Welcome back our dear friend, Spiritual Medium, Intuitive, Healing Practitioner and teacher Kat B. Kat’s focus is to help guide you closer to healing, personal growth, transformation and progression.
Her work is a calling. She calls her abilities and spiritual connection a life changing and altering experience. She believes it is there for each and every one of us to explore in different ways, for different reasons. She says, “a soul was born to expand and we are here to love deeply and enjoy every moment of your life because life is precious. If all you do in life is tap into source and love, you and your life will be a great success.” Kat wants to help you remember who you really are.
Since Kat is versed in so many different ways of experiencing who you really are at that soul level, today we're going to focus on using dreaming as a spiritual tool -- and lucid dreaming in particular. What is it? How do you do it? Why should you consider it?
MORE FROM KAT B
Visit theseekingcenter.com for more from Robyn + Karen, plus mega inspo -- and the best wellness + spiritual practitioners, products and experiences on the planet!
You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter
Welcome back our dear friend, Spiritual Medium, Intuitive, Healing Practitioner and teacher Kat B. Kat’s focus is to help guide you closer to healing, personal growth, transformation and progression.
Her work is a calling. She calls her abilities and spiritual connection a life changing and altering experience. She believes it is there for each and every one of us to explore in different ways, for different reasons. She says, “a soul was born to expand and we are here to love deeply and enjoy every moment of your life because life is precious. If all you do in life is tap into source and love, you and your life will be a great success.” Kat wants to help you remember who you really are.
Since Kat is versed in so many different ways of experiencing who you really are at that soul level, today we're going to focus on using dreaming as a spiritual tool -- and lucid dreaming in particular. What is it? How do you do it? Why should you consider it?
MORE FROM KAT B
Visit theseekingcenter.com for more from Robyn + Karen, plus mega inspo -- and the best wellness + spiritual practitioners, products and experiences on the planet!
You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter
Robyn: [00:00:00]
I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.
Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.
Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com.
Welcome
back our dear friend, spiritual medium, intuitive healing practitioner and teacher Kat B. Kat's focus is to help guide you closer to healing, personal growth, transformation, and progression. Her work is a [00:01:00] calling. She calls her abilities and spiritual connection, a life changing and altering experience.
She believes it is there for each and every one of us to explore in different ways. For different reasons, she says, a soul was born to expand and we are here to love deeply and enjoy every moment of your life because life is precious. If all you do in life is tap into source and love, you and your life will be a great success.
Kat wants to help you remember who you really are. Since Kat is versed in so many different ways of experiencing who you really are at that soul level, today we're going to focus on using dreaming as a spiritual tool and lucid dreaming in particular. What is it? How do you do it? Why should you consider it?
There's so much to discuss. Let's get going. Hi Kat.
Kat B: how are you doing?
Karen: to see you as always.
Kat B: Lovely to see you, my darlings. So we're going to talk dreaming. Yes.
Amazing.
Robyn: Yeah, we were just saying, we all do it. and what would you say [00:02:00] you believe dreaming
is?
Kat B: Oh, that's a really good question. So I believe dreaming is a conscious state of awareness. So dreams are like the storyline, projections, images that are created in our mind when we're asleep that provide us with a kind of mental, emotional, sensory experience. And these storyboards of the mind are often very creative.
They're not limited to our in life everyday experiences. So for instance, we might not have ever piloted a plane before, but in our dreams we might find ourselves flying an aircraft talking to the, pilot next to us, having an experience and feeling as if we're taking flight. Therefore we sort of access experiences that in our make believe, if you will, that sometimes are outside of our natural frame of reference and comfort zone.
Although dream and sleep experts and neuroscientists, they don't really yet know why we dream and that, that's really important. There's lots of studies out there and they are looking at the activity of the brain and while there's many theories on [00:03:00] why dreaming is important and what dreaming is about, there is no real tangible scientific evidence yet that says definitively why we dream.
So I can give you a few examples of what possibilities could be out there as to why we dream and what dreaming is about.
we'd love to hear.
Kat B: many of us think that we're actually just processing raw emotions and memories in dreams. So it's a creative process that gives us more self knowledge and we can get deeper insight into certain situations.
I don't know about you, but I've had dreams where I've replayed certain things that have happened in life, but the replay is very different to the experience that I've had in the waking state. Or maybe I've role played somebody else's experience of the same situation and seeing it from a completely different angle.
So I think that dreams can deliver us great insights. It can allow us to evaluate things, and process, emotions. I think we can role play and rehearse. We've all heard in sports performance people who rehearse [00:04:00] and imitate in the everyday life, rehearsing that perfect goal, that perfect, opportunity to get the best score and then they found that it's given them more confidence and they've been more successful in life.
I think we do a bit of that kind of role playing in Dreams as well, where we might be rehearsing things that are coming up preparing in our dreams. We're also accessing kind of fears and our shadow side. So often we get presented, nightmares or kind of triggers get presented back to us in the dream state.
So maybe we're processing some of those shadow experiences where we haven't had the confidence or the ability for whatever reason to or perform that role in the physical awaking state, but in the dream state we're able to access and process those emotions or get closure in some way.
