Also called lucid dreaming, conscious dreaming is a state where you are aware that you are in the middle of a dream and can then start to control the goings-on of the experience. You can do anything that you can imagine while having a lucid dream, as soon as you understand that you are dreaming.

Think about what you will want to do when you are lucid dreaming. Do you want to enjoy your dreams more, fly in your dreams, hunt down the villain as in a video game or use them to help you solve problems in other areas? It does not matter why you want to lucid dream as long as you have a goal and a mindset to achieve it.

Before you get started, take a step back and think about what you want to accomplish by means of conscious dreaming ? do you just want to have more enjoyable dreams, or are there goals in your life which lucid dreaming can help you to reach?

Once you have a clear idea of your goals, you are ready to start practicing the techniques which lead to conscious dreaming. The first step for many is dream recall, which involves training yourself to remember you dreams in detail.

This will force your mind to focus on your dreams and begin remembering them easily as time goes by. You can always use your dream record to refresh your memory. As soon as you get used to recalling your dreams you are ready to go to the next level, which is to know when you are in a dream. You may in fact be in a dream and suddenly realize it.

Keeping a dream diary trains your mind to recall and recognize dreams; this makes it easy to ?awaken? during a dream and start asserting control over it.

You may accidentally wake up from a conscious dream, but do not despair, this is normal, especially at first. Picture the dream in your mind and follow it as you go back to sleep. You will more than likely fall right back into the same dream and be able to control whatever is going on there as you wish.

Yet another conscious dreaming method is to force yourself to awaken earlier than usual, such as two hours or so. After you have awoken, go ahead and fall back to sleep. This has the effect of making you more aware of your dreams. You may have the illusion that you are lying in bed daydreaming but you are actually asleep and dreaming. Lucid dreaming is very likely to occur if you do this consistently.

Get to know your sleeping patterns. This will help you find the right time to have the most success at having these dreams. Do not lose too much sleep, if you become very tired, lucid dreaming is not likely to occur.

Figure out your sleep patterns, as this will help you to figure out when the best times for you to have conscious dreaming experiences are. Don?t short yourself on sleep too much though; being sleep deprived makes it harder to have lucid dreams.

Those afflicted with insomnia and other sleep disorders may be pleased to hear that conscious dreaming can help them to get a better night?s sleep ? it makes it easier to clear away the worries which can keep you from getting to sleep at night.

Conscious dreaming is easy to learn and anyone can do it, in fact some do it without learning or practice. Find a method you like to use and learn to lucid dream. Do not miss what others are doing every night. Explore your dreams.

If you are asleep and aware you are dreaming, this means you are having a lucid or conscious dream. This means you can control what happens while you are in this state. You will know you are dreaming so you can decide what happens next.