A few years ago, I took a flight from Atlanta back to my home in San Francisco. I was sleep deprived after a late night out with old friends. The afternoon I arrived home, I drove down to Ocean Beach and took a nap in the car, leaving the window open for the ocean breeze. My seat was reclined most of the way and I fell asleep on my back. I instantly slipped into sleep paralysis.

The feeling of sleep paralysis is like being stuck in the threshold between sleep and wakefulness, and can trigger intense fear if you have never experienced it before. However, you can easily learn how to shift from sleep paralysis into a lucid dream or an OBE, especially by zapping negative expectation with an affirmation or a gratitude practices.  After 20+ years of this peculiar altered state, I knew the drill.

I kicked myself out of my perceptual body and began drifting down a dark river.

It was dark and quiet. The air was noticeably cool.

I relaxed, looking at the lights of stars overhead. I woke myself up by wriggling my little toe, and feeling refreshed, spacious and focused.

This nap vision didn’t occur randomly. I was primed for some weird REM sleep effects because I was sleep deprived.  But it was the posture of laying on my back, and slightly inclined, that brought me to the threshold.

Posture not only can increase the likelihood of out-of-body experiences, but it can bring on some rich lucid dreams too, particularly wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILD) in which you fall asleep and maintain awareness. I have personally had excellent results with WILDs when my head and upper torso are comfortably propped up in bed.

Why does a slight incline work?

In short, it appears to increase mental vigilance compared to laying completely flat.

Sleeping Guard by Bernard Strigel, 1521

We know from historical sources that we are more likely to awaken if propped up rather than fully prone.

For example, a common practice for soldiers in the 19th century American frontier included round-the-clock guard duty. Soldiers on duty slept on an inclined wooden bench, with their musket close at hand, a practice called “sleeping in the leather.”¹

A group of Buddhist monks in Scotland used this practice to an extreme: sleeping completely upright in a box for less than five hours at a time. 

Ani Lhamo, secretary to the abbot at the Samye Ling monastery, was quoted as saying, “If you are more upright when you sleep, when you wake up you haven’t slept so deeply, and it is easy to wake up quickly and get going.”

Indeed, Tibetan Buddhists have practiced secret sleeping postures for hundreds of years. Buddhist lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche suggests that “using a high pillow will help keep sleep light and generate more lucidity in dreams.”²

Another practice in Buddhist dream yoga involves reclining on a stack of pillows and sitting cross-legged. After a period of counting breaths, you fall asleep and dream. Tellingly, this particular practice is recommended for early morning, about four hours into the sleep period, when arousal rates naturally hiccup.

The call for night vigilance can also be seen in the historic European tradition of the night watch, the time of contemplative wakefulness in between first and second sleep.³

Most clinical research about sleeping supine (on your back) versus prone (sleeping on your stomach) has been conducted with infants in the search for the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The infant is safer sleeping on his back, especially in the first three months of life. Privy to this conversation: infants who sleep on their backs have greater cortical arousal, and more awakenings, during REM sleep.

Put it to use tonight

For out-of-body experiences, position yourself semi-elevated and then try these recommended exercises.

For lucid dreaming. try combining a slightly elevated posture with a wake-back-to-bed method (WBTB) in the middle of the night. WBTB is about rousing (by alarm) for a short period of nighttime wakefulness in the very early morning.

Spend your time reading, journaling, or meditating, as all three of these activities are simultaneously relaxing and known to increase cortical arousal.

A warning: don’t substitute video games or computer work for your middle-of-the-night vigilance, as light in the blue spectrum may stall melatonin production and can make it hard to get back to sleep at all. If you look at monitors at night, I recommend warming up the color spectrum. Here’s a great free program called f.lux that does this automatically. (I’m using it right now in fact).

Also, make sure you are staying safe and are securely positioned on your mattress or comfortable surface.  Falling asleep standing up can be dangerous because you completely lose muscle tone in REM sleep.

