*New Weird Wednesday episode of Enhance Podcast out now! Lucid Dreams and Samm’s Nightmare! With guest-host, moi, Sidney Floyd! Hear Samm and I chat about all things lucid dreaming!*
Lucid Dreaming: What Is It?
We know lucid dreaming is what occurs when you are asleep and dreaming, and you know it. However, you probably will not be able to change the physics or gravity of your dream or gain the ability to live within a dream, like Inception. When you are lucid dreaming, you should be able to fully control your body within the limitations of the dream. For example, I have been able to use magical powers in some of my dreams, but, of course, the storyline was dark wizard academia. There was context! I have never been able to alter the environment of my dream, that I attribute solely to my subconscious. Your subconscious shapes your dreams because of what’s going on in your brain and your body while you’re sleeping and dreaming. With practice, you too can certainly lucid dream, if you haven’t already!
Let’s break down what goes on when you’re asleep. The main component to dreaming is REM sleep, but to understand REM sleep we have to understand the cycles of sleep.
Cycles of sleep:
Stage 1: The transitionary time between lying in bed awake and lying in bed half asleep. During stage 1 of sleep, your brain is producing high amplitude theta waves (slow brain waves that are seen mainly in the frontal lobe of our brains). Your brain is also still moderately active.
Stage 2: Half of your total sleep time is spent in stage 2 of sleep. This is when your breathing and heart rate start to regulate, your eye movement stops, and your body temperature drops(*non-scary ghost noises*). While you are initially falling asleep, your brain produces sleep spindles (“bursts of rapid rhythmic brain wave activity” (google)) thought to be a feature of memory consolidation. Basically, your body is slowing down for deep sleep.
Stage 3, also known as Delta sleep, is characterized by the delta waves emitted from your brain during this phase of sleep. Stage 3 is the first half of the deep sleep you experience throughout the stages of sleep. Sleepwalking occurs during delta sleep. During stage 3 your muscles completely relax, your blood pressure drops and your breathing slows. Stage 3 is the time when your body and mind prepare for the next day. So your body goes to work restoring its muscles and organs, while your brain works to consolidate all of the new and learned information from the day. This is the last stage of non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) in the sleep cycle (stages 1-3 are known as NREM sleep). REM sleep, also known as active sleep comes next.
REM sleep: This is the main attraction (REM refers to ‘rapid eye movement’ sleep). REM sleep is the stage when we dream. The primary feature of REM sleep is that your brain activity is much closer to that of an awake person than of someone in deep sleep, BUT our muscles are temporarily immobilized by this deepest phase in our sleep cycle. If you’ve ever experienced a sleep paralysis demon, this is the result of waking up during REM sleep and not being able to move. NOTE* There is a distinction between waking up during REM sleep and gaining awareness in a dream, as we are talking about in reference to lucid dreaming. Waking up during REM sleep can happen for a multitude of reasons if you start to physiologically respond to a nightmare or stress-filled dream. For me, this often happens when I strain too hard to move or scream during an emotionally draining nightmare. So, while your body is relaxed and also completely still, your breath quickens and becomes more irregular, your eye-movement drastically increases, and you dream.
REM sleep is also an important part of memory consolidation and the processing of new information. The brain uses REM sleep as a secondary method to really pound in memories from the day. It is also thought that REM sleep is where we process most of the emotional information and stimuli experienced during the day. During stage 3 and REM sleep important cell-repair work is being done inside of our bodies. Hormones are released to help aid in muscle repair and the immune system is strengthened during all deep sleep.
The ability to and how often a person experiences lucid dreaming has been linked to metacognition*(see below article)*.
You go through each sleep stage in order, for the most part, repeating the second stage after the third stage as well as REM sleep: Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Stage 2, REM, Stage 2 (repeat). You go through this cycle until you wake up. Because we go from deep sleep directly to stage 2 of sleep, oftentimes people will lucid dream without even trying to as they’re waking up. Typically a full sleep cycle is around 90 minutes long, but this varies from person to person.
*SOME FUN FACTS: Samm Brown, Enhance Production’s dear CEO, times his sleep cycles every time he goes to sleep, so he knows nearly exactly how much time he needs to set aside to be fully rested! He also used to only lucid dream, as in every time he had a dream it was a lucid one! My jaw literally dropped when I heard this for the first time. At the same time though, I have had periods of time (typically when I was experiencing a recurring nightmare!) where I would realize I was dreaming right before waking up nearly everyday. Have you ever started lucid dreaming after having a recurring nightmare? Let us know, for science ofc!
Now that you know what lucid dreaming is and how you get there, let’s take a look at the history of lucid dreaming. Has this been around longer than the now-aunties of tumblr? The answer is yes, long before.
