A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that they are dreaming, and precisely this awareness is responsible for the individual being able to control what happens in it.
What is a lucid dream?
According to different studies, 55% of adults have been able to experience at least one lucid dream at one point in their lives, and 23% of them can have them once a month. But what are lucid dreams?
A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that they are dreaming, and precisely this awareness is responsible for the individual being able to control what happens in it. They happen in the periods of most intense brain activation, during the REM phase of sleep, the moment that precedes waking up, and it is such an ancient practice that references to them can be found in cultures as old as Taoism and Tibetan Buddhism.
Benefits of lucid dreaming
- They reduce anxiety: conscious dreams make us feel we control our lives. So much so that being able to change what happens in a dream so that it benefits us lessens nightmares and helps us manage conflicting emotions that translate into anxiety daily.
- They improve our social and personal skills: being able to face, during sleep, complicated situations that are difficult for us to face in real life trains us and enables us to put them into practice.
- They help us solve problems: lucid dreams allow us to see our problems from different perspectives, making their solution easier.
- They encourage creativity: lucid dreams can help us develop ideas completely different from those contemplated in real life.
- They allow us to understand ourselves better: when we are in the world of dreams, people can see parts of our unconscious related to our consciousness, which allows us to better understand our limits, defects, and virtues.
Lucid dreaming risks
- They decrease sleep quality: when a person plays with vivid dreams, they may wake up due to the actions or feelings perceived within them. Therefore, if you have a lot of lucid dreaming or experiment with it too much, it can affect the quality of your sleep.
- They blur the line between what is real and imagined: For people suffering from certain psychological disorders, lucid dreams can aggravate their symptoms.
How can I achieve lucid dreaming?
Having lucid dreams is not as difficult as we might imagine. Several techniques can help you increase the probability of having lucid dreams:
- Maintain good sleep hygiene: the key to reaching the REM phase, where these lucid dreams occur, is to have good habits when going to sleep.
- Do reality tests: a good way to have a lucid dream is to ask yourself daily if you are in one of them and look for tests that tell you if you are in the dream world or reality. For example, looking at the clock twice a row to see if the hours have changed can be a reality check; if you are in a dream, the time will not change. If, in reality, you often think about whether or not you are in a dream, it is highly probable that you also do so in your dreams, and you will find signs that indicate that you are dreaming.
- Keep a Dream Journal – Keeping a dream journal can help you recognize patterns in your dreams. To do this, you must write down your dreams every day when you wake up to identify repeating patterns and use that information to recognize that you are dreaming.
- Play video games: according to various studies, it has been shown that playing video games can induce more lucid dreams.
- It uses the MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming) technique, which is based on prospective memory and aims to remember and do things later. The idea is to repeat while we are still awake the phrase, “the next time I dream, I want to remember that I am dreaming.”
- Use the WILD (Wake-Induced While Dreaming) technique: This technique involves waking up during the night and then going back to sleep with the intention of lucid dreaming. During this process, you maintain awareness while your body falls asleep.
What is a peeper?
The person who, when dreaming, is aware that he is dreaming is called the oneironaut and enters a mental state similar to wakefulness.
Neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich have compared the brain structures of people who regularly and rarely lucid dreamers, and what they have discovered is that the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that enables self-reflection, is larger in oneironauts. This suggests that they are possibly more self-reflective when awake.
What you should know…
- A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that they are dreaming, and precisely this awareness is responsible for the individual being able to control what happens in it.
- Lucid dreams can reduce anxiety, help us solve problems, and improve creativity… but they can also carry risks, such as reducing the quality of sleep or blurring the line between what is real and what is imaginary.
- Having lucid dreams is not as difficult as we might imagine. Several techniques can help you increase the probability of having lucid dreams.
