Understanding Lucid Dreaming
[Music]
i study
dreams for a living everything from
recurring dreams to sex
dreams to nightmares but as a dream
scientist
there’s one aspect of dreaming that i’ve
always been
particularly fascinated about and that
is
lucid dreaming lucid dreams are those
in which you know that you are dreaming
while you’re still
in the dream i know how cool these
dreams can be
because when i was in college i had a
lucid dream
that changed my life it was a long
and unusually vivid dream in which i was
wrongly convicted of a crime
incarcerated
stabbed by an inmate and later managed
to escape
by sprinting across the prison yard and
leaping
over this 15 foot barbed wire fence
but it was only when i landed on a field
of snow
on the other side of the fence in my
dream that i realized
something was wrong the prison yard
behind me
it was covered in grass not in snow
and my stab wounds they had magically
healed
and come to think of it that miraculous
15 foot leap
well that didn’t make much sense either
only one explanation did make sense
i was dreaming
i picked up some snow in my dream and
marveled at the coldness permeating my
hand
i knew that my real body was asleep in
my bed
but everything in the dream looked and
felt so real
it was mind-boggling i then threw a
snowball at the first person i saw
a rather large man standing nearby
curious about how he’d react the man got
upset
and threatened to punch me out and when
he took a few steps in my direction
i panicked forgetting for a moment that
i was dreaming
i later encountered other intriguing
dream characters
including this one gentleman who tried
to convince me that the whole thing
wasn’t a dream by the time i finally
woke up
i was hooked i wanted to learn more
about this incredible
experience i just had and so
because of this lucid dream i became
a dream scientist
a few months after i had this dream i
became aware of these
fascinating studies coming out of
stanford university
researchers there had showed that while
in rem
sleep the sleep stage most closely
associated with vivid dreaming
lucid dreamers could use these
pre-agreed upon
eye signals such as repeatedly looking
left right to communicate with the
researchers
while they were asleep and dreaming
it turns out that the eye movements
lucid dreamers performed in their lucid
dreams
could be picked up by electrodes
monitoring their actual
eye movements under their closed eyelids
in the sleep lab you can see what these
eye movements look like
in this video
and here’s an example of what these
lucid eye signals look like
on a paper tracing
having someone become aware that they
are dreaming
while they are sleeping in a lab that’s
pretty cool
but having them communicate this to you
from inside their dream
that’s mind-bending this research
not only proved that lucid dreams are
real
but also that lucid dreamers could use
these left right left right
eye signals to time stamp the exact
moment at which they start and
finish specific tasks in their dreams
these eye signals they tell researchers
where to look in their recordings for
example
between signal one and signal two
for corresponding changes in that
person’s
brain and bodily activity
a variety of skills like singing
counting doing squats even having sex
in lucid dreams have been studied in
this way
in sleep labs around the world
what these studies tell us is that the
events we experience in our dreams
produce effects on our brains that are
remarkably
similar to what we would expect if we
experience the corresponding events
during wakefulness in other words
to our brains dreaming of doing
something is pretty much equivalent to
actually doing it moreover
it now appears that two-way
communication with lucid dreamers may be
possible opening up a whole new frontier
in this line of research
but offering an innovative way of
exploring dreams
isn’t the only benefit of lucid dreaming
several studies including from our own
laboratory
have shown that lucid dreams can be used
to treat nightmares
and pilot data indicates that lucid
dreaming can foster
creativity or even be used much like
imagery rehearsal techniques to practice
motor skills like skiing
or playing darts more fascinating still
lucid dreams allow you to
explore and interact with parts of your
mind
your unconscious if you wish in ways
that you can’t
in non-lucid dreams or
during wakefulness for that matter
now when people give talks on lucid
dreams
they often emphasize how easily anyone
can learn to have them
or how you can do anything in a lucid
dream
but truth of the matter is it’s really
not all that simple
only about 20 percent of people report
having lucid dreams
even once a month and those proficient
lucid dreamers
that do the left right left right eye
signals in the lab
well they represent less than one
