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Welcome to VividDreams.org. Have you ever wanted to make your dreams more real, more vivid, and more controllable? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have wildly vivid dreams every night? How about to know you are dreaming every single time? This is how I've been dreaming for the past 20 years. The Vivid Dreams organization is the result of wanting to share my techniques with the world.

The Vivid Dreams Program

Our lucid dreaming technique produces wildly vivid dreams by strengthening the areas of your brain that create the dream world.

Our organization is comprised of VividDreams.org as well as DreamsInterpretation.org.

The Vivid Dreams program is broken down into four parts

1. Dream Recall - To begin our program it is important to remember your dreams. We will show you tried and true methods of doing so.

2. Brain Training - This is the bread of butter of the course. You won't find this method anywhere but here. We are going to train and strengthen the parts of your brain that create the dream world. This is the key to wildly vivid dreams.

3. Dream awareness - At this stage we will teach you techniques for realizing you are dreaming while the dream is occurring.

4. Putting it all to use - During this stage we are going to explore the many wonderful benefits of having complete control over your dreams, as well as other benefits the dream world can offer. Once you have arrived at this stage you will be able to interpret your dreams, gain great insights from your dreams, and use these insights to build a better and more fullfilling life.

Vivid Dreams

So you're enticed by the possibility of having more vivid and lucid dreams. Maybe you've recently had a vivid dream and loved how rich and meaningful it was. Maybe you have great dreams only to forget what you've dreamt about by morning. What if I told you that you could tap into unparalleled creativity inside the dream world; and that your dreams could be so incredibly vivid that you will not be able to differentiate the dream from reality without a realty test? Does it sound too good to be true? It's not; this is the way I have been dreaming for years, and I am no different from anyone else. Everyone has this ability if given the proper direction and tools.

I have been fascinated by my dreams since a very young age, so much so that I obtained a degree in psychology from the University of Hawaii so that I could better understand how the dream world works. I think my fascination with dreams first began due to the fact that I had two reoccurring vivid dreams from about 5 years old until I was 12. The first dream was actually somewhat of a nightmare and occurred often. Most kids will have nightmares growing up but mine was very peculiar. The dream always began with me standing at the top of the stairs in my parents house. I would walk down stairs and see my mom talking to a group of people in the living room. I would try to call out to her but I couldn't speak. I'd turn my head to the left and there would be a women standing there dressed completely in black. She'd point her finger at me and suddenly I couldn't move or speak. As I stood there completely paralyzed, I'd always hope that my mom would turn around and see what was happening, but she never does. And then the dream ends.

My second reoccurring dream is even more odd. It begins with me as a small yellow peg floating about 5 feet of the ground in a sea of other yellow pegs. There is a harmonious tone playing in the background, but its more than just a sound. I'd have to say it's the life force of everything in the dream. I felt as if every peg was another human being. It was our entire race. Suddenly a ball, about the size of a bowling ball, falls through a tube in the sky and slams into the floor. At that instant the tone in the background changes to one of complete dread. All of us yellow pegs know that it's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

To this day I don't understand the meaning behind that dream. In my mind it feels as though there is great meaning behind it, possibly for the human race, but my rational side dismisses that notion as nonsense. I'd be happy to provide illustrations of the dream if anyone would like to try interpret and pull meaning from it or have had similar dreams.

I don't know why I had two reoccurring and vivid dreams at such a young age. I was lucid in neither dream, but both were extremely vivid. Those two dreams started me pondering the dream world at about 6 years of age. I've spend every night since, the past 25 years or so, exploring my dreams. This manual, and the Vivid Dreams organization, are the result.

Now that you know a little more about me lets begin our program. First we'll start by understanding what occurs when a person dreams. What processes are at work and what knowledge can we use to our advantage? I'll leave technical information out and instead look at dreams in a more useful manner. When in a dream you feel as if the dream is unfolding without your input. It takes no effort on your behalf to be in a dream, you simply have to take in the scene. This is different from day dreaming or thinking in the sense that you are not seeing the dream in your minds eye, instead you actually feel as if you are there. We will use this distinction in our program. Thought during the waking hours occurs inside your mind, in your minds eye. While in a dream, your unconscious imagination becomes the dream world around you. For all intents and purposed it become your surroundings. You can still think in a dream though, right? Therefore not all thoughts have been converted into surroundings. While in a dream you still posses the feeling that you are in the dream, not part of it.

So where does the feeling of YOU reside in your brain? Your brain has a visual cortex, are you there? Your brain has spacial reasoning areas, are you in them? The answer is no. You rely on these areas to process and interpret the world around you but they are not you. It is these areas of the brain that are active during dreams. They are separate from the feeling of YOU, but they are connected enough to be influenced by your thoughts. We will exploit this in our program to help create amazingly vivid dreams.

Knowing this information the question becomes, how can we strengthen these areas of the brain to make the dream world more vivid? The key is to use our imagination on our surroundings during the waking hours.

Since we know the visual and spacial areas of the brain create the dream world, then strengthening these areas will allow for more vivid dreams, right? This turns out to be so. It's something I stumbled upon when I was 12 years old.

At around 12 years of age I began visualizing the world in a new way. My grandmother was very interested in meditation. I would spend many weekends with her learning whatever meditation techniques she was willing to teach me. One meditation in particular was to envision an object moving simply from your desire to make it move. I would sit at her table for hours trying to get a spoon on the table to lift off from the power of my mind. To my grandmother this was simply a meditation tool, but me being twelve, I really wanted the spoon to move. A few nights later I had a dream that I was sitting at the table trying to make the spoon move. The only difference was that after a few moments the spoon lifted right off the table and into the air. After a few shocked moments I realized it must be a dream. This later became my test to see whether or not I was dreaming. I would look at an object in my dream and attempt to make it move. If it moved I knew it was a dream and I could then have fun with the dream world.

As you gain more experience lucid dreaming you'll eventually realize that the only times you are asking yourself if it's a dream is when you're dreaming. Rarely do healthy individuals question if they're dreaming while they're actually awake, except from a philosophical standpoint of course. That being said, the mere question will let you know that you are indeed dreaming. This phenomenon is due to the fact that our mind suspends disbelief to a certain extent while in a dream. It's not until you are becoming lucid in the dream that you will begin asking questions such as: How did I get here? Why doesn't this make sense? and, I know the world doesn't work this way.

The Vivid Dreams Program:

Our program is broken down into four weeks. Each week builds off the previous week. By week four you will be using all of the techniques outlined in the program simultaneously. After week four we welcome you to email us your stories and difficulties you are having. Analyzing and pulling meaning from your dreams is a life-long endeavor. Now that you are part of our community you will always have a connection to others sharing this common goal.

Week 1 - The Dream Journal

Now that you know a little about me and what I have learned about dreams, its time to begin our program. Lets start by finding or purchases a notebook. This will be your dream journal. I want you to write down your dreams the moment you wake up in the morning and review what you have written before you go to sleep. This will prime your mind for dreaming. The description doesn't have to be long, but should describe the dream in enough detail so that you will remember it later that night. If there was anything particularly odd or notable in the dream, write it down. We will be looking for certain things in your dreams later on, but for now a general description of your dream will suffice. Getting you acclimated to remembering and writing down your dreams will be the scope of the first week and the base for further training. Be sure to date each entry. We will be looking at the dates later to ascertain any sleep patterns, and when you can expect your best dreaming.

Writing in your dream journal will also help you get to sleep at night. Before you go to bed review what you have written for the previous night and try to remember the dream. This will tune your mind for dreaming and also make you sleepy.

Week one will also be the week of breaking a few habits if they exist. I'm not saying that these habits will certainly hinder your dream exploration, but I have never had lucid dreams with them present.

The first habit to kick is the consumption of caffeine after 5pm. If you don't drink Coffee or caffeinated soda at all it would be better, however it's not realistic for most people. Therefore we will limit the consumption of caffeine to before 5pm.

Secondly, alcohol should be consumed only in moderation. Any night that you fall asleep intoxicated will rarely result in the amount of REM sleep needed for vivid and lucid dreaming. Limit nightly cocktails to no more than 1 or two ounces of alcohol if you are going to drink before bed.

The third habit we have to kick is getting less than 8 hours of sleep. The most dreaming occurs in the hour or two before you naturally awake. If you are woken up by an alarm clock you'll miss out on hours of great dreaming. For this reason it is important to fall asleep early enough that your alarm goes off roughly when you are already naturally waking up. The Key here is to wake up naturally. If you naturally wake up after 6 or 7 hours of sleep and still feel rested, than that is fine as well. REM sleep declines with age so a full nights sleep is even more important the older you are.

At the end of week one you should have 7 days worth of dreams in your dream journal. Maybe some of the days you couldn't remember having any dream, and that's okay, but be sure to document that fact as well. Now I want you to review all seven dream records and note any patterns or similarities between the dreams. Interpreting dreams is easier when you have a collection of dreams and can possibly build a common theme from them. For instant, if you came to me with a dream that you were being chased by lions I might ask if you fell asleep with Animal Planet on. However, if you show me seven dreams and you are being chased in all of them we may be able to pull meaning from that. The goal of your dream journal is to look for patterns in the data at the end of each week, as well as note any weaknesses you may be having while trying to lucid dream.

Week 2 - Brain Training For Vivid Dreams

Week 2 is the bread and butter of our course. Here you will learn the brain training techniques that will strengthen the areas of your brain that create the dream world.

I want to make an important distinction upfront. There are two types of visualizing. Closing your eyes and thinking about something in your mind is different from envisioning changes to your surrounds. Here's what I mean; imagine that you are reading a great fiction novel. You're reading the words on the page and the scene unfolds in your mind. This scene that you are creating in your mind is practice for the visual centers of your brain and research suggests that it may actually help produce more vivid dreams; however, the only problem is that it is completely in your mind, not in your surroundings. The dream world overtakes your surrounds and appears real. By reading novels and getting better at creating these scenes in your mind does not exactly working the correct areas of your brain. When you dream you feel that the dream is your surroundings. This is the distinction we need to understand for our program. We need to visualize our surroundings in such a way during the waking hours that it is able to strengthen our dreams.

Lets begin. This may sound odd at first but I want you to start visualizing changes to objects in your surroundings. If something is sitting on a table, envision it lifting off the table. Once in mid air, rotate the object around. Zoom into the object and see what it looks like close up. If you're looking at your t.v., go inside the t.v. with your mind. See the inner workings of it. The point here is to take actual objects in your surroundings and manipulate them with your mind. When I was young I would manipulate objects in my room and see how many I could keep in the air at one time while still focusing on each in my mind. I cannot stress enough that you need to keep the thoughts focused on outside objects so that your mind is being trained to manipulate objects in your surrounds instead of in your mind. This will prime your mind to manipulate objects in the dream world. Sure, lifting the object with your mind is occurring in your imagination but by transposing it on to objects in your surroundings it strengthens the areas of your brain that create the external world while you are dreaming. Do this often enough and you will begin doing it while you dream; therefore, this exercise services two purposes; it strengthens the right parts of your brain for vivid dreams, and it also serves as a means to realize you are dreaming when objects in your dream world actually move under control of your mind.

Another way of transposing thoughts onto objects is by overlaying a grid pattern onto objects you find in your surroundings. This is an easy way to train the visual centers of your mind without having to come up with new and creative ways of manipulating objects, although you will probably come up with many unique ways. The grid pattern I always used was the green computer grid pattern you often see when graphic designers are creating virtual worlds. Before they add color and details to whatever image they are creating it first starts out as a grid pattern which creates the form of the object. If I look at an apple I will overlay a grid pattern onto the apple. Now when I levitate the apple in my mind I am levitating a grid pattern of the apple. It has no color, nor is it solid. It is simply a green grid pattern in the 3D shape of an apple.

For this week I want you to get into the habit of doing these exercises constantly. Levitate anything in your surroundings. You're going to be using a lot of brain power with all of this visualization so you may find yourself getting tired. If you do simply take a break. With time your brain will build new connections which will make visualizing much easier.

By the end of week two you should have 2 weeks of dream records in your dream journal and you should be levitating and manipulating objects with your mind constantly. Week two is the hardest part of our course but please stick with it, the payoffs are great.

Week 3 - Lucid Dreaming

Week three we are going to work on becoming aware of our dream while dreaming. Having an extremely vivid dream is much more rewarding when you are able to realize it's a dream. In my dreams I am able to fly, move objects with my mind, visit with friends, and even visit family members who have passed away. It's a great feeling to be able to tell a family member something you never had the chance to. Sure it's only in a dream but this alone can be very rewarding. The feeling of control is amazing as well. You have an entire dream world to do whatever you please.

During this week I want you to write any problems you encounter while trying to become lucid in your dream, or anything you'd like to try next, in your dream journal. It's important to study what you have written so that you may figure out what is working for you and what is not.

Lets begin. In week 2 we learned to manipulate objects in our surroundings with our mind. Doing this in our dream is going to become our reality test. If you are doing the exercises in week 2 often enough, then chances are you will begin to do them in your dreams as well just by force of habit. Now the first time a candle or some other object moves off the table by the power of your mind you're going to be so excited you might think you actually made the candle move and not realize you are dreaming. The voice of reason will eventually bring you back to realty and you will have the "ahh ha" moment, and realize you are in a dream. Trying to make an object move with your mind in a dream is the best realty check there is. As a child I would tell people I was having these amazing dreams and many of them would say "did you pinch yourself to see if you were dreaming"? I never understood that because pinching myself in a dream always felt the same as pinching myself in real life. But I assure you, trying to move an object with your mind will work, and work well.

Occasionally when you realize it's a dream you will start to slip out of the dream. The knowledge of knowing it's a dream will cause you to try and wake up. This usually occurs when you have a dream close to your waking time. The best way to stay in the dream world is to relax and let the dream flow on its own. Notate any problems you were having in your dream journal.

Week 4 - Exploring The Dream World

Now that you have mastered weeks 1, 2, and 3, you should begin to notice that your dreams are becoming more vivid, and you may have already experienced a lucid dream. If you haven't had one yet then you should keep practicing the material from weeks 2 and 3. Week 4 is going to delve into the many wonderful things you can accomplish by having lucid and vivid dreams, as well as figuring out and interpreting what your dreams mean to you. You may email your dreams and experiences while using the program to Members@DreamsInterpretation.org. Your experiences may end up in our monthly newsletter so that they may help others in our group.

Now that you are having lucid dreams I want you to explore your dream worlds. The first thing I want you to do is to learn to fly in your dream. When I first started flying in my dreams it was a bit awkward. The harder I tried to make myself fly the more I seemed to be stuck to the ground. Eventually I learned to relax and imagine that I was as light as air. Flying in your dream gets easier with practice. Eventually you will be flying with ease. You may choose to fly to a destination or simply teleport to any destination you choose. On occasion I try to teach other people in my dream how to fly. I know these other people are products of my mind, but it can be very revealing to have a conversation with them while I try to teach them how to fly. Many times I will get into arguments with others in the dream because they will not accept the fact that it is a dream. I know, strange, right?

I have noticed that there is a time lag from the time you learn something until it is ingrained in your subconscious. When I a child I always wanted to fly into outer space in my dreams. I would attempt it but I always hit some kind of ceiling and could never make it into space. It wasn't until I studied space for a few years and knew what it would be like to be in space that I was able to break through that ceiling in my dreams. Another example would be someone in mechanics school taking this program. They may have just learned the inner workings of an engine but if they try to work on an engine in their dream it will probably have all kinds of strange parts, and look nothing like a true engine until the information makes its way to their subconscious. This process can take a few months.

The idea of week four is to gain control of your dreams. Having control over the dream world can be very empowering and bleed over to feelings of control in your waking life.

After you learn to fly in your dreams I want you to make people appear from your past. Anyone you feel you have unfinished business with. Once you realize you are dreaming simply envision that person standing in front of you and they will likely appear. I also want you to make notes of all of your experiences while lucid dreaming.

After week four you will be relying on your own creativity, and well as our monthly newsletter, for new insights and techniques.

Recap:

Your month of dream exercises will proceed like this:

First: purchase a dream journal and write in it every morning when you first wake up.

Second: Manipulate your surrounds as often as possible using the envisioning techniques mentioned in week two. This is the most crucial part of the program. It will strengthen your dreaming brain, and make your dreams much more vivid. It is also a great way of staving off age related mental decline.

Third: Use our technique to become aware that you are dreaming.

Fourth: Learn to fly in your dream and gain control of the dream world. Visit people from your past and write everything in your dream journal.

Fifth: Continue everything you have learned, especially manipulating your surrounds in your mind, and keep up with our monthly newsletter.

Please stay in touch by emailing (Members "at" VividDreams.org) with any struggles you are having with the program, and any dreams you would like to share.