Dreams and sleep go hand in hand, even if you don't remember your dreams. But have you ever clearly thought you were actively dreaming as you were dreaming? If so, then you had a lucid dream!
A lucid dream occurs when you know you're dreaming and can take control of the dream's narrative. However, despite about 55 percent of adults experiencing lucid dreams at least once in their lifetime, these dreams don't happen as often as you would think. But what if you could change all that?
We'll go over the ins and outs of lucid dreaming — including techniques on how to lucid dream!
History of Lucid Dreaming
You might not think it, but people have been practicing lucid dreaming for millennia. Tibetan Bon Buddhists practice "dream yoga" and have been doing so for centuries! Aristotle even described lucid dreams back in 330 B.C. But it wasn't until 1913 that Frederick Van Eeden coined the term "lucid dream," as we know it today.
From there, the fascination with this peculiar dreaming continued with more scientific studies by Celia Green in 1968, where she noted that lucid dreaming occurs during the REM stage of sleep. During the 70s and 80s, Dr. Stephen LaBerge furthered this research by learning that certain eye movements indicate lucidity (or lucid dreaming) with his breakout electrooculogram technology!
What Causes It
So, what causes lucid dreaming? It's the brain's prefrontal cortex, which handles self-awareness and reflection. During a lucid dream, the line between the conscious waking self and the unconscious sleeping self blur. The prefrontal cortex shows minor activity when typically, it's completely offline during sleep.
When the brain is lucid dreaming, it's closer to wakefulness but hasn't entirely breached the point of waking up.
The Benefits of It
The idea of lucid dreaming and having control over your dreams is incredibly fascinating, but does it have any real benefits? It can! Some benefits include the following:
- Treating nightmares by letting you take control of the dream and redirecting events can be especially helpful for those with PTSD.
- Enhancing creativity by letting you experience things outside of daily life so you can explore infinite options.
- Lessening anxiety by letting you explore varying situations with a measure of control.
- Improving your motor skills by practicing them mentally. Mentally practicing motor skills can help you develop them physically!
- Helping you solve your problems as you go over each solution and potential outcome!
Even with these benefits, lucid dreaming has potential drawbacks, like negatively affecting your mental health, interrupting your sleep, or invoking more bad dreams. So, before you try lucid dreaming, make sure you're aware of the risks!
How to Achieve It
Instead of hoping for a lucid dream to come your way, you can try triggering it instead with one of these techniques!
- Better Sleep Hygiene: going to bed and waking up at the same time consistently, avoiding electronics before bed, skipping heavy meals and caffeine before bed, and keeping your bedroom cool and comfortable will help you get into REM sleep easier!
- Dream Diary: writing down your dreams when you wake up forces you to remember what happened in each dream and trains your brain to recognize when dreaming occurs.
- Reality Testing: train your mind to notice your awareness by asking yourself if you're dreaming, checking your environment, and engaging with your surroundings multiple times a day to further divide the line between reality and dreaming.
- Wake Back to Bed (WBTB): set the alarm five hours after bedtime, sleep as usual, wake up when the alarm goes off, stay up for 30 minutes with a quiet activity, and then go back to sleep. This technique will lead you to have a lucid dream during the second part of your sleep!
- Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD): think of a recent dream as you fall asleep, identify an irregular occurrence that is strange in the dream, think about returning to the ream with that strange occurrence in mind, then tell yourself to remember that you're dreaming the next time you dream!
Many of these techniques involve training your brain to know the difference between reality and dreaming, so it'll take a while to see any results.
Is your dream lucid?
Usually, when most people dream, they only know they were dreaming after waking up. So, how can you tell if you had a lucid dream?
- You're aware that you're asleep and dreaming.
- Your dreams are incredibly vivid and feel real.
- You can change and control certain aspects of the dream.
- You experience vastly intense emotions in your dream.
Dream A Little Dream
As you can see, lucid dreaming is entirely possible and a fun way to explore your subconscious. But if you don't have a good sleep foundation, aka a good mattress, your chances of dreaming are lower and lower. So, if your current mattress is a lump mess, don't wait to upgrade — check out our mattress selection at Hudson Appliance!
We carry various top brands in stock, so don't hesitate to stop by and try them out!