Lucid Dreaming:
Hack Your Dreams to Improve Your Life
The Daily Doze
What are Lucid Dreams?
Much is still unknown about the phenomena, but researchers believe lucid dreams happen with brain activity in the prefrontal cortex.
Lucid dreaming occurs when you’re fully aware you’re in a dream, including the thoughts and emotions experienced as the dream happens. The dreamer doesn’t leave the dream state and can exercise control over aspects of the dream: the environment, people, and storyline.
Lucid dreams exclusively happen during deep sleep or REM sleep. Lucid dreaming is also known as ‘hybrid sleep-wake state’ because prefrontal cortex activity is similar to levels when awake.
The two central characteristics of the experience of lucid dreaming are self-awareness and the ability to control dreams; although they do not always occur together. Moreover, lucidity of dreams can be fleeting -- there may be brief bursts of self awareness within dreams.
Are Lucid Dreams Good for You?
You may be asking why someone would want to encourage lucid dreaming? Self-induced lucid dreams have grown in popularity over the years. How will it help us improve our lives?
While we still don’t know the fundamental purpose of dreaming, dreams have been identified as a space for both healing and discovery related to our waking lives. Also, dreams have long been believed to help with emotional processing, problem solving, creativity and idea exploration.
There are certainly benefits to lucid dreaming and there may also be potential consequences. Some studies say it can help with treatment for nightmares and anxiety, while others argue it could disturb sleep and cause people to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy.
How to Start Lucid Dreaming
The ability to lucid dream might be straightforward to some, while others may not have had the experience. With practice and knowledge, one can easily trigger lucid dreams by employing some of the following methods. Techniques are not set in stone, but have worked effectively:
- Optimize your bedroom for sleeping. It’s crucial to have the right mattress, pillow and room environment to get you into deep sleep. Good sleep hygiene will ensure a healthy sleep-wake cycle and get you into REM Sleep, the stage when lucid dreams occur.
- Be definite. A lucid dream created with a specific theme and goal in mind will have a greater impact in one’s waking life. For example, if you want courage to move out of the country or ask your boss for a raise, this helps you build the courage and purpose.
- Be detailed. The more detail you include will make the experience and visualization stronger.
- Use real-world situations, places, and people. Draw on elements from your real or waking life. Even mundane or trivial details will help align the visualization with your real-world experience, making it more real -- and thus, more powerful.
- Develop detailed dream recall. Keeping a dream journal is very effective in helping with dream recall. Fostering a strong dream memory means you'll be able to harness this technique as a strong self-development tool.
Want to know more? Make sure to check out our other blog posts for valuable information on sleep!
- How Sleep Affects Your Mental Health
- How an App can Make You Sleep Better at Night
- The 6 Most-Burning Questions on Sleep, Answered
Learn more about our sleep systems at MajesticBeds. The right mattress, pillow and room environment help facilitate the experience of deep sleep. Our Sleep Experts can help you identify the best solution to your sleep needs.
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