Lucid dreaming is the ability to consciously direct and control your dreams.

It transforms your inner dream

world into a living alternate reality - where everything you see, hear, feel, taste and even smell is as
authentic as real life.
Lucidity occurs during altered states of consciousness when you realize you are dreaming - and your brain
switches into waking mode inside the dream. In normal dreams, your self awareness is shut down. That's
why they often feel fuzzy and distant. But when lucid, the conscious brain wakes up during sleep!
A nightmare is a dream occurring during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that results in feelings of strong
terror, fear, distress or extreme anxiety.
*Nightmares, and dreams in general, occur during the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage. Depending
on how long you sleep, your body goes through four to six cycles a night, and the REM stage gets longer
with each sleep cycle. Most nightmares happen during the last third of your nights sleep.
This dream control might be able to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) overcome
nightmares. These can be frightening and overwhelming for anyone, but for people with PTSD, nightmares
can be a way of reliving the events that first traumatized them
Mota-Rolim hopes that lucid dreaming might be able to help. He explained, Psychotherapies based on
inducing LD could be an effective way of treating recurrent nightmares of PTSD patients, because they
being lucid during the nightmarewould be able to: one, naturally lose their fear by realizing the absence
of real threats, i.e. the lack of reality of the perceptual experience; two, simply try to wake up during the
nightmare; and, three, change dream context, in a way of transforming the nightmare into a neutral or
even a pleasant dream.
A. Lucid dreamers safely overcome fears and phobias.
When you wake up in a dream and see it as a dream, you are empowered to take control and make the
dream into something you want it to be. You realize you arent just the victim anymore. Amazing things will
begin happening at night while you sleep if you choose to keep having this experience.
PTSD and nightmares may in fact become intertwined in such a manner that nightmares strengthen PTSD
symptoms and PTSD in turn causes nightmares.
Fear is a main component of nightmares, both experienced during sleep in relation to the nightmare
content, and during wakefulness, as suffering from recurrent nightmares can lead to fear of going to sleep
due to the risk of re-experiencing the nightmare.
Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life (LaBerge, 2004), lucid
dreaming may well be the basis of the most effective therapy for nightmares. If you know you are
dreaming, it is a simple logical step to realizing that nothing in your current experience, however
unpleasant, can cause you physical harm. There is no need to run from or fight with dream monsters. In
fact, it is often pointless to try, because the horror pursuing you was conceived in your own mind, and as
long as you continue to fear it, it can pursue you wherever you dream yourself to be. The only way to really
"escape" is to end your fear. (For a discussion of reasons for recurrent nightmares, see "Overcoming
Nightmares" from EWLD.) The fear you feel in a nightmare is completely real; it is the danger that is not.
As defined by Stephen LaBerge, Lucidity, allowing as it does flexibility and creative response, presents a
means of resolving dream conflicts and hence fosters a return to effective self-regulation. This is the basis
of approach to healing through lucid dreaming: to facilitate the persons self-healing mechanisms by
means of intentional imagery on the mental level (Healing through Lucid Dreaming [1]).
LaBerge and Rheingold [27] have suggested that expectations can play an important role in dream
construction, so that what a person expects to happen next in a dream often influences or determines the
manner in which the dream will unfold. It is possible that individuals who suffer from recurrent nightmares
may be locked into a fixed way of responding to the nightmare's imagery and of anticipating what will
happen next. This in turn leads the dreamer to re-experience the same threatening imagery. Lucid
dreaming may provide recurrent nightmare sufferers with new responses and expectations concerning the
nightmare's progression, thereby altering the repetitive nature of such nightmares.
Prescriptions for Nightmares
The following is a list of some of the more common nightmare themes, with suggested methods of
transforming the dream to achieve a positive outcome. Make yourself a goal that whenever you next find
yourself in a nightmare, you will become lucid, and overcome your fear. If the nightmare features one of
the following themes, try the suggested responses.
1. Theme: Being pursued
Response: Stop running. Turn to face the pursuer. This is in itself may cause the pursuer to disappear or
become harmless. If not, try starting a conciliatory dialog with the character or animal.
2. Theme: Being attacked
Response: Don't give in meekly to the attack or flee. Show your readiness to defend yourself and then try
to engage the attacker in a conciliatory dialog. Alternatively, find acceptance and love in yourself and
extend this towards the threatening figure (see Chapter 11).
3. Theme: Falling

