There’s no way around this one: The sun is HUGELY important for lucid dreaming, energy, living and overall wellbeing. this is the story of how I discovered this again.
So I’ve always known that the sun is important (essential) to life on earth. Not only that but I’ve been preaching about the importance of your circadian rhythym for lucid dreaming for a number of years. It’s just unavoidable, but recently as I’ve been travelling around Asia, I’ve been staying in a place for a few weeks that has no WINDOWS.
Staying in a place with no windows
Now, by having no windows, I have no natural light or sunlight entering the room at all, meaning that every day, the lighting in the room is ALWAYS exactly the same. It’s either pitch black, or lit up by the lights in the room (That I have to walk across the room to turn on or off).
So what this has meant is that I’ve not been woken up by the sun once during my stay here, and after a few days I started to feel pretty bad. I’d feel tired, annoyed and fatigued and I couldn’t work out why. I was sleeping MORE than enough. In fact I was sleeping more than I ever did before, but that’s the problem, or at least part of it.
I’d been sleeping too much because there was no light and no way for me to tell how long I’d slept for. I’d regularly sleep in until 10-11AM because my body didn’t now what time it was, or how light it was outside. Usually if I sleep in in a normal place with windows, I get woken up pretty fast by the light at about 9AM.
Because there’s no light, it doesn’t matter WHAT time I wake up, I always feel like it’s too early, and it’s still the middle of the night. More importantly, my body thinks it’s the middle of the night and so I feel awful unless I go back to sleep.
The only solution has been to FORCE myself out of the bed as soon as I see the time, get dressed, and run up to the roof or go outside and let the daylight enter my eyes and wake me up. If I don’t do this, I end up feeling tired all day no matter how long I’d slept and how long I’d sat in the lit up room.
Why the sun is so important
So I’d like to talk a bit about WHY the sun is so important, and why I’ll never take it for granted again. Until a few weeks ago I knew the sun was important, but I just didn’t realise HOW much of an effect it would have if the sun wasn’t there. It’s pretty big.
You see when we go about our day, we gradually build up melatonin in our bodies based on how long we’ve been awake and also towards the end of the day, how dark it is. When the sun goes down, our bodies naturally start producing and retaining melatonin which makes us feel tired.
Eventually it gets to the break point where we feel SO tired that we hust have to pass out and fall asleep. That’s how the body naturally works, and it’s meant to run off of the sun. But the problem is lots of people keep themselves awake using lights, phone screens, TVs and whatever else, so this process is ruined.
The result? The vast majority of people are not getting the quality of sleep they COULD be getting if they followed their natural circadian rhythym. I know this now more than ever.
How it relates to lucid dreaming
The way this relates back to lucid dreaming is like this:
If you follow the natural pattern of the sun rising and setting, and you wake up when the sun rises, and go to sleep when the sun sets, you’re setting yourself up for lucid dreaming success. The reason is that during the early hours of the morning, when we’ve HAD our deep sleep and a few REM cycles, but our bodies are starting to produce serotonin ready for the day, that’s the perfect time for lucid dreams.
It’s the time where the majority of lucid dreams happen (regardless of which technique or method you’re using) and it’s where it will be the easiest. If you’re a beginner lucid dreamer and you just can’t have one, just focus on THAT time of the morning.
The exact time you’re aiming to target is between 5-7AM when you’ve had 5-6 hours of sleep already. Set your alarm, and focus your energy on trying your techniques then. I guarantee you’ll have more success during those hours.
