Lucid dreams

What are lucid dreams?

Lucid dreams occur when you are aware that you are dreaming while sleeping.You’re aware that the events that are flashing across your mind aren’t genuine. However, the dream is vivid and real. You could even be able to guide the action in your sleep, as if you were directing a movie. According to studies, roughly half of all adults have had at least one lucid dream. However, they are unlikely to occur frequently, usually only a few times per year.

When do lucid dreams happen?

Lucid dreams are most common during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is characterised by rapid eye movement, faster breathing, and increased brain activity. About 90 minutes after falling asleep, you normally enter REM sleep. It lasts approximately ten minutes. Each REM cycle lasts longer than the one before it, eventually reaching an hour.

Lucid Dreams Research

Neuroscientists are baffled as to how and why lucid dreams occur. They do, however, have some suggestions. For one instance, research have discovered physical differences in the brains of those who have lucid dreams versus those who don’t. People who have lucid dreams have a larger prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for high-level processes such as decision-making and memory recall. That shows that people who are most prone to have lucid dreams are self-reflective individuals who ruminate on their own thoughts. In a tiny study conducted in Germany, individuals’ brain electrical activity was monitored as they slept. According to the findings, lucid dreaming may be a kind of “in-between state” in which you aren’t entirely awake but also not fully sleeping. Some sleep researchers believe that lucid dreams can occur outside of REM sleep, which was previously regarded to be the only moment when people dreamed.

Benefits of Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams may assist your waking life by providing advantages such as:

– Less Anxiety: There is less anxiety. The sense of control you experience during a lucid dream may linger and make you feel powerful. You can mould the tale and the finale after you realise you’re in a dream. This could be used as a form of treatment for people who suffer from nightmares, teaching them how to manage their dreams.

– Better motor skills: Some research suggests that by “practising” in a lucid dream, you might be able to improve simple things like tapping your fingers faster. Whether you visualise the actions while awake or run through them in a lucid dream, the same area of your brain becomes engaged.

– Improved Problem-solving skills: Researchers discovered evidence that lucid dreams can assist people address difficulties involving creativity (such as a disagreement with another person) rather than reasoning (such as a math problem).

– Increased creativity: Some participants in lucid dream studies were able to generate new ideas or insights, sometimes with the assistance of characters in their dreams.

Dangers of Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreaming can lead to a variety of issues, including:

– Sleep deprivation: Vivid dreams might wake you up and make it difficult to fall back asleep. And if you’re too concentrated on lucid dreaming, you can have trouble sleeping.

– Confusion, delirium, and hallucinations: Lucid dreams can cause confusion, delirium, and hallucinations in people with certain mental health problems.

We spend one third of our life dreaming. Sometimes dreams are happy, scary, unexplainable and even an indication of what is going to happen in future. There is a popular saying that the dreams we see in the morning are usually true and real, though there is no scientific proof to it. We usually dream what we think, stress is an important factor in dreams. Less stress means happy dreams.

But will you believe it if I tell you that you can actually control your dreams?🤔
A dream where one becomes aware of the dream it is known as lucid dreaming. And there are people who do this. You can do it too!! Let’s know how.
People have been studying lucid dreams for a very long time, from ancient to modern it has been studied to understand the cause and purposes of it. As a result many theories have emerged, though it is still under research.

This term was given by Dutch author and psychiatrist Fredreik Van Eeden. In his article A Study of Dreams in 1913. He studied his own dreams for a period of time and wrote them in his dream diary, 352 of his dreams were categorized as lucid.
He mentioned 7 different types of dreams and out of which he considered lucid dreams most interesting and worthy of observation.
The reference to this phenomenon can be found in ancient greek writings. According to Aristotle, Greek philosopher, “often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream”. Other than Aristotle, physician Sir Thomas Browne, Samuel Pepys and more have mentioned lucid dreaming.
In 2020 there was a large increase in reports of lucid dreams compared to the previous year.

There are a few conditions for a dream in order to be defined as a lucid dream and these were given by Paul Tholey. The conditions are:
1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation)
2. Awareness of the capacity to make decisions
3. Awareness of memory functions
4. Awareness of self
5. Awareness of the dream environment
6. Awareness of the meaning of the dream
7. Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state)

Lucid dreams are often found to be affective in treating nightmares. Physiotherapists have also been including lucid dreaming as a part of therapy. There are also books and movies based on this like inception, paprika, etc.
Though lucid dreaming has been beneficial in many aspects but for the people who experience it for the first time can go through the feelings of stress or confusion. People who see lucid dreams very often might feel empowered and also isolated from others in terms of their dreaming experience which is quiet different to others. Others might experience sleep paralysis, which is sometimes confused with lucid dreams.

Read about sleep paralysis here: https://edupub.org/2021/08/12/sleep-paralysis/

There are many methods using which one can experience lucid dream like, make a dream diary and jot down the dreams you remember, diary alone won’t help but it will be beneficial with other methods. Some devices and drugs are also used.

Tag: Lucid dreams

Rate this:

Rate this: