Lucid Dreaming

by Stephen LaBerge

  There are many variations on the technique of falling asleep while maintaining consciousness. Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan lama teaching in Berkeley, describes a simple and effective method: after relaxing very deeply just before sleep, you visualize a beautiful lotus flower in your throat. In the center of this lotus is a red-orange flame. You gently focus your attention on the light of the flame as you fall asleep consciously. The referred audio link includes a guided meditation on the dream Lotus and Flame Technique.

  LISTEN TO TRACK 4

  Dream Lotus and Flame Technique

  PREVENTING PREMATURE AWAKENING

  Beginning lucid dreamers often have the problem of waking up right after becoming lucid. This obstacle may prevent some people from realizing the value of lucid dreaming. Fortunately, there are ways to overcome this problem.

  The first is to remain calm in the dream. Becoming lucid is exciting, but expressing the excitement too soon can awaken you. It is possible to enjoy the thrill that accompanies the dawning of lucidity without allowing the activation to overwhelm you. Be like a poker player with an ideal hand. relax and engage with the dream rather than withdrawing into your inner joy of accomplishment.

  Then, if the dream shows signs of ending, such as a loss of detail, vividness, or apparent reality of the imagery, the technique of “spinning” your dream body like a whirling dervish can often restore the imagery. I developed this technique serendipitously after having the (mistaken) idea that relaxing completely might help prevent awakening from lucid dreams. The next time I found myself in a fading lucid dream, I relaxed completely and dropped backward to the floor ... and was disappointed to find myself back in bed. Or was I? After I actually awoke a minute later, I realized that I had had a “false awakening”—a partial success, in that dreaming continued. After a bit of testing, I determined that what stabilized the dream state was not relaxation but movement, or rather the sensation of motion. The best way to create a feeling of movement, especially if the dream scene has vanished, leaving nowhere to move to, is to spin like a top. You are not really spinning, but your brain is well familiar with the experience of spinning and duplicates the experience quite well. In the process, the vestibular and kinesthetic senses are engaged. Presumably, this sensory engagement with the dream inhibits the brain from changing state from dreaming to waking.

  Be aware that the expectation of possible awakening sometimes leads to a false awakening in which you dream of waking. The vividness of the spinning sensation may cause you to feel your spinning arm hit the bed. You may think, “Oops, I’m awake in bed now.” But be clear—it was not your physical body that was spinning, it was your dream body—therefore, the moving arm must be a dream arm hitting a dream bed! To avoid being deceived, continuously remind yourself while spinning, “The next thing I see will be a dream,” until a scene appears. If you are in doubt about your status, perform a thorough reality test.

  Research at the Lucidity Institute has proven the effectiveness of spinning: the odds in favor of continuing the lucid dream were better than twenty-to-one after spinning, compared to odds of only one-to-two after “going with the flow” (the control task). That makes the relative odds favoring spinning over going with the flow nearly fifty-to-one—well worth the minor investment of time to set your mind.

  FUTURE ACCESS TO THE LUCID DREAM STATE

  At present, it is possible to point to several techniques that could perhaps be profitably developed to induce lucid dreams. One is the use of hypnosis. “Autosuggestion,” or implanting in oneself the intention to do something, is a form of hypnosis; and it is involved in practicing MILD. Many people have found it at least moderately effective in inducing lucid dreams. Also, for the fortunate minority of the population who are easily hypnotizable, post-hypnotic suggestion to have lucid dreams may be more effective when given in a trance by a hypnotist, rather than when given by yourself. But even if you are not highly hypnotizable, you are fully able to benefit from positive suggestions and affirmations. The referred audio link includes a Trance Induction of Lucid dreaming in two versions, one for use in the daytime (Track 5) and one for use at bedtime (Track 6).

  LISTEN TO TRACK 5

  Trance Induction of Lucid Dreaming: Day and TRACK 6 Trance Induction of Lucid Dreaming: Night

  LUCID DREAMING INDUCTION DEVICES (LDIDs)

  The basis for most lucid dream induction procedures is to focus and reinforce your intention to remember to do something during your dream—namely, to recognize that you are dreaming. Wouldn’t it be nice if while you were dreaming, someone could give you a reminder? As it happens, there are electronic devices available that can do just that. These lucid dream induction devices, or LDIDs, were developed in the course of our laboratory research at Stanford University. We found that flashing lights could be used as lucidity cues. Lights tended to be incorporated into ongoing dreams without causing awakening.

  You may have noticed that occasional bits of sensory information are filtered into your dreams in disguised form, like a clock radio as supermarket music or a chain saw as the sound of a thunderstorm. This is the same principle used by LDIDs: the lights or sounds from the device filter into the user’s dreams. The dreamer’s task is to notice the flashing lights in the dream and remember that they are cues to become lucid.

