Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. 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 milam 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 Stephen Leberte,
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.
Speaker 1: So how does that work? Well, generally people are dreaming
Speaker 1: when 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 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 here
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 skept to go about lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: Here at how stuff works. But here are some tips
Speaker 1: for lucid dreaming no dream control promised. First, you could
Speaker 1: practice mindfulness while you're awake. This is what they call
Speaker 1: reality testing. Throughout your day, pay attention to how it
Speaker 1: feels to be awake and the cause and effect nature
Speaker 1: of reality. Like when you flip a light switch, a
Speaker 1: light turns on, and if it doesn't, there are steps
Speaker 1: you can take to figure out why. Well. The idea
Speaker 1: here is that by being more aware of what it's
Speaker 1: like to be awake, you'll be able to notice differences
Speaker 1: while you're dreaming. Secondly, keep a dream journal when you
Speaker 1: wake up, immediately right down what you remember of your dreams.
Speaker 1: The immediacy is important because we tend to forget dreams
Speaker 1: much more quickly than waking events. One Freudian era dream
Speaker 1: researcher by the name of L. Strumple hypothesized that that
Speaker 1: is because the strength of our memories is based in
Speaker 1: association and repetition, which we don't get in dreams the
Speaker 1: way we do in waking activity. The idea here is
Speaker 1: that by paying closer wakeful attention to your dreams, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to recognize them while you're asleep. Third, disrupt
Speaker 1: your dream cycles. Set an alarm to wake yourself up
Speaker 1: after ninety minutes after bedtime. That should give your brain
Speaker 1: enough time to cycle through the sleep stages and reach REM.
Speaker 1: Or set an alarm to wake yourself up a couple
Speaker 1: hours early, stay awake for about half an hour, then
Speaker 1: go to sleep again. The idea here is that by
Speaker 1: waking yourself up in the middle of rem sleep, you
Speaker 1: should be able to remember your recent dreams more clearly
Speaker 1: than usual. And finally, there's Laberge's MILD technique. And that's
Speaker 1: MILD in all caps because it stands for pneumonic induction
Speaker 1: of lucid dreaming. This is one of Laberge's most famous techniques.
Speaker 1: When you wake up from a dream, try your best
Speaker 1: to remember it fully, and when you go back to sleep,
Speaker 1: keep telling yourself that you're going to remember that you're
Speaker 1: dreaming during your next dream. The next step is to
Speaker 1: picture yourself back in the dream that you just had
Speaker 1: and look for a sign that the dream is a
Speaker 1: dream and not reality, like the fact that you're flying
Speaker 1: through the air with wings. Leberts calls these dream signs.
Speaker 1: At this point, remind yourself that you're dreaming and continue
Speaker 1: the visualization. Keep doing this until you fall asleep. If
Speaker 1: you liked that and you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming, my other show, stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: has a real deep dive into the topic where my
Speaker 1: co host Robert and I talk all about lucid dreaming,
Speaker 1: it's history and all of the dream types that Frederick
Speaker 1: Van Eden came up with. Check out the brain Stuff
Speaker 1: channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.