The sci-fi adventure hit, Inception, has sparked massive new interest in the concept of lucid dreaming.

Lucidity means becoming conscious and self-aware in your dreams, turning the dreamscape into a vivid virtual reality. This enables you to control and manipulate the dream world and its characters in any way you like.

In the movie, Cobb penetrates other people's minds using a fictional piece of technology that enables shared dreams, called PASIV. Inception's creators had to make up an elaborate set of rules to create drama using PASIV. These were rules that don't exist in real life - such as, in order to wake up you have to kill yourself in the dream! Or if you die in a level 2 dream (a dream-within-a-dream) you will be sent to your own personal dream limbo for eternity... Suffice to say that none of this is true in the real world of lucid dreaming.

Check out this scene from Inception, in which Cobb explains about self awareness in dreams. When Ariadne (Ellen Page) realizes she is dreaming, she is shocked and afraid, and her subconscious causes the shared dream to collapse around them...

The dream explorers in Inception use special totems for their reality checks. They know their totem object so well, that if it is slighter heavier, or smaller, or doesn't obey the usual laws of physics... then they must be asleep and dreaming.

You can use your own totem if you like. I prefer to look at my hands. An ideal totem is a digital watch; not only does it chime on the hour (to remind you to check your reality) which you can hear in your sleep, it is also electronic. For some reason, electronics don't work in dreams. Light switches, in particular, often fail to function. And because a digital watch display requires the language centers of the brain to be active, telling the time can be very difficult indeed... This is a dead giveaway that you are dreaming.

In your dreamworld, you face a similar task. Your subconscious will go to extraordinary lengths to convince you that your dream is actually reality.

In Christopher Nolan's Inception, there is a major emphasis on spotting the difference between dreams and reality. You can practice this yourself: because if you have more self-awareness in everyday life, you will be able to recognize the dream state more easily. And when that happens... you become lucid.

By adopting this questioning mentality during the day, you can retain it at night as you sleep. Very soon, you will notice more inconsistencies in your dreams, and you will find it easier to become lucidly aware...

And when you are lucid in a dream - anything can happen! You can fly over great cities, breathe under water, teleport to the edge of the universe, travel through time, and interact with dream figures. The realism of a lucid dream is astonishing, becoming more vivid as you become more aware.

This scientifically-proven phenomenon of conscious dreaming is accessible to anyone who wants it, with simple techniques and mental training.

Ask yourself if you are dreaming, right now. Look at the palms of your hands, and try to push your fingers through a solid object. Is everything normal? By performing this simple reality check several times a day, you are training your brain to become more self aware. This mentality filters through to the dreamworld, so that you may even have your first lucid dream tonight.

Lucidity also gives you direct access to your subconscious mind. This is a deeply insightful place to explore, one-on-one, inside your own personal dream world. Interacting with your subconscious in a lucid dream can change the way you view yourself and the world around you, just as Cobb (DiCaprio) did in his dreams.

But what of dream telepathy and shared dreams? Is it possible to communicate with each other in lucid dreams? Robert Waggoner, advanced lucid dreamer and author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, believes it might be. He discusses this idea at length in his book, and provides real life studies to support his case.

Click Here! for more information on lucid dreaming and to learn how to become a lucid dreaming expert.