WEBVTT - How Does Lucid Dreaming Work? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:10.119 Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain stuff, 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.560 it's Christian Sager here. Have you ever heard of lucid 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:18.520 dreaming before? Well, Lucid dreaming is simply being aware that 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.360 you are dreaming while you're in a dream, and it's 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.480 not a new thing. Aristotle wrote about it, and Tibetan 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:30.240 Buddhists have been practicing dream yoga called milam for centuries. 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:34.680 A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick van Eden actually came up 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.560 with the term lucid dreams in nineteen thirteen, and it's 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:43.360 become popular in some scientific circles since the early eighties, 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:48.520 largely because of the work of psychophysiologist Dr Stephen Leberte, 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:54.880 a Stanford grad who founded the Lucidity Institute in Researchers 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:59.000 have confirmed that lucid dreaming is possible. The way they 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:01.960 do it is by having sleepers give you a distinctive, 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:07.280 predetermined eye movement signal when they become aware that they're dreaming. 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.240 So how does that work? Well, generally people are dreaming 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.360 when they're in the fifth stage of sleep r e M. 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:19.880 Sleep or rem REM is marked by rapid eye movements, 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.960 paralysis through the rest of our muscles rises in heart rate, 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.640 breath rate and blood pressure, changes in body temperature, and 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.800 acceleration of brain wave oscillation to the type we have 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.040 while we're awake, which are alpha waves. These are all 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:40.000 part of REM. Note that some of these can happen 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:44.320 during other stages of sleep and transitions between those stages, 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:49.000 signaling what's known as covert REM dreaming. So you can 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:52.600 monitor for these signs and your predetermined signal with machines 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:57.160 like a polygraphed or an e G or an e MG. 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.640 But what about the whole thing about controlling dreams, right? 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.960 That sounds cool, Let's get back to that. Some researchers 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.040 are skeptical that it's possible. That's because there's no empirical 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.919 way to test for it. We don't know enough about 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.519 how memories work or how dreams work to see and 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.800 experience what people are thinking or dreaming, so we've only 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:22.160 got their reports to go on. Sure, some subject report 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.720 being able to control their dreams, but even when people 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.840 are trying to be honest about their memories, they can't 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:33.320 always succeed. That's because memories are electrochemical patterns in the brain, 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.480 and every time we call one up, we change it. 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.280 Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Some research indicates that 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.480 the harder we're trying for perfect recall, the more we 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.720 mess our own memories up. Okay, but you are here 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.639 because you want to learn how to control your dreams. Right. 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.600 There are lots of books and workshops that are totally 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.639 willing to help you at varying expenses. Of course, this 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.200 is another reason why we're skept to go about lucid dreaming. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.080 Here at how stuff works. But here are some tips 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:09.080 for lucid dreaming no dream control promised. First, you could 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.519 practice mindfulness while you're awake. This is what they call 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:16.240 reality testing. Throughout your day, pay attention to how it 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.560 feels to be awake and the cause and effect nature 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:21.880 of reality. Like when you flip a light switch, a 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.640 light turns on, and if it doesn't, there are steps 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.280 you can take to figure out why. Well. The idea 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.880 here is that by being more aware of what it's 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.680 like to be awake, you'll be able to notice differences 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.760 while you're dreaming. Secondly, keep a dream journal when you 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.280 wake up, immediately right down what you remember of your dreams. 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:44.040 The immediacy is important because we tend to forget dreams 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.880 much more quickly than waking events. One Freudian era dream 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:53.240 researcher by the name of L. Strumple hypothesized that that 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.320 is because the strength of our memories is based in 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.600 association and repetition, which we don't get in dreams the 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:04.040 way we do in waking activity. The idea here is 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.000 that by paying closer wakeful attention to your dreams, you'll 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:12.480 be able to recognize them while you're asleep. Third, disrupt 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.200 your dream cycles. Set an alarm to wake yourself up 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.239 after ninety minutes after bedtime. That should give your brain 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:23.919 enough time to cycle through the sleep stages and reach REM. 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.919 Or set an alarm to wake yourself up a couple 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.240 hours early, stay awake for about half an hour, then 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.640 go to sleep again. The idea here is that by 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.640 waking yourself up in the middle of rem sleep, you 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.760 should be able to remember your recent dreams more clearly 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:44.480 than usual. And finally, there's Laberge's MILD technique. And that's 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.560 MILD in all caps because it stands for pneumonic induction 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:53.280 of lucid dreaming. This is one of Laberge's most famous techniques. 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:55.960 When you wake up from a dream, try your best 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.600 to remember it fully, and when you go back to sleep, 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.640 keep telling yourself that you're going to remember that you're 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.640 dreaming during your next dream. The next step is to 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.200 picture yourself back in the dream that you just had 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.200 and look for a sign that the dream is a 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:16.200 dream and not reality, like the fact that you're flying 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:21.040 through the air with wings. Leberts calls these dream signs. 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.120 At this point, remind yourself that you're dreaming and continue 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.680 the visualization. Keep doing this until you fall asleep. If 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:31.799 you liked that and you want to learn more about 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.800 lucid dreaming, my other show, stuff to Blow Your Mind, 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.719 has a real deep dive into the topic where my 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.800 co host Robert and I talk all about lucid dreaming, 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:45.680 it's history and all of the dream types that Frederick 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:52.560 Van Eden came up with. Check out the brain Stuff 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:54.960 channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands 0:05:54.960 --> 0:06:11.280 of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.