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If you’ve ever thought about using lucid dreaming to harness the power of your sleeping brain, you are not alone. The first step for aspiring Oneironauts is to let your mind know that your dreams matter. As part of Lifehacker’s Workshop for lucid dreams, here is some background on the risks and benefits of lucid dreaming and what exactly is happening to your brain while it is happening.
What are the benefits of lucid dreaming?
Why bother with lucid dreams at all? First and foremost, lucid dreaming is fun. Like, really fun. My first lucid dream happened when I was a teenager. I had just started reading a book about lucid dreaming, and on family vacation, beginner’s luck met me in a hotel room:
I spoke to a dream friend – who wasn’t real, but was compelling in my dream state – while standing on my high school football field. While we were talking, an eye-opening realization occurred to me: I’m traveling with my family right now, so how could I be at school? Suddenly everything stopped and became more alive. The grass felt real, the sun on my skin warmed me and I became very aware that I didn’t know the person I was talking to. “Am I dreaming?” I asked myself allowed. “If I dream, then I can fly.” I felt my feet leave the ground and I hovered gently over the dream friend. “I can fly. I can go anywhere!” I thought as the amusement of the flight drove me higher and higher. Soon I was in the clouds planning to see the world from the comfort of my bed.
The dream didn’t last long as I couldn’t maintain my clarity, but I woke up ecstatically. It was the most fun sleep I’d ever had and I couldn’t wait to do it again.
But lucid dreams can offer other opportunities too if you are willing to do the legwork. Your dreams can be a sanctuary for personal reflection and deep meditation; a place to chat with your real self and ponder big decisions without the distractions of the waking world. Dreams can also be a place to practice real activities. Think of the dream world as a mental rehearsal roomwhere you can go through your big presentation for work, focus on your exercise routines, or even get on with your studies before a big exam.
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If you are a creative type, lucid dreams can be an endless source of artistic inspiration. The dream world is your canvas and you can create anything in it. After all, dreams are a safe place to experiment and overcome fears. You can stand up against a bully, practice socializing, have the courage to ask your boss for a raise, or overcome your fear of public speaking.
What are the risks of lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming is generally safe for those who are mentally stable, but it is important to discuss some of the potential risks associated with the practice.
Sleep paralysis occurs in almost everyone at night during the REM cycle – to keep you from physically living out your dreams – however some people experience a state between dreaming and waking when trying lucid dreaming. This can be scary as you cannot move, aware that you are awake, but you may still be hallucinating from your dream. This type of sleep paralysis is uncommon, but it is definitely possible by experimenting with lucid dreams. Fortunately, there are ways to either wake yourself up from this state or achieve a full sleep / dream state, but we’ll cover these later.
One of the best advantages of lucid dreaming can also be one of its worst pitfalls: realistic feelings. The lucid dream state can offer euphoric feelings of sight, movement, happiness, and even sex, but that means feelings on the other side of the spectrum can also occur. Fear, sadness and pain are also possible in a lucid dream. However, such negative feelings occur even more frequently in the waking state, since, unlike in the dream state, you have less control over the world. And no, you don’t die in real life if you die in a dream. Trust me, I have died many times in my dreams.
There is also the possibility of “dream claustrophobia”, in which people in a dream scenario become clear that they cannot manipulate or from which they cannot awaken. But these aren’t that different from normal dreams – they’re just more alive. And finally, some fear it Using lucid dreams as a form of escapism will push them out of contact with reality. After all, why would you want to spend time in the normal world when you can be in your own personal world where you have unimaginable power? Well, lucid dreams only last as long as your REM cycles happen while you sleep, and training to be clear at any point in time you choose takes years of training. In short, your dream escapism sessions are no more damaging than watching a movie or playing a video game – except, perhaps, a little more enlightening.
However, if any of these slight risks startle you, lucid dreaming may not be for you. Likewise, if you have borderline personality disorder, or some other mental disorder that makes it difficult for you to know what is real and what is not, sleep better the old-fashioned way: lucid dreaming can leave you with dream-reality confusion and make your condition worse.
But while these scenarios are a very real possibility, they are all still unlikely events for those in relatively sane states of mind who work their way up to lucid dreams with gradual, conscious practice. Lucid dreams are very similar to a swimming pool; It’s a place to fight and drown, but once you learn to swim there is nothing to worry about and you will have a lot of fun splashing around.
Start and keep a dream journal
Learning how to wake up in your dreams doesn’t matter until you can develop your dream memory. You must learn to stand before you can walk. In fact, you may have had a lucid dream but you don’t know it because you don’t remember it happened.
Your brain usually tries to automatically forget your dreams. It knows that these experiences are not real and tries to push them into the background when they wake up to make room for immediate memories from the waking world. But there is an easy way to disrupt this: a dream journal. Always keep your pen and pad by your bed. It should be easy to pick up and use right away. Don’t put it in your bedside drawer, throw it under your bed, or use a writing tool that requires a lot of force (fancy pens, quills, etc.). You have to be able to grasp, grasp, and write.
Also, do not use your phone to do this. The act of writing down like taking notes in class, will only help you keep the dream in mind. Or if you have artistic skills and can make use of them, that’s even better.
To sleep well –worth at least seven hours– is also of great help with this exercise, as well as during your excursion into lucid dreaming. Without consistent, restful sleep, lucid dreaming is almost impossible. You won’t get stronger if you spend less time in the gym.
Additionally, don’t keep your alarm clock too far from the bed. You have few precious moments to memorize your dream when you wake up and chasing an alarm clock will waste that window of time. If possible, go to bed early and try to wake up without an alarm clock. When you wake up, take a few seconds to go over what you just went through, then grab your journal and write it down as soon as possible. Do this as often as possible and your brain will gradually reconfigure its normal wake-up protocol to meet your newly declared storage needs.
“Oh, did you want to hold onto that?” Your brain will tell when you wake from a wonderful dream and you will open your dream diary with a resounding “Hell yeah!” Okay, Oneironauts: sleep well and keep dreaming.
This story was originally published in June 2017 and was updated on July 20, 2021 to comply with Lifehacker style guidelines.
