I hope this research is quickly buried and never resurfaces again. Why? Because the last thing I want is to be asleep and dreaming and have some dream character approach me and say "I've been trying to reach you about your vehicle's extended warranty!" Do. Not. Want.
> a highly-selective analysis of highly selected participants shows that a small minority of them seem able to respond to simple questions while they sleep. the stats here are a mess.
I don't think the stats were the point. The conclusion isn't about quantifying it. It's essentially a binary existence statement and "we found this phenomenon that needs more research".
Like giantg2 said. There are (at least) two types of studies: this is purely exploratory, proof-of-concept type. The reason "a group of british scientists" studies got such a bad reputation is because they were largely aimed at finding out new stuff, but got presented by the press as the proving things.
For discovery (or university science play) you're good with samples of 10-20 people. For proving stuff you need meta-analysis of several studies, ideally including RTCs and a couple of large longitudinal ones.
shrug science is complicated. Some stuff about how to do it properly has been leaking into the water supply, but overall public opinion is pretty much detached from the details and still thinks a study is a study.
If I realize I'm dreaming, then it becomes a lucid dream, but a timer also starts ticking. I can't usually remain dreaming for more than 30 seconds (or what feels like that long).
I usually realize I'm dreaming because I'm talking with someone who, I all of a sudden remember, is dead in real life (usually my parents). They then comfort me about this fact until I wake up.
I could probably communicate something to an external observer for that brief window. I don't know how it would be useful though - I typically remember the lucid dream portion vividly upon waking up.
There are some tricks which can help you stay there. E.g. you can try spinning around and then usually you end up in a different place. Also, if you haven't been lucid dreaming for a long time yet it may come naturally as you get less frantically excited that you've achieved it.
But there are also levels to lucidity. I remember having dreams when I knew I was dreaming before I've been lucid dreaming and it was a very different experience.
With full lucidity everything is in such a mind boggling great detail which I cannot achieve in the real world with my eyes and yet I know it's all made up in my head. I can carefully examine surface of some thing and it's so unreal that this touch experience is only a dream.
I highly recommend to at least try it a few times for those who haven't. Profound life experience.
However personally I don't do these anymore (or even hardly remember any dreams, low amount of sleep may be related), because dreams tend to consume me a bit. They can be such a powerful experiences that I may spend good part of the day thinking about them and I'd rather take in what's around me. I wonder if anybody here can relate to that part.
I've only ever had one lucid dream, in which I was being chased and realized I could just throw myself off a cliff to wake up, which is what I immediately did. I wish I could have more.
I really enjoy when I remember my dreams and they consume part of my day. I consider it productive. If I let them, they reveal themselves more to me as the day goes on, and there's usually an "aha" moment when I realize what a dream was a metaphor for, usually something I'm struggling with in real life. Often they also give me new ideas for creative design problems I'm working on. Sometimes a building or a landscape I'm walking through is even laid out to show me a better way to approach an algorithm.
I can relate, though, to wanting to clear the fog that comes with holding onto a dream, and get on with the day in reality. Usually if I decide one isn't worth reading too much into, I can just jot a few words about it down and let it go.
Maybe writing it down will help to let it go, I'll try it some time.
> I've only ever had one lucid dream, in which I was being chased and realized I could just throw myself off a cliff to wake up, which is what I immediately did. I wish I could have more.
I can't say anything objective about your subjective experience, but I think if it was a lucid dream, not a "oh it's a dream", you'd rather look around the thing that is chasing you, transform it to whatever you please and fly of a cliff to dance in the sky.
What I'm trying to say is that it can be much more than just this realization, and if you wish to have more, you can, there's tons of exercises you can find online. Unfortunately they tend to often be on sites/forums where they also talk about chakras, astral projections and what not. Which is the reason I thought lucid dreaming may also be some b*t, and which is the reason I'm writing these comments here to vouch that it is real, achievable and worth giving it a try.
What has worked for me is “priming” my subconscious with a place/person/thing I want to incorporate in my dream, and then finding the nearest door in the current dream I’m in (doesn’t always work, sometimes I gain lucidity in an environment that does not have many doors, but often times my dreams are inside (aside: I think it’s easier for the subconscious to generate dreamscapes that are bounded)). When I open the door I can change environments to what I “primed” with a low risk (but not zero) of “popping” out of the dream (which for me involves the entire dreamscape going completely and infinitely white/blank).
During the day practice moving your attention from spot to spot in a triangle maybe 10 degrees of a side. Don't move your eyes, just your attention. (Your fovea is usually served by a lot of extra brain power, but with practice most of that computation (sharpening) power can be shifted. It probably won't happen the first few times, but you can eventually get this result, and it'll be obvious enough that you won't be in much doubt about it.
Then when you start to realize you are lucid dreaming, shift your dream eyes (your attention) in similar triangles, while keeping calm as you can. This will help keep the dream from dissolving for a couple reasons, if you can remember to start doing it, and do keep doing it until the dream stabilizes again and lucid dreaming seems less startling.
Asking yourself, seriously but very calmly, many times during the day whether you are lucid dreaming helps too; to increase the chances of lucidity, but even more to reduce the excitement of finding yourself lucid dreaming (which adrenaline spike can send you to wakefulness) by making the question a fairly ordinary one. Make sure you always start doing the triangular attention-shifting as soon as you start to ask the question, each time - to make that a habit that goes with that question/realization.
Some of this information can be found in Casteneda's writings, some can't.
I've started having lucid dreams by reminding me of "watching my hands" frequently and repeating a short mantra as described in Castaneda book (iirc the second one he wrote). It took me less than 3 weeks to start experiencing those. The first one was one of the most powerful and energetic experience of my life. I woke up with "I did it!" and started grasping because of the excitement.
Something that help me from dissolving is to frequently reminding of shaking my hands during the dream, it gives a temporary boost of consciousness.
The scariest thought that I had during my experiences was a time when I found myself thinking: 'what if I'll not be able to get back...'. I was walking in a dark world lighted by a moon for moments that felt like hours. I discovered that relaxing was enough to get back.
Good on you. I remember the hands technique, but I was never conscious of it working for me - which doesn't mean it didn't, necessarily.
It's true that repeated waking-but-not-actually-waking (just moving into a new dream in which you're waking) can happens, and can cause anxiety. Bertrand Russell reported it and it's happened to me. However, the fifth or sixth time that happens to you, you know it won't keep going forever, you know you're just waking slowly. After that, repeated false waking is not anxiety producing, it's boring. Soooo boring as you wait to actually wake up for realz.
The opposite can happen too. I was sleeping in an unfamiliar room when I saw an interesting invention in a dream, realized that I was sleeping and became desperate to wake up and write it down so I didn't forget it. That urgency accelerated parts of the waking process, but not the whole process. I got my real, waking vision back before I got any body sensation or the inner ear back. So I was frozen for a bit but immensely puzzled by what I saw 'cause what I thought was "up" was actually "sideways" and I was in a new real room that was new to me. I did get to write the invention down in the real world shortly after though, after all of my brain woke up.
"Dreams take us to a different reality, a hallucinatory world that feels as real as any waking experience."
Does it really? It doesn't feel that real when you know it's a dream. All the dreams I can remember are always ones that I know it's a dream.
"rare phenomenon and lucid dreams can seldom be summoned at will, which has made it difficult for researchers to capture them in the lab in a reliable manner."
I mean, I can't summon them at will, but I do tend to dream most nights, and they're (as far as I can remember) always lucid.
I'm looking forward to more info about dreams and lucid dreams. I wonder if there's any correlation to stuff like dementia or early death. It seems like lucid dreaming is very tiring and that I don't wake well rested (I should add that I can generally control or struggle to control what goes on in the dream, so that might be part of it).
> All the dreams I can remember are always ones that I know it's a dream.
In my dreams I observe two orthogonal-ish aspects of lucidity: one is to know it's a dream, the other is to control my actions.
