How to Use Lucid Dreaming and Dreams for Problem Solving

Lucid dreaming is one method of solving difficult problems you have during the waking hours. Since your mind isn't focusing on other tasks as you sleep, like sensory input, it allows it to be far more creative. If you've ever forgotten a name, a date or even something important you wanted to tell someone and simply decided to quit stressing and allow it to simply come to you, you'll understand how lucid dreaming works. You relax your thoughts and the solutions find you rather than the other way around.

Scientists, artists and novelists often find important information in lucid dreams. In order to use the information found in lucid dreaming the first challenge, however, is to conquer dream recall. Dream recall is simply the ability to remember your dreams. Often, people awakened in the middle of a dream remember the dream for a few seconds and then the memory disappears as they shake off the grogginess of sleep. For those practicing dream recall, a journal and pen by the bedside is mandatory. Even if you have only fragments of dream memory, it's still a place to begin.

Once the dreamer accomplishes dream recall, or at least partially conquers it, the next process is lucid dreaming. In lucid dreaming, you're aware of that you're in a dream. For those that want to solve a problem, taking lucid dreaming one step farther might be necessary. The next step, dream control, allows the dreamers to put themselves into the situation where they can solve the problem they have in their waking hours. Sometimes this is not necessary as the dreamer sees the solution in the dream without any additional input.

Sometimes artists find that lucid dreams bring them bonuses they weren't expecting. Paul McCartney of the Beatles found the tune for the song "Yesterday" in a lucid dream. He said he heard the tune played by a string ensemble in a dream and awoke with the tune still in his head. He sat at the piano and reproduced the tune. While he loved it, he didn't think he actually wrote it because it came to him in a dream and was nothing like his previous tunes.

Another lucid dreamer, the first female American to be a self made millionaire, Madame C.J. Walker was also the first freeborn member of her family of former slaves. Walker suffered from a scalp infection that caused the loss of her hair. In order to solve her problem she began experimenting with various hair-care products. One night in a dream, a large black man came to her in her dreams. He told her how to mix the formula to cure the problem. Even though some of the ingredients came from Africa, she ordered them anyway and since the formula worked for her, began to sell it to friends. She turned that dream into a successful African-American centered cosmetic company.

Others that used dreams to solve problems include Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine and Mary Shelly the author of "Frankenstein". Several scientists also fall into the ranks of lucid dreamers and problem solvers. Friedrich August von Stradonitz used it frequently in his study of organic chemistry and made huge contributions to the scientific community. Otto Loewi, a Nobel Prize winner also used lucid dreaming to find a method of proving his theory of chemical transmission of nerve impulses in the body.

Lucid dreaming can come naturally to people or accomplished by practice. The key is always being able to remember what the subconscious mind tells you in a dream. For that, the practice of dream recall is of utmost importance.