Combining the mental agitation with the natural increase of the relaxation-inducing hormone known as prolactin in the middle of the night⁴  is the perfect recipe for peaceful clarity. And that’s the basic secret to wake-initiated lucid dreams in general: blend positive stress with relaxation, close your eyes, and let the great show begin.

Try it tonight and let me know how it goes!

This article is adapted from the Lucid Immersion Blueprint.

Additional sources

1. Moore, R. and Haynes, M. (2003). Lewis and Clark: Tailor made, trail worn. Helena, MT: Far Country Press, p. 33

2. Wangyal, T. (1998). The Tibetan yogas of dream and sleep. Ithica, NY: Snow Lion Publications, p. 109.

3. Naiman, R. (2006). Healing night: the science and spirit of sleeping, dreaming and awakening. Minneapolis: Syrene, p. 90.

4. Wehr, T. (1999). The impact of changes in night length (scotoperiod) on human sleep. In F.W. Turek and P.C. Zee (Eds.), Neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms, (pp. 263– 85). New York: Marcel Dekker.

First Image: Sleeping Lion (CC, 2009) by Rennett Stowe

Turns out, Gawker has got hold of some emails from Jared Loughner, and Daulerio has been going through them looking for new insights in the horrendous mass shooting that left six dead and wounder 14, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. It got weird when Daulerio asked, “So, you talked to Jared, right?”

“Nope, never spoke with him,” I replied.

“But you emailed with him, right?”

“No, never did. Uh…why?”

“Because we have an email from him to you.”

That’s when my nervous laughter began. Good to know that I laugh when I’m freaking out, it must be my Irish heritage.  “Um, do you have a reply from me?” I asked, cringing.

No reply, he says… but maybe I have it?

I have no recollection so I tell him I’ll get back to him. I got home and did a search for Loughner in my email database. Ping. With an increasingly icky feeling, I saw that not only had he emailed me, but I had responded.

Time stamp: February 2009. A full 23 months before the shooting.

I reread Loughner’s email to me and instantly understood why I didn’t remember it: it was very, very forgettable. By any reasonable standard, it was a polite inquiry about dreams, like the kind I get each and every day. No weirdness. No nonsensical queries. Even with the typo, it was a totally normal request, and I sent him a reply back a few days later and forgot about it.

Below you can read Loughner’s email to me and my reply. I’m attaching the emails as screenshots, and have blurred out only our email addresses.

A couple of points about this exchange:

• The “knol” Loughner is referring to is an article on lucid dreaming I wrote for the now-defunct Google Knol project. 
• But the history of lucid dreaming section of that knol is available here. 
• In my response, I hesitate to recommend melatonin. That stuff is not candy, y’all.  Supplements alone are not a healthy approach to lucid dreaming. And melatonin is a crappy supplement for lucid dreaming anyways.
• I invited Loughner to feel free to submit me some examples of his own lucid dreams, which he never did.
• The lucid nightmare data set I mention in the email was presented in June of 2009 in Chicago at the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Ominously enough considering the present discussion, it was titled, “Lucid Nightmares:the Dark Side of Self-Awareness in Dreams.”

Lucid Dreaming and Mental Illness

It’s sobering to know that a man who later became a convicted mass-murderer was reading my blog and corresponding with me in 2009. As I suggested to the editor of Gawker, as an online educator, all I can do is hope that my work helps people.

It’s especially sobering as I provide educational material about lucid dreaming, which will probably, once again, get some media buzz as being a “cause” to Loughner’s descent into schizophrenia.

This correlation simply does not hold water.

As I discuss in this article on the supposed dangers of lucid dreaming, there’s no evidence that lucid dreaming can bring on mental illness. From my dangers piece:

“In fact, lucid dreaming has recently been linked to resilience, the ability to maintain stability during and after traumatic events. Lucid dreaming is used clinically to help cope with nightmares, and is considered by many psychologists to promote psychological growth and encourage problem solving.”