So I think there's a lot of important things, it seems to rebalance energy. We seem to also attune our conscious awareness and our sleep process thoughts, , some of the dreams are so [00:05:00] vivid that we actually trigger physiological experiences. For instance, if we dream very passionately about making love to somebody, or that we've fallen in love with somebody, we may actually trigger the release of the hormone oxytocin, which is the love hormone.
So there are theories as well that maybe the dream state is used for rebalancing more than just the mind and the brain activity and allowing us to experience different frequencies of brain activity and dream states, because we know that we move through different brain waves as well in the sleep state at times. I think that we can't rule out that dreams change our vibration, that they help center ourselves, rebalance us. And I think that they're there to support good health, vitality, and encourage us to a greater sense of awareness. And that's Dreaming from a Western philosophy, but in the Eastern philosophy, dreams have been very important for many years and they were often used as a community exercise where people would, you weren't allowed in some shamanic practices to even come to the table for [00:06:00] breakfast if you didn't have your dream from the night before the discussion in the morning.
And dreams in different cultures take on different roles. They're not seen as the primitive sort of activity that we sometimes view them as in the West. They're actually seen as very important, valuable pieces of information that when shared can actually broaden our understanding and limit ourselves and bring us to a different level of vibration or understanding that could maybe support the survival of a community or the culture of a community even.
So it is really interesting how dreaming evolves in different cultures and different places in the world to have a sort of a different level of emphasis if you will. So that's my view on dreaming, I think dreaming is very normal. We all do it. Not all of us recall dreams, and that's why it's good to relearn skills and talk about dreaming a little bit more.
As children, we're very open. We tend to shut down or recollect less we get older, perhaps. But different people have different experiences. Some [00:07:00] people remember all their dreams. Some people remember none of them. And there are different reasons for why that is. yeah, that's
Robyn: one of the questions we have for you because we talk about this all the time.
We don't actually remember our dreams most of the time. And when we are purposeful and set the intention to remember it, we can, but then , what we find is you have to jot it down really quickly because most of the time you don't remember it after honestly, maybe like 15, 20 seconds.
Kat B: Yeah, it's so true, isn't it?
So true. Actually, it's really interesting. As a child, I used to dream, frequently and recall dreams very easily. As an adult, I found it really hard. And actually, I think it was about seven or eight years ago that I started exploring dreaming and lucid dreaming in particular. at that stage I wasn't recalling any dreams whatsoever so I just want to say to any of the listeners out there If you're not recalling dreams don't write off lucid dreaming or any other type form of dreaming because there's many different varieties of [00:08:00] dreaming because you can build up and it is skill that you can learn and you can practice and you can develop in order to get that recall.
But basically the reason we believe that some people recall more than others is that it's related to brain, function. So basically, the studies show that people who dream regularly and recall it have more activity in the central posterior of the brain called the temporal parietal junction of the brain.
So This area causes people to react more to noises and disturbance in sleep, which then makes the dreamer, if you will, wake up or recall more of the information from the sort of REM states or the dream states that they get moving through. They recall more and they bring more into conscious awareness.
In lucid dreaming, it's slightly different in that the area of the brain that's activated that is normally dormant is the frontal cortex of the brain at the front of their head. That's what an area of the brain that we associate with waking life. And what happens with lucid [00:09:00] dreaming is that both the sleeping states of the brain and the waking states of the frontal cortex are illuminated, basically, so they're active.
So you're actually. actively awake in your dream state. And so that's slightly different, so we see that these dream states are very corresponding and coinciding with brain waves and brain frequencies and brain function. And there's definitely a link to why some people recall it.
In terms of training people to recall dreams when we practice recalling them, so you're saying, you have to write them down really quickly. It might even just. Be that you only recall the mood that you were in, or the last word that you said, or one idea. And it's almost what I'd say to people is don't lose heart, just write down and recall what you have got.
Even if that is just an emotion. What happens is, as soon as we start to function and recall the dreams, we start to remember more. And the more [00:10:00] patient we are with the process, so we want a little notebook or a dream journal and we want to write things down. We might want to record it on our phone or the iPad or the digital device that you keep near your bedroom, whatever's easier for you.
can get some really good apps now that record dreams, but you want to get it written down as quickly as you can. And in order to get lucid, you have to patient with yourself. You need to really experiencing the memory of at least two dreams before you're going to get.
the sort of lucidity that you want, and that can take a bit of patience. you're actively working it very hard, you could probably achieve it within about three to four weeks. If you're just dipping in and out of it, it's going to take longer. So I say to people, even if you're not recalling anything at the moment, don't lose heart.
You can work at building that memory in that kind of scale, if you will.
Karen: Is it a meditative process that you
use in order to get into sleep state?
Robyn: And can you talk about what lucid dreaming actually is?
Kat B: There's lots of different techniques to getting lucid. So we've talked about the dream [00:11:00] state that we all experience. Lucid dreaming is a state of conscious awareness in which As I explained, the frontal cortex is illuminated at the same time as the other areas of the brain that are illuminated during sleep. And so we become effectively awake in our sleep state, which means that the dreams that we're having feel very lifelike.
They feel very vibrant. They have a different level of detail in them. If you were walking on a beach in your lucid dream, you might actually feel the grains of sand under your feet or the stone that's in that sand. You might actually be able to smell the salt of the air.
It would feel as if you were absolutely awake. And that's what's so almost a bit magical or interesting about the state. It feels very vibrant, very different. It's very alive. And you can interact in your dream state. We set the intention that we want to observe really what's happening in the dream first.
We don't want to just be the person that rewrites the whole dream, we want to learn from the dream. So we can explore in that state different [00:12:00] locations, kind of question why we're there, have experiences where we can interact with the dream, if you will. And here, that could take any kind of form.
It could be a conversation with your shadow self or embracing your shadow self to dissolve the fear that you have. It could be that you have a very sort of profound experience. I remember in one of my lucid dreams, I was, suddenly found myself in France and I was walking through, one of the things that happens in lucid dreaming is that you can walk through walls or put your hand through things that limit us in the physical world with our physical body on.
in that reality. So there are certain things, I was walking through walls in this house and it was a massive stately home, and I was dressed as a bride. I was like, this is really strange, but I couldn't find anybody in any of the rooms. I couldn't find any of the guests in the wedding. I couldn't find the groom in the wedding.
I just was aware of looking and then what was really interesting about the bridal dress as well, is that it was so encrusted with Sort of diamante and sequins and I could [00:13:00] see the sparkle , I could feel the weight of the stones and the weight of the dress and how beautiful and elaborate it was, but how weird it was and how irrelevant it felt in this house with nobody in it.
It was just so fascinating. So we can explore them. So what I did is start exploring around the house to see where are the people? why am I in France? Why is it on this estate? What is the relevance? Now there's something very interesting about this because this sort of happened when I was doing kind of a workshop in terms of lucid dreaming.
And I was paired with a young gentleman who was a yoga teacher the next day. And we were told to discuss and explore our dreams. This young lad then said to me when I said, oh, I was dreaming about France and being a bride, and he said, oh, I've just read some of Carl Jung's philosophy, and it was called The Bride.
You must have to look at that kind of, so we get some strange synchronicities when we pair up and discuss dreams. That was very interesting, so I went away to look at it. Now, unbeknown to me, a few months later. I ended up at the time of the dream. I didn't [00:14:00] know I was going to be doing this. I ended up going on a trip to France and I did end up going to a place very associated with The Divine Feminine and the Bride, and so it was really interesting how there seemed to be a vague relevance to this very interesting lucid dream that I explored.
So lucid dreaming is we're conscious that we're dreaming. What happens in this state is that we can hit high vibrational states of frequency as well.
So when we go into hypnosis as a clinical hypnotherapist, I can tell you that we sometimes move through beta and delta waves into theta. And if we're really fortunate and we practice meditational hypnosis frequently, we can get into those really amazing states that the monks want to get into, which are the gamma states of frequencies, which are very powerful and they're very connected, so for a medium like me, that's a really appealing kind of experience because it's going to make you more spiritual, it's going to give you a better connection, you're going to get information faster, you're in the [00:15:00] superhighway physically of consciousness.
Where information is going to travel to you quicker, is what I feel. So lucid dreaming was sexy for me in the respect that's what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to learn how to do some of my spiritual practice in my sleep. I wanted to waste less time meditating in my day state.
I wanted to be able to get lucid so that perhaps I could meditate or even talk to some of these big archetypes, like the Buddhas or the Jesus, all the archetypes of your dreams, you can bring anybody into your dream experience, have interesting philosophical conversations and change frequency.
And I also wanted to understand for, a lot of the people that have lost loved ones. Whether we could connect to our loved ones in spirit, and I found that we can.
Robyn: How would people use lucid dreaming in their everyday lives?
Kat B: It's like an interdimensional state of reality, where you're very much in your own consciousness, you're working with your mind, you're working with your brain, but you're perhaps changing frequencies, and these frequencies have benefits to health and being, as I've said.
It's almost like being [00:16:00] in a gym, isn't it?
You're building your muscle and you've primed your body and your mind and your brain there to access information quicker. And I suppose that's connected to what we call neuroplasticity in the brain, which is where the brain can be rewired through different processes.
So that's another thing that lucid dreaming can do is that it can rewire ways of thinking. So for somebody who's very anxious. Or been struggling maybe with an addiction they could get lucid in a dream and maybe, I'm no longer addicted to nicotine or I'm now, addiction free or you might explore a phobia that you've got maybe if you're frightened of snakes or something you befriend the snakes in your dreams.
you can change your brainwaves and your sort of processing so that you're rewiring the brain to make you less phobic, if you will, of certain situations or more comfortable in certain situations or to, rise above. Addictions and other things. So there's [00:17:00] lots of things that you can play with that can be quite interesting, but my own reasons for wanting to lucid dream were really to save time and to hit some of these higher level frequencies.
Other people explore them to explore the soul and consciousness. Some people want to make connection with loved ones, self, others get to know themselves better consciously connect to different levels of energy or different archetypes, whether that's angels, guides, helpers to gain access to more knowledge or information.
