[LifeStyle] Lucid dreaming: what are the best techniques to control your dreams, according to science

[@CharliAviless]

 

I first heard of lucid dreaming as a teenager and for a brief period was fascinated by the subject.

The idea of being aware in your dreams and even being able to direct and adapt them is appealing.

Did you ever want to fly? Walk on walls? Anything is possible, at least in theory, in a lucid dream.

A lucid dream is a dream in which you realize that you are dreaming, while you are asleep.
Of course, there is a wide spectrum within what can happen in a dream of this type: from a fleeting and passive awareness that you are in a dream, to taking control of the dream and being able to direct it.

In sleep research labs, if people are able to point with eye movements while in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, then "we agree they were lucid dreaming," says Karen Konkoly , a doctoral researcher in psychology at Northwestern University, in Illinois, United States.

REM is the phase in which dreams occur.

spontaneous or stimuli
While some people experience lucid dreams spontaneously, others only have them from an external stimulus (such as having a conversation, watching a video or reading an article about lucid dreaming, or after working very hard to achieve one). ).

"There are people who can learn (to have one) in a few days, and others need three months," explains Michael Schredl, a researcher at the sleep laboratory at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany.
Studies have found that the main motivation for lucid dreaming is to have fun or fulfill a wish, but many also use lucid dreaming to better deal with nightmares or bad dreams, solve problems, explore creative ideas, or practice skills.

Some research revealed that participants who practice simple motor skills in their lucid dreams, such as finger tapping, improve their waking ability compared to control groups.

One study found that people who clenched their hands during lucid dreams showed activation in the same areas of the motor cortex as in the waking state.

It has even been suggested that lucid dreaming could be used to treat serious psychological disorders, such as clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

my first lucid dream
After first hearing about lucid dreaming in the early 2000s, I started keeping a dream journal and very soon had my first lucid dream: I was walking down a street near my school and passed a girl. friend and we stopped to chat.

For some reason, the conversation had something unreal about it, and that made me realize that I was dreaming. I yelled at my friend and immediately jumped up and started flying, while my partner waved at me.

Over the years, I had a few more lucid dreams. I belong to the average po[CENSORED]tion when it comes to experiencing lucid dreaming. In a 1998 survey on the dream behavior of 1,000 Austrians, at least 26% reported having lucid dreams at times.

A 2011 survey of 900 German adults found that half of them reported having ever lucid dreamed, and it was more common among women and young people. A 2016 meta-analysis had similar results.

Most lucid dreamers have these dreams naturally and spontaneously, without intention.

Quite often, natural lucid dreaming begins in adolescence, sometimes as a coping mechanism for frequent nightmares, says Tadas Stumbrys, a professor of psychology at Vilnius University in Lithuania.

Techniques to induce lucid dreams
Since lucid dreamers are often rare, researchers may find it difficult to achieve high success rates in inducing lucid dreams, making them difficult to study, especially in laboratory settings.

For this reason, research is currently focused on determining which techniques work best

"Right now, we don't have a single technique that can induce lucid dreaming reliably and with a high success rate," Stumbrys says.

However, there are several easy ways to facilitate them.

People who remember dreams well, for example, are more likely to recall having lucid dreams.

Dream recall can be improved by keeping a dream journal, recording audio of the dream on your phone or playing it in your mind for 10 minutes after waking up, says Denholm Aspy, a psychology researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia. .

Testing reality is another widely used technique. It consists of asking yourself several times a day if you are dreaming or not, with the hope that you will too.

 

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/vert-fut-65286458