THE ART OF DREAMS AND LUCID DREAMING WRITTEN BY VALERIA CRUZ PUBLISHED 6 JUNE 2017 1 P a g e
HISTORY Dreams are your subconscious creating a possible world. This, however, is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the history of sleep, dreams, and lucid dreaming dates back into the BC era and the ages of the Egyptians and Greeks. The first people to analyze and record dreams were the Egyptians. When looking at their culture, Egyptians analyzed dreams by using dream symbols to search for prophecies and instructions from their gods. Back then, people had a very personal relationship with dreams and believed them to be messages that needed interpretation and implementation. In ancient Egypt, their belief revolved around three bodies: the corpse body (Shat), the living physical body (Ka), and the soul (Ba). In hieroglyphics, images of a human headed bird towering above the corpse or sleeping body represented the Ba. In fact, some experts describe this ancient Egyptian practice as the first instance of the human spirit in an out-of-body state. Afterward, the Greeks adopted the Egyptian study of dreams to their culture but progression of the study of sleep did not evolve until 1729. Jean-Jacques d Ortus de Mairan, a French geophysicist, preceded to conduct a circadian experiment that allowed for the identification of biological rhythms. He attributed this discovery to the leaves of the heliotrope plant. The geophysicist was intrigued by the opening and closing of the plant and its behavior towards the sun. Therefore, he confined the plant to darkness to see if the daily rhythms would change. Even with the absence of sunlight, the rhythms maintained a constant pattern. This is the first recorded discovery of circadian rhythms. Another noteworthy individual that changed the study of dreams forever was Sigmund Freud. This psychologist was able to alter the way people thought about dreams because of his seminal work that outlined the theory of the unconscious force in a dream context analysis. Freud introduced the id, ego, and superego, as well as the idea that people experience anxiety because of the fact that they have repressed feelings, memories, and desires that are bubbling to resurface to their awareness. Finally, Tibetan Buddhists are given the credit of discovering lucid dreaming. Their craft consisted of learning to control dreams by using dream yoga and the WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dreams) technique. HOW AND WHY WE DREAM We dream often, probably every day and even on days that we cannot recall our dreams. Science shows that we dream for a minimum of one or two hours every night. During REM sleep and dream state, our muscles have no motion and we are in a temporary state of paralysis. This protects us from physically acting out our dream and hurting ourselves. However, this still does not explain why we even dream in the first place. One theory is that sleep and dreams symbiotically work to sort out all the data the brain collects during the hours a person is wake. Another popular theory is that we dream as a reflection of our emotions. Still, another group of experts believe that dreams hold no function at all. 2 P a g e
WHAT ARE LUCID DREAMS? Lucid dreams are a glimpse of the past, present, and the future. Lucidity begins in the middle of a dream and it is the realization that the dream is not occurring in the physical reality. At a high level of lucidity, a person is aware that everything happening in the dream is occuring in their mind; at a low level of lucidity, a person has a small awareness that they are dreaming to some extent. Lucidity is possible even with little or no control of the content of the dream. HOW TO EXPERIENCE A LUCID DREAM 1. Dream Recall- Learning and practicing lucid dreaming demands excellent dream recall skills. This could be attributed to two reasons. The first one is that remembering your dream vividly will help you recognize patterns and familiar features. The second reason is that poor dream recall may cause you to have lucid dreams that a person may not remember. One largely accepted method or exercise involves writing down what an individual can recall about their dreams in a dream journal. However, if it is hard for a person to even remember their dreams in the first place, it is advised to them to practice a sleep experiment that involves waking up at the end of sleep cycles that coincide with REM sleep: Set an alarm roughly after 4.5 hours of sleep. With luck, this will wake up during the first phase of REM sleep and you'll have immediate dream recall. Write down whatever you can remember. Afterward, have the alarm go off every 90 minutes for the rest of the night. You should extend it if it takes you a long time to get back to sleep. The hope of this exercise is for you to gain awareness of not only the transitions of your sleep cycle, but also to train your mind to start becoming aware of the dreams that are being encountered. 2. Reality Test- Ask yourself: Could I be dreaming? Don t simply reply, Well of course I m not! How do you KNOW you are not dreaming? A reality test is simply a procedure to distinguish between being awake and in a dream state. The idea is that, by doing this regularly (during waking periods), you will train your mind to question and test for dreaming whenever something happens that could be a dream sign. The following techniques are the most widely used: Try to switch a light on and off. If you are dreaming, the light will probably fail or come on only dimly. If you are awake, the light will work normally. Look at your watch, read the time, look away for a few seconds, then look at it again. If the time has changed completely, chances are you are dreaming. Read some text, look away for a few moments, then read it again. If the text has disappeared or changed at all, then most likely you are dreaming. 3. The MILD Technique (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams)- This technique uses prospective memory and the best time to practice it is immediately after waking up 3 P a g e
from a dream and before drifting back into slumber. It incorporates some of the already mentioned strategies above: a. Step One: Dream Recall b. Step Two: Reality Test c. Step Three: Visualize Becoming Lucid As your focus from step two soars, visualize yourself back in the dream you have awoken from or have had. Imagine the thought of remembering that you are dreaming and consciously begin to transition yourself into the dream realm. Being in a calm, meditative state will help you achieve your awareness when in a lucid dream. d. Step Four: Repeat this Pattern to Achieve a Dream State The Sleep Cycle Everything we have looked at so far revolves around sleep and dreams. This means that to manifest lucid dreams, you also must have some understanding of the sleeping cycles. Each of these stages serves a different purpose in the sleep manifestation of lucid dreams. 1. First Stage: A person can feel the body transitioning from the physical world to the metaphysical plane. Moreover, this stage is also the last stage in the sleep cycle before an individual wakes up from sleep. 2. Second Stage: The second cycle consists of light sleeping. In this stage, the brain activity comes to a slow crawl and your breathing and heart begin to slow down. A person s body comes into deep relaxation and calmness. 3. Third Stage: During this stage, a person is at the edge of deep sleep. It is at this time that the brain may experience short bursts of increased brain activity known as beta waves. If someone were to wake you up at this stage, you would be groggy, confused, and unfocused at first. 4. Fourth Stage: This stage is characterized by deep slumber. The brain only shows slow, delta wave activity and the body does all the repair and maintenance it must do to keep it healthy and in shape. 5. Fifth Stage: This is when you are actually dreaming and it is often referred to as REM sleep. During this stage, you experience elevated breathing, increased blood flow, and rapid brain activity. Moreover, your muscles will experience a period of paralysis to protect you from acting out your dreams. The first cycle in this stage occurs approximately 90 minutes after stage one. It lasts for 10 minutes only. However, as the night progresses, cycles of stage five increase. The final stage lasts about an hour. This is the only stage where you can experience lucid dreams. 4 P a g e
POSSIBLE DANGERS OF LUCIDITY AND LUCID DREAMS Like everything else in the control of humans, lucid dreaming may pose some minor negative effects. The most important thing to remember about lucid dreaming is that you are dealing with the mind on a subconscious protected level. However, this does not mean purse lucid dreaming in a reckless matter. Here are some possible effects of lucid dreaming: Addiction: If you are not careful, you risk becoming addicted to the practice. If you find yourself spending more time asleep lucid dreaming than in the normal sleep cycle, you may need to reexamine your reasons for practicing the craft. Alienation: As a lucid dreamer, you will encounter people who are not open-minded with their views. Remember that the choice to pursue lucid dreaming is a personal one. Dissociation: To some extent, lucid dreaming may weaken the borders between dreaming and waking. It may also blur the borderlines between the subconscious and conscious mind as well as fantasy and reality. The most common form of a dissociative behavior is trouble distinguishing waking dream memories from waking memories. Here are some signs to be mindful of: o A keen ability to ignore pain or situations that would cause extreme pain o A vivid remembrance of performing actions you cannot remember performing o Failure to remember important dates and events o Finding unfamiliarity in a familiar place o Failure to recognize friends and family members FIVE REAL WORLD BENEFITS OF LUCID DREAMING Lucid dreaming, however, has many psychological benefits. The dream world has no limits and the only limits it could potentially have are those you place yourself. Get some Insight you can use in the Real World: For a moment, imagine you owned a magical encyclopedia that could answer any question you ask it. All these answers are possible in the lucid dream state. Because lucid dreams give us a rare opportunity to control or connect with our dreams, you have the ability to ask for what you want to know or change the context to reflect your desire to know. Complete Freedom in the Lucid Dream State: The lucid dream state is the ideal place to escape the real world and experience things out of the ordinary. If you experience a phenomenon during such a time, you can also use the same dream state to get some insight into what drives your inner being. Better Sleep: Awareness in your sleep patterns alone can give you a chance to sleep better. It is important to remember that sleep is a relaxed state. Relaxing while maintaining consciousness can help you achieve better relaxation and thus allow you to obtain a sense of peacefulness. Individuals who practice lucid dreaming often find that they can relax easier as well as experience fulfilling slumber because they 5 P a g e
can interact at a deeper level with their sleep through the understanding of their sleep patterns. Memory Improvement: By experiencing better sleep, you can improve your memory. In essence, a dream solidifies episodic memories. On the other hand, deep sleep solidifies semantic memories. Lucid dreaming and the state of lucidity offers your mind the opportunity to engrave these memories, especially those that have occurred throughout the day. Learn Skills Faster: Visualization in lucid dreams and even in the real state is a powerful skill-learning tool. This means that you can perform conscious dreaming and practice a new skill during the dream state to aid you in mastering its precision. REFERENCES ChhayaP (n.d.) Lucid Dreaming. [Website Image]. Retrieved from https://webbybuzz.com/10-super-interesting-magical-facts-about-dreams/ Siv, S. (2014). Lucid Dreaming. Retrieved June 15, 2017, from https://www.amazon.com/dreams-dreaming-projection-beginners-conscious ebook/dp/b00tckuele/ref=sr_1_1?ie=utf8&qid=1496684012&sr=8 1&keywords=sam siv 6 P a g e