Some people just want to learn and gain self knowledge about themselves transform fears, the shadow self, and have a look at maybe why they feel those fears, where they originate from, and how they can rise above them. Some people want to rehearse, like the sports people, rehearsing, imagine that you're doing your exercises in your sleep or you're rehearsing in your sleep, we've actually found that there's a lot of research that sort of indicates that people who role rehearse, whether that's in the waking state through daydreams [00:18:00] of the mind or in the lucid state can actually build up physical muscle density and actually get a certain percentage of physical and physiological change as well.
So there's an argument that the brain doesn't know the difference between the real and the imagined and so these states of awareness are very powerful, transformative experiences that can actually change psychological and physical changes in the mind, brain and the body and the way that the brain maps certain neural pathways as well.
So it can change fears, addictions and all those kind of things. It can also give you if one of the Buddhist. things is that it can give you a sense of humor. It can make things lighter. So some of the things that you take so seriously in life and that you worry about. Suddenly you see a, I don't know, say if you fear there is a fear of snake and you suddenly see this Medusa running to you, but she's dressed as a clown and she's got crazy clothes on and, or maybe you want to make her [00:19:00] more interesting and funny and take the fear.
away for yourself, you suddenly can find yourself or adopt a sense of humor. You find that the things that you're frightened of are perhaps not the way that you perceive them to be. And you can find fun and amusement, through having these experiences. It can also allow you to access experiences that perhaps you'd never have in life.
You might have a film star or an idol that you've always wanted to meet. You might have even wanted to hug them or kiss them in your sleep. You can go up to them and talk to them and have those kind of experiences as well. So some people use the lucid state for exploration, for fun, the people that enjoy some of these more psychedelic experiences, perhaps they want something very different from lucid dreaming.
Perhaps they want to have a cosmic escape, and just an experience of the cosmos that we don't have in our waking state, and to really find out what is accessible, and what more is available to us in consciousness. I think there's many reasons [00:20:00] why people might want to explore lucid dreaming. I think they're different for every person
I'm always interested in things that we carry around with us, the voice, for instance, and how we use sound with a voice and how that can change brainwaves. , dreaming is very accessible to all of us. We don't need a computer or any software or anything, we don't have to buy anything.
All we need is a notebook and our own consciousness and mind to explore our consciousness and get to know ourselves that little bit better. So there's certainly nothing harmful about lucid dreaming or dreaming. It can be a very beautiful experience. What I've also found as a medium. Is that sometimes the spirit world, when I practice or lean into lucid dreaming, and I do want to say, there is a variance between lucid dreaming and leaning into it.
If you're practicing all the time, you're going to get better at it. It's like a muscle at the gym. And it's a bit like when you're at the gym and you stop going for a few months, it's hard to get back into it. It will ebb and flow with the amount of effort that you put in.
Robyn: how has lucid dreaming [00:21:00] helped you in your life being a spiritual medium and intuitive?
Kat B:
What I would say is that the spiritual experiences in terms of being a medium is that what I found is if there's an emergency in the spirit world, need to get something important across to me, they will access my dream state just before I awake.
And so for instance, I'll give you an example. There was a gentleman in South Africa who was coming for a reading. He was very skeptical. He'd had a very traumatic experience. His father had actually been murdered. In a house attacker robbery and his mother had been seriously injured in that attack and His mum survived he'd taken, maybe 10, 15 years
To find somebody like myself and be willing to put himself in front. of a medium to see what would happen. It
was
so important to the spirit world, I feel, that he got good reading that the morning of his reading suddenly I became very lucid and I was aware that I was on [00:22:00] a farmland In Africa and this gentleman was coming from the UK.
So I didn't have an awareness that there was a connection necessarily to Africa, but suddenly I was on the plains of Africa on this property. became very aware that there was an attack or a robbery and I felt that the people were coming through the roof. I almost adopted one of the characters in that real situation within the dream to see things from their perspective.
And the one thing that really was poignant to me is I was aware that there was a knife attack. and again I think the spirit world would help me if I'd have experienced it maybe without the rehearsal. From the dream state I might have been quite traumatized myself, I am human at the end of the day, and when I'm working through some of the things that happen in human life are very shocking.
And so I think as well they were preparing me so that I wouldn't. be so shocked and I wouldn't react, I'd be able to come from a place of compassion and loving holding space and it was very useful to me. It meant that the reading was much more [00:23:00] successful and went very well very quickly because I was able to get to the finite detail by saying, look, I know that I need to tell you about this lucid dream that I've had this morning.
And maybe that as well made it a little bit safer for the person, because if the information had been incorrect, they would have said something to me. But I said, look, I feel that this is very connected to your reading today. I'm profoundly grateful for the experience, but I want to tell you about it because I think it's so Cognitively linked, and I explained what I'd experienced in the dream and it fitted perfectly like a glove.
And so I find that for me as a medium, the, this lucid state or practicing with dreams can be Very poignant and help me and make me feel more comfortable, but also help the clients sometimes. It doesn't happen very frequently and it tends to be connected to trauma situations, I'll be really honest. They don't just willy nilly wake me up and give me these kind of experiences, but in that dream I could move through and [00:24:00] look at things from different angles and experience kind of the fears and the sort of explore the house and the location and kind of get curious about things without necessarily, knowing it's a dream.
So there's something safe, isn't it? It's just a dream. It's not reality. So I find the dream state fascinating. explore loads, I've been working with it. Closely for seven years, but, and I say that I've got a good level of knowledge about it, but there's still more to find out.
Robyn: Whenever I was telling people we were going to be having this conversation. think of lucid dreaming, they also think of the opportunity to control their actions in the dream.
Kat B: Yeah. So for instance, if you found yourself suddenly on a beach, you could.
Click your fingers and say, turn that beach into the bluest, greenest, the most amazing sea that you've ever seen, the most tropical, beautiful, whatever beauty looks like to you. Oh, just give me that greeny blue sea and give me that cocktail and that really nice lounger or whatever, and [00:25:00] you could explore different things and place things into your dreams and so you can have an adventure you can explore in that way.
We tend to say what you don't want to do because you want to learn from your dream. If you control your dream, and I mean there are reasons when controlling your dream is a really positive thing I'll come to that in a moment but if you're wanting to learn from your dream and use it spiritually.
You might want to change certain things or explore things within it, but keep the dream framework as it's been presented to you because you want to understand the context that the consciousness is trying to share with you of its universal message, its thought process, its ideas. To give you the different perspective, so I think sometimes it's good to allow things to unfold in the lucid state and not try to control everything.
But you could certainly play with it. You can, change my outfit to green. give me the, full on Versace or Dior moment that I've always dreamed of, or, have some fun with it. Absolutely. There are [00:26:00] times when controlling the dream can be really important or exciting in a way that so for instance, if you have got a fear and you're scared of something, embracing that fear, hugging it sending love to it allowing yourself to get comfortable with something that can be a really beautiful thing. And if you wanted to, if you didn't feel comfortable, you could cage it off and do whatever you needed to do, but you could change the scenery like that. It's almost like , if you had a phobia in and it was too much or too powerful experience,
you transport yourself to, okay, take me to the swim pool, I want to lay on the lounger and relax for a while. And then you might want to go back and re look at the fear again later down the line, or in another dream, or another day. Because we don't have to resolve our issues all in one moment, and we never do that really in life, do we?
Exploring and controlling the dreams really fun but you do want the wisdom to also be presented to you, you don't want to rule out why that consciousness has taken you to that image or that idea, it's like the building in France There was a [00:27:00] clear reason why that building in France was important and that bridal connection was important.
Robyn: another question I have is. Do you know you are dreaming, or do you
Kat B: confuse your life? Oh yeah, lucid dreaming is being consciously aware that you are dreaming.
if
Karen: you can address that, because I keep
playing with the question in my head for somebody who feels that their dreams control them versus I control my dream You know, I just feel like I'm being swept into it.
Is it an intention that you set before you fall asleep? Like how do you actually,
Kat B: Oh, many different ways. And
Robyn: how do you lose a dream?
Kat B: there's many different techniques. But one of them is to set up a dream sign. So in your waking state, you do something.
So . For instance, in real life, I might say every time I walk through a doorway, am I dreaming, or I might use a hand signal, am I dreaming? And it sounds really weird.
Why would somebody do this in their state? What you're doing is you're programming your mind to repeat something because we process memory in our dream state. So after doing this for [00:28:00] maybe 23 days which is the period in which have behavior changes hypnotically. And when we rehearse something, we can change a behavior within 23 days of doing the different behavior, basically.
And so the theory is that the more we practice, oh, am I dreaming? eventually our hand will appear in the dream state. And we might hear ourselves going, Am I dreaming? Because we're repeating what we did in reality. But in the dream state, hands do very different things. They might spiral off into rainbows of colours.
You might be able to put your hand through them. And so suddenly you realise, Oh, it's not a physical hand I'm experiencing. It's a dream hand! I'm dreaming and suddenly bingo you're awake in your dream state and now It's almost like you've gone into virtual reality You're in minecraft And you're looking around at all the things this dreamscape has got to offer and just like minecraft You can build your own house.
You can throw things in there. You can just explore and get very creative,[00:29:00] so it can really get the creative juices flowing, you can rehearse certain things, you can explore, you can have adventures, you can go to places you've always dreamed of going but you've never had the opportunity to be, and like I said you could talk to archetypes that you've always wanted to meet and ask for their opinions or have experiences.
had some funny experiences as well where the dream talks back Consciousness talks back to you and then suddenly I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm having a proper conversation with my, which must be my own consciousness in my dream state, but it's answering me and It's telling me information that I don't know and then I'm able to leave the dream state and check it out online and find out that the information is true.
So can get some very interesting sort of validations or information through the dream state, but , there's lots of different techniques that can get you lucid. Once you practice it enough, you can go from lucid dreaming into out of body experiences, which is called the astral state.
I'd say that's a choice, and most people don't. Most people stay in the [00:30:00] lucid dream, but you can use it as a bridge to getting to the astral planes. Some people do it automatically and have that experience. And I think those kind of things It happens when somebody is consciously at the level and ready for that process to naturally happen and they're prepared for it.
So I don't want anyone to think that they suddenly go lucid and they're going to go out of body and they're going to be scared because they're not going to be able to control it. You're in control of everything. like Karen says, you can control it. You can just literally go, wake me up and suddenly wake up.
Yeah, it's a very real state of awareness. I'm
Karen: excited, , because I have a reoccurring dream almost every night.
Robyn: Really?
Karen: Yes.
What is it?
There is a theme. And Robyn will know what this is
Robyn: I'm always losing my phone, always, no matter what is going on in the dream,
Kat B: being scared of being out of control because all my data and information is on the phone, and that the
Karen: phone controls me and my life and then the other one that you'll laugh is that I'm always on my last day of vacation and I haven't had a chance to go to the beach yet.
[00:31:00] And when I do get down to the beach, it's the very end of the day and it starts raining.
Kat B: You don't get the experience. So in that instant, you could be on the beach and go, give me sunshine and suddenly sunshine would appear. You can enter into the dream and say, present me my phone. Yeah.
Karen: And so for people who are listening, I'm just trying to think cause I would really love to experiment with this, but I always feel like I don't have that control. But if I can talk to my phone, which I have in my hand all the time and do that exercise okay, phone, am I dreaming
That's a really good way for me to condition myself. So when I get into that dream state, I can process it
Kat B: fear of losing the phone and losing all your knowledge and your information that's held on that, there's lots of things you could play with that. You could literally.
Return my phone to me. So you're changing the fear because you're starting to realize that you're in control and you haven't lost your phone. You could say, give me all the data or information in my conscious state that is controlled on that phone. So you could play with all sorts of things.
So actually the [00:32:00] phone isn't a symbol of holding all the knowledge. You hold all the knowledge. So there's lots of things you could explore. What would be useful in that scenario, Karen, is to think of the endings that you want to have, or the experience that you want to change, because clearly it's linked to a fear of losing control, or losing knowledge, or losing accessibility to information.
And so you could explore different endings of you could ask your consciousness how to overcome the fear or change the endings to happy endings, if you will, solutions that, so you wake up feeling very calm, relaxed, and that phobia that you're building up of what happens if I haven't got the phone suddenly starts to dissolve.
I think
Robyn: a lot of people have, if they do have a dream, very often have a reoccurring kind of thing. I think that's your brain's way of trying to process over and over.
Kat B: Not so much in lucid dreaming, but I've had in past life exploration, really interesting ones of people coming to me with repeat dreams.
I remember there was a lady who [00:33:00] constantly kept telling me I'm on a prairie estate. I'm a African lady there's a white wooden house, there's a patio there, I'm sat rocking on this chair, and every night, I have no idea why I go to this image of me, rocking on this rocker, but every night, I go into that experience, and, you can go into hypnosis, and let's go into that hypnosis, just like you can in lucidity, and explore that memory, what is it that your conscious mind's trying to tell you, and do you want to change the experience, and sometimes we've either maybe not file something in the storage file of the mind properly, or there's something unresolved from maybe another incarnation or an experience.
And this is the portrayal in the mind or the imagination of that moment. And sometimes by revisiting it and experiencing that energy, we release it. And what I frequently find is people that come with repetitive dreams don't have the same repetitive dream again. Once they've looked at it or [00:34:00] experienced it.
And I think the same is similar with lucid dreaming, that the exposure dissolves or drains, it almost takes the energy out of it or the power out of it.
Robyn: you brought up hypnotherapy. , and I know from my own experiences with hypnotherapy for various reasons, I very much remember those experiences, they're very tangible to me, feel very real to me. Would you say that lucid dreaming is similar in that sense,
Kat B: Yeah, absolutely. The hairs can stand up in your hand. You can feel the temperature changes. You recall, because you've built up that recollection, the dream and the information. So I think it's really fascinating to explore. And I think it makes you feel different. In the Buddhist belief system, my understanding is, and there might be people that have got more knowledge than me out there, but my understanding is that the Buddhists used to use it for the bardo state.
So the bardo state is thought to be this in between state between life and death. And if you could overcome the bardo, you wouldn't take rebirth. [00:35:00] You'd be able to go to a higher level of awareness in a different conscious state. And so they practice getting lucid to dissolve all karmic energy and kind of re look at all fears and do amazing work, but also some of the masters use it to help other people bring their energy up and higher.
In terms of groups or resolutions , help people with their fears or they're in a shadow side. But the idea is that if you can get lucid you then got the practice ready for getting lucid in this transition between life and death. So that you can rise or experience more or have more conscious awareness of what's going on so that you can make conscious choice.
as opposed to your soul electing for certain things. So there's some really interesting thought processes around why people would want to lucid a dream. But my understanding at its highest level is it's a form of ascension. It's a transformation and transcendence, I'm
Karen: glad you asked that question, Robyn, because I was thinking
the same thing.
It's
probably activating those [00:36:00] two parts of the brain in the same way
Kat B: It's almost like you're in two states of an awareness at once.
Karen: Yeah.