History of lucid dreaming:
Aristotle is one of the first credible scholars to mention lucid dreaming. In the fourth century BCE in the treatise On dreams of his Parva Naturali, he states: “often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream” (Aristotle, 1941, p. 624). Here, I believe Aristotle is trying to analyze the properties of lucid dreams. “That what then presents itself,” (624) I think, can be stricken from the paraphrased sentence I’m about to develop. Often, when you are asleep, there is something in you that becomes aware, or wakes up, and shouts, this is a dream (Aristotle, 624)! He never added a chapter about lucid dreaming after this, but I’m choosing to assume, based on the mentioned excerpt, that Aristotle had some pretty philosophical thoughts on the matter.
Around the same time, or earlier (scholars have debated the exact dates surrounding the Buddha’s life) there is mention of lucid dreaming by the Buddha. Buddha told a story in the Samadhiraja Sutra (scholars argue that this occurred somewhere between 2nd or 3rd century CE to the 6th century) which goes, “There was once a young woman who dreamed she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. She was so happy; she loved nourishing and caring for her baby. This was the happiest time in her life. But when he was a couple of years old, he became sick and died. Then, she became heartbroken. This was the most tragic time in her life.” This text is a bit different. The Buddha does not, to me at least, appear to talk about lucid dreaming here. Buddha does, however, discuss the themes of emotional contentment in the space of our dream world. Which begets the question, how much of our time asleep is spent unhappy? I believe this is the basis of buddhist developments upon lucid dreaming, based on this story from the Samadhiraja Sutra.
From there, a practice known as ‘dream yoga‘ developed. The dream yoga I will mention here follows the structure described by Padmasambhava Tibetan Buddhism. Paralysis of the body during deep sleep, which is causing the body and the brain’s usual sensory ability to be decreased, invites a wonderful playing field for the potential practice of dharma. Dharma is the practice of living by the teachings of the Buddha, or actively utilizing the Buddha’s teachings in your own life. Tibetan dream yoga takes advantage of this deep-sleep playing field in the name of utilizing the time spent asleep during one’s lifetime to practice Dharma. While asleep, drifting away into a meditative asleep state, your senses are swept up into your mental consciousness, which buddhism refers to as the sixth consciousness. The goal of dream yoga is to transform dreams into clear light, after wading through all of the external and internal factors that influence and cause negative dreams. With the goal being to transform your dreams into clear light, you are working towards the very unique ability of being able to practice Dharma while asleep (which is the main message being presented here by dream yoga). This is based in the Bodhichitta, which states “we dedicate our dream yoga for the benefit of all beings. Enlightenment is totally dependant on intention, effort, and proper motivation.”
This practice also involves looking at things happening in everyday life as “no more real than a dream.” in an effort to practice detachment.
Developments in The History of Lucid Dreaming:
There really were no developments made to the Western concept of lucid dreaming until the 20th century. So, I’ve gotta mention Dutch psychiatrist Frederik Van Eeden who, in 1913, wrote a full account of his ordeal with this whole lucid dreaming thing. Van Eeden mostly scratches the surface of realizing one is in a dream and declares therefore one is lucid. Lucid dreaming faced a lot of skepticism from scientists and philosophers because there wasn’t the scientific equipment necessary for the research needed for firmer conclusions. Until the late 1970s, when lucid dreaming was first distinguished using eye mapping tech (EOG). Research led to the beginning of scientific development of machines and tools that could examine what was going on while someone was lucid dreaming. This led to the invention of the electrooculogram, or EOG, a machine that measures eye movement during sleep, to differentiate between normal REM sleep and lucid dreaming. And the electromyogram EMG, which measures electrical activity in muscles and muscle response to nerve stimuli. This is used to test muscle response to nerve signals. And the electroencephalogram, or EEG, showing that the prefrontal and parietal regions of the brain are active parts in lucid dreaming. William Dement and Edward A. Wolpert (1958), Keith Hearne (1978), and Stephan Laberge (1981) all contributed to standardization of specific indicators of lucid dreaming; mainly specific volatile eye movements, distinctly different from typical REM eye movement patterns.
Now that we have gone over all of the history, the what, and the why, let’s get into how to do it! Noting that we should only try something once we have established a firm baseline on where it comes from!
How to Lucid Dream
~Best Practices to prepare~
Write down your dreams. It’s important that you begin to practice remembering your dreams. This helps create a pattern in your brain to be more aware of your dreams, which helps your awareness inside of your dreams. It’s helpful to know the typical attributes of your personal dreamscape, so you can recognize your dreams when you’re in them!
Repeat it if you believe it! Tell yourself you will remember your dreams when you wake up. Whether or not you believe in manifestation, it always helps to put good out into the universe surrounding what you want! If you think about wanting to remember your dreams when you wake up every night before bed, chances are, eventually, you will wake up and remember one of them!
Starting a dream journal is an essential first step in any lucid dream journey! This is also a wonderful practice for overall mindfulness and mental health. Writing down what you can remember from your dreams helps you to remember and keep track of them. Remembering your dreams is also an essential self awareness tool that can help you to identify when you are in a dream.