In most dreams I control myself but don't know it's a dream until I wake up. At times realising it's a dream immediately wakes me up.
The opposite is also common, where I know it's a dream but have no volition, it just plays out as a movie.
I'm sure there are dreams which are fully random but I can't seem to remember those.
Finally, I can only remember a single time when both combined. At first I just had control of my actions, then realised it was a dream. Then I remember proving to other people they were in a/my dream. That didn't last long before I woke up.
I also have never been able to lucid dream. Even the few instances where I realized I was dreaming I almost instantly woke up involuntarily.
I have heard keeping a dream-journal and using a few techniques inside the dream can give you the ability to lucid dream, but these haven't worked for me.
Yeah this is interesting, it's maybe only a few times a DECADE where I'll realize I'm dreaming. Well, that I remember at least. I have pretty good dream recall most days but of course I lose a lot pretty soon after getting going.
Not OP, but I can't think of a dream that I remember where I didn't know I was dreaming. Sometimes they are nightmares, but if it gets too bad I just remind myself that it's just a dream, and then that's pretty much that.
Not really. I can find myself in a nightmare situation, but I can then force it to play out differently. I don't wake up scared or anything, but I will wake up tired from forcing the dream to change or go a certain way.
I'm just commenting here to say that you're not the only one. My dreams always go wherever my mind wanders, so any nightmare events are just moments in a longer episode in which I'm aware that I'm dreaming. Any bad dream can be turned around as long as the thoughts inducing it are not intrusive.
Exception to the above are only 5 one-off "nightmare" dreams:
1. When I was a very little, I had a nightmare after watching/about The Little Toaster. Probably a lot of kids did.
2. Slightly older, I dreamt that flowers were growing out of my skin and I was becoming a plant.
3. Same age range, dreamt an evil clown had provoked me into a fight and none of my swings could hit him.
4. When I was a tween, I had a nightmare that my mother kept a small wooden box full of my father's freshly severed fingers.
5. In my 20s, I had a nightmare where I told my sister (I don't actually have one IRL) that I shot and killed a demonic horse who was actually myself.
I find it interesting that lucid dreaming has an impact on your feeling of restfulness. I can't say I've experienced the same, but I'll try to reflect on this more given that almost 100% of my dream states are lucid and have been for almost all of my adult life. As an adolescent, I would lucid dream only occasionally.
My personal experience with lucid dreaming is that I am almost always aware that I'm dreaming, and most of the time I'm content to let the dream play out. Sometimes I do intervene and become an active participant in the dream, rather than letting it happen like a cut-scene in a game. And, on occasion, I will rewind a scene that I'm unhappy with or I want to revisit.
I'll also sometimes find myself in a dream location and suddenly remember all the prior occurrences that I've visited the setting. It's the weirdest feeling because I'll have what feels like years worth of memories from experiences in that dream setting that come rushing back to me. Memories that I can only vaguely grasp when I'm conscious, but as soon as I'm back in a particular setting all those prior experiences are remembered -- things that happened in the environment, character interactions, etc.
It's a bit unsettling when I wake up because for a moment I feel like I have these parallel life experiences from different realities stored in my head, mostly partitioned from each other.
>It seems like lucid dreaming is very tiring and that I don't wake well rested
I spent a lot of time in my teens learning to lucid dream and I do credit it with worsening my sleep quality. If nothing else because I have to force myself to wake up when lucid dreams repeatedly turn creepy with their occupants unhappy with me for being the dreamer.
Learning about Lucid dreaming is a worthy investment of effort that can be rewarding everytime you rest your eyes which is over 50% of your life if you get enough. I used to struggle with sleep, getting to sleep, staying asleep. I dreamt alot.
It takes some time, but with just a basic technique about becoming alert and staying asleep at the same time, it can be assecible to all. I started out by trying to fly, progressed to completely orchestrating dreamscapes including summonsing different dream charactors at will.
That theory that you make up the entire memory of a dream the instant you wake up based on the "randomized" state of the brain at sleep must be bunk then.