The real connection of mental illness and lucid dreaming: people who suffer with mental illness often also have arousal disorders, which can increase the likelihood of hallucinations at sleep onset, and may increase the chance to have a lucid dream due to increased awakenings throughout the night.

But millions of healthy people have lucid dreams every night. And millions more experience sleep onset hallucinations that seem extraordinarily vivid, which coincidentally is a central theme of Oliver Sack’s new book Hallucinations.

Sacks’ point: hallucinations are not just the mark of psychosis. More commonly, they are the mark of being sleep deprived, stressed, drugged or physically exhausted. People with narcolepsy and partial blindness and also experience hallucinations without losing their mind.

Anyhow, Loughner didn’t become a murderer because he was a lucid dreamer, no more than he did because he smoked copious amounts of ganja. He was sick, he needed help, and the saddest part of this case is that the people in his community knew it but seemed powerless to help him.

The Secret Sufferers

One more thing: it’s not weird to me that I corresponded with someone who turned out to be mentally ill.  This probably happens more than I am aware — and that’s true for all of us.  Those suffering with mental illness routinely hide their illness, and most do it pretty well.

They are not “them.”  “They” are us. Bouts of clinical depression, schizophrenia and other personality disorders and psychoses can come and go. Most people heal, picking up where they left off — at least that’s true for those who have community support. Elyn Saks eloquently describes what this looks like from the inside in this TED talk. 

Society, and especially media, has a way of othering those with sicknesses that we don’t understand. Even though people with mental illness may commit more violent crime (under stressed conditions) than those without, this doesn’t mean that all schizophrenics and other folks with personality disorders are murderers-to-be, waiting to blow up like a greasy stick of dynamite. This is another logical fallacy.

In fact, those with substance abuse problems (including alcoholics) are more likely to be violent than schizophrenics, but as a culture–and perhaps it’s part of human nature — we are much more scared of the sensational and seemingly random acts of violence than the systematic violence that happens around us every day .

And it is far more likely that people with a serious mental illness will be the victim of violence, not the perp.

Our mental health facilities are less funded than they have been since the 1970s. This problem will continue to get worse until we start supporting the mental ill amongst us again.

The grain of truth: Lucid dreaming is powerful medicine

Under all the misplaced fear about the dark side of lucid dreaming, there is a small grain of truth: the practice of lucid dreaming can, over time, bring up disturbing imagery and challenging situations for the dreamer. It’s not all fluffy bunnies and celebrity fantasies in the dreamworld. Sooner or later, you have to face your fears.

This is why I take lucid dreaming seriously: it’s powerful medicine. It shakes up your ego defenses by design. As Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

In my view, and the view of many lucid dreaming scholars, establishing a secure container is essential to a healthy lucid dreaming practice: by this I mean having a social support network, a healthy home life, and the time to go deeper into process. These are just a few of the prerequisites to success, and can also prevent the occurrence of nightmares and scary “false awakening” type dreams along the way.

These dreams won’t make you schizophrenic, but without proper support, they can agitate your mental state and possibly re-strengthen the fears that came up in the dreams.

Unwanted lucid dreams is a real problem for some people too; in these cases, it’s best to treat too many vivid and nightmarish dreams as a red flag, find ways to relax and ground yourself, and seek professional help if it’s disrupting your life.

My heart goes out to the survivors of the Tuscon tragedy, and to the shattered families who are picking up the pieces.

Please join the discussion. I will delete any comment that I arbitrarily deem too snarky, full of hatred or intolerance.

One of the most important elements of getting a restful night’s sleep is feeling relaxed and safe. Ordinarily we achieve this comfort zone by sleeping in our own homes. But if you want to have more lucid dreams, it’s time to stir it up a bit. 

Enter the vigilance effect.

When we fall asleep in unfamiliar settings, we are more likely to awaken at night and, consequently, remember more dreams.

We can see an artifact of this natural effect in the sleep lab, where scientists often throw out the initial night of data due to the “first night effect,” in which sleep patterns have increased arousal rates.

