A lucid dream is said to occur when a person becomes aware they are dreaming. This happens to a majority of people at some time in their life, and to a small percentage of people on a fairly regular basis.

Below we’ll take a close look at lucid dreaming, the techniques people are using to deliberately induce it, any benefits that might be derived from it, as well as any potential downsides.

Lucid Dreaming: The Basics

Lucid dreaming is a natural occurrence that is experienced by a majority of people at one time or another during their life. A regular dream is said to transform into a lucid dream when the person becomes aware they are dreaming. Most people wake up shortly thereafter and don’t give it a second thought.

However, an increasing number of people want to cultivate and nurture the lucid dream state. They believe this type of directed dreaming can boost creativity, enhance mental health, or simply allow them to live out their fantasies (like flying) without having to take hallucinogenic drugs. They also believe they can train their minds to enter and explore lucid dreams and that they can select topics for lucid dreams.

Let’s look at some of the techniques people are using to induce and control lucid dreaming.

Inducing a Lucid Dream

Most people have a lucid dream now and then, some have them several times a month, and others cultivate ways to have them at will. If you wish to induce lucid dreaming it’s recommended you practice some or all of the following techniques.

Make Sure Your Bedroom is Sleep Friendly

In the past it was believed that a person fell asleep and that their brain and body basically remained the same until they woke up, with dreams randomly sprinkled throughout their sleep time. We now know there are several stages involved in the sleep cycle.

• Stage 1 sleep is the lightest form of sleep and the easiest to wake up from. The brain is still shutting down and breathing is more or less regular.
• During Stage 2 sleep brain activity slows as does breathing, and it becomes more difficult to wake someone.
• Stages 3 and 4 are known as Slow Wave Sleep, with “wave” referring to brain waves. During this stage of sleep it can be very difficult to wake someone, and if they are awakened they will feel quite groggy for some time.
• The final stage of sleep is called REM, or Rapid Eye Movement, sleep. It is during this stage of sleep that we experience dreams, including lucid dreams.Once the REM sleep stage ends the cycle starts all over again. The average person will go through several cycles every night with each cycle lasting anywhere from 1 ½ to 2 hours.

The more time you spend in REM sleep the greater the odds of being able to induce lucid dreaming. So make sure your bedroom is free of distractions that might interfere with your ability to get and stay asleep.

Perform Reality Checks

Almost all people who cultivate lucid dreaming perform so-called “reality checks” as many as 10 times per day. They claim that, in time, this helps them gain greater control over their level of self-awareness while sleeping. If you ever watched the movie “Inception” the main character played by Leonardo DiCaprio uses a top to check whether he is dreaming or not. If he is, the top spins indefinitely. If he isn’t, it eventually falls over. This is a form of reality check.

Those of us not playing parts in multimillion dollar blockbusters need less elaborate ways to check if we’re dreaming or not. Some suggest trying to push your index finger through your hand, or to examine your hands and feet, as these are often distorted in dreams. While still others suggest reading a full page of a book; something that’s difficult to do in a dream.

Keep a Journal of Your Dreams

Most people who pursue lucid dreaming recommend heightening your awareness of your dreams by recording them. The easiest way to do that is to write them down in a dream journal as soon as you wake up. If writing is too slow and causes you to lose details or forget dreams altogether, use a digital tape recorder or a dream journal app. That way you can record your dreams as fast as you can speak and make sure you get it all.

Regardless of which method you use to record your dreams the important thing is that you do, and that you review what you’ve recorded either on paper or in digital form, on a regular basis. This is supposed to heighten your awareness of the kinds of things you dream about. That way, you can more easily recognize when you are dreaming.

Don’t Wake Up and Get Up

When you wake up from a dream it’s important that you record what you remember about that dream immediately. But don’t just make a record of your dream and then get up. Instead, stay in bed, focus on the details of that dream and try to get back to sleep. Play what you remember of the dream over and over in your head while you try to get back to sleep.

Don’t Wake Up and Get Up II

Instead of waking up, recording your dream and trying to get back to sleep while thinking about it, try keeping your eyes closed but your mind aware once you wake up. The goal in this case is to go back to sleep as quickly as possible without ever engaging the real world in any substantive way. But to do so with your mind in a heightened state of awareness.

Keep in mind that during REM sleep the body experiences a form of paralysis which some theorize is designed to keep us from physically acting out our dreams and perhaps hurting ourselves. Sometimes this sleep paralysis (1) can linger for a couple of minutes after we wake up. The bottom line is if you come right out of a dream into a waking state but keep your eyes closed in order to try and go right back to sleep, you may be aware of feeling paralyzed. But rest assured it’s nothing to worry about.

