5 Traits of Natural Lucid Dreamers
March 9, 2010 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Lucid Dreaming
With lucid dreaming you can explore the crack between worlds, but first you have to break on through. Image by ATV Nut.
Avatar: A Dreamer’s Review
February 4, 2010 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Dreamy Movies
Avatar is the movie James Cameron has been dreaming about for over 20 years. It took that long for the technology to catch up with his vision. Worth it? Yeah, worth it. I usually only see movies in the theater if something is guaranteed to blow up. Avatar met this requirement, and if you wear the 3D glasses, exceeded it. Beyond the explosions and mind-numbing CG goodness, Avatar is a film I recommend for dreamers everywhere.
As lucid dream writer Rebecca Turner suggested, the movie actually feels like a lucid dream. Let’s see: a man goes to sleep, wakes up in a new body, and cavorts around in a magical world full of waterfalls and long-legged sexy smurfs. Except for that last detail, this is the proto-typical lucid dream.
Allan Hobson and the Neuroscience of Dreams
January 7, 2010 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Theories of Dreaming
The neuroscience of dreaming is a relatively new enterprise but has quickly become the major paradigm of experimental dream research today. J. Allan Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard University, is the undisputed celebrity of this scientific outlook, and the author of several popular books on the topic. Hobson, in his 30 years of tireless work, is also perhaps the greatest provocateur in the field of dream studies, stirring up old philosophical conflicts such as the value of objective science over experience, and mechanism over meaning.
5 tips for Powerful Dreams Over the Holidays
December 22, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Working with Dreams
Image by rachel.laureene ♫ ♥
Lucid Dreaming: a Hybrid of REM and Waking Cognition
September 18, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under New Dream Studies
Where does lucidity comes from? Image by ocean.flynn
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 years. But this study, conducted at the Neurological Laboratory in Frankfurt, Germany, backs the assertion with physiological data taken with an EEG.
What is Lucid Dreaming?
September 2, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Lucid Dreaming
This is my final post on ways of working with dreams without a dang dream dictionary. Becoming a lucid dreamer is an advanced dream practice that is actually easy to learn. I’ve been leading up to this post because to start lucid dreaming you have to have good dream recall, know how to set a strong intention for dream incubation, and understand how to honor a dream with action. All of these are foundational practices and perspectives for those who want to take their dreaming life to the next level.
Dream ReLiving: An Advanced Lucid Dreaming Practice
July 22, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Lucid Dreaming
Sparrow's 1976 book on the spiritual dimensions of lucid dreaming
I’d like to share an advanced lucid dreaming technique taught by Scott Sparrow, a psychotherapist who played a major role in the beginning of the modern lucid dreaming movement. Dreams often give us gifts, but sometimes as lucid dreamers we ironically lose our lucidity about the value of the dream’s spontaneous gift. This technique is a powerful way to re-enter a lucid dream that you feel you made a “bad choice,” and wish to have another opportunity to meet the dream as it comes.
Dreams and the Gift of Masculinity
June 17, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Working with Dreams
Most people who are interested in learning more about their dreams are women. About three quarters or so, in fact. Whether it’s culture or biological, women are more willing to explore the murky murk of their dreamworld as well as share their dreams with others.
Lucid Nightmares – Submit Your Dream
June 4, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Nightmares & Dream Terrors
I’m preparing for my upcoming lecture on lucid nightmares, coming up in three weeks in Chicago at the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
Robert Moss’s Blog & the Archaeology of Gratitude
June 1, 2009 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Lucid Dreaming
Check out the new blog by renown dream worker Robert Moss. I say new, but he’s really been at it for six months already.
Moss has an approachable style to working with dreams, and he never ceases to inspire me. In fact, his classic book Conscious Dreaming came into my life just as I was wandering around the American West, looking to find a graduate school where I could learn about dreams, consciousness and psychology. I was excavating a village site in Yosemite Valley at the time. The park service was putting in a new parking lot – pretty much anytime you kick up a rock in Yosemite Valley you have to call in a team of archaeologists because it’s all sacred ground.
In the evenings, I went back to my tent and read Moss’s incredible stories of his shamanic lucid dreams, and how he learned to value the dream’s path over his attempts to control the experience. Moss isn’t too worried about our conscious and sometimes childish attempts at dream control, though. He writes, “Dreams are wiser than our everyday minds and come from an infinitely deeper source.”