We can harness this effect, as many dreamers regularly have more incidents of lucid dreams and sleep paralysis when they are sleeping someplace new.

It sounds like a paradox that vigilance can increase dreaming, especially after all my talk about the importance of relaxing before bed. What you want to achieve is relaxed alertness, not red-alert paranoia.

Similarly, the best lucid intentions have a slight edge to them: you need to have a strong pull, but not a frantic air.

So don’t issue yourself ultimatums, and remember to pair vigilance practices with the calming sleep practices outlined earlier in this book, so the work can go underground.

Camping Out for Dreams

Camping near Mt Diablo, CA. Image (c) by Kevin Feinstein, 2008.

Personally, I often have lucid dreams when camping outdoors in a tent. The novelty of the sleeping environment and my increased sense of vigilance (is that a bear?) routinely spur on vivid and lucid dreams.

Camping is a fun way to take your lucid immersion to a new level due to this sleep disturbance effect, the immersion in nature, as well as the benefits of hiking and outdoor activities. My camping trips are always dreaming trips; I usually make the journey with a specific dream intention in mind. 

Business Class Lucid

Traveling, in general, can also spur on lucid dreaming for the same reason. 

Sleeping in a hotel room can increase awakenings and remembered dreams. One look at the pastel art on the wall and you know you’re definitely not in your own bedroom. Admit it, it’s kind of creepy, and so are the strange sounds you hear throughout the night. 

(Bed jumping can also stir it up..I seriously didn’t know this was a thing until tonight). 

Novelty, increased vigilance and disturbed sleeping styles (read: jetlag) are pretty common outcomes of traveling in a foreign country as well, especially when you have a lot of airport connections to make and don’t speak the language.

My intense dreaming style during my research project in Nicaragua in 2006 was no doubt related to heightened vigilance levels — in my case, it was the 4am screeching of howler monkeys that stirred me to wakefulness… each and every night.

In fact, my whole research design depended on the vigilance effect and it didn’t disappoint: I recorded over 110 dreams in three weeks, including a dozen lucid dreams. 

So if you are planning to travel this year, don’t forget your intention to have more lucid dreams. Vacationing may be the perfect opportunity for a powerful lucid immersion, and it can add a little excitement to mandatory family vacations over the holidays.

Be prepared and pack right:

Your lucid dreaming traveling check list should include, at the minimum:

 Dream journal

Flashlight or night pen

Favorite book about dreams or lucid dreams

Relaxing music to listen to as you fall asleep with your intention in mind

————————————————————

This is an excerpt from my digital kit the Lucid Immersion Blueprint.

To learn more about this comprehensive multi-media project that takes you deeper-safer-faster into advanced lucid dreaming, check out the video and description here. 

First image CC: Hotel bed jumping by Chrispitality

A fascinating new study has just come out showing precisely the parts of the brain that are associated with meta-consciousness, or the ability to be conscious of ourselves. Michael Dresler and co-researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry used magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) to demonstrate how the brain during a lucid dream differs from waking consciousness and ordinary dreaming.

Could this study provide, as it claims, new insight into the neural basis of human consciousness?

That’s a bold claim for a study, but the results of the MRT re-confirmed that during lucid dreaming –as defined by the press release‘s authors–  “a specific cortical network consisting of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar regions and the precuneus is activated when this lucid consciousness is attained.”

This study in context

This not the first time that lucid dreamer’s brains have been mapped using MRI technology, nor the first time that these particular brain regions have been associated with areas of self-regulation and executive functioning, either. The value of the study is that it’s a confirmation and refocusing of earlier work done by the Max Planck Institute, such as this earlier 2011 paper. They are honing in, little by little.

But let’s not forget the pioneering–and still controversial–results of Ursula Voss and company’s 2009 EEG study, which also found strong synchronization in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Interestingly, a 2011 study of task performance found that lucid dreamers had higher performance in tasks that utilize the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a closely related area.

