Questions about the phenomenon of lucid dreaming — that is,
experiencing consciousness while in a dream state — have been tossed around for
thousands of years. Aristotle wrote about lucid dreams in 350 B.C., and
Buddhists have practiced “dream yoga” for centuries.
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Such dreams have underpinned literary and cinematic plots
(“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Inception”), as well as scientific
studies on sleep; a review of such studies, published in 2019, found that brain
activity during lucid dreaming is distinct.
More recently, lucid dreaming has become a kind of sport —
fodder for countless life-hack-style posts on Reddit, YouTube and TikTok, where
people expound on their moments of mid-sleep awareness and trade tips about how
to increase the frequency of lucid dreams.
In theory, anyone can have a lucid dream; after combing
through 50 years of research on sleep and dreaming, a group of scientists
concluded that about half the global population has experienced one.
“From everything we know, if people really try to start engaging
with the topic and maybe do some training and so on, most people at some point
will have a lucid dream,” said Martin Dresler, a cognitive neuroscientist at
Radboud University’s Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior in the
Netherlands.
Daniel Love, a lucid dream educator in Truro, England, said
that he has observed a wide range of experiences with lucid dreaming. “Over
years of teaching, I found a huge variety in the abilities for people and some
people who just can’t get past certain blockages,” he said. Skilled lucid
dreamers may only have one every few weeks.
There are two commonly recommended techniques for developing
that skill, both of which take time and practice, and don’t always bear fruit.
The first is to record your dreams in a journal and look for patterns within
them. I noticed, for example, that many of my dreams take place in my parents’
attic and my elementary school gymnasium. Now when a dream takes place in
either of those spaces, it should be easier for me to recognize it for what it
is.
The second technique often touted for promoting lucidity is
“reality checking”: questioning one’s consciousness during waking hours through
simple tests like counting fingers. Once those checks become habitual, Love
said, they may occur during a dream state, where logical outcomes could have
dreamlike distortions — the wrong number of fingers, for instance.
The internet is saturated with other tips, of course,
spilling out of YouTube videos, Reddit posts and blogs, not to mention the
endless virtual classes, books, coaching, devices and even supplements, like
melatonin and vitamin B6, that claim to help people achieve lucid dreaming. (In
one small study of 35 people over eight nights, a drug designed originally for
treating Alzheimer’s symptoms induced lucid dreams. Dr. Ralph Carlson, an
educational psychologist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and an
author of the study, asserted that no one should take any drug without first
consulting a physician.)
Still, even those who sell such products and services said
they are not necessary. “You really don’t need to throw money at this subject,”
Love said. He offers coaching and sells books, but said that they’re “there for
people who are struggling, who just want that extra push, but they don’t need
it.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Nate Turner, a 19-year-old
bartender in Michigan whose TikTok videos about lucid dreaming have earned him
a following on the app. His advice to beginners sifting through online tips?
“If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true.”
Love echoed that point. “Lucid dreaming essentially is
hacking the world’s most complicated computer: the human brain,” he said. “So
anyone who’s promising to give you lucid dreams in five days, one day, 30 days?
That’s impossible.”
Jay Mutzafi, a moderator of r/LucidDreaming on Reddit,
spends a lot of time removing posts that might mislead prospective lucid
dreamers. He believes that the community element can be helpful for those
starting out, to ask questions and trade notes. But at the same time, he warns,
it can be detrimental to compare yourself too much to others: “It’s all
subjective, personal experience. Different brains work differently.”
People pursue lucid dreaming for all kinds of reasons: as a
mental challenge, for therapeutic purposes or as an amusing hobby. Turner
described his experiences as “a video game world inside my head.”
My own practice has evolved out of a grim immediate reality,
set against a pandemic now in its second year. I felt stuck in my life, and
desperate for control. My grandfather is terminally ill, and I spend several
nights a week sleeping on his couch to be available to take care of him. While
there, I keep a dream journal and practice reality checks.
Sleeping in a foreign environment often promotes more vivid
dreams and the disruption of sleep can promote lucidity, according to Dresler.
But even on these difficult nights, even on this miserable couch from the ’70s,
I only achieve lucidity once, briefly. I dream that my grandfather and I are
seated at his favorite booth at his favorite lunch spot, unmasked and healthy.
He smiles, and though I know I am dreaming, that this perfect moment must be
impossible, I smile back.