Robyn: And actually my other question related to that is, do you wake up tired?
Kat B: Very rarely. It depends on how you're doing it.
I've been on dream camps or I've done workshops where I have felt tired. But normally when you're practicing lucid dreaming, you get more sleep. And actually is a myth of lucid dreaming, that you wake up tired and feeling grotty and all those kind of things. Because actually, It occurs in the REM state of the dream state, you are deep in sleep, you may be done six hours of good sleep, and you've got all the rest that you need, and you're actually lucid for maybe the last couple of hours of your sleep, or maybe you even sleep longer, maybe you wake up six hours into your sleep, write down your lucid dream, go back to sleep, lucid dream, write it down, go back to sleep, depending on how you're practicing it.
So you very rarely wake up tired. You actually have had a full night's sleep. So I think that's one of the myths.
Robyn: Yeah, that was one of the things that I thought , because you are so active.
Kat B: [00:37:00] Yeah. It's no, you can wake up from normal sleep state, can't you?
Robyn: Totally, that's right.
Kat B: And you can be tired.
right. So I think that can happen when you've been lucid dreaming, but I don't think it's any different than a normal night. . Other people might say differently, but my own experience is that you're not tired.
Robyn: And to me also just from this whole conversation, so much of it is tied to the feeling, So it's similar, to what I was just bringing up with hypnotherapy. There's a feeling that's tied. That's so tangible. That's really the word I can use. And so it feels like that with lucid dreaming as well.
Kat B: , I guess what you're doing is you're going into the same conscious awareness, aren't you?
In hypnosis, you're closing down the critical mind , which is at the frontal cortex to access the subconscious mind and to have more fluidity of thought so that you don't limit and you're able to unlimit.
And, in the lucid state, you've got the frontal cortex is activated at the same time as the other areas, the sleep state in the brain. So I imagine that there may be a [00:38:00] similarity in terms of neuroplasticity of the brain and being able to rewire the brain in these processes, but maybe the delivery of how you get to that point is different.
Yeah. The mechanics of how you get there is different. I've never really thought about that question, actually, to be honest, before. That's really interesting. it must be different mechanics, but it gives a similar outcome in that you can change the way that you perceive the world or you look at the world through the experiences that you have in both.
So somebody that has a fear of spiders could explore the fear of spider through what we call a subscale in hypnosis of desensitization to the fear, but actually you would probably desensitize yourself quicker in the lucid stage. So whether it's making those spiders really friendly or finding yourself being able to hold them and not have the fear and imagining what that would be like.
So imagination is really powerful. It transforms the way that we perceive world. And I think. We do limit and we do put blocks up depending on certain [00:39:00] experiences and in these states of awareness those walls get dissolved or broken down. And I think that's the joy of these experiences.
But yeah, they can definitely be cosmic as well. So the people that want to control their dreams and have all these wonderful experiences, they can. And that's the whole thing of dreaming is you can have fun with it. And you can explore it. But what I will say is that if you're dancing and having joyous experiences in your dreams, as opposed to heavier emotions you're gonna wake up because the dream state bleeds into the reality of your day.
So imagine waking up, you've been dancing and partying and having a great time. You've hugged all your friends you haven't seen for ages. You've woken up feeling like, oh my god, I've had the best night of my life. And you wake up the next morning and you've still got that aura and that feeling and You've probably triggered those hormones, the extra serotonin levels, the oxytocin, and all the endorphins, the pain relief in the body, and you feel great.
I did hear a story of a [00:40:00] woman that in the dream state, I think she was on stage four cancer, if I'm right. And she had this dream she just remembered it was about smiling
she came out of the dream feeling like. she'd had a real lucid experience of a visualization where she just felt complete joy and she was a bit confused as why do I feel such joy when I've got stage four cancer and I'm dying and she went to a dream expert who said to her keep recalling in meditation That vibrational state and it actually cured her illness started to dissolve and she started to go into remission.
And my understanding is from the documentary that I watched is that she actually did cure herself. So there may be a link between the mind, the body and the soul. That if we do a bit more research and we learn a bit more could have. bigger implications. I know that some people are looking at how lucid dreaming can dissolve trauma and having very good results with it.
Somebody who's come back from Afghanistan and being affected perhaps by war and or [00:41:00] having nightmare trauma could maybe go to one of the dream experts and learn how to lose the dream so that they can change or transform the energy of their dreams and realize that they're dreaming and that they're not reliving the same thing as a reality every night.
Imagine that. It must be hard. So yeah, there is some amazing work and research going on. And I think as it continues and we get to learn more, perhaps we'll understand what some of those triggers are. I certainly don't have all the answers. I've just been playing with this and exploring it myself, but I think it's out there.
I think it's got a lot of potential.
Karen: I love the idea of it because I think of how many
hours that you sleep. Yeah. You sleep so much of your lifetime that you being able to utilize that time for something I
Kat B: think the actual thing is sleep a third of our lives, so imagine how, if we utilize that time more effectively, how much more we'd get out of life.
