Tapping into Your Subconscious with Lucid Dreaming
About a week ago, The New York Times shared an article about some of the benefits of lucid dreaming. The author shared how her lucid dreaming can be an escape from the stressful real world, but another great benefit of lucid dreaming is using it to tap into your subconscious. (1)
Your subconscious mind contains a lot of the thoughts and information that we learned when we were young and that we believe without question. Thoughts like “the sky is blue,” “the world is round,” and “we need to breathe to live” are all either harmless or important to our well-being, but thoughts like “I’m unattractive,” “I don’t deserve success,” or “I’m not smart” can be super detrimental to our well-being.
We might not even consciously recognize these thoughts on a day-to-day basis, but they play out in our actions. Maybe when you were growing up, you weren’t the best reader and someone in your life told you that you weren’t smart because of it. Even though you’re perfectly smart, you might not attempt certain opportunities because you still subconsciously believe you’re not smart enough.
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When we’re children, we have our conscious mind and subconscious mind and we’re constantly taking things in from our conscious mind directly to our subconscious mind. We’re watching the world around us and we’re learning what is socially acceptable, what rules we have to follow, and how to be safe and happy. Once we have a pretty good understanding of how the world works, we develop a critical mind. This critical mind helps us better analyze what we should believe or not. Now instead of our of conscious observations going directly to our subconscious, they pass through our critical mind.
Our critical mind keeps us from believing everything around us and helps us stay grounded in the subconscious beliefs we learned when we were younger. This part of our mind is helpful in certain ways because it reinforces positive beliefs, but it also keeps us from changing negative ones.
So if you came to believe that you aren’t smart, no matter how many people tell you you’re smart or how many A’s you got in high school, you would still struggle to believe that you’re smart. This is because your critical mind sees those thoughts as false and doesn't let them reach the subconscious.
So how can you change those negative subconscious thoughts? There are few ways you can access those thoughts and part of it might even be as easy as enjoying a cup of blue lotus tea.
Spending time in silence
You can’t change your subconscious thoughts until you know what they are. Getting time alone with your thoughts is really important when trying to reset. Spending time in nature, quiet alone time and in self-care activities like a trip to the sauna can be a good way to prep your mind for some deep digging.
Journaling
After spending time in silence, try accessing some of those negative subconscious thoughts. If you’re not sure where to start, begin thinking about the things you want in life but haven’t been able to get. Maybe you want a promotion at your job, but you keep getting passed up. Is it possible you don’t believe you deserve the promotion or that you’re not good enough to work that job?
We're not saying that it's your fault you're not getting what you want because there is a lot that goes into things in the outside world as well. So, don't get down on yourself if things don't come quickly, but figuring out what the mental blockages are through journaling can be really helpful. Just thinking more positively has a lot of health and wellness benefits. If you need some guidance, we dive more into a few journaling exercises in our four-week spring cleanse.
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Lucid dreaming
If you don’t know what lucid dreaming is, it’s when you become aware of the fact that you are dreaming within a dream. If this hasn’t happened to you, you’re not alone. Lucid dreaming isn’t that common and a lot of people actually work to be able to lucid dream. We dive into how exactly to lucid dream in our blog post all about lucid dreaming, but today we want to talk about how lucid dreaming can help you get in touch with your subconscious.
Experts don’t really understand why we dream, but most of them believe that dreams are a way that your subconscious mind communicates with your conscious mind. This is why people analyze dreams through symbols because sometimes your subconscious mind doesn’t speak the same language as your conscious mind. Despite there being a ton of different dream dictionaries and dream symbols, you are probably the best fit for analyzing your dreams.
You know better than most people what certain events mean to you. Having a dream that you’re riding a horse could mean something different to everyone depending on the memories that you have with horseback riding.
When you’re lucid dreaming you’re able to directly talk to your subconscious and start to change those negative thoughts. Getting through your critical mind can be tough, so this is a good way to dive right into those subconscious thoughts. While lucid dreaming isn’t easy, there are a lot of ways to develop the skill. Certain foods and drinks like blue lotus tea can help your brain be more open to a lucid dream as well as certain exercises.
That being said there can be negative side effects associated with lucid dreaming including lower quality sleep and increased likelihood for hallucinations. Though this doesn’t happen with most people, listen to your body and do what works best for you.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy can also be a quick way to tap into your subconscious. Through relaxation exercises, hypnotherapists are able to speak directly to your subconscious and help you tap into positive thoughts and reconfigure negative thoughts. If you’ve ever heard that little voice telling you to do something or had a gut feeling about something, it usually comes from our subconscious. Doing hypnotherapy can help you have stronger communication with those feelings and thoughts. (2)
Hypnotherapy is great for people who have specific things they want to work on like bad habits, certain fears, mental blocks, and more. If you’re struggling to talk to your subconscious on your own, talking to a hypnotherapist could be a good option for you.
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Positive affirmations
If you’ve been telling yourself for years that you’re not good enough or that you don’t deserve something, it can be hard to convince yourself that you are or that you do. Positive affirmations can be a great way to convince yourself of something. Simply pick something you need to believe and then put the idea in front of yourself as often as possible. You can make it your screensaver, write it on a sticky note and put it on your mirror, or write it five times in your journal every morning. No matter what, the more you see it, say it, and write it, the more you’ll believe it.
Overall, getting in touch with your subconscious through lucid dreaming or other exercises can be beneficial to reducing those negative or limiting thoughts. We want to clarify that tapping into your subconscious isn't a fix-all, but knowing your true worth can really improve your quality of life. So, we’ll be here drinking our blue lotus tea, writing in our journal and telling ourselves we deserve joy, beauty, healing, well-being, connection, and unity.
3 comments
I just had a lucid dream First I was sitting on my desk looking out the window and the people next door were doing erratic behavior peering out their window, almost looking like shadows and could not make out the faces. there were two of them. So I laid back on the desk…breathing heavy at this point it was somewhat labored. Then they appeared at my window with lights shining down at me. My son had left the room which was mostly dark at this time. I was trying to sit up to get off the desk and found it impossible to move, someone had a hold of my feet and would not let go and my body could not respond to the order of getting up I tried repeatedly to do so. it was like I was being held down by a force unrecognizable to me. I kept struggling to get up and still was unable to. I found it to be extremely uncomfortable lying in that position. I wanted to get off the desk and go outside to confront whoever was doing this, but I tried many times in doing so. When I finally opened my eyes, I looked at the curtain over the window and realized that it looked very similar to the window in my dream with a shadow and minimum light shining through. I guess what I am trying to say is I was somewhere between conscience and unconsciousness stuck. eyes may have even been open for a portion of the dream.
I have heard of lucid dreaming, maybe even almost manage to have control on my dream. But, alas most of the time im a spectator of my own dream. I am me, i watched as the scene unfold and the feeling i felt through the dream, followed me in my wake. Yet last night, the dream was slightly different. Its not that i finally able to move freely and interact with everything as i please. Its more like the word that i think/willed/choose to say come out exactly as it is. Albeit little, this might actually be a sign of a turning point. This article helps me understand more I hope– No, I believe that I will succeed. Wish me luck, is what i wanted to say but One’s shouldn’t depends on luck when the matter is something thats attainable through their belief and conviction. For those who tried to succeed in achieving/mastering lucid dream. My conscious mind or inner thoughts/voices have something to say;
“If you willed it to be, then it was meant to be”
This artical was very helpful. I didn’t know about lucid dreaming before & I’ve really learn a lot from this article about how to understand your subconscious belief.