  The Novadreamer® is a commercially available LDID consisting of a comfortable sleep mask equipped with infrared eye-movement sensors. When the sensors determine you are dreaming, the Novadreamer delivers a lucidity cue in the form of flashing lights from a pair of bright red LEDs. The flashing light cues enter into ongoing dreams in a variety of ways. Cues can be superimposed over the dream scene, like a light flashing in one’s face, or they can briefly interrupt the dream scene, or most commonly, they blend into the ongoing dream plot: little brother flashing the room lights, fireflies, lightning, traffic signals, police car lights, or flash cameras.

  LDIDs do not make people have lucid dreams any more than exercise machines make people develop strong muscles. In both cases, the goal—lucid dreams or strength—results from practice. The machines simply accelerate the process. Scientific studies have verified that the current generation of LDIDs, correctly used, can effectively increase lucid dreaming frequency.

  I believe that during the next decade or two we can look forward to increasingly effective LDIDs thanks to the rapid growth of computers and microelectronics. In case you fear that there is something wrong or unnatural about using technology to induce lucid dreaming, you will be interested to know that the dalai Lama was delighted with the DreamLight® LDID (a close cousin of the Novadreamer) when he saw it at a Mind and Life conference in 1997:

  This would be very good for practice while sleeping and dreaming. Sometimes, if you have a strong dream at night, when you wake up it affects your emotional state in the morning. With this we could cultivate wholesome states of mind while dreaming, and that would be of benefit.[2]

  And to the benefits we now turn.

  The Practical Dreamer: Applications of Lucid Dreaming

  ***

  THE USE OF A NEWBORN BABY

  Concerning electricity, a scientific curiosity of the eighteenth century, a woman is said to have asked Benjamin Franklin, “But what use is it?” his reply is famous: “What use, madame, is a newborn baby?” If 200 years later the same question were asked in regard to lucid dreaming, a scientific curiosity of the present century, the same answer could be given. Though we can only speculate at present, our work at Stanford and the accounts of other lucid dreamers suggests that, like electricity, lucid dreaming could also conceivably be harnessed to aid us in performing a variety of tasks with far greater ease.

  Since the most general advantage offered by lucid consciousness to both dreaming and waking is the capacity for flexible and creative action, most of the various applications of lucid dreaming will themselves be examples of creativity, broadly defined.

  Biofeedback researchers Elmer and Alyce Green have discussed creativity at thre
e different levels of organization—physiological, psychological, and social. For example, in physiological processes, creativity means physical healing and regeneration. In emotional processes, creativity includes creating attitude changes which favor the establishment of inner harmony, and in the mental sphere it involves the synthesis of new ideas.

  “The entrance, or key, to all these inner processes,” the Greens were beginning to believe, was:

  ...a particular state of consciousness in which the gap between conscious and unconscious processes is voluntarily narrowed, and temporarily eliminated when useful. When that self-regulated reverie is established, the body can apparently be programmed at will, and the instructions given will be carried out, emotional states can be dispassionately examined, accepted or rejected, or totally supplanted by others deemed more useful, and problems insoluble in the normal state of consciousness can be elegantly resolved.[1]

  I believe that what the Greens propose about the hypnagogic (or reverie) state applies all the more strongly to the lucid dreaming state, where the conscious mind encounters the unconscious, face to face.

  THE HEALING DREAM

  There have been times when I have fallen asleep in tears; but in my dreams the most charming forms have come to cheer me, and I have risen fresh and joyful.

  —Goethe

  The use of dreams for healing was widespread in the ancient world. The sick would sleep in the temples of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing; during their dreams, the god or his serpent familiar (hence the caduceus symbol of medicine) was said to appear, telling patients what they must do to be healed. Clearly we cannot evaluate either the effectiveness or mechanism of any resulting cures, but today we have reason to believe that dreams can indeed aid the healing process.

  health has been defined as “a state of optimal functioning with freedom from disease and abnormality.”[2] The domain over which this functioning ranges is life in all its complexities. In general terms, health can be conceived of as a condition of adaptive responsiveness to the challenges of life. For responses to be adaptive, they must at least favorably resolve the situation in a way that does not disrupt the individual’s integrity or wholeness. Adaptive responses also improve the individual’s relationship with the environment. There are degrees of adaptiveness, with the optimum being what we have defined as health.

  By this definition, being healthy involves more than simply maintaining the status quo. On the contrary, when our familiar behaviors are inadequate to cope with a situation, any healthy response will include learning new, hopefully more adaptive behaviors. When we learn new behaviors, we grow; having done so, we find ourselves better equipped to deal with the challenges of life.

  Lucid dreaming bears a family resemblance to daydreaming, hypnagogic reverie, psychedelic drug states, hypnotic hallucinations, and other types of mental imagery. Since many members of the mental imagery family have found gainful employment in therapeutic circles, it would seem reasonable to expect that lucid dreaming might also prove effective here.

