The Top 3 Barriers To Lucid Dreaming + How To Overcome Them

Regular dreams are dreams in which you have no idea you are dreaming. It's only when you wake up in the morning that you realize that you were, in fact, in a dream. In stark contrast, lucid dreams are dreams in which you are actively aware that you are dreaming while you are actually in the dream!

In other words, lucid dreaming is what happens when you find yourself "awake" in a dream even though physiologically, your body is still asleep. If you become a lucid dreamer, you can then go on to explore your dream world with conscious awareness and intent of will. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Deepening your mindfulness practice in your waking life can help you recognize a dream for a dream. Simple practices like coming back to the present moment as often as you can, focusing on one thing fully at a time, eating more mindfully, and actually paying attention to your surroundings can all help.

The more mindful that you are, the easier it will then become to recognize anomalies in dreams, which in turn can trigger lucidity. For example, if you find yourself at your office desk, you may notice that in your dream, the table is made of mahogany wood.

Many beginners have an underlying belief that it is difficult to lucid dream, which then turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in many cases. Yes, maintaining a practice of mindfulness, perseverance, and spiritual focus is tough. But lucid dreaming, like meditation, is something I believe we all can do—even if we may struggle to make it a habit. 

Equally, in the West, lucid dreaming is something many people try to do just for the fun of it (which is great!), but if that's your only motivator, it's easy to give up on lucid dreaming if you're not successful on the first few attempts.