lucid dreaming Archives

The Basics: What Is Lucid Dreaming?

While we will go into a short description of the science of lucid dreaming in this article, you can also check out our more in-depth piece on the subject here. If you are really interested in mastering the art we recommend checking out both.

Lucid dreaming, in a nutshell, refers to the sensation of being able to control your dreams. More precisely, the National Sleep Foundation defines it as, “extremely vivid reveries where the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming.” The key is that the person has an awareness that what they are experiencing is a dream, though they retain agency to control their actions and thoughts inside of that world.

The science of why this happens is still murky, to be sure. Our most vivid dreams take place during the REM stage of the sleep cycle, which is characterized by intense brain activity and body paralysis. Lucid dreaming occurs during this stage as well—though studies indicate that human brain activity during a lucid state looks much different than it does during a typical dream. This lucidity is created by, or perhaps leads to, brain activity that has qualities of both sleep and wakefulness.

What Can I Expect When Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is a strange experience. Over half of all adults have experienced lucid dreaming, so you may already be familiar with the sensation. But if you are not, you can expect an interesting mix of the fantastical and the mundane.

As mentioned before, lucid dreaming is a kind of skill that can be cultivated over time. The more you do it, the more control you will likely feel over what occurs and what you are able to do in your dream. Many people think they are quite scary, especially at first. It can feel like an all-too-real nightmare that you can’t quite wake from.

practicing magic while learning lucid dreaming

But the more you practice having them, the more comfortable you will be within them. People who are experts in the state claim they are able to experience things like flying, meeting famous people or dead relatives. Even traveling to places they’ve never before seen. The main takeaway is that you will likely be able to control your body, and the environment around you too if you practice the craft enough.

Please note, however, that lucid dreaming looks different for everyone. It might terrify some while others find it joyous. It all depends on you, and what you are comfortable with.

The Steps

With all these things in mind, here are a few tips that experts say will allow you to experience lucid dreaming, and even get better at it as time goes by. We’ve broken this section up into the steps you can take to prepare while you’re awake. And what things you can do while you are dreaming.

While you’re awake:

Keep a dream journal: Write down anything you can recall, as soon as you wake up. This will help you to recognize the patterns and sensations that reoccur during your subconscious. The technique works because the more you can recognize these things, the better chance you will have of becoming aware you are dreaming which helps guide you to a state of lucidity.

Keep a regular sleep schedule: The more you are able to stick to a set time for going to bed and waking up, the better chance you have of maintaining the healthy sleep cycles necessary for entering the REM state and thereby giving yourself a better chance to dream and be cognizant of the fact that you are dreaming.

Meditate before bed: Relaxation is important for good sleep, as well as dreaming. Meditation before bed will help you to relax the mind enough for sleep and provides you with the added benefit of relieving some of the anxiety that might contribute to nightmares or sleep anxiety.

Count, repeat and visualize: As you lie in bed ready to sleep, count down from 100 while repeating the phrase “I’m having a dream,” in your head. It sounds corny, but the more you remember to acknowledge that you are dreaming, the likelier you will. Visualizing the type of dream you want to have is helpful as well.

Wake up and go back to bed: You can also set an alarm to go off during the middle of the night, about 4-6 hours after you’ve gone to bed. When you wake up, get back in bed and repeat the visualization step above. This will help stimulate your body by going into the REM state. This is where you have the best chance at a lucid dream.

When you think you might be dreaming:

Soaring through the clouds in your dreams

Learn to do “reality checks”: If you’ve seen the film Inception, you might be familiar with this exercise. This means coming up with a way to see if what you are experiencing is reality or… something else. It can be as simple as staring at your hand to make sure it looks the way it should. Or as complicated as throwing a ball up in the air to check that physics conforms to regular life on earth.
In Inception, Leo DiCaprio spins a top to check whether it falls over, as it would in real life. You might look weird doing this in your day-to-day life. However, as time goes on the habit will stick and you are likely to perform these checks in your dreams.

Imagine lucid dreaming (LD) a bit like this: You walk up to the edge of a cliff. Wind blows through your hair and ruffles your clothes as you peer over into the abyss. But instead of fear, you feel excitement. You bend your knees, raise your arms, and all of a sudden, you shoot up into the sky and begin flying.

