Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and I've got a classic episode of
Speaker 1: brain Stuff for you today. How does lucid dreaming work?
Speaker 1: Come explore with our former host, Christian Sagar. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager here. Have you ever heard of lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming before? Well, lucid dreaming is simply being aware that
Speaker 1: you are dreaming while you're in a dream, and it's
Speaker 1: not a new thing. Aristotle wrote about it, and Tibetan
Speaker 1: Buddhists have been practicing dream yoga called malam for centuries.
Speaker 1: A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick van Eden actually came up
Speaker 1: with the term lucid dreams in nineteen thirteen, and it's
Speaker 1: become popular in some scientific circles since the early eighties,
Speaker 1: largely because of the work of psychophysiologist Dr Deven Leberts,
Speaker 1: a Stanford grad who founded the Lucidity Institute in Researchers
Speaker 1: have confirmed that lucid dreaming is possible. The way they
Speaker 1: do it is by having sleepers give you a distinctive,
Speaker 1: predetermined eye movement signal when they become aware that they're dreaming. So,
Speaker 1: how does that work well. Generally, people are dreaming when
Speaker 1: they're in the fifth stage of sleep r e M
Speaker 1: sleep or REM REM is marked by rapid eye movements,
Speaker 1: paralysis through the rest of our muscles, rises in heart rate,
Speaker 1: breath rate and blood pressure, changes in body temperature, and
Speaker 1: acceleration of brain wave oscillation to the type we have
Speaker 1: while we're awake, which are alpha waves. These are all
Speaker 1: part of REM. Note that some of these can happen
Speaker 1: during other stages of sleep and transitions between those stages,
Speaker 1: signaling what's known as covert REM dreaming. So you can
Speaker 1: monitor for these signs and your predetermined signal with machines
Speaker 1: like a polygraphed or an e G or an e MG.
Speaker 1: But what about the whole thing about controlling your dreams? Right?
Speaker 1: That sounds cool, Let's get back to that. Some researchers
Speaker 1: are skeptical that it's possible. That's because there's no empirical
Speaker 1: way to test for it. We don't know enough about
Speaker 1: how memories work or how dreams work to see and
Speaker 1: experience what people are thinking or dreaming, so we've only
Speaker 1: got their reports to go on. Sure, some subject report
Speaker 1: being able to control their dreams, but even when people
Speaker 1: are trying to be honest about their memories, they can't
Speaker 1: always succeed. That's because memories are electrochemical patterns in the brain,
Speaker 1: and every time we call one up, we change it,
Speaker 1: maybe a little, maybe a lot. Some research indicates that
Speaker 1: the harder we're trying for perfect recall, the more we
Speaker 1: mess our own memories up. Okay, but you are year
Speaker 1: because you want to learn how to control your dreams. Right.
Speaker 1: There are lots of books and workshops that are totally
Speaker 1: willing to help you at varying expenses. Of course, this
Speaker 1: is another reason why we're skeptical about lucid dreaming. Here
Speaker 1: at how stuff works. But here are some tips for
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming no dream control promised. First, you could practice
Speaker 1: mindfulness while you're awake. This is what they call reality testing.
Speaker 1: Throughout your day, pay attention to how it feels to
Speaker 1: be awake and the cause and effect nature of reality.
Speaker 1: Like when you flip a light switch, a light turns on,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, there are steps you can take
Speaker 1: to figure out why. Well. The idea here is that
Speaker 1: by being more aware of what it's like to be awake,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to notice differences while you're dreaming. Secondly,
Speaker 1: keep a dream journal. When you wake up, immediately write
Speaker 1: down what you remember of your dreams. The immediacy is
Speaker 1: important because we tend to forget dreams much more quickly
Speaker 1: than waking events. One Freudian era dream researcher by the
Speaker 1: name of L. Strumple hypothesized that that is because the
Speaker 1: strength of our memories is based in association and repetition,
Speaker 1: which we don't get in dreams the way we do
Speaker 1: in waking activity. The idea here is that by paying closer,
Speaker 1: wakeful attention to your dreams, you'll be able to recognize
Speaker 1: them while you're asleep. Third, disrupt your dream cycles. Set
Speaker 1: an alarm to wake yourself up after ninety minutes after bedtime.
Speaker 1: That should give your brain enough time to cycle through
Speaker 1: the sleep stages and reach rem Or set an alarm
Speaker 1: to wake yourself up a couple hours early, stay awake
Speaker 1: for about half an hour, then go to sleep again.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that by waking yourself up in
Speaker 1: the middle of rem sleep, you should be able to
Speaker 1: remember your recent dreams more clearly than usual. And finally,
Speaker 1: there's Laberge's mild technique, and that's mild in all caps
Speaker 1: because it stands for new monic induction of lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: This is one of Leberge's most famous techniques. When you
Speaker 1: wake up from a dream, try your best to remember
Speaker 1: it fully, and when you go back to sleep, keep
Speaker 1: telling yourself that you're going to remember that you're dreaming
Speaker 1: during your next dream. The next step is to picture
Speaker 1: yourself back in the dream that you just had and
Speaker 1: look for a sign that the dream is a dream
Speaker 1: and not reality, like the fact that you're flying through
Speaker 1: the air with wings. Leberts calls these dream signs. At
Speaker 1: this point, remind yourself that you're dreaming and continue the visualization.
Speaker 1: Keep doing this until you fall asleep. If you liked
Speaker 1: that and you want to learn more about lucid dreaming,
Speaker 1: my other show Stuff to Blow Your Mind has a
Speaker 1: real deep dive into the topic where my co host
Speaker 1: Robert and I talk all about lucid dreaming, it's history
Speaker 1: and all of the dream types that Frederick vany Eden
Speaker 1: came up with ye Today's episode was produced by Tyler
Speaker 1: Clang and written by me for brain Stuffs Erstwhile YouTube series.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy our show and want to support us
Speaker 1: in return for some brainy housewears or people wears. Visit
Speaker 1: our online shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff,
Speaker 1: and of course, for more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other dreamy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com