CHAPTER NINE

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LUCID DREAMS

A unique feature of dreams is that we generally don’t realize that they are occurring until they no longer are. As we dream when we sleep, it seems that we’re often asleep during our dreams, needing to awaken to wake up to the recognition of the oneiric journey that we just experienced. But not always. It’s possible to have a dream in which while it’s occurring, we’re able to recognize that we’re actually dreaming. We’re sleeping, yet not asleep to the fact we’re presently dreaming. We become an awakened witness to our oneiric visions, with a cognitive cogency that perceives what is occurring. Realizing that we’re in a dream, we may then choose to transform ourselves from a passive character to an active agent who can knowingly traverse dream landscapes and encounters. We can give shape to our experience, whether that means choosing to fly, transform the monsters who haunt our nightmares into allies, work through creative problems without the usual confines of Cartesian limitations, or the like.

This phenomenon is called lucid dreaming. And while for those who have never experienced it, it may sound like a plotline for a sci-fi movie (Inception, anyone?), it’s actually something that is relatively common. In fact, it’s been noted that 55 percent of people have experienced at least one lucid dream in their lifetime, with just shy of one-quarter claiming to have a lucid dream at least once a month. For those who have lucid dreams, it seems that it’s an experience that begins spontaneously in adolescence.

Lucid Explorations

Lucid dreaming is considered a hybrid state of consciousness — you’re in REM sleep, although not passively dreaming, and yet you’re not awake, either. In this space where there’s a weaving together of different levels of consciousness, you can be an oneironaut, able to explore a host of things that you may not otherwise readily be able to. After all, as you realize that dreams don’t have the stability and fixity with which you had associated them, they become a canvas upon which you can more freely be an auteur. Without defenses and presuppositions both about yourself and what reality is, you can deconstruct limiting beliefs and viewpoints. You can fulfill wishes, rehearse behaviors, have adventures, and enjoy heightened sensations. You can practice skills, refine athletic moves, and learn to better understand yourself.

Lucid dreaming can be a source of spiritual understanding, an avenue to further perceive the extended nature of reality. Without your waking life defenses, you may also be more open to seeing and embracing your shadow, the oft-denied facets of ourselves to which we don’t readily admit. Some have even noted that they have been able to heal illnesses through being in a lucid-dreaming state. Additionally, it’s possible to rescript nightmares, which can lead to their abatement, a possible benefit reflected in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s 2018 position paper that included lucid dreaming as a potential treatment for nightmare disorder.

THE LUCID-DREAMING BRAIN

How can it be that we’re in this liminal state, with an awareness that approaches waking consciousness while we’re asleep, being in a dream while knowing we are in a dream? Research and brain-imaging studies may hold some clues. As we discussed in chapter 5, our brain activity shifts when we are sleeping. One of the hallmarks of a sleeping and dreaming brain is that one of its areas, known as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is more dormant than when we are awake. As the PFC is responsible for executive function — including rational judgment, self-consciousness, and working memories — usually when we’re dreaming, we do so without an editor, judge, or witness, and without self-awareness.

However, when one is lucid dreaming, their brain looks different. EEGs taken during the REM-sleep state of those lucid dreaming show their brains don’t behave like they do in normal dreaming. There’s more electrical activity happening, reflective of a different level of functioning than usual. This may be why during lucid dreaming people experience metacognition and the subsequent ability to reflect upon their mental state, able to participate in more thought monitoring than during regular dreaming. In addition to knowing that one is dreaming, there’s a greater ability to remember episodes of waking life and volitionally control one’s actions. While the PFC is more activated than it is during regular REM dreaming, it’s still more tamped down than when we are awake. Hence, why lucid dreaming is described as a somewhat hybrid state.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Before we explore techniques that lucid dreamers use to have awareness-filled dreams, let’s look to see how our knowledge of conscious dreaming’s potentiality has evolved. Lucid dreaming galvanized attention in the 1980s, thanks to the pathfinding work of Stephen LaBerge, PhD. A vanguard in the field, LaBerge focused his post-graduate research in psychophysiology on the subject while studying at Stanford University. This work and his subsequent research endeavors led to his developing a multitude of methods that are still considered foundational for those who follow this practice. Since this time, lucid dreaming has become a focus of study for scientists around the world, with scores of research studies on the subject published in peer-reviewed medical journals.