Embrace Video Games

It will likely come as no surprise to parents that researchers believe there’s a link between video games and a dissociation from reality. In this case though that dissociation, brought on by lengthy immersion in the fantasy world of the game, may be useful as it seems to promote more lucid dreaming and perhaps even aid in the ability to control lucid dreams (2).

Schedule a Wake Up During REM Sleep

Because we understand about the various stages of the sleep cycle, and how long they last, it is theoretically possible for a person to set their alarm to wake them up during the REM stage of sleep. When they do they should write down the dream they just woke up from and then putz around for half an hour or so (no coffee during this period) before returning to bed and trying to get back to sleep while focusing on the dream they just woke up from.

Some people swear by this so-called “wake back to bed” method of inducing lucid dreams. Others, however, point out that regular dreams seem to serve the purpose of helping us to make sense out of unresolved feelings and situations (3), and that by purposely disrupting dreams we may be doing ourselves long term emotional harm. Purposely waking during REM sleep is also likely to cause sleep deprivation, which will affect both physical and mental performance.

The Bottom Line

There are other techniques people use to cultivate lucid dreaming as a pastime, but the above are some of the most common. Keep in mind none of them are guaranteed to work, and the whole idea of trying to promote lucid dreaming is possibly specious to begin with (4), unless there is some compelling psychological or therapeutic reason to do so.

Now let’s go over some frequently asked questions swirling around the topic of lucid dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming FAQs

How long will I have to wait to have my first lucid dream?

There is no hard and fast rule regarding how quickly a person will start to experience lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming seems to be a skill of sorts, or more accurately, the sort of thing some people are born to and others have to work at. Recent studies suggest that it has a lot to do with the relationship between an individual’s anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) and parietal cortex in the brain (5). This does not necessarily mean that people who lack a certain type of brain structure are incapable of lucid dreaming, just that they may have to work at it harder and are less likely to experience frequent lucid dreams. But again, there are no hard and fast rules here. It will vary from person to person.

How do I know I’m in a lucid dream?

When it comes to lucid dreaming, this is perhaps the easiest question to answer. You will know you’re in a lucid dream because you will say or think to yourself “I must be dreaming”, or something to that effect. If you have ever had a dream where you thought or said something like that then you have had a lucid dream. Almost everyone has experienced a lucid dream at some point in their lives. What we’re concerned with here is whether you can train yourself to have them on demand.

How can I prolong a lucid dream?

People are often frustrated because their lucid dreams end abruptly. They want to know if there is anything they can do to extend the lucid dream state. While there are lots of theories and some incredibly wacky ideas floating around regarding how to extend a lucid dream, the best way seems to be to simply try and relax into the dream once you realize you’re dreaming. Don’t get too excited or try and impose too much control. Just remind yourself occasionally that you’re dreaming, relax and enjoy.

Can I create flying dreams at will?

Humans have no experience flying on their own. They’re dependent on some type of technological support to navigate the atmospheric ocean. As such, it’s difficult to direct yourself to experience something you’ve never experienced. You can have a lucid dream about running because in all likelihood you have spent time running. Your brain knows what’s involved and what it feels like, so you can reproduce it in your dream. That’s not the case with flying.

Still, it’s not unheard of for people to lift their feet off the ground in a dream and take to the air. There is no scientific evidence to support this next statement, but the secret seems to be to remind yourself that you’re dreaming (if you can) and then work your way into it slowly with progressively larger and larger leaps.

Is it possible to change dream elements?

This is a hotly debated subject with some lucid dream bloggers claiming anyone can change any element of a lucid dream at any time, and others stating flatly that any changes are likely coincidental. The scientific evidence is mixed at best (6), with some suggesting control is possible and others suggesting control of lucid dreaming is an illusion.

As is the case with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. The only way to find out is to try. What we do know is that people can be taught to communicate with those in the waking world while they are in a lucid dream (7). But this is not the same as changing specific details of a particular dream.

Will lucid dreaming ruin my sleep?

People worry that if they’re mind is actively engaged during lucid dreaming they won’t get the rest they need. There is certainly something to this concern, especially if you believe, as many sleep researchers do, that one of the primary reasons we sleep is to give our brains a chance to purge toxins and organise information taken in during the previous day (8). Since lucid dreaming is a semi-conscious activity some fear it could interfere with the brain’s ability to carry out these important sleep-related functions and lead to sluggish mental performance while awake. Scientific research into the question has so far yielded conflicting results.

Can I get stuck in a lucid dream?

No, because eventually you’ll wake up. But there are concerns that indulging lucid dreaming too frequently can disrupt a person’s normal, healthy relationship with sleep to the point that it causes them to lose touch with reality (9). That is, they become less engaged with the real world and more engaged with the dream world. That notion is buttressed by the fact that scientists have found a link between lucid dreaming and psychosis (10), although it will take some time to untangle that relationship. The bottom line is that there may be nothing to worry about, but there is also reason to be cautious before diving into the deep end of the lucid dream pool.

If I die in a lucid dream will I die in the real world?

It seems incredibly unlikely, but at the same time there is no way to know for sure. If someone had a dream where they died and then died in the real world at the same moment they would not be here to report what happened to them. People often have dreams that they’re about to die and then wake up a moment before they pass on. But that’s not the same as dying in your dream. As they say, there’s no such thing as a “near death” experience (11). You either die or you don’t.

What is a “false awakening”?

A false awakening is just that: you believe you have awakened from a dream only to (eventually) discover you have actually slipped into another dream. Most people experience false awakenings now and then, and believing (while dreaming) that you have awakened from a dream is an experience similar in some ways to lucid dreaming (12), although for most of the time you are not aware you are dreaming. But you do not have to be a lucid dreamer to experience false awakenings (13).

Should I use a lucid dream machine?

A couple of decades back researchers discovered that if you shined various lights into people’s faces while they were dreaming it sometimes induced lucid dreams. This avenue of research was more or less abandoned in time but that didn’t stop some aggressive entrepreneurs from seeing green in those flashing lights and creating so-called lucid dream machines. Do they work? Well, if you mean do they generate profits for the manufacturers, yes. But if you mean do they induce lucid dreams then the answer is, usually not. More often what they do is interrupt your sleep and cause you to feel groggy and mentally sluggish during the day.

What Are the Benefits of Lucid Dreaming?

The jury is still out on lucid dreaming, particularly lucid dreaming that is consciously induced, rather than naturally occurring. That said, there are some pretty well understood positives associated with lucid dreaming. The important question is: do the positives outweigh the negatives or vise-versa? We still don’t have a definitive answer to that, but until we do here are those positives.

Enhanced mental health – People who are naturally prone to lucid dreaming seem to exhibit greater mental health and self confidence (14). What is unknown is whether the high degree of mental health causes the lucid dreams, or whether the lucid dreams enhance mental health. Whichever it is there seems a direct correlation between the two.

Enhanced creativity – No one is saying you can turn yourself into Mozart by practicing lucid dreaming, but there is some evidence of a connection between lucid dreams and a higher level of creativity in people (15).

Reduced anxiety – That enhanced mental health we mentioned above has a number of potential knock-on benefits, including reduced anxiety levels. Think about it: how many decisive, self-confident people do you know who are also wracked by anxiety? We’re willing to bet not many.

Downside of Lucid Dreams

Now that we’re familiar with some of the benefits of lucid dreaming, let’s look at the potential downsides. It should be noted that the potential downsides of lucid dreaming are usually related to practice of purposely inducing lucid dreams, rather than those lucid dreams that occur naturally.

Elevated risk of dissociation – The science suggests that people who work to induce lucid dreams run an increased risk of dissociation (16) and schizotypy (17) symptoms, meaning they run the risk of losing track of what’s real. You do not have to suffer from any particular pre-existing mental health condition for this to happen.

Negative impact on sleep quality – We touched on this earlier and it’s back here on this list because it’s a real concern. Getting enough restful sleep is essential to many brain functions, including memory (18). The brain may also use the downtime to flush toxins, which in turn helps maintain optimal brain function. If your brain is actively engaged in lucid dreaming there is a chance it’s not getting the downtime it needs to properly rejuvenate.

Insomnia – People who experience intense lucid dreams sometimes wake suddenly and have a hard time getting back to sleep. Such experiences may even raise the person’s anxiety levels, since they become wary of falling back to sleep and repeating the same type of experience.

Conclusion

Lucid dreaming is a hot topic these days, and like most hot topics it tends to attract two kinds of people: those with a sincere interest in the subject, and snake oil salesmen hoping to rope the unsuspecting into buying something they don’t need or subscribing to a blog or youtube channel.

The only thing that is clear about lucid dreaming is that most people will experience a lucid dream from time to time, and that natural lucid dreaming has some pretty well defined benefits. What is decidedly less clear is whether purposely inducing lucid dreams is a good idea or not.

We would strongly suggest you discuss the matter with a qualified healthcare professional before you set off down the road of purposeful lucid dreaming.