So yeah definitely
Robyn: know you said that was one of the reasons that it was attractive to
Kat B: you. Yeah, so I meditate when I lean into it, I will [00:42:00] meditate in my lucid state. I will imagine myself sitting in the room or the place that I find myself in the dream state, meditating, and I explore what comes up in that session.
But I wake up. Feeling more than like I've slept actually the whole night, I actually wake up buzzing and I've probably accessed, I don't know, I have never been wired up to a computer to see, but I bet you I've accessed sort of different levels of frequency of vibration, but I find it really interesting.
Yeah, it's a magnificent tool and it's something to play with. I don't use it all the time, I lean in and out of it and Sometimes I get into the routine of it, I do really well. Sometimes I fall out of it and I'm like, oh, I haven't done it for a while. I should get back to practice. Some people are very disciplined and do it consistently. I'm not, sadly, one of those people. but I do enjoy it when I, especially if I have a heavy workload and then I will lean into it and you know, a poignant time of year when there's a lot of high emotions, it's very useful to get in those extra hours of zen.
It's through the dream state. It's powerful.
Karen: And again, I think [00:43:00] for people who might feel like their dreams don't make any sense to them, if
Kat B: they remember them. Yeah. Write them down. Because look, when you discuss them, you often find that other people have got different perceptions on your conscious experience and it can really enhance it.
And you can. end up learning so much about yourself or the experiences that you find yourself in. And it can be a very creative way to build community as well because it's lovely to have a discussion group and there's something magical about dreams. I think there's something magical about the creative energy and force around this.
And it's relatively harmless, isn't it? you can discuss all sorts of things because it's the dream state, not reality.
Robyn: and we all do it. It's this is something every single human being does.
Kat B: Yeah,
Karen: Even if they don't remember they're doing it.
And I think yourself to try to remember and really learn what is going on in your subconscious and in those dreams while you're sleeping, then you might sleep better.
Kat B: Yeah. Absolutely. You want to see
Robyn: the patterns, [00:44:00] right?
Kat B: Imagine if you're processing all your anxieties and everything and for the person who's got insomnia of actually using it to go in and out of sleep, it's very interesting.
Yeah. So if someone wanted to start today. Yeah, loads of resources online and loads of online workshops and books out there and some really good films as well. So definitely get online. I've got a workshop on the 3rd of February that I'm teaching on lucid dreaming. So teaching the induction techniques and a bit of the history behind it and how it came about and stuff.
So that you can learn different techniques and things that you can do to get lucid and to start practicing. But the key is really get a notebook. Start recalling your dreams, first of all, and once you've got to a state of recalling one or two dreams, then learning about dream signs and how to activate those in your dreaming, then you can awaken in your dream state and start exploring.
But I think it's useful to go on a workshop or kind of do a course out there. with somebody that's had experience of [00:45:00] lucid dreaming themselves because it'll take all your fears away and eradicate all the myths but it also teach you different techniques that you can use and things that you can do to have fun really so Yeah
Robyn: And so for people who might be interested in signing up for your workshop,
Kat B: Yeah, if they just send me through the contact, just say lucid dreaming that they want the information, then I will send them the information for the February workshop. But yeah, otherwise. Have a look online, see who's available in your local area, maybe there's a dream circle going on in your local area or camp, get involved and explore.
But you're definitely welcome to come see me if you want to and do a workshop with me, I'd love to see you and talk dreaming. We've learned
Robyn: so much today. And we dispelled myths about lucid dreaming too, which is incredible. Kat, you have so much knowledge and wisdom within
Kat B: you.
It comes from the questions that I get asked. I'm one of these people that, one thing that's very poignant to a lot of my clients is they want to have dream experience or vivid dreams [00:46:00] where they can meet their loved ones in the spirit world. And, we want to be able to give them opportunities where they don't need to come to somebody like myself as a medium, that they can have direct experiences.
And these things that I've explored, they come from people questioning me. How can I experience this? How can I get better at that? And I think, do you know what? I love learning. 101 courses. I learn all these things. I read and study loads of books. I listen to podcasts. And then I start experimenting and trying them out myself.
And then once I've got a certain level of knowledge, then I want to share that knowledge. Because the more of us, that have these experiences, I change my vibration, you change yours, we all start rising up in consciousness together. so connection, unity, all these things are explored when we come together and we share information, aren't they?
And that's probably what your podcast about and doing for so many people. It's bringing subject matters that perhaps they've never even heard of or thought. that's interesting, but why would I want to do that?
Robyn: Exactly. [00:47:00] that is the goal really. As soon as we learn something, we want to share it. And it's all with that intention of raising the vibration and raising consciousness. Because that will change the world.
Kat B: Absolutely.
Robyn: So to book a session with Kat, or find out more about all of her offerings, visit kat b. com and we'll also be doing a lot of work with Kat in 2024 and beyond on theseekingcenter.
com so be on the lookout for those announcements as well. Kat, we love you.
Kat B: Thank you, Kat. It's been lovely to see you guys. Have a brilliant day. I'm gonna go to bed tonight
Robyn: talking to my phone and I'm dreaming. That's how I'm going to get started.
Kat B: I'm going to set the intention to find your phone for you.
Robyn: I'm going to join you in that dream. Come on, Kat, you and I.