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10 Habits and Traits of Successful Lucid Dreamers

Posted by Ryan Hurd on February 29, 2012 | 8 Comments

I’ll just go ahead and say it: not everyone is cut out to be a lucid dreamer. I’m not meaning to be a downer, but it’s true. While there is so much hype about how achieving self-awareness in your dreams is a learnable skill—and it surely is—some people simply will be more successful than others.
The [...]

Filed Under: Lucid Dreaming, New Dream Studies

Neuroscience of Lucid Dreaming

Posted by Ryan Hurd on January 6, 2011 | 8 Comments

Lucid dreaming research is growing up. At least, that is Allan Hobson’s take on the recent burst of scientific studies published on conscious dreaming. Once a myth of Carlos Castaneda, and then a topic guaranteed to instantly transport researchers to the margins of academia, lucid dreaming has become a hot topic for neuroscience and cognitive [...]

Filed Under: Lucid Dreaming, New Dream Studies

The Mystery of Hypnagogia

Posted by Ryan Hurd on December 10, 2010 | 15 Comments

Hypnagogia is the imagery, sounds and strange bodily feelings that are felt at “sleep onset.” This is a simplification though, as researchers have noted hypnagogic imagery in the lab at periods of quiet wakefulness as well as stage 1 sleep. Others have correlated hypnagogia with pre-sleep alpha waves and also REM intrusion into sleep onset. [...]

Filed Under: New Dream Studies

Lucid Dreaming: a Hybrid of REM and Waking Cognition

Posted by Ryan Hurd on September 18, 2009 | 6 Comments

A study accepted in the journal Sleep last month (but not yet published) claims that lucid dreaming should be not be considered a REM dreaming phenomenon but rather a unique state of consciousness (Voss, et al., 2009). Poetically, the assertion that lucid dreaming has elements of waking consciousness and dreaming has been made for [...]

Filed Under: New Dream Studies

PsiberDreaming Conference Coming up!

Posted by Ryan Hurd on September 8, 2009 | 2 Comments

There’s less than 2 weeks until the premiere Dreaming event on the web. I’m talking about the 2009 PsiberDreaming conference: a two week online conference that features over two dozen presentations from leaders in the fields of dream research and consciousness studies.
Keep in mind, this is not a boring academic conference, but an open forum [...]

Filed Under: New Dream Studies

Managing Cancer Pain with Healing Dreams

Posted by Ryan Hurd on July 20, 2009 | 3 Comments

Often the claim is made that dreams are healing. Usually, dream workers are talking about psychological healing, or the knack for dreams to highlight the areas in our lives that need attention, courage and renewal.