Patricia Garfield, PhD in clinical psychology, is a world authority in the field of dreams. She has written more than ten books on the topic, the most famous among them being Creative Dreaming. The bestseller was published in 1974, appeared in fifteen languages, and is considered a classic. Garfield was a frequent guest on television and radio, as well as a co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Dreams over which she presided in 1998–99.
In her work Creative Dreaming, the author describes many well-known methods of developing self-awareness in dreams, ways of applying this skill, as well as cases of false awakenings. Let us take a minute to recall the ways to induce a lucid dream (LD) as described in one of the classics in the field:
1. Fright. According to Garfield, short episodes of LD often grow out of stressful situations in a dream.
2. The development of vigilance, paying attention to the surrounding inconsistencies and absurdities.
3. Transitioning to LD directly from the waking state (including immediately after waking up) through the observation of emerging images.
4. Keeping a dream journal. As the author adds, illness, fatigue and menstruation in women negatively affect the ability to remember dreams.
Having achieved awareness in a dream, you should be vigilant and maintain a balance between the danger of falling into a normal dream (avoid getting distracted by the plot and constantly remind yourself that you are dreaming) and waking up (which can be provoked by excitement and excess of emotions).
Garfield puts special emphasis on the creative potential of LD, since the lucid dreamer can literally pull a poem, a piece of music, a picture, a mathematical formula, and anything else at will out of the dream. Other listed LD activities include traveling, communicating with the dead, getting answers to your questions, sex, flying, psychotherapy, etc. The world of LD is limited only by the imagination of the sleeper.
As the web-site Creative Dreaming, dedicated to Garfield’s work and named after her bestseller, adds, she is probably the creator of the longest extant dream journal, since she has been keeping it for more than 60 years.
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