10 Things you Didnt know about Lucid

Dreaming
July 1, 2014 / 1307 views

Here are 10 things you (probably) didnt know about the wonderful phenomenon of lucid
dreaming the ability to have conscious awareness during your dreams.

1. The first lucid dreams were recorded by Ancient Egyptians

The Egyptians were an advanced civilization which coalesced more than 5,000 years ago.
According to Jeremy Naydler, author of Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian
Experience of the Sacred, they believed in three bodies: Shat(the corpse body), Ka (the living
physical body) and Ba (the soul).
Ba was often represented in hieroglyphics as a human-headed bird floating above the sleeping
body or corpse. Naydler notes that the Ba is the person but in another form. The Ba could
be defined as an individual in an out-of-body state. Was the Ba actually the lucid dreaming
consciousness?
Robert Waggoner, editor of The Lucid Dreaming Experience, believes so: I was struck by
the concept of the Babeing the part of one that flies during sleep, trance and after-death

states Many of us have had that experience, whether we call it an OOBE or a lucid dream,
of flying around our sleeping body.
For lucid dreamers, trance journeyers and OOBE-ers, the Ba may represent in a historic
sense, the first depiction of a mobile awareness separated from the physical host.
Interestingly, this mobile awareness, this Ba, seems naturally connected to flying a common
and seemingly universal part of lucid dreaming. Though thousands of years separate us from
the Ancient Egyptians, perhaps some of their ancient knowledge remains in our collective
unconscious

2. One in five people lucid dream every month or more

In 1988, Snyder & Gackenback conducted a scientific survey which found that 20% of people
claimed to lucid dream frequently (every month) while 50% of people had done it at least
once in their lives. So lucidity is not so rare, even if most people dont know the technical
name or induce such dreams deliberately. It actually seems quite normal to have spontaneous
dream control especially as children.
One possible reason for this is that children are more prone to nightmares which can be highly
vivid and emotionally intense. This awakens the part of the brain responsible for selfawareness, and gives the young dreamer a moment of clarity to realize hey I must be
dreaming! Some children use this knowledge to wake themselves up, while others transform
the nightmare into a pleasant guided dream.
When I first discovered lucid dreaming in my teens, I was excited to tell my friend about it.
Ive been doing that for years, she told me: for as long as she could remember, she would
use her imagination as she went to sleep to visualize whatever dreamscape she wanted. Then
she would just pop into her dream and experience dream control perfectly naturally. Though
she didnt know what it was called, shed been lucid dreaming intuitively.
It may be surprising how many people you know are already lucid dreamers you just never
happened to ask them about it. Since I launched this website six years ago and made lucid
dreaming my career, a number of friends have come out of the woodwork to announce they
have the occasional guided dream. Its a coincidence that my partner Pete has controlled his
dreams since he was a child too another natural lucid dreamer.
At the other end of the spectrum, a handful of people have written to me saying that ALL their
dreams are lucid, every single night since childhood and they sleep very poorly as a result,
feeling like their brain never properly shuts down. This is a rare condition, as most people
find inducing lucid dreams is a deliberate act or a welcome accident, but never a burden. As
with all aspects of sleep, its possible that things can go wrong and specialist help is needed.
So if you find it impossible to have non-lucid dreams and this disrupts your everyday life,
then do see a specialist doctor.

3. When you close your eyes in a lucid dream, you can wake up
When I was younger I used close my eyes to escape from nightmares. When I was frozen with
terror it occurred to me that none of it was real, and I had a moment to squeeze my eyes shut
tightly and shout WAKE UP!

Now I never end a lucid dream prematurely if I can help it. But that doesnt stop me from
accidentally closing my eyes in the dream (out of force of habit, not because theyre dry or I
need to blink) This almost always causes me to return to my physical waking body.
Apparently, this is not true for everyone, but it sure is for some.
Luckily, if you do wake up by accident, there is a way to resume the dream from where you
left off. As long as you keep your body still (so as not to disturb the sleep paralysis
mechanism) and close your eyes immediately, you should find yourself back in the dream and
fully lucid. I would liken it to changing channels on the TV: for a few seconds, both realities
exist and you are free to flick between them.

4. Lucid dreamers can talk to the outside world

In 1975, the British psychologist Keith Hearne achieved a world first: he recorded the eye
movements of Alan Worsley as he slept and engaged in a lucid dream in the lab. Crucially, the
two men had agreed upon a pattern set of eye movement signals beforehand. By moving his
eyes inside the lucid dream, Worsley was able to communicate with Hearne in the outside
world, while he was dreaming.
This remarkable experiment proved, for the first time ever, that consciousness in dreams was
indeed real. Later, EEG readings were able to record a high frequency GAMMA brainwave
state in lucid dreamers, which provided further evidence of this unique state of conscious
awareness. However, it was the basis of Hearnes experiment, which was more famously
replicated by Dr Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University a few years later, that showed us it
really is possible for a dreamer to talk with a waking person in the outside world.
But what about the other way around? Can we send messages to a dreamer while they sleep?
Could a two-way conversation be achieved?
Actually, yes to a degree. When we sleep, our brains are largely ignorant to most of whats
happening in the outside world. However, for survival reasons, we do have the ability to retain
some awareness and be responsive so some types of external stimulus. So, if someone gently
prods you in the rib while you sleep, you will sometimes feel the prod in the dream, albeit
under a different interpretation.
I once dreamed of a rat biting me in the ribs then woke up and found I was actually pinching
myself! Another example is auditory stimulus: heavy rain in the waking world has transferred
to my dream and once it began raining heavilyinside my house. Like many a surreal trigger,
this caused me to become lucid.

5. Lucidity arises from a special part of the brain

The neuroscientist, J Allan Hobson, has theorized about what happens in the brain when a
dreamer becomes lucid. First, we recognize that were dreaming, and this stimulates the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain which is responsible for self-awareness and
working memory. This area is usually deactivated during REM sleep which explains why it
is not typical to realize that were dreaming or remember all of the detail without serious
effort.

Once lucidity is triggered, the dreamer treads a fine line between staying asleep, yet
remaining conscious enough to remember theyre dreaming
Interestingly, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is uniquely associated with the subjective
experience of deciding when and how to act. In Susan Blackmores wonderful
pocketbook, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, she explains how this region is
directly connected to free will and how this may be an illusion created by our own complex
brain processes. She also discusses self awareness and the contentious problem we have when
we try to pinpoint the location of our conscious inner self.

6. Lucid dreaming can be mapped as a state of consciousness

Susan Blackmores work highlights another important feature of lucidity: that it may be a
special state of consciousness distinct from any other. Can these individual states be mapped?
Some scientists believe so.
Here is a diagram based on Blackmores conclusions and the existing theories of human
consciousness. Although it is extremely difficult to know the relevant dimensions, it is
possible to visualize how these conscious states might be mapped in a vast multidimensional
space. This aims to illustrate how some states are commonly experienced and easy to reach
(being wide awake, false awakenings and dreaming) while others are rarer and tread the far
reaches of the human experience (deep sleep, sleep paralysis and mystical experiences).

7. Certain vitamins can increase your dream intensity

Vitamin B6 (also known as Pyridoxine) plays a key role in brain and nerve function. Healthy
adults need just 1.3 mg of Vitamin B6 each day and this can be acquired through foods like
bananas, carrots, oranges, spinach, fish, chicken, liver, beans, eggs and nuts. However, to
achieve the dose necessary for greater dream intensity, take a 100 mg supplement such
as Nature Made Vitamin B6.
So, what happens in your body when you take this supplement? Vitamin B6 converts
Tryptophan into Serotonin, which produces much more vivid dreams. You may wonder why
you cant just take a Serotonin supplement. Unfortunately, the blood brain barrier wont let it
in directly; the conversion has to take place in the body.
To boost your chances further, eat foods containing Tryptophan around the same time you
take your B6 pill, a few hours before bed. Tryptophan-rich foods include cheddar cheese,
chicken, salmon, lamb, eggs, white rice, flour and milk. So, there really is something to be
said about cheese dreams.

8. Lucid dream orgasms can be real

Scientists have found that lucid orgasms can sometimes be accompanied by a real physical
response, including increased heart rate, changes in vascular tissue and other muscular
reactions. Sometimes, however, its purely in the mind although this doesnt make it any
less real to the dreamer in their super-sensory dream environment. There is also heaps of
anecdotal evidence to show that men who experience a lucid dream orgasm also ejaculate in
real life.

The problem many people find is that its difficult to hold onto conscious lucidity until the
critical moment. Lucid dream sex is highly arousing and beginner oneironauts will most likely
wake up before the experience has even got going. In this way, sexual lucid dreams arent
ideal for beginners, yet theyre usually the ones most motivated to seek them out for the
novelty value.

9. Meditation is profoundly linked with self-awareness in dreams

There is a proven scientific link between meditation and lucid dreams. I find that the more
frequent and deep meditation I can accommodate into my lifestyle, the more easily I can
recognize when Im dreaming. For all its apparent simplicity, meditation can ahve prfound
meaning and impact on your life, helping you reach blissful states of relaxation and insight. It
also helps to enter altered states of consciousness at will (great practice for Wake Induced
Lucid Dreams) as well as increase self-awareness (powerful for Dream Induced Lucid
Dreams.)
One thing I frequently rave about on this site is brainwave entrainment for meditation. This
was the key in my learning how to meditate. First in the form of binaural beats, later in the
form of isochronic tones, brainwave entrainment is a proven way of guiding your internal
brainwave frequencies to produce relaxed, altered states of consciousness on demand. My
favorite brainwave entrainment audios are listed here.
The most notorious application for these audio entrainment products is meditation and this
delivers us very close to the lucid dreaming state. I highly recommend beginners invest in a
good entrainment audio to kickstart their internal voyages in meditation.

10. Tibetan Buddhist Monks practice lucid dreaming on their path to

enlightenment
Tibetan Dream Yoga is the original form of lucid dreaming. It is a philosophical practice
created in Tibetan Buddhism at least 1,000 years ago.
Just like lucid dreams, the aim of Dream Yoga is to awaken the conscious self from within the
dream state, which they call apprehending the dream.
However, Buddhist monks have more esoteric goals in mind. Their aim is to harness the
power of the conscious dream state and then complete a number of set tasks to take them to
the next level, including:

Practice sadhana (a spiritual discipline)

Receive initiations, empowerments and transmissions

Visit different places, planes and lokas (worlds)

Communicate with yidam (an enlightened being)

Meet with other sentient beings

Fly and shape shift into other creatures

The ultimate goal in Tibetan dream yoga is to apprehend the dream, then dissolve it
completely. Deprived of physical stimulus via the sleeping body, and conceptual stimulus via
the dreaming mind, they can observe the purest form of conscious awareness through
profound meditation in a lucid dream.

Final Thoughts
Your journey to lucidity is only just beginning. To discover more hidden insights as well as
step-by-step tutorials on lucid dream inducation and exploration, check out The Lucid
Dreaming Fast Track, my definitive digital course for beginners and beyond.
Rebecca Turner, World Of Lucid Dreaming
Waking Times
Read more at http://higherperspective.com/2014/06/10-things-didnt-know-lucid-dreaming2.html#SGcYgBo67UdeHHS6.99