Somewhere between your first midair loop-de-loop and the moment when you hover directly across from a plane carrying all of your exes and elementary school teachers you have a realization…you’re not awake, in fact, you’re still in bed.

Such is the purported course of the much-discussed lucid dream—a situation where a person becomes aware that they are dreaming. Most of the time we experience dreams in the same way we experience everyday life, assuming what we see and feel is reality. But in this case, it breaks down, allowing us to navigate the strange world of our subconscious minds with some degree of awareness.

So what exactly is this experience? Are there benefits to it? Could it be dangerous?

What is Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming refers to the phenomenon in which people having dreams become subjectively aware that they are not experiencing everyday normal reality, but are in fact in a dream state. In its most simple form, a dream can be considered lucid if this awareness check is present. However, these sleepers also frequently report an ability to have control over certain aspects of their dreams, including the setting and people that appear or the actions that take place.

As fantastical as it sounds, lucid dreaming is also surprisingly common. The National Sleep Foundation reports that over half of all people say they have had at least one in their life. Like most, lucid dreams usually begin during the rapid eye movement (REM) portion of the sleep cycle, a time when our brains are extremely active.

However, scientists are still very much unsure about the exact physiological mechanisms that cause this type of dreaming.

One 2008 study examined the hypothesis that lucid dreaming might be a kind of hybrid state between wakefulness and dreaming. The experiment aimed to measure the brain activity of dreamers as they moved from normal REM state into states of lucid dreaming. Their results indicated that lucid dreaming may be a sort of hybrid state in which the brain demonstrates activity usually seen in REM sleep as well.

More recent studies have also confirmed that brain activity during lucid dreaming episodes is measurably different from what is typically seen during REM dreaming.

What are benefits to lucid dreaming?

A quick web search online will net hundreds of thousands of results focused on trumpeting wonders of this strange phenomenon. Videos on the subject rack up millions of views. Why is there so much interest in the subject?

The answer could lie in the purported benefits of the activity.

For one, there is the intangible yet most obvious benefit—a technique to potentially control everything that happens in a fantasy world. This could mean gaining the ability to fly, having romantic encounters with whomever you choose, or any other thing one could imagine. For many people, this is reason enough to attempt lucid dreaming.

Another potential benefit is that lucid dreaming may allow people who suffer from frequent nightmares to confront their fears. In combination with therapy designed to teach people how to respond to nightmare situations, becoming lucid during such an episode can allow people to break their typical response habits, and realize there is nothing to fear by confronting the imagined stressor in your imagination.

Others have pointed out that lucid dreaming could be helpful in reducing anxiety, as well as increasing motor skills. Keeping a journal or log during the night and often performing reality testing can yield better results.

Can LD be dangerous?

First and foremost, there is no evidence that dying during one of these events will result in death, despite mountains of anecdotal examples in pop culture. Falling from the sky mid-flight while sleeping may be terrifying, but you are much more likely to wake with a start when you hit the ground than you are to never wake again. Sorry, Christopher Nolan.

That being said, these types of events have been linked to some negative outcomes due to the way it seems to disrupt the normal sleep cycle. One opinion article by sleep researchers analyzed many of the most prevalent experiments on lucid dreaming and determined that there was significant evidence to, “fear an adverse effect on sleep and health of a regular use of LD induction methods or of an increased LD frequency…”

Since lucid dreaming occurs in a state outside of the normal stages of sleep, they argue, significant time spent lucid dreaming might mean people do not spend the appropriate amount of time in those regular stages while asleep. This in turn could result in sleep deprivation and lead to drop-offs in health and wellness.

Some sleepers who engage in the practice often have also reported difficulty distinguishing reality from dreaming over time, a phenomenon known as derealization. This is relatively uncommon for lucid dreamers, but can be a very dangerous condition that requires medical intervention.

Lucid dreaming has also been linked to narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that has demonstrable negative effects on health. Growing evidence suggests that narcoleptics, who are prone to suffering from disturbing nightmares, could benefit from lucid dreaming as a way to combat the trauma of such disturbing experiences. A 2015 study out of the Max-Plank-Institute of Psychiatry in Germany found that 70 percent of narcolepsy patients reported relief from nightmares when they gained this level of control during their dreams.

With these things being said, there seems to be much more enthusiasm for the potential benefits of lucid dreaming than there is caution against its negative outcomes. Like most things in life, moderation appears to be the key to success when it comes to training your mind on this technique.