percent of the population
and studies have also found that up to
half of lucid dreamers
report not being able to change much
if anything in their dreams
so while lucid dreaming is a learnable
skill
it often takes considerable time and
effort that being said
if you’re interested in learning to have
lucid dreams
well here’s a few steps to get you
started
first keep a dream diary
this will greatly improve your dream
recall
second while awake get into the habit of
asking yourself
am i dreaming whenever something unusual
happens to you
think about how you got there and what
was going through your mind
right before you asked yourself this
question
the idea is to develop a critical frame
of mind while you’re awake
that will hopefully carry over
into your dreams
third perform daily reality checks
actions meant to determine if you’re
awake
or dreaming they include things like
reading or pressing your fingers up
against your palm
they’re called reality checks because
unlike in waking life
they tend to misfire in dreams
if you try reading a book in your dream
for example
the letters and words may make little
sense
or appear to jump about or change
if you look away and back at the text
again
one reason this happens is because when
you’re dreaming
there is no physical page or book
in front of you all the sentences you
see
are created by your imagination so it’s
hard for your brain to keep
track of all of these phrases as the
dream
unfolds
as for pressing a finger against your
hand
it might go right through your palm or
create some other
unusual sensation because
well you’re dreaming
now if you’re like most people
once you realize that you are in fact
dreaming
you’ll want to use this awareness to try
to influence
what happens next in the dream
many lucid dreamers find that willing
things into existence
doesn’t work very well what does work
is expecting things to happen in the
dream
here’s how to do it suppose
you’d like to make a fancy house or a
yummy dessert
or a particular person appear in your
dream
take the time to imagine the object or
scene
then slowly turn around in your dream
expecting that scene to be there
chances are that the person or object
or something pretty close to that will
be there
you can also use this expectancy effect
to make objects appear in your dreams
for example by telling yourself that
you’ll find the object
behind some furniture
or even inside your pants pocket
some experienced lucid dreamers will
open
doors in their dreams envisioning
whatever they want
waiting for them on the other side
but this expectancy effect only works
if you’re convinced you can do it if you
have any
doubts well here’s what can happen
when my friend sarah was a young girl
she’d often dream of this
large menacing wolf chasing her through
a forest
when she told her father about this
dream he told her
the next time she had the dream she
should face the wolf
and tell it stop you can’t hurt me
this is a dream
well a few weeks later sarah had her
dream again
but remembered the words her father had
told her to say
as soon as she finished repeating her
father’s words
the wolf came in close
looked her in the eye and growled
is that so then
he ripped off her arm with a vicious
snap of its jaws
so what went wrong
well sarah may have said the right
things in her dream
but part of her was also afraid of what
the creature might
do this sense of fear was probably
registered by her brain and contributed
to the dream’s unnerving ending
a similar dynamic can be seen in people
who
while in the middle of a fantastic
flying dream
start to wonder how it is that they are
able to fly
and promptly tumble back to earth
so what we feel and think in our dreams
often plays a role in how the dream will
unfold
over the past few decades science has
made
significant progress in our
understanding of lucid dreams
but there are many challenges ahead we
still don’t have a good understanding
of the neural underpinnings behind lucid
dreaming or
the brain-based processes that can
facilitate their occurrence
and we still don’t have a safe and
reliable way
of inducing lucid dreams or of making
them last
longer and we’re
ways away from understanding how the
brain goes about
creating the people we encounter in our
dreams
many of whom do and say things
as if they had their own thoughts and
feelings
when i started this talk i mentioned a
character in my lucid dream
who tried to convince me that the whole
thing
wasn’t a dream i dreamt about him again
on several other occasions and in
one lucid dream i asked him
if he ever dreamt
he said of course i do
whenever i’m asleep
only i try not to wake up
whenever you’re in my dream
when i asked him why he grinned
and said because
you’d disappear
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