Lucid Dreaming: An exploration of the inner self

Lucid Dreaming—an exploration of the inner self
Have you ever been in a dream and realized, ‘Hey, I’m dreaming!’ This thought is what starts all lucid dreams. How many of you have had that thought and then decided to control your dreams? Lucidity offers the ability to create a landscape and basically do whatever one feels like within the realm of imagination. Whether soaring through the air over endless and beautiful landscapes or fighting people matrix-style, lucid dreaming can be extremely fun. However, there is more to it than just entertainment. Lucid dreaming has the potential to bring about many great things. It is a previously unexplored gateway to one’s subconscious, and not only will the study of lucid dreams result in scientific breakthroughs regarding the brain, it will also be useful on a personal level to explore one’s inner self and emotions, and to learn about one’s self in the most revealing way possible.
Before the uses of lucid dreaming are elaborated upon, perhaps a brief introduction to lucid dreaming should be discussed. Stephen LaBerge, author of the pioneering book Lucid Dreaming, describes lucid dreaming as “being ‘awake in your dreams.’”1 This is true in two senses of the word ‘awake’: the chemical sense and the personal sense. In a lucid dream, one has conscious thought and has realistic sensory experiences. In this sense, perception in a lucid dream and perception in real life are not as different as one would think, and it is possible to even think of them as the same. Chemically, the onset of lucidity is marked by an onset of alpha waves. Now this statement most likely means nothing to you, so let me elaborate. There is a large spectrum of brain waves, but alpha and delta are the only ones we need to be concerned about now. Alpha waves, which are shorter brain waves, generally occur when one is awake, but in a very relaxed state, such as drifting off to sleep. Deep sleep is characterized by delta waves, which are much longer brain waves. Technically, when one is lucid dreaming, the brain is acting
as if one is awake. Therefore, maybe the statement ‘awake while dreaming’ is not too farfetched after all.

Alright, so lucid dreaming may sound cool, but maybe you ask ‘so what? I hardly lucid dream, and I often I don’t even remember my dreams in the first place.’ The beautiful thing about lucid dreaming is that it can be a learned technique. Realization is the most important step towards mastering the art of lucid dreaming. If people have non-lucid dreams, then they are taking everything that is in the dream as complete reality. When they wake up, they realize that ‘singing three-headed dogs doing cartwheels are absurd and obviously don’t exist. Of course there are no tigers in my house. I graduated high school 10 years ago, obviously I’m not late for a final.’ What if one could realize this while dreaming?
LaBerge advises that the first step to lucid dreaming is to “think continuously, that ‘all things are of the substance of dreams.’” If one never asks the questions ‘am I dreaming?’ while awake, then why would one do so while dreaming? The second step is “to comprehend the dream state—that is, to understand that it is not real, but a dream.” If one can firmly resolve to do this while drifting off to sleep, then achieving lucidity will be much easier to accomplish. Finally, thanks to the movie Waking Life and the Brown GISP about lucid dreaming, there are some techniques one can use to ensure lucid dreaming. I will not list all of them, but the biggest one is to pinch your nose with your fingers and try to breath. Of course, if you are awake, no air will pass through. However, in a dream, you will still be able to breathe because your real nose is not obstructed. If one makes this a habit throughout daily waking life, then one will eventually do this in a dream, triggering awareness that it is indeed a dream and therefore lucidity.
What if the problem is not achieving lucidity, but instead just remembering the dream in the first place? Dream recall can also be improved with determination and motivation. Other than
just the mindset of ‘I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…’ LaBerge suggests to the reader “to keep a dream journal beside your bed and record whatever you can remember of your dreams every time you wake up.”1 This is a way of telling your brain that you want to remember your dreams, and slowly you will begin to have better dream recall. Another possibly effective method is that when you wake up, lay still without moving until you can recall all parts of your dream that you can. Physical movement activates certain neurons that seem to erase the memories of dreams, so this method will greatly increase dream recall.
Now that attainability of lucid dreaming has been discussed, the uses of lucid dreaming will be more relevant and profound for the average reader. The average person attracted to lucid dreaming is interested in it because it seems fun. And while it definitely is entertaining—the thought of a land of no rules and consequences can be exhilarating—there are some more applications of lucid dreaming of which the general population is not aware. The uses of lucid dreaming can be broken down into five parts: healing, creation, decision-making, external knowledge, self-knowledge, and scientific research.
Dreams can have a large emotional impact. LaBerge notes that “dreams, remembered or not, can color our mood for a good part of the day.”1 If we could control our dreams, could we control our emotions? This is quite possible, to a point. Let us use nightmares as an example. Recurring nightmares can create a lot of stress and anxiety, especially when coupled with stress in the waking life. With lucid dreaming, one can conquer any monsters or other scary projections that appear in one’s dream. If one can work through a problem in the dream state and conquer anxiety, chances are one will be met with feelings of happiness and achievement upon waking. Emotional betterment and fulfillment is a very personal part of lucid dreaming. LaBerge advises the reader that, “it’s your dream. Try it and see how you feel afterward. If you listen to your
conscience, you need no other rule.”1 Basically, following one’s intuition can result in emotional healing or betterment.
