An adaptive flux weakening method for wide speed range operation of switched reluctance motors (SRM) is proposed in this paper. This method is based on SRM control in the dq rotating reference frame. This dq control of SRM mimics the control of synchronous machines (SM) by looking at the torque per phase as the product of sinusoidal inductance related term and current related terms. Hence, flux weakening can be applied using the dq control method to SRM for providing flux weakening. The proposed adaptive control method uses the commanded and actual currents to adaptively determine the required amount of flux weakening. Through the unique features of dq controls, the proposed method increases the average torque production supporting a wide speed range of operation for SRMs. The proposed control method is verified through simulations and hardware experiments.