However, it was 120 years prior to LaBerge’s establishment of the groundbreaking Lucidity Institute that the pioneering tome Dreams and How to Guide Them was published. This initially anonymously penned book was later recognized to be authored by the French scholar Marquis D’Hervey de Saint-Denys. The treatise was based upon twenty years of research and examination of lucid dreaming by Saint-Denys, who many regard as the modern-day father of lucid dreaming. The possibility that one may have awareness in a dream was not something that was actually siloed from the psychological field. In fact, Sigmund Freud gave it a nod, noting “there are people who are quite clearly aware during the night that they are asleep and dreaming and who thus seem to possess the faculty of consciously directing their dreams” in a footnote in the 1909 second edition of his classic The Interpretation of Dreams. Yet, it wasn’t until 1913 that the term lucid dreaming itself was forged. The originator of the phrase was Frederick van Eeden, a psychiatrist and the author of A Study of Dreams. He defined the experience as not only being able to have an awareness within your dreams, but also one in which “the sleeper remembers day life and his own condition, reaches a state of perfect awareness, and is able to direct his attention, and to attempt different acts of free volition.”

Lucid-Dreaming Tools and Techniques

As we explore in chapter 12, research suggests that if you have confidence that you’ll remember your dreams and you make an intention to do so, you will more likely recall them in the morning. Similar principles seem to apply with lucid dreaming. You can sow the field of conscious-dreaming potential, priming the pump, if you will, by just wanting to do so and telling yourself that it is possible.

From there, lucid dreamers use a variety of different techniques to inspire lucidity in their oneiric journeys. Different people find that certain lucid-dreaming techniques work better for them than others; therefore, experimenting with different ones may help people discover those that best align with them. While providing detailed instruction and guidance about how to lucid dream is outside the scope of this book, what follows are some of the more popular approaches that people use. (For more in-depth resources on lucid dreaming, see here.)

MNEMONICALLY INDUCED LUCID DREAM (MILD)

This is one of the classic methods created by LaBerge for inducing lucid dreams. The MILD method can be done when you’re first going to sleep or in the middle of the night, coupling it with the Wake Back to Bed technique on the next page.

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During the day, choose a dream that you recently had in which you did not experience lucidity. Run through the dream in your mind several times, looking to see if you can find any dream signs that reside within. Once you do, work on rescripting the dream, seeing yourself recognizing these as signals that you were actually dreaming. And then imagine a different path that the dream would take if you had that level of awareness. Reflect on this rescripted dream numerous times daily.

Then, when you’re in bed and ready to sleep, create a lucidity affirmation in which you tell yourself that the next time you’re in a dream, you will know that you are. This is a bit like dream incubation, where your conscious mind is encouraging your dreaming mind to have a certain level of awareness.

Finally, as you continue to feel lulled to sleep, go back over your rescripted dream, seeing it again and again in your mind’s eye. The experience of reflecting upon being lucid, as well as having your mind be playing out a dream in the liminal state before you sink into sleep, helps to prime the psyche to have proximity to the experience of lucidity.

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WAKE BACK TO BED

Another practice that lucid dreamers use involves sleep interruption, and is usually referred to as Wake Back to Bed. Given that REM sleep occurs about every 90 minutes for the average person, and the further into sleep we are, the longer the REM periods last, dreamers set their alarm clocks about 5 hours or so after going to sleep. This enhances their chance of waking up in an extended REM period. They then try to stay awake for a while, reflecting upon the dream experiences they just had; for many, doing so helps them slip right back into a lucid-rich REM dream period once they fall back to sleep.

WAKE-INITIATED LUCID DREAMING (WILD)

Hand in hand with Wake Back to Bed is Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreaming (WILD). It’s the experience of moving from waking to dreaming with awareness that you’re going to shift right into a dream (and, therefore, be having lucidity). As you’re doing so, you’re reminding yourself to notice such things as hypnagogic imagery, heavy feelings in the body, or other sensations that fill the liminal space between sleeping and dreaming. This is thought to help you slip with awareness right into a lucid dream, all the while reminding yourself that you will remember you are dreaming.

DREAM MASKS

There are numerous masks available that people use to trigger awareness that they are dreaming, an invention pioneered by LaBerge. Worn during sleep, the mask recognizes — through detecting eye movement — when you are in REM sleep. As it does, a light pulses on and off that you can sense through your eyelids. Since you would have previously made the association that the appearance of fluctuating light is a dream sign, it can trigger a moment of lucidity.

GALANTAMINE SUPPLEMENTS

An alkaloid substance known to increase acetylcholine and enhance memory, galantamine in its over-the-counter supplement form is often used for its dream-enhancing properties. (In its prescription form, it’s been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.) As it intensifies REM sleep, it’s one of the premier compounds currently used by lucid dreamers to enhance lucidity, with research suggesting that it increases the frequency of these types of oneiric experiences. Before considering using galantamine, check with your health-care practitioner or pharmacist to ensure that it won’t have a negative interaction with any current medications that you are taking or health conditions you have.