Response: Relax and allow yourself to land. The "old wives' tale" is falseyou will not really die if you hit
the ground. Alternatively, you can transform falling into flying.
4. Theme: Paralysis
Response: When you feel trapped, stuck or paralyzed, relax. Don't allow anxiety to overcome your
rationality. Tell yourself you are dreaming and the dream will soon end. Let yourself go along with any
images that appear or things that happen to your body. None of it will hurt you. Adopt an attitude of
interest and curiosity about what happens.
5. Theme: Being unprepared for an examination or speech
Response: First of all, you don't need to continue with this theme at all. You can leave the exam or lecture
room. However, you might enhance your self-confidence in such situations by creatively answering the test
questions or giving a spontaneous talk on whatever topic suits you. Be sure to enjoy yourself. When you
wake up, you may want to ask yourself whether you should actually prepare for a similar situation.
6. Theme: Being naked in public
Response: Who cares in a dream? Have fun with the idea. Some find being naked in a lucid dream
erotically exciting. If you wish, have everyone else in the dream remove their clothes. Remember, modesty
is a public convention, and dreams are private experiences.
B. Lucid dreamers summon and converse with their true selves.
Frequent lucid dreamers have discovered that there appears to be a hidden awareness behind the dream.
This observer, this wiser self, speaks frankly and directly and references both waking and dream elements.
The oneironaut Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, refers to it as a
separate consciousness within. I have come to think of it as a true self; an awareness hidden by layers of
misguided core beliefs developed in childhood. What questions would you ask if you possessed such
profound lucid wisdom?
Through Astral Projection we become better in all spheres of life. We have a sense of overall well-being,
increase in self-confidence, control of stress, emotional balance, heightening of intellectual capacities, and
expansion of self-knowledge. Out-of-body experiences help us to break free from old mental ruts and
habits. We get a more enlightened perspective of our current existence and this expansive vision is
instrumental in awakening new levels of personal growth and understanding. The recognition that we are
more than just physical beings, gives us firm belief that we are capable of much more than previously
imagined. Once we consciously control our non-physical self, we can unlock the unlimited knowledge of our
subconscious and harness our ability to explore the universe.
C. Lucid dreamers travel in time and space to other dimensions.
The lucid dream world is made up of many alternate realities. Every time you wake up in a new dream
scene, you will find strange goings on and new landscapes to explore. They are all completely tangible and
life-like. Just like science fiction, you can teleport to parallel worlds, explore different timelines, visit alien
planets and travel to the tenth dimension. This is a thrilling proposition that enables you to explore the
nature of the physical universe, as your vast unconscious mind sees it. You can even induce an out of body
experience (OBE) in a lucid dream and explore the so-called astral realm.
Astral projection (or astral travel) is a spiritual interpretation of the out of body experience. It supposes we
each possess a spirit that can roam freely from the body while we are in a semi-sleep or trance state.
2.1.6 Transcendence
The experience of being in a lucid dream clearly demonstrates the astonishing fact that the world we see is
a construct of our minds. This concept, so elusive when sought in waking life, is the cornerstone of spiritual
teachings. It forces us to look beyond everyday experience and ask, "If this is not real, what is?" Lucid
dreaming, by so baldly baring a truth that many spend lives seeking, often triggers spiritual questioning in
people who try it for far more mundane purposes. Not only does lucid dreaming lead to questioning the
nature of reality, but for many it also has been a source of transcendent experience. Exalted and ecstatic
states are common in lucid dreams. EWLD presents several cases of individuals achieving states of union
with the Highest, great peace and a new sense of their roles in life.
LDT has been proven to be efficient in the treatment of recurrent nightmares (Abramovitch, 1995;
Brylowski, 1990; Spoormaker & van den Bout, 2006; Spoormaker et al., 2003; Zadra & Pihl, 1997). Case
studies indicate that it may be useful in treating posttraumatic nightmares (Spoormaker & van den Bout)
and nightmares related to other psychiatric disorders as well (Brylowski). In addition, LDT might prove to
be effective not only for patients suffering from nightmares, in reducing nightmare frequency, but also for
patients suffering from disorders characterized by fear by offering the possibility to control the fear which
possibly could reduce the level of the fear. In this sense, patients suffering from phobias might benefit from
LDT.
LDT shows promising potential for the reduction of nightmare frequency, but its effectiveness is in need of
substantial future exploration and validation before LDT might become more widely applied in the
appropriate patient populations. In future studies, the effectiveness of LDT should be compared to other

cognitive-restructuring techniques: larger sample sizes should be used and the intensity and length of the
lucidity intervention should be substantially increased.