excited, you wake yourself up.

So I tried to stay calm, but I was like, "Oh my God, I'm in my dream. I'm in my dream!" And I asked, I was like, I don't know what to do. What should I do? And the voice in my head, I like to call it the narrator. The voice just said, open your door, and you'll know where to go. I walked up to my door, and I opened it, and then the next moment, I was flying, and, you guys, I cannot express enough how incredible this felt. I was flying in Seattle, the city that I was living in at the time, and it was really cloudy, and I was, like, trying to fly through all these clouds, and it was really turbulent. And then I again heard the voice saying, just push through, keep going, keep going. Don't give up. And I pushed through, and then poof, all of a sudden, it's freaking bright blue skies, perfectly puffy white clouds.

And then I started realizing that, holy crap, I'm in Mario World! This is Mario world, and I'm flying, and a rainbow is, like, trailing behind me. So I was doing all these tricks. So then I looked down, and there's this island, and it looks like Mario world, and there's all the characters, and they're all celebrating, and there's a big celebration. And I looked down, and I was like, where is Princess Peach? And then in my dream, I realized, oh, my gosh, I'm Princess Peach. And they're all celebrating me. They're celebrating me getting lucid for the first time. Oh, my God. It was seriously, like, the best dream ever. And anyway, there was more that went on in the dream, but I swear to God, as soon as I woke up, it just changed my whole life because it was so real, and I've been obsessed with my dreams ever since.

And that was a major dream milestone for me, and I've had many, many lucid dreams since then. That, by far is my favorite lucid dream. So I wanted to share how I reached that milestone and how you can, too.

The first thing is just being interested in your dreams, and having the desire to become lucid. It is like somewhat of a commitment. You have to commit to writing down your dreams. Having a dream journal is number one when it comes to remembering your dreams, because that tells your subconscious mind that you care about your dreams. And so when you wake up, you remember more and more. Even my dream journal, I can look at it now. My first dream was one sentence. For the longest time, it was just like little paragraphs. And now I can write pages because it takes practice.

The other thing is you can read books about lucid dreaming just by being engulfed in dreamwork and especially lucid dreaming and the techniques and all of that, you're consuming it so much more that it's on your conscious mind more often and it's getting planted into your subconscious mind. So you'll start experiencing more vivid dreams, and then you'll hopefully become lucid.

The third trick is to do reality checks, kind of what I was mentioning before. Check your hands. Look at your hands throughout the day. There are actually people who make bracelets that say, "Am I dreaming?" on them that kind of remind you to ask throughout the day. You can also have some sort of item, or a totem they call it, like in the movie Inception, that you can check. Every now and then you grab onto it and you ask, "Am I dreaming?" Okay. Because then that forms the habit so that when you're in your dream, you'll look at your hands or you'll check your totem, and then something will be different. And then you'll realize, wait, something's a little off right now, I think I'm dreaming. And then you can become lucid and you can start controlling your dreams. Okay. You can also look at light switches. That's another really good check in your dream, because light switches don't work in your dreams. Also, clocks. You look at a clock, look away, and then look back. The time will be different. There's all sorts of different things you can do while you're awake and while you're dreaming, and then that will signal to your subconscious mind that you're dreaming.

I really, really hope that you experience lucid dreaming. If you are an avid lucid dreamer, send me a message. Reach out to me. I would love to connect with you and hear about your favorite techniques. And if you're just starting this journey, also reach out to me, too. I would love to help you jumpstart this process. Lucid dreaming truly will change your life, which is so ironic that one of the best experiences of your life can happen while you're asleep. And I'm an example of that. Seriously. It's one of my greatest memories.

The second major dream milestone that I reached actually this week, which kind of inspired this podcast episode, was overcoming sleep paralysis. So if you've ever had sleep paralysis, you know the feeling - it's when you are conscious, but your body is paralyzed and you're trying to wake up and you can't move. So every time I've had sleep paralysis, which has been many times throughout my whole life, I used to have it a lot more when I was a teenager, but I would wake up, but I couldn't move. So I would try screaming, I would try moving. And most of the time I would see some sort of, like, figure coming toward me. It was always this kind of black figure. There was actually one time where it was hovering over me.

So when I started looking into sleep paralysis and what it was and how I can overcome it, I started doing some research, and I learned that seeing this black figure is super common worldwide, which blows my mind that I had no idea about this. And it just shows that this isn't fake, this isn't like made up. We're all connected somehow. And since so many people around the world are seeing the same thing, it makes me think that there really is some sort of spirit aura or something. And there's actually a term - I think it's called "black hat man" or something, but it's the spirit that comes toward you. There's a lot of, like, theories about it. And again, that's the thing about dreamwork. Nobody can really, really say with 100% certainty what it is. But all I know is I experienced it, and I didn't like it, and it's never been a good feeling.

Well, this week I experienced sleep paralysis. And for the first time in my life, I didn't go into panic mode. I woke up and I couldn't move. And I was starting to get into that point where I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need to scream. I need to move. This is freaking me out. But instead, that lasted for, like, a second getting into that panic mode. But instead I became lucid, essentially. And I was conscious, and I was thinking, "Andrea, calm down. You know what? This is...it's okay. You know that your body is frozen. You know that you can't move. Your boyfriend is right next to you. You are safe. You are protected. Just relax. It's all good. It's going to go away. It's temporary."

Seriously, that was such a milestone for me. It just goes to show that learning how to become lucid can literally save you from panic attacks and scary feelings and scary experiences. Because becoming conscious, you can talk to yourself, you can calm yourself down. You can coach yourself on how to overcome these things. So if you ever experience sleep paralysis, I really encourage you to again jump into this world of dreamwork, learn how to lucid dream, because I swear, the more you practice this, the more your mind just becomes more lucid, not just in your sleep, but in your waking life. You just become more in tune and connected with yourself. And that's how I overcame the sleep paralysis. Am I going to experience a sleep paralysis that's scary again? Maybe, I don't know. But I trust that I can notice when these things are happening and I can talk myself through. It's really powerful. I'm telling you, dreamwork can really improve your life.

And the last milestone that I reached was overcoming dream dry spells. Dry spells, they happened a lot for me at least. I'll go months without remembering any dreams. And it makes me sad when that happens because I care about my dreams so much and I am a dream coach, so sometimes I feel a little bit like a fraud where I'm like, I don't even remember my dreams right now. So it's not the best feeling when I am not having very vivid dreams for a long period of time. But it's normal. There's a lot of things that can prevent you from remembering your dreams. And the biggest one is stress, because that's impacting your sleep and your dreams. So if you're stressed, you're not sleeping as well, you're not hitting REM as often and you're not dreaming. And upon waking, you're probably just thinking about like, what do I need to do? Like your to-do list.

Recently I had a little bit of a dream dry spell, and I think that I finally realized how to overcome it. Like I've always had drive spells and then my dreams will slowly come back. But I've never figured out why they've come back or how I can make them come back. And I think I figured it out recently because while I was in Porto, Portugal, it's a very busy city. It's a very condensed city, and we were in the heart of it. Also, my boyfriend and I's bed was a double. So we were sharing a smaller bed. We didn't have as much space, so I didn't sleep as well. I wasn't remembering any of my dreams. I don't have any dreams written down from when I was in Porto.

Then we came down to Portimao. It's beautiful. We have a big bed. There's lots of space in our bed and in the city we can go to the beach. It's sunny. I just feel calmer, I feel happier. I'm not as stressed, I'm good. And my dreams have been so much more vivid and memorable since we've come down here. So I think our environment really does... I mean, it's kind of obvious, right? It's pretty obvious that our environment impacts our sleep. So I would like to suggest that if you're having a dream dry spell, if you want to remember your dreams, take a look at your environment. Take a look at your emotions too. Are you stressed a lot? Is work stressing you out? Maybe there's something you can do each night to kind of calm you down and set the intention that you want to remember the dreams. Try to get into a calm state before you go to sleep, because the calmer you are, the more likely you are to remember your dreams. Maybe you're just in a city that's a little bit busier and the energies that are around you in this city are just a little bit more condensed or kind of in that busy go go mindset. All of that impacts your sleep and your dreams. And like I said, my experience of moving from a busy city to a really nice town next to the beach, it's done wonders for my dreams.

Anyway, those are my major dream milestones. Lucid dreaming, overcoming sleep paralysis, and overcoming dream dry spells - and how you can reach these milestones as well. Thank you so much for listening. Like I always say, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you listened. I hope we can connect somehow outside of this podcast. Reach out to me @dreamlifeconnection on Instagram or dreamlifeconnection.com. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Yay soon and sweet dreams.