Lucid Dreaming: What If You Could Control Your Imagination?
Lucid dreaming is the highly mystical process of being conscious during your dreams. Can lucid dreaming serve as a natural therapy alternative?
By Lily Yuan, Featured Writer.
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
You're the writer of your own story. Hang on tight—you’re the main character now. Hit the pillow, open your imagination, and welcome to a new reality. You control what the restaurant serves, and who the waiters are.
Your stomach is a bottomless pit, and your eating prowess remains undefeated. You control if the skies rain burrito bowls or nachos. Have it all in the blink of an eye with lucid dreaming.
What if...you could really control your imagination?
What Is Lucid Dreaming?
Lucid dreaming is the highly mystical process of being conscious during your dreams. It happens during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep—that is, during light sleep. Neuropsychologic technology such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) demonstrate activity in the brain’s prefrontal and parietal regions. Researchers found that cholinergic stimulation shows promising results in inducing lucid dreaming (Baird et al., 2019).
Can lucid dreaming serve as a natural therapy alternative? It's a more subconscious visualization technique. Yes, with practice, it can be learned—despite sometimes being confused as an innate talent or something someone is born with. Neuroscientists have expressed vested interest in lucid dreaming and have pinpointed the (sub-)stages to which this phenomenon occurs.
To measure the phases of lucid dreaming, neuroscientists use an electrooculogram (EOG) to record activity during polysomnography-verified sleep. Participants have brain scans, use dream journals for dream recall, and other physiological tools to track their slumber and get one step closer to solving the lucid dreaming mystery.
Now dream on this—what if you could now effectively treat your nightmares? Better yet, what if you could take on any challenge in your sleep?
Lucid dreaming can be the gateway to bliss...on Earth. At least during your slumbers. With an estimated 2-8% of American adults battling recurring nightmares, a natural, non-invasive treatment strategy can be challenging to acquire. Luckily, an influx of holistic remedies have entered the market during the last decade: binaural sound therapy, art therapy, and so on.
“The thing about lucid dreams is that it’s not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics - you can do magic.”
Lucid Dreaming: Case Studies
Long-term lucid dreamers are found to possess a variety of characteristics: a need for cognition and creativity, as well as a higher internal locus of control (Blagrove and Hartnell, 2000). A higher locus of control entails greater autonomy, a stronger sense of self-efficacy, and heightened conscientiousness. Imagination and fantasy proneness, key components in solving complex tasks during dreams, also correlates with successful lucid dreams (Koffel and Watson, 2009).
The Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO) defines reality testing as “the capacity to differentiate self from non-self, intrapsychic from external stimuli, and to maintain empathy with ordinary social criteria of reality” (Kernberg, 1996, p. 120). Dagnall et al. (2017) identified four factors that measure IPO-RT: delusional thinking, hallucinations, sensory or perceptual confusion, and social deficits.
Stumbrys, T. (2021), a phD dream researcher and lecturer, investigated the potential downsides of lucid dreaming on health and wellbeing. He found that within a group of 489 dreamers (where 94% of the sample were lucid dreamers), they reported greater mental wellbeing and creativity as opposed to adverse reactions such as dissociation or poor sleep quality. Lucid dreaming, he concludes, has great potential and requires more intensive longitudinal research.
What Will the Future of Lucid Dreaming Look Like?
As previously mentioned, lucid dreaming can be a gateway to better self-control, emotional regulation, and better sleep. Combined with therapy, lucid dreaming can be a natural alternative to traditional sleep aids such as melatonin supplements or more powerful sedative/hypnotic pills such as Zolpidem. We’ll continue to learn more about treatment options for different sleep chronotypes and …
“Lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem solving and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery.”
…with technology grounded in neuroscience, brain gadgets may soon be available for the general public to own. This is just the beginning of a larger mystery as scientists piece together pieces of our brain puzzles. We may learn how to effectively control the grey area between our conscious and subconscious minds—an exciting endeavor!
Where in our minds will lucid dreaming take us next?
References
Baird, B., Mota-Rolim, S. A., & Dresler, M. (2019). The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 100, 305–323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.008.
Blanchette-Carrière, C., Julien, S. H., Picard-Deland, C., Bouchard, M., Carrier, J., Paquette, T., & Nielsen, T. (2020). Attempted induction of signalled lucid dreaming by transcranial alternating current stimulation. Consciousness and cognition, 83, 102957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2020.102957.
Drinkwater, K. G., Denovan, A., & Dagnall, N. (2020). Lucid Dreaming, Nightmares, and Sleep Paralysis: Associations With Reality Testing Deficits and Paranormal Experience/Belief. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 471. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00471.
Stumbrys, Tadas. (2021). Dispelling the shadows of the lucid night: An exploration of potential adverse effects of lucid dreaming. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000288.
Szczegielniak, Anna & Pałka, Karol & Goc, T. & Krysta, Krzysztof. (2015). Lucid Dreaming: a Mysterious Phenomenon. European Psychiatry. 30. 1780. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(15)31372-9.
Tart, C. (1979). From spontaneous event to lucidity: A review of attempts to consciously control nocturnal dreaming. In B. Wolman, M. Ullman, & W. Webb (Eds.), Handbook of dreams: Research, theories and applications. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 226–268.
Vallat, R., & Ruby, P. M. (2019). Is It a Good Idea to Cultivate Lucid Dreaming?. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2585. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02585.
Voss, U., Holzmann, R., Tuin, I., & Hobson, J. A. (2009). Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep, 32(9), 1191–1200. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/32.9.1191.
Zadra, A. L., & Pihl, R. O. (1997). Lucid dreaming as a treatment for recurrent nightmares. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 66(1), 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1159/000289106.