Here are 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the wonderful phenomenon of lucid dreaming – the ability to have conscious awareness during your dreams.
1. The first lucid dreams were recorded by Ancient Egyptians
The Egyptians were an advanced civilization which coalesced more than 5,000 years ago. According to Jeremy Naydler, author of Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred, they believed in three bodies: Shat(the corpse body), Ka (the living physical body) and Ba (the soul).
Ba was often represented in
hieroglyphics as a human-headed bird floating above the sleeping body or
corpse. Naydler notes that “…the Ba is the person but in another form. The Ba could be defined as an individual in an out-of-body state.” Was the Ba actually the lucid dreaming consciousness?
Robert Waggoner, editor of The Lucid Dreaming Experience, believes so: “…I was struck by the concept of the Babeing
the part of one that flies during sleep, trance and after-death states…
Many of us have had that experience, whether we call it an OOBE or a
lucid dream, of flying around our sleeping body.
“For lucid dreamers, trance
journeyers and OOBE-ers, the Ba may represent in a historic sense, the
first depiction of a ‘mobile awareness’ separated from the physical
host. Interestingly, this mobile awareness, this Ba, seems naturally
connected to flying – a common and seemingly universal part of lucid
dreaming. Though thousands of years separate us from the Ancient
Egyptians, perhaps some of their ancient knowledge remains in our
collective unconscious…”
2. One in five people lucid dream every month or more
In 1988, Snyder & Gackenback conducted a
scientific survey which found that 20% of people claimed to lucid dream
frequently (every month) while 50% of people had done it at least once
in their lives. So lucidity is not so rare, even if most people don’t
know the technical name or induce such dreams deliberately. It actually
seems quite normal to have spontaneous dream control – especially as
children.
One possible
reason for this is that children are more prone to nightmares which can
be highly vivid and emotionally intense. This awakens the part of the
brain responsible for self-awareness, and gives the young dreamer a
moment of clarity to realize “hey – I must be dreaming!” Some children
use this knowledge to wake themselves up, while others transform the
nightmare into a pleasant guided dream.
When I first discovered lucid dreaming in my teens, I was excited to tell my friend about it. “I’ve been doing that for years,” she told me: for as long
as she could remember, she would use her imagination as she went to
sleep to visualize whatever dreamscape she wanted. Then she would just
pop into her dream and experience dream control perfectly naturally.
Though she didn’t know what it was called, she’d been lucid dreaming
intuitively.
It may be
surprising how many people you know are already lucid dreamers – you
just never happened to ask them about it. Since I launched this website
six years ago and made lucid dreaming my career, a number of friends
have come out of the woodwork to announce they have the occasional
guided dream. It’s a coincidence that my partner Pete has controlled his dreams since he was a child too – another natural lucid dreamer.
At the other end of the spectrum, a handful
of people have written to me saying that ALL their dreams are lucid,
every single night since childhood and they sleep very poorly as a
result, feeling like their brain never properly shuts down. This is a
rare condition, as most people find inducing lucid dreams is a
deliberate act or a welcome accident, but never a burden. As with all
aspects of sleep, it’s possible that things can go wrong and specialist
help is needed. So if you find it impossible to have non-lucid dreams
and this disrupts your everyday life, then do see a specialist doctor.
3. When you close your eyes in a lucid dream, you can wake up
When I was younger I used close my eyes to
escape from nightmares. When I was frozen with terror it occurred to me
that none of it was real, and I had a moment to squeeze my eyes shut
tightly and shout “WAKE UP!”
Now I never end a lucid dream prematurely if I
can help it. But that doesn’t stop me from accidentally closing my eyes
in the dream (out of force of habit, not because they’re dry or I need
to blink…) This almost always causes me to return to my physical waking
body. Apparently, this is not true for everyone, but it sure is for
some.
Luckily, if you do wake up by accident, there
is a way to resume the dream from where you left off. As long as you
keep your body still (so as not to disturb the sleep paralysis
mechanism) and close your eyes immediately, you should find yourself
back in the dream and fully lucid. I would liken it to changing channels
on the TV: for a few seconds, both realities exist and you are free to
flick between them.
4. Lucid dreamers can “talk” to the outside world
In 1975, the British psychologist Keith
Hearne achieved a world first: he recorded the eye movements of Alan
Worsley as he slept and engaged in a lucid dream in the lab. Crucially,
the two men had agreed upon a pattern set of eye movement signals
beforehand. By moving his eyes inside the lucid dream, Worsley was able
to communicate with Hearne in the outside world, while he was dreaming.
This remarkable experiment proved, for the first time ever, that consciousness in dreams was indeed real. Later, EEG readings were
able to record a high frequency GAMMA brainwave state in lucid
dreamers, which provided further evidence of this unique state of
conscious awareness. However, it was the basis of Hearne’s experiment,
which was more famously replicated by Dr Stephen LaBerge at Stanford
University a few years later, that showed us it really is possible for a
dreamer to “talk” with a waking person in the outside world.
But what about the other way around? Can we
send messages to a dreamer while they sleep? Could a two-way
conversation be achieved?
Actually, yes – to a degree. When we sleep,
our brains are largely ignorant to most of what’s happening in the
outside world. However, for survival reasons, we do have the ability to
retain some awareness and be responsive so some types of external
stimulus. So, if someone gently prods you in the rib while you sleep,
you will sometimes feel the prod in the dream, albeit under a different
interpretation.
I once dreamed of a rat biting me in the ribs
then woke up and found I was actually pinching myself! Another example
is auditory stimulus: heavy rain in the waking world has transferred to
my dream – and once it began raining heavilyinside my house. Like many a surreal trigger, this caused me to become lucid.
5. Lucidity arises from a special part of the brain
The neuroscientist, J Allan Hobson, has
theorized about what happens in the brain when a dreamer becomes lucid.
First, we recognize that we’re dreaming, and this stimulates the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain which is
responsible for self-awareness and working memory. This area is usually
deactivated during REM sleep – which explains why it is not typical to
realize that we’re dreaming or remember all of the detail without
serious effort.
Once lucidity is triggered, the dreamer
treads a fine line between staying asleep, yet remaining conscious
enough to remember they’re dreaming…
Interestingly, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is
uniquely associated with the subjective experience of deciding when and
how to act. In Susan Blackmore’s wonderful pocketbook, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction,
she explains how this region is directly connected to free will – and
how this may be an illusion created by our own complex brain processes.
She also discusses self awareness and the contentious problem we have
when we try to pinpoint the location of our conscious inner self.
6. Lucid dreaming can be mapped as a state of consciousness
Susan Blackmore’s work highlights another
important feature of lucidity: that it may be a special state of
consciousness distinct from any other. Can these individual states be
mapped? Some scientists believe so.
Here is a diagram based on Blackmore’s
conclusions and the existing theories of human consciousness. Although
it is extremely difficult to know the relevant dimensions, it is
possible to visualize how these conscious states might be mapped in a
vast multidimensional space. This aims to illustrate how some states are
commonly experienced and easy to reach (being wide awake, false
awakenings and dreaming) while others are rarer and tread the far
reaches of the human experience (deep sleep, sleep paralysis and
mystical experiences).
7. Certain vitamins can increase your dream intensity
Vitamin B6 (also known as Pyridoxine) plays a
key role in brain and nerve function. Healthy adults need just 1.3 mg
of Vitamin B6 each day and this can be acquired through foods like
bananas, carrots, oranges, spinach, fish, chicken, liver, beans, eggs
and nuts. However, to achieve the dose necessary for greater dream
intensity, take a 100 mg supplement such as Nature Made Vitamin B6.
So, what happens in your body when you take
this supplement? Vitamin B6 converts Tryptophan into Serotonin, which
produces much more vivid dreams. You may wonder why you can’t just take a
Serotonin supplement. Unfortunately, the blood brain barrier wont let
it in directly; the conversion has to take place in the body.
To boost your chances further, eat foods
containing Tryptophan around the same time you take your B6 pill, a few
hours before bed. Tryptophan-rich foods include cheddar cheese, chicken,
salmon, lamb, eggs, white rice, flour and milk. So, there really is
something to be said about cheese dreams.
8. Lucid dream orgasms can be real
Scientists have found that lucid
orgasms can sometimes be accompanied by a real physical response,
including increased heart rate, changes in vascular tissue and other
muscular reactions. Sometimes, however, it’s purely in the mind –
although this doesn’t make it any less real to the dreamer in their
super-sensory dream environment. There is also heaps of anecdotal
evidence to show that men who experience a lucid dream orgasm also
ejaculate in real life.
The problem many people find is that it’s difficult to hold onto conscious lucidity until the critical moment. Lucid dream sex is
highly arousing and beginner oneironauts will most likely wake up
before the experience has even got going. In this way, sexual lucid
dreams aren’t ideal for beginners, yet they’re usually the ones most
motivated to seek them out for the novelty value.
9. Meditation is profoundly linked with self-awareness in dreams
There is a proven scientific
link between meditation and lucid dreams. I find that the more frequent
and deep meditation I can accommodate into my lifestyle, the more easily
I can recognize when I’m dreaming. For all it’s apparent simplicity,
meditation can ahve prfound meaning and impact on your life, helping you
reach blissful states of relaxation and insight. It also helps to enter
altered states of consciousness at will (great practice for Wake Induced Lucid Dreams) as well as increase self-awareness (powerful for Dream Induced Lucid Dreams.)
One thing I frequently rave
about on this site is brainwave entrainment for meditation. This was the
key in my learning how to meditate. First in the form of binaural
beats, later in the form of isochronic tones, brainwave entrainment is a
proven way of guiding your internal brainwave frequencies to produce
relaxed, altered states of consciousness on demand. My favorite brainwave entrainment audios are listed here.
The most notorious application
for these audio entrainment products is meditation – and this delivers
us very close to the lucid dreaming state. I highly recommend beginners
invest in a good entrainment audio to kickstart their internal voyages
in meditation.
10. Tibetan Buddhist Monks practice lucid dreaming on their path to enlightenment
Tibetan Dream Yoga is the original form of lucid dreaming. It is a philosophical practice created in Tibetan Buddhism at least 1,000 years ago.
Just like lucid dreams, the aim
of Dream Yoga is to awaken the conscious self from within the dream
state, which they call “apprehending the dream”.
However, Buddhist monks have
more esoteric goals in mind. Their aim is to harness the power of the
conscious dream state and then complete a number of set tasks to take
them to the next level, including:
- Practice sadhana (a spiritual discipline)
- Receive initiations, empowerments and transmissions
- Visit different places, planes and lokas (worlds)
- Communicate with yidam (an enlightened being)
- Meet with other sentient beings
- Fly and shape shift into other creatures
The ultimate goal in Tibetan dream yoga is to
apprehend the dream, then dissolve it completely. Deprived of physical
stimulus via the sleeping body, and conceptual stimulus via the dreaming
mind, they can observe the purest form of conscious awareness through
profound meditation in a lucid dream.
Final Thoughts
Your journey to lucidity is only just
beginning. To discover more hidden insights as well as step-by-step
tutorials on lucid dream inducation and exploration, check out The Lucid Dreaming Fast Track, my definitive digital course for beginners and beyond.
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