Practice ‘reality-testing’ (optional but helpful). Throughout the day count your fingers and flip light switches to make sure you’re not dreaming. I know this seems very silly when you’re awake. It always feels silly. That’s okay. What this does, though, is create a behavioral pattern that will eventually follow you into your dreams. Consistency is the key. The more you think about your dreams when you’re awake, the easier it will be to notice when you’re asleep.
Try waking up a bit earlier and then going back to bed. There is a window about five minutes after you wake up that is prime-time for going back to sleep and re-entering REM sleep, to try and facilitate a lucid dream. Sometimes this might even happen without you meaning for it to, where you wake up early one morning and upon going back to sleep find yourself back in a lovely dream?
The final step, is don’t panic. The first instinct when you realize you’re asleep, is to wake up. When you’re in REM sleep though, you can’t move your body. Which can be very distressing if you’re trying to do a whole bunch of waking up and your body is not doing it. You might realize, in your dream, that while you can see your (dream)arm stretched out in front of you, when you strain hard to reach far, you can feel your actual arm struggling to move. So, it is imperative to remain calm. Remember that this is your time for rest, and it’s okay that you’re still. And on the bright side, if this is occurring, you can now do whatever you want in your dream!
There’s going to be a bit of a learning curve while you get used to the jostle of realizing you are in a dream. Or if you’re like me, you may wake up and then fall back asleep while lucid dreaming! The important thing to remember is that it will not last forever, and your body will catch up to you if you’re trying to wake up, just give it time to move back through the cycles.
Lucid Dreaming and meditative states:
You can also lucid dream from a meditative state. Wherein you meditate until you fall asleep and then once you start to dream you are in a heightened state of awareness and therefore are able to become lucid within the dream. (Side note: this process is similar to how you might set up for astral projection. But that’s another story for another day!)
Preparing to lucid dream from a meditative state requires that you get in a comfy, preferably lying down, position and meditate for at least 14 minutes. Enough time for your body to go into stage 1 of the sleep cycle.
Then you continue to meditate, until your body moves into stage 2 of the sleep cycle. The key here is to maintain consciousness while letting your mind and body rest. You can’t be thinking up a whole mess about your day and work drama. It’s helpful to try to generate relaxing and detached good vibes. While your favorite meditative practice is great for getting your body to start winding down, in order to allow your brain to move through its sleep cycles (rather than stay in stage 1, wake up, and then go back into stage 1), you have to allow your brain to go completely quiet while maintaining awareness.
Eventually you will move into stage three of the sleep cycle. Once this happens any meditation will probably give way to sleep. Don’t worry! This does not undo all of the work (or lack-there of) that you have done to get here. By maintaining awareness while technically asleep, no matter how light the sleep, your brain is practicing intentionally going through the motions of lucid dreaming. While that feeling is fresh in your brain’s storage tank of neural processes, it’s easier to find awareness and clarity when dreaming, in my experience.
Go forth and gain a little more insight on yourself through your dreams!
Your dreamworld is the playground of your subconscious, so don’t be afraid of any lurking shadows. They are important facets of you. All of it is a part of your story.
*Metacognition is the process your brain goes through to properly manage conditional knowledge (long-term memory of past mistakes/solutions and active corrections for potential dangerous behavior), self awareness and analysis, as well as the ability to observe and actively correct actions taken in the interest of efficacy and efficiency. Essentially the full Monty of common sense.
Check out this episode of Enhance Podcast, out now, all about lucid dreaming and nightmares!!! With guest-host Sid Floyd, thas me! Hear me and Samm get into it, yuh!
Works Cited
Baird B, Mota-Rolim SA, Dresler M. The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2019 May;100:305-323. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.008. Epub 2019 Mar 14. PMID: 30880167; PMCID: PMC6451677
Cherry, Kendra. “Can You Learn to Lucid Dream?” Verywell Mind, 23 May 2021, http://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-lucid-dream-5077887.
—. “The 4 Stages of Sleep (NREM and REM Sleep Cycles).” Verywell Health, Verywellhealth, 16 June 2007, http://www.verywellhealth.com/the-four-stages-of-sleep-2795920.
Gosse, Carolyn, and Rhea Paul. “Metacognition – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics.” Www.sciencedirect.com, 2018, http://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/metacognition#:~:text=Metacognition%2C%20or%20executive%20function%2C%20includes. Accessed 29 July 2023.
John Hopkins Medicine. “Electromyography (EMG).” Www.hopkinsmedicine.org, 2023, http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/electromyography-emg#:~:text=Electromyography%20(EMG)%20measures%20muscle%20response.
Martins, Kris. “Lucid Dreams.” WebMD, 14 Aug. 2022, http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/lucid-dreams-overview#:~:text=Lucid%20dreams%20are%20when%20you.
Rogers, Reece. “How to Lucid Dream (Even If You Think You Can’t).” Wired, 14 Mar. 2023, http://www.wired.com/story/how-to-lucid-dream/.
Voss, Ursula, et al. “Lucid Dreaming: A State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming.” Sleep, vol. 32, no. 9, Sept. 2009, pp. 1191–1200, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737577/, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/32.9.1191.
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