The practice of lucid dreaming can also result in physical healing. The theory is that when you dream, you imagine yourself in a state of perfect health. If you are not in perfect health in the dream state, you can symbolically heal your dream body if you are lucid. The question that LaBerge poses is “if we heal the dream body, to what extent will we also heal the physical body?”1 This is a very interesting question, because it brings about something else to ponder: how much of healing is dependent on the mind? There is evidence supporting the capability of lucid dreaming to heal physically. Carl Simonton did work with cancer patients, and reported that “patients with advanced cancer who supplemented standard radiation and chemotherapy treatment with healing imagery (lucid dreaming falls under this category) survived, on the average, twice as long as expected by national averages.”1 This suggests that lucid dreaming has the potential to be an important factor in physical healing in the future.
The period in which the brain emits alpha waves is also known as the creative cycle. It is unsurprising then that creativity increases during the dream state. Elusive solutions to problems can be obtained. Symphonies can be composed. The image for a painting can appear with incredible vividness. There is endless creative potential in dreams, and dreams have played a role in many important discoveries throughout history. Mendeleev’s periodic table appeared to him in a dream after months of exhaustive work in trying to classify elements. In fact, after writing down the table as it appeared to him in his dream, he only had to adjust one element before it was complete and accurate. Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, had the design of the sewing machine’s needle appear in a dream. Salvador Dalí contributes his painting The Ascension of Christ to a dream he had where the image appeared to him with incredible power
and detail. Even Jack Nicklaus ended his slump after dreaming of a better golf swing and implementing it. This happens too with everyday people, and LaBerge offers examples of a woman who perfected her ice skating techniques and a surgeon who mastered a tricky surgical procedure through dreaming.
Why does this happen? Knowledge can be categorized in two ways: tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is obvious, conscious knowledge, such as how to add or multiply two numbers. Tacit knowledge is more subconscious and abstract, such as how to walk or talk. We generally have a lot more knowledge than we can access consciously. LaBerge offers the example that “everyone has had the experience of dreaming about a person they’ve met only once, yet in a dream produced an amazing likeness of that person, much better than anything they could have done while awake with pencil and paper or with words.”1 This is because this knowledge is stored in your subconscious as tacit knowledge. What if we could access this knowledge through lucid dreaming? The reality is that lucid dreaming is the key to unlocking this knowledge, which brings me to both decision-making and external knowledge.
Dr. William Dement suggests that REM sleep (the phase during which lucid dreaming occurs) can “allow man to experience the many alternatives of the future in the quasi-reality of the dream, and so make a more ‘informed’ choice.”1 He goes on to discuss a dream he had while he was a heavy smoker in which he was diagnosed with lung cancer and went through the emotions that dying brings, including dealing with an imminent end to life and how he would miss so much of his family’s lives. Upon waking up, this seemingly real experience was enough to decide to quit smoking. With this in mind, lucid dreaming could potentially be used to view different possible futures when dealing with a decision or a problem. This could possibly be a very powerful decision making tool in the future.
On a side-note, there is a movie called Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, which includes a lot of aspects of lucid dreaming. One interesting quote from the movie is that “Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream.” Wouldn’t it be incredible if we had limited time to solve a problem, and could just enter the dream state and extend this time by a huge factor? There seems to be some evidence supporting the notion that time passes more slowly in dreams. We all have had dreams that seem to last for hours, and then wake up to find that only a few minutes have passed. LaBerge provides an interesting anecdote regarding this:
…the nineteenth-century pioneer of dream research, Alfred Maury, recalled late in his life a dream he had had many years earlier, in which he somehow had gotten mixed up with the French Revolution. After witnessing a number of scenes of murder, he was himself brought before the revolutionary tribunal. After a long trial in which he saw Robespierre, Marat, and other heroes of the revolution, he was sentenced to death and led to the place of execution in the midst of the usual jeering mob. Waiting his turn among the condemned, he watched the quick and grisly work of the guillotine. Then his turn came and he mounted the scaffold. The executioner tied him to the board and tipped it into place. The blade fell…and at this critical point, Maury awoke in terror, only to find his head still attached to his body. He realized almost at once what had happened: the headboard had fallen on his neck. He concluded that his lengthy dream must have taken place in the briefest instant!1
Unfortunately, this extremely different perception of time does not seem to transcend to lucid dreams. LaBerge conducted some experiments on his own, in which oneironauts (lucid dreamers used for science) “are instructed to signal when they become lucid in their dream, and then to estimate an interval of, say, ten seconds by counting to ten in the dream…we found that the
average length of these estimated ten-second intervals was thirteen seconds, which was also the average estimation of a ten-second interval while subjects were awake.”1 It seems that even with lucid dreaming, humans still have not unlocked the tools necessary to conquer time.
Something else that can be gained through lucid dreaming is wish fulfillment. After achieving lucidity, one can do whatever one wants, and LaBerge offers that “we might fly, meet anyone we like from all of history, or indulge in any sexual adventures.”1 Besides sexual fulfillment, it has been found that there are connections between “the neural circuits of REM sleep the brain’s ‘reward system’”1 Basically, lucid dreams intrinsically make you happier. Lucid dreaming also serves a manner in which to gain experiences that otherwise would be impossible. The paralyzed can walk, the mute can talk, and people with other disadvantages can finally ‘make their dreams come true’ to a point. A large cause for depression among the paralyzed besides the inability to move is the inability to experience sexual pleasure. Lucid dreaming allows paralytics to bring both of these into realization.
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