Hello, beautiful Loco Love community, 

I am Brooke Skinner, the owner and founder of The Ritual. I am so honoured to be sharing some insights into the world of Esotericism alongside our monthly New Moon Reports.

Did you know that we spend around six years of our lives dreaming? And we are all well aware of how important sleep is. There is new information coming out every week about how to improve our sleep and how as technology advances, so does sleep deprivation and the rise of sleeping disorders. It is a fast-paced world, and our brains have not had enough adequate time to adapt to the advancements we see today. We can easily find blue blocker glasses, filters for your screens to sleep tonics, and of course, herbal infused chocolates, but what we don't often know is the deep relaxation and restoration we can get from the practice of lucid dreaming or, as I personally call it Psychic Sleep (a guided relaxation / lucid dreaming journey).

It is one of my most favourite practices and powerful ways to return home to myself, check in with my subconscious and release built-up tension and stress. As a mother of three very energetic girls and juggling running a business, it also gifts me the most exquisite recharge when sleep is just not an option (like that 2-4 pm daily slump).

From as little as 30 minutes of practice, we can experience the same result we would get from a 5-hour deep sleep; how and why? Because when we allow our nervous system to completely settle by placing our awareness on areas around the body and the gentle, subtle sounds around us, we are practising mindfulness and begin to bend reality by fusing our conscious and subconscious minds. You allow yourself to be taken away from all the distractions, the inner and outer noise and enter the dream world, the world of cosmic dreaming, the realm of expansion. When we merge the conscious with the subconscious, we can turn our thoughts into things, and our dreams can become a reality. Our dreams become our reality because we are not imprinting them with negativity, bias or our reactive states, we are connecting with them in this dream-like state of not being asleep but not being awake either, the place of in-between, the place of union and infinite possibilities.

The basic definition of lucid dreaming is being aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. There are many practices and versions of lucid dreaming, some more effective than others, but mostly they have the same intention. No matter what type of variation of lucid dreaming, they all place you in the driver's seat of your dreams, where you can shift the narrative, the direction of your vision with thought alone.

Through my teachings and offerings guiding Psychic Sleep practice for over ten years, I have supported my own healing journey from PTSD and Anxiety and seen thousands of others see such positive, long-lasting effects too. The practice of lucid dreaming will deepen your connection with yourself. It also naturally increases your intuition and sensitivities to the energetic realm. It is a state of awareness to reprogram your psyche and create an intention, a heart's desire you wish to summon.

For over 15 years, I have been fascinated with the brain- our neurobiology of how and why we do the things we do. It started to understand my own complex trauma further and spiralled into years and years of studies and research. When I was living in the UK, I was fortunate enough to watch live active brain scans on participants who were in lucid dreaming states. Watching the brain waves move and seeing the more active parts and increased cerebral flow was fascinating. The most activity we saw was in the brain's prefrontal cortex (the same as when you are awake), which is why lucid dreaming is often referred to as a "hybrid sleep-wake state." It also showed lucid dreaming happens when the dreamer is in an active state of REM (rapid eye movement) - the last phase of deep sleep.

So when someone asks me, do I believe in magick, I say, of course, do you believe in the power of your mind because that is where it resides. There are these deep cosmic connections within everything that we do, including dreaming. Through this connection with our subconscious, we are dancing with our innate wisdom and empowering ourselves through knowing how vast and incredible the human body is. When we use our intention with awareness in a deeply relaxed state, we are no longer defined by what is out of our control, and we are no longer held hostage by what is outside of ourselves.

Take the time regularly to connect with yourself in this way, whether on the full moon, each week, each evening or now and then - be your own alchemist and transmute coal into diamonds because you are the designer of your own life. You get to choose what chapter is next, use the most intelligent system we have, the mind, to take you to places that a profound and untouched by anyone else. Connect with your mystery and the magick that runs through your veins.

"For to dream is to awaken and to awaken in the dream is to be the visionary of your own reality" - Brooke.

Happy dreaming, alchemists!

So much love,

Brooke x