dream control exercises

[mongreloctopus]

The skeptical nature of reality checking actually led to a lucid dream last night, when a girl in my dream was speaking with an old friend's voice. Everything had seemed so real and normal up until then, but as soon as it happened I was positive I was dreaming.--- Does anyone know of any good exercises to do (aside from reality checks), once you are actually lucid to increase sustainability of the dream-state, fine control, etc.? I, like everyone else I'm sure, am eager to jump right into learning how to fly or shoot fireballs out of my eyes and all that jazz, but I think it's prudent to take slow steady steps cementing what I have already done, and save the games for later.

[Serkat]

For stability and level of lucidity, some common techniques are: - Dream Spinning: Spin around your length axis and feel your body and see the swirling colors and sounds. You will probably find yourself somewhere else (think of a certain place while spinning to land there), but your lucidity should be a lot higher - Hands Rubbing: Rub your hands against each other. (This is a fast version of the next step and it can be executed anytime). - Activate your senses: Concentrate on your senses. You do this to manifestate yourself in the dream environment and be part of the whole dream system that you're in. If you show interest in the dream scenario, it will be stable. If you ignore the dream (closing eyes, staring at a fixed point) you could even wake up. So what you do is - focus on your visuals, and sounds: recognize all details and the beauty of your surroundings. Touch a lot of things and explore the reality of the different textures. Feel your dream body in the dream environment and how real every movement feels. This should keep your grounded in the dream. - Shout a control that sounds good to you. "Lucidity times 1000", "Clarity now", "Bright visions", "Increase clarity" or whatever you want. - Feel and believe that you are stable in the dream world (simple autosuggestion but it might not be powerful enough against blackening dreams etc.) For dream control the things you need to learn are: - Belief - Expectancy. You need to control these factors of your psyche because they determine what happens in the dream. You can even practice in the day - Use autosuggestion or something and really feel that you mean it even if it might not be true - you should be able to believe in it. Or try and feel like you were in a dream, when you're actually awake, and expect something specific odd to happen. For example, you could try to summon something by visualising it or expect a certain person to come into the next door and say something. You need to really feel and expect/believe that this will happen even if it's a sure thing that it won't. Another good thing about this practice is that in a dream you might actually do the same but realize that it's working - then you know you're dreaming.