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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and I've got a classic episode of

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff for you today. How does lucid dreaming work?

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Speaker 1: Come explore with our former host, Christian Sagar. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager here. Have you ever heard of lucid

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Speaker 1: dreaming before? Well, lucid dreaming is simply being aware that

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Speaker 1: you are dreaming while you're in a dream, and it's

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Speaker 1: not a new thing. Aristotle wrote about it, and Tibetan

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Speaker 1: Buddhists have been practicing dream yoga called malam for centuries.

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Speaker 1: A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick van Eden actually came up

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Speaker 1: with the term lucid dreams in nineteen thirteen, and it's

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Speaker 1: become popular in some scientific circles since the early eighties,

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Speaker 1: largely because of the work of psychophysiologist Dr Deven Leberts,

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Speaker 1: a Stanford grad who founded the Lucidity Institute in Researchers

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Speaker 1: have confirmed that lucid dreaming is possible. The way they

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Speaker 1: do it is by having sleepers give you a distinctive,

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Speaker 1: predetermined eye movement signal when they become aware that they're dreaming. So,

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Speaker 1: how does that work well. Generally, people are dreaming when

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Speaker 1: they're in the fifth stage of sleep r e M

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Speaker 1: sleep or REM REM is marked by rapid eye movements,

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Speaker 1: paralysis through the rest of our muscles, rises in heart rate,

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Speaker 1: breath rate and blood pressure, changes in body temperature, and

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Speaker 1: acceleration of brain wave oscillation to the type we have

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Speaker 1: while we're awake, which are alpha waves. These are all

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Speaker 1: part of REM. Note that some of these can happen

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Speaker 1: during other stages of sleep and transitions between those stages,

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Speaker 1: signaling what's known as covert REM dreaming. So you can

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Speaker 1: monitor for these signs and your predetermined signal with machines

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Speaker 1: like a polygraphed or an e G or an e MG.

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Speaker 1: But what about the whole thing about controlling your dreams? Right?

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Speaker 1: That sounds cool, Let's get back to that. Some researchers

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Speaker 1: are skeptical that it's possible. That's because there's no empirical

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Speaker 1: way to test for it. We don't know enough about

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Speaker 1: how memories work or how dreams work to see and

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Speaker 1: experience what people are thinking or dreaming, so we've only

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Speaker 1: got their reports to go on. Sure, some subject report

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Speaker 1: being able to control their dreams, but even when people

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Speaker 1: are trying to be honest about their memories, they can't

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Speaker 1: always succeed. That's because memories are electrochemical patterns in the brain,

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Speaker 1: and every time we call one up, we change it,

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Speaker 1: maybe a little, maybe a lot. Some research indicates that

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Speaker 1: the harder we're trying for perfect recall, the more we

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Speaker 1: mess our own memories up. Okay, but you are year

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Speaker 1: because you want to learn how to control your dreams. Right.

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Speaker 1: There are lots of books and workshops that are totally

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Speaker 1: willing to help you at varying expenses. Of course, this

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Speaker 1: is another reason why we're skeptical about lucid dreaming. Here

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works. But here are some tips for

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Speaker 1: lucid dreaming no dream control promised. First, you could practice

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Speaker 1: mindfulness while you're awake. This is what they call reality testing.

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Speaker 1: Throughout your day, pay attention to how it feels to

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Speaker 1: be awake and the cause and effect nature of reality.

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Speaker 1: Like when you flip a light switch, a light turns on,

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Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, there are steps you can take

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Speaker 1: to figure out why. Well. The idea here is that

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Speaker 1: by being more aware of what it's like to be awake,

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Speaker 1: you'll be able to notice differences while you're dreaming. Secondly,

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Speaker 1: keep a dream journal. When you wake up, immediately write

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Speaker 1: down what you remember of your dreams. The immediacy is

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Speaker 1: important because we tend to forget dreams much more quickly

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Speaker 1: than waking events. One Freudian era dream researcher by the

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Speaker 1: name of L. Strumple hypothesized that that is because the

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Speaker 1: strength of our memories is based in association and repetition,

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Speaker 1: which we don't get in dreams the way we do

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Speaker 1: in waking activity. The idea here is that by paying closer,

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Speaker 1: wakeful attention to your dreams, you'll be able to recognize

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Speaker 1: them while you're asleep. Third, disrupt your dream cycles. Set

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Speaker 1: an alarm to wake yourself up after ninety minutes after bedtime.

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Speaker 1: That should give your brain enough time to cycle through

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Speaker 1: the sleep stages and reach rem Or set an alarm

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Speaker 1: to wake yourself up a couple hours early, stay awake

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Speaker 1: for about half an hour, then go to sleep again.

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Speaker 1: The idea here is that by waking yourself up in

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Speaker 1: the middle of rem sleep, you should be able to

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Speaker 1: remember your recent dreams more clearly than usual. And finally,

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Speaker 1: there's Laberge's mild technique, and that's mild in all caps

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Speaker 1: because it stands for new monic induction of lucid dreaming.

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Speaker 1: This is one of Leberge's most famous techniques. When you

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Speaker 1: wake up from a dream, try your best to remember

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Speaker 1: it fully, and when you go back to sleep, keep

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Speaker 1: telling yourself that you're going to remember that you're dreaming

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Speaker 1: during your next dream. The next step is to picture

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Speaker 1: yourself back in the dream that you just had and

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Speaker 1: look for a sign that the dream is a dream

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Speaker 1: and not reality, like the fact that you're flying through

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Speaker 1: the air with wings. Leberts calls these dream signs. At

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Speaker 1: this point, remind yourself that you're dreaming and continue the visualization.

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Speaker 1: Keep doing this until you fall asleep. If you liked

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Speaker 1: that and you want to learn more about lucid dreaming,

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Speaker 1: my other show Stuff to Blow Your Mind has a

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Speaker 1: real deep dive into the topic where my co host

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Speaker 1: Robert and I talk all about lucid dreaming, it's history

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Speaker 1: and all of the dream types that Frederick vany Eden

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Speaker 1: came up with ye Today's episode was produced by Tyler

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Speaker 1: Clang and written by me for brain Stuffs Erstwhile YouTube series.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoy our show and want to support us

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Speaker 1: in return for some brainy housewears or people wears. Visit

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Speaker 1: our online shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: and of course, for more on this and lots of

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Speaker 1: other dreamy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com