I love that several different groups are now doing this work, generating unprecedented discussion about lucid dreaming in the scientific community.

Waking life – not as rational as its cracked up to be

Yet I admit a little annoyance that has less to do with this brilliant study than the press release summarizing its results. “During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves,” the announcement begins. This premise is absurdly false. Waking consciousness is not the hotbed of clear and steady rationality we assume it to be.

Rather, as summed up in this recent literature review on the dreaming brain, “Waking thoughts jump around and drift into bizarre daydreaming, rumination, and worrying far more than stereotypes of rational linear thinking suggest.”

The opposite assumption is also not true, that dreams are devoid of meta-cognition and awareness factors. Recent cognitive research by Stephen LaBerge and Tracey Kahan shows that ordinary dreams are in fact full of meta-cognition, such as thinking about our thoughts, noticing our emotional reactions, and planning the next move. In fact, in some measures, dreams show levels of meta-cognition comparable to waking life.

So how does this continuity work jive with the Max Planck resonance studies?

Firstly, knowing you’re dreaming is a very specific and specialized form of meta-cognition. As LaBerge and Kahan put it, lucidity involves “both participant and observer levels of awareness as well as awareness that the experience is occurring during the dream state.”

Secondly, and most importantly, there’s more than one way to be lucid. As we will see play out as these brain imagery studies are retested around the world, different definitions and cognitive postures in lucid dreams will probably reflect a variety of brain synchrony and cortical networks.

This opinion, certainly not unique to me, is explored by other lucid dream researchers in the aptly named 2010 paper “Different kinds of subjective experience during lucid dreaming may have different neural substrates,” published in the International Journal of Dream Research.

Lucidity defined?

How does the Max Planck group define lucid dreaming? According to the press release (which is not the best judge to be sure), lucid dreamers “are aware that they are dreaming while being in a dream state, and are also able to deliberately control their dreams. (emphasis is mine). Those so-called lucid dreamers have access to their memories during lucid dreaming, can perform actions and are aware of themselves.”

So, lucidity for this research group is actually a sub-set of lucid dreaming known as lucid-control dreams.

To be sure, there’s a lot of other ways to be “lucid” in a dream than trying to control the content, or remember a specific task imported from waking life.

So, reigning myself in, let’s celebrate the new generation of lucid dreaming brain research! I can’t wait to see how this work develops, especially as lucid dreaming is applied to therapeutic interventions and creativity studies.

But, take it with a grain of salt –  “the neural basis of human consciousness” has not been pinned down just yet.

Comments are welcome — and I’d like to ask how do you define lucid dreaming for yourself? (no wrong answers! — let us celebrate our lucid diversity!)

In the lucid dreaming community, there’s a lot of emphasis on how to lengthen lucid dreams and prevent awakening. There is nothing wrong with this. The skill of holding your attention span and riding the turbulent sea of REM takes time to develop, and waking practices hold the key to developing this capacity. However, longer lucid dreams are not necessarily better dreams, or automatic achievements. To think so would be to deny the neuromythological structure of the dreaming mind.

Let me break that down:

From a neurological standpoint, many lucid dreams occur in the first place due to cortical arousal, when the brain is already transitioning into waking awareness.

From a mythological standpoint, we could say that lucid dreams reach a conclusion because the dream has achieved its own end–on its own timetable–regardless of what you want to happen next.

Neuromythology, therefore, emphasizes the inherent storytelling framework of the dream, rooted not only in our expectations and desires, but also the emotional, linguistic and visionary structures of the lucidly dreaming brain.

4 examples of short but “successful” lucid dreams include:

•    The dream image transforming into a previously unknown or unexpressed emotion, leading to awakening with that emotion still in the air.
•    A realization, a provocative statement by a dream figure, or a new understanding that leads to arousal.
•    A powerful image that demands attention, often nightmarish and scary. These are important because they may carry some information that the waking self usually represses.
•    Spontaneous orgasm, transcendent bliss and feