By Gary L. Zhang © 2012

As a writer, visual artist, passionate cook and, since Christmas, XBOX aficionado (I’ve read that gaming might help promote lucid dreaming, great excuse!) I spend a lot of time typing, using a mouse, chopping ingredients and pressing buttons, activities that all make rather excessive use of my right hand, thumb, wrist and arm.

 

In fact, I relied almost exclusively on the right side of my body until the day I tripped and fell while playing catch-the-stick with my puppy. I broke my fall with both hands and thought nothing of it, until a few days later, when it became excruciatingly apparent that something was terribly wrong with my right wrist and thumb.

 

The pain when I moved them in certain directions was so intense, I was forced to begin using my left hand for whatever tasks I could manage to accomplish with it. I bought a cloth brace and began wearing it night and day, hoping that whatever was wrong would get better, but days and then weeks passed with no sign of improvement.

 

I continued to type and use a mouse, cook and do yoga, yet the range of motion in my wrist and thumb was limited by instant and severe pain. Desiring to avoid a cortisone shot at all cost, I tried two weeks of electrical heat stimulation, ultrasounds, massages and physical therapy with a chiropractor. After the treatment ended, I continued doing the stretches they had taught me at home, but my condition showed no real improvement.

 

I did not immediately attempt to heal myself in a lucid dream because I felt I was suffering from a life-style injury that was teaching me important lessons about balancing both sides of my self, in every sense. I didn’t feel it was right to want to fix a non-life threatening condition which was helping me grow. On the other hand, the constant inconvenience of a brace—and the occasional excruciating pain when it failed to keep my wrist and/or thumb from moving in a certain direction—was really getting old.

 

There was also the concern that my tendonitis (for so the chiropractor diagnosed it) if not dealt with in a timely fashion might become chronic. Therefore, before scheduling the dreaded cortisone shot, I consciously stepped past the mental and emotional assumptions causing me to treat the power behind the dream like a genie granting me only three big wishes I should be afraid of wasting. I decided to try to heal myself in a lucid dream.

 

 

September 2011

 

I find myself fully conscious of being awake in a dream where I’m lying on my back on my bed in our bedroom, which is dark. I raise my right hand toward the ceiling thinking make light and violet sparkles emanate from my fingertips which delight me, and also succeed in gently illuminating the ceiling, where a circular decorative carving has replaced our actual ceiling fan.

 

I notice then that my right hand is wearing the cloth brace I’ve been subjected to for weeks now because of a strained tendon. (Yesterday it was worse than ever; I couldn’t move my thumb in any direction without pain shooting through me, so that I was obliged to skip yoga, which really upset me.)

 

At once, I remember my intent. Raising both hands before me, I point the index finger of my left hand at the junction of my right wrist and thumb, willing a healing energy into it. I’m delighted to see a stream of lovely blue and violet sparkles (I can’t think of better word for them). I then take the time to remove the cloth brace so it won’t be in the way, and direct the starry healing energy to just above the tender area.

 

At one point I can’t see anything but I’m aware of lying in bed having this lucid dream, and of struggling to disconnect the desire to open my eyes in the dream with the urge to open my actual physical eyes, which will wake me up. I don’t know how I manage it, perhaps through sheer willpower, but I find myself once again gazing at the dream room and my hands.

 

I turn my right hand so I can see the bottom of my wrist and trace my left index finger along it. I can see beneath the skin; a section of skin seems to be missing. I discern a black line or band of sorts which at first looks like an inverted syringe with something sharp and dark moving up my arm from my wrist.

 

I’m quite fascinated to be seeing the inside of my body as I continue directing healing energy that consists of a shimmering violet light indistinguishable from my intent, which is the real mysterious source of the ‘corrective’ power I’m focusing on my wrist and thumb. I become aware of a golden light slightly behind me to my left and give thanks for this dream as it slowly fades and I find myself awake in bed.

 

At once I told my husband about the dream, and removing the cloth brace said with complete faith, ‘Look!’ as I moved my wrist and thumb around in different directions without any pain whatsoever. ‘It’s still not one-hundred percent, but it’s much better! And morning is when it hurts the most! I wish I’d had more time!’

 

I Wrote in my Dream Journal: If I have to assign a percentage to the improvement in my condition, I would say seventy-five percent. My wrist also feels so much stronger, nowhere near as weak and vulnerable to being accidentally moved in the wrong direction. It’s very interesting how connected I feel to this part of my body after seeing it in the dream, and seeing into it. I look at it now and feel as though I can will it to get better, that my intent is still connected to it in an active way.

 

I feel my physical body is akin to an animal, to a pet of my Inner Self which also serves as a mysterious tool of my Consciousness. I’ve become aware of all my hand motions these past few weeks, but this morning I feel reverently connected to my right hand and wrist in a way I never have before. As always happens with a lucid dream, I feel differently about something, not just think differently.

 

Two nights later, I became lucid in a dream again. I’ll skip to the moment I woke up in the dream:

 

…I decide I’ll fly and rise up into the sky. I’m soon well above the trees. I raise my hands before me and think, Well, I must be dreaming. The sky is a pale, somewhat murky watercolor blue. I look at my right hand thinking I might as well heal the whole tendon as I attempt to direct a healing energy up my arm, but I don’t see any sparkling lights emanating from my left fingertip.

 

I keep at it, and give thanks to the power behind the dream, expressing how grateful I am for all I’ve been assisted in achieving, yet also admitting to being a little confused and in need of more guidance. There still isn’t any visible healing energy emanating from my hand.

 

Abruptly spotting a building ahead of me, I think perhaps I need to find a doctor in the dream (I had this thought earlier while I was awake, remembering how another person did that in a lucid dream). I fly up to a platform high off the ground on which a little building sits that is more like a big closet or armoire. On the left there’s a single dark-wooden door and on the right two wooden doors. I veer to the right, but then turn to the left because that was the door I originally intended to open.

 

Inside the cramped space is a very attractive naked man with dark hair. He’s sitting up slightly, his right shoulder leaning against the wood, his well muscled body stretched out in a partially reclined position. I seem to wake him when I open the door. I tell him I’m looking for a doctor. When he doesn’t respond right away, I go and open the double doors. Finding nothing behind them, I return to the man, who indicates he can, in fact, help me. Floating in the air, I rest my elbows on the entrance to the room (like in a pool, only partially needing its support).

 

Facing away from me and going through some drawers, he looks back at me and tells me, ‘Your father’s dying.’ I reply, ‘No, he’s dead.’ He adds, ‘Well, he’s fine,’ and I say, ‘Yes, I know, I’ve seen him a few times’ (meaning in dreams after he died). He echoes, ‘Yes, I know. I talked to him just the other day.’ ‘Really?’ I ask. ‘Cool.’

 

I’m rather enjoying talking to this dream character who is so forthcoming. Pulling a photograph out of a wallet, he shows it to me. I see a woman and an older man and state, ‘That’s not my dad.’

 

I get the feeling he really can’t help me, but as I make to leave, he abruptly tells me he’ll give me a prescription for what I need. I’m happy about that but, as I begin gliding away, I realize he really hasn’t given me anything. Yet suddenly I do seem to have a prescription in my hand. Looking at it, I make out an image of a little girl crouching in front of a pile of colorful goggles and the ‘pharmacy’ header reads Harbor Freight Tools. It seems a joke; it makes no sense. How can goggles help me heal my tendon?

 

I Wrote in my Dream Journal: Yet there is something to this dream, something about being able to see better in the flowing depths of my subconscious, of my dreams. I feel encouraged to think outside the box, creatively, as I did naturally when I was a little girl. This dream also seems to reflect my deepening faith and lack of doubts and fears (the part of me who was like my father in that respect) dying inside me once and for all. And the beautiful man strikes me as the vigorous good health of my Inner Self and gaining conscious access to it.

 

October 2011

 

In a dream, I’m looking at my right arm and seeing deep blue blood rushing along my veins quite vigorously pumped by my heart, which I distinctly feel beating swiftly. About where my wrist still hurts in waking life when I touch it, I see a circle rimmed in yellow, a pool of sorts with a dark orange-pink center around which my blood flows freely.

 

My mother and I are studying my arm in fascination, and I personally experience an awe tinged with fear, because it’s very clear that should something happen and the river of blood cease to flow, or rise beyond the banks of my skin, I will die.

 

Part of me experiences a frisson of fear but a very calm, centered part of me faces the inevitable and transcends it with the thought, the knowledge, that I will continue (my awareness, who I am) even outside the confines of my body. It is a highly lucid moment, after which I drift off into another dream.

 

I Wrote in my Dream Journal: It may not be related, but my wrist feels a heck of a lot better today than it did yesterday or even in the middle of the night before the dream. All I remember doing is looking at it, marveling, and then having that lucid moment where the twinge of fear was quickly overcome by the knowledge I would survive even if my heart stopped beating and my blood stopped flowing.

 

I’m thinking now that a healing energy was flowing from my heart down into my arm because all day I have felt much better, not just in my wrist area, which is noticeably stronger, but in my right shoulder and my entire arm.

 

Mind/Consciousness is the infinite ocean of creativity (the Dream) in which the shells of our skulls live, and information/energy rushes as blood through our veins, just as rivers flow between solid banks, carving the four dimensions and chambers of our heart, the ‘house’ of our soul. Moving out of one, we can always build another.

 

I learned from the chiropractor that the trauma feels concentrated in my wrist because where the tendon meets the bone there’s less circulation, less blood flow. My dream seemed to be increasing the blood flow to the affected area even though I wasn’t lucid.

 

October 2011

 

Walking back to the center of our living room, I raise my right hand before me and realize I’m dreaming! At once I remember my intent and, holding my wrist up before me, I instruct blood to begin flowing down into the affected joint. I can see blue veins beneath my rosy-beige skin in the location of the troubled area and am pleased. I open the door to the rec room and walk in. It’s dark in there but I head toward the bay windows as I plant my lips on my wrist. I push open the windows (which don’t open in reality) and there’s our yard.

 

As I take off, I see Arthur (my puppy) shoot into the woods, a white streak beneath me. I’m here on our mountain property but the night is so alive, profoundly quiet on the surface and yet subliminally almost noisy. Coming from every direction, I hear a faint and lovely yet also eerie music. I make out the faint drone of airplanes high above and see the tell-tale orange streak of one going by.

 

I just barely register a sound like voices I seem to know are other people having out of body experiences. I’m floating slowly and easily around my yard in a night subliminally lit by a silvery aura that isn’t actually light. I’m enthralled by the energy -music-voices humming all around me, and I know the moon is out tonight but I don’t see it or notice many stars.

 

I turn toward my favorite tulip tree and greet it; I’m definitely really outside, this is not like a lucid dream. I try and remember to keep my lips on my wrist but the night is so oddly creepy and yet so real and the music fascinates me. I go peer through a window at the right side of the house and think Oh, that’s a room in my house! even though it isn’t really—I see an odd straight-backed narrow brown chair sitting before a bed.

 

Floating over the yard again I say, ‘Arthur, did you go out?’ but I realize it’s silly to worry because obviously he didn’t since I’m dreaming and he’s in his crate sleeping. I return to the rec room, moving my mouth over my wrist now, attempting to massage the tension out of the joint with my lips as I enter a room we don’t really own, and abruptly wake up.

 

I Wrote in my Dream Journal: My wrist feels the same as it did yesterday, but I think I know why—I was in a lower vibrational body. I have to be in a less dense, in a higher vibrational body, so to speak, to access healing energy that can flow down into my denser physical form. It seems to me the Other Side isn’t just one other level or world but multiple realms.

 

October 2011

 

I’m lying in a bed, not at home but in a room that seems related to a previous dream. I experience that whooshing sound with flashing lights and a loud noise I’ve read traditionally signals the beginning of an OBE. I remain calm; I scarcely need to tell myself not to be frightened; I know what’s going on.

 

I imagine myself floating up out of my body, but nothing seems to happen. I know I should be out of body so I remember the technique of simply sitting up. I feel myself, and somehow also see myself, sit up out of my physical body. It works just fine and I think this is great, I’m going out to the ocean now.

 

I walk to the door and open it. In the dim nocturnal atmosphere, I glimpse the dark figure of a young woman leaving the building ahead of me. I seem to startle her and I say something like don’t worry. I go through a second door and the ocean seems to be getting farther away. Next I have to traverse something like a pub-restaurant and decide to fly over the tables toward a window.

 

But I have to navigate through yet another space like a kitchen in the back. There’s a wall in my way and I’m getting impatient. I begin going through the wall, I can feel the texture of it and know I can make it through the barrier, but I don’t really feel like dealing with the slightly unpleasant sensation and decide to simply walk out the door.

 

I’m on a beach and there are lots of people, but I can’t seem to get to the water. Then all of a sudden it gets a more confined feeling, as though the ocean is limited to an indoor space like a really nice resort built from dark wood with red carpets. But it’s no longer the open ocean, which is what I want. I command, “More blue! More water!” and am happy to see more blue, but I remain confined. I command, “More ocean!” and it seems to work but I’m still confined!

 

I reach a point where I say, “I’m going to close my eyes and when I open them again I’m going to be at the ocean.” I envision a white beach and clear, bright blue water with no one around. I open my eyes. It didn’t work! All I see is a large pool in a room. I feel quite frustrated but decide to get on with my intent, which is to send healing energy into my wrist.

 

As I look around at this open yet enclosed space divided into different areas I can see into (there are no people around) I think that perhaps I’m not supposed to change the environment in this dream.

 

I begin walking down a corridor and, looking down at my wrist, I move it around and don’t feel any discomfort or tightness. I think that when I wake up my wrist will feel just like it does here in my dream body. I turn around and start walking back the way I came. Then, standing against a wall, I recite, “I’m radiant with health, I’m radiant with health” and begin walking again.

 

I raise my hands slightly before me and visualize blue healing energy coming out of my left index finger toward the problem spot in my right wrist. I’m gratified to see it, and by how effortless it is. Then I decide to make the healing energy more direct and intense, like a laser, and it transforms into a violet shaft of solid light that darkens to a shimmering purple. I look for my tendon to make sure I’m directing the energy into the right place, and gradually begin waking up.

 

I Wrote in my Dream Journal: This morning I’ve been able to stretch and move my wrist and thumb even more freely than before just by remembering what my dream body felt like, and by visualizing the tendon as I saw it in the dream. The lucid dreams in which I direct healing energy into my arm seem akin to the electrical stimulation and ultrasound treatment I received at the chiropractor before doing physical therapy exercises. I’m concentrating on my thumb’s mobility now and on opening my hand fully, as I haven’t been able to do in weeks.

 

After each lucid healing dream, the flexibility and the strength of my injured tendon markedly improved. The area where my thumb meets my wrist is still a bit stiff and tender, my tendon isn’t one-hundred percent healed, but after only the first dream, I was able to remove the protective brace, and I haven’t needed to wear it since.

 

I appear to have reduced the inflammation in a lucid dreaming equivalent of cortisone shots. Each time after I woke up, I moved and stretched my thumb and wrist in ways I couldn’t before, and I repeated these exercises several times during the day, feeling I was helping align my physical body with my dream body so that its healing energy could be more effectively absorbed.

 

At first I was disappointed I couldn’t just wave a magic dream wand and completely heal myself overnight, but the process itself is so fascinating, my tendonitis now feels like a mysterious gift I’m still unwrapping. I’m discovering that if I strive to live as lucidly as possible, this spiritual practice carries over into sleep and enables me to become conscious in my dreams more often, especially if I’m passionate about accomplishing something.

 

For me, the smallest events of everyday life feel increasingly like choreography, and the more gracefully I dance—the more positive and lucid my thoughts and responses to everything are— the more life unfolds in a beautiful, magical way, not despite problems and pain but sometimes because of them.