  According to Drs. Dennis Jaffe and David Bresler, “Mental imagery mobilizes the latent, inner powers of the person, which have immense potential to aid in the healing process and in the promotion of health.”[3] However it works, imagery is employed in a great variety of psychotherapeutic approaches ranging from psychoanalysis to behavior modification.

  If, as appears likely, the efficacy of imagery is proportional to its experiential reality, it seems likely that healing imagery, occurring in the lucid dream state, should be especially effective—perhaps uniquely so. This is because dreaming is surely the most vivid form of imagery likely to be experienced by normal individuals. Thus what happens in lucid dreams has an understandably powerful impact on the dreamer, both experientially and physically.

  Hypnosis is a therapeutic imagery technique that is probably relevant to lucid dreaming. deeply hypnotized subjects are able to exert remarkable control over many of their physiological functions: inhibiting allergic reactions, stopping bleeding, and inducing anesthesia at will. Unfortunately, these dramatic responses seem to be limited to the five or ten percent of the population capable of entering hypnosis very deeply, and this capability does not appear to be trainable. In contrast, lucid dreaming is a learnable skill. Lucid dreams could hold the same potential for self-regulation as deep-trance hypnosis and be accessible to a much greater proportion of the population.

  One of the most intriguing therapeutic applications of mental imagery is Dr. O. Carl Simonton’s work with cancer patients. Dr. Simonton and his colleagues report that patients with advanced cancer who supplemented standard radiation and chemotherapy treatment with healing imagery survived on average twice as long as expected by national averages. While caution seems appropriate in interpreting these results, they still suggest some very exciting possibilities.

  Given the fact that our laboratory studies have revealed a high correlation between dream behavior and physiological responses, it seems justifiable to hope that healing imagery during lucid dreaming might be even more effective. You could conceivably carry out actions in your lucid dreams specifically designed to accomplish whatever precise physiological consequences you desire. That leaves some fascinating possibilities for future research to explore: Can you initiate self-healing processes by consciously envisioning your dream body as perfectly healthy? If in lucid dreams you “heal” your dream body, to what extent will you also heal your physical body?

  BENEFITS OF WORKING THROUGH FEARFUL DREAMS

  He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Masakatsu agatsu. (True victory is mastery of self.)

  —O Sensei

  As I will discuss in detail in the next chapter, from my own experience I believe that facing and working through fearful dreams can be a valuable learning experience, providing an education in clarity and compassion that truly starts at home. At the beginning of my study of lucid dreaming, I noted that anxiety preceded lucidity onset in 36 percent of my first year’s lucid dreams (60 percent during the first six months). In contrast, by the second year, anxiety was present when I recognized that I was dreaming in only about 19 percent of my lucid dreams. during the third year, anxiety appeared in only 5 percent, and in 1 percent or less during the following four years. I attribute the decrease in number and proportion of anxiety dreams to my practice of resolving conflicts during lucid dreams, in the manner I described earlier. This reduction seems especially impressive in light of the fact that my life has become much more stressful and demanding in the years since. If something were not resolving the stress of my daily life, I should be experiencing waking anxiety in recent years with concomitant increases in dream anxiety. however, I have been having less anxiety in my lucid dreams and perhaps also in waking life. It may therefore be the case that a lasting benefit of “responsible” lucid dreaming, of the sort I have been practicing, can result in more adaptive behaviors while asleep and perhaps while awake. Furthermore, as I explained earlier, I have learned to utilize anxiety itself as an infallible lucidity cue. In the last six years, I have not once been awakened from a dream by anxiety, as should have happened if I were having non-lucid nightmares. during this period, sufficient anxiety has always led to my awakening in my dream rather than from it, thereby affording me the opportunity to face my fears and resolve my conflicts.

  This is a very important potential of lucid dreaming, for when we escape from a nightmare by awakening, we have not dealt with the problem of our fear or of our frightening dream, but have merely temporarily relieved the fear and repressed the fearful dream. Thus we are left with an unresolved conflict as well as, in all likelihood, negative and unhealthy feelings. On the other hand, staying with the nightmare and accepting its challenge, as lucidity makes possible, allows us to resolve the dream problem in a fashion that leaves us healthier than before. So if, as I have suggested, healing was the original intent of the dream that became the n
ightmare, lucidity can aid in the redemption of a dream gone wrong.

  The flexibility and self-confidence that lucidity brings in its wake greatly enhances the dreamer’s ability to master the situation presented by the dream. I believe the habit of flexibility to be well worth developing in the lucid dream. In addition to being highly effective in the dream world, it is also generally applicable in the waking world. Indeed, it may at times be the only course of action open to you. In most situations, it would be unrealistic to expect other people to change the way you may want them to. You cannot always or even often get others to do what you want; you may not even be able to prevent them from doing exactly what you do not want them to do. nonetheless, at every moment, whether dreaming or waking, you have the power to reframe the way you see the circumstances in which you find yourself. You define your own experience: who and how you want to be, and how you choose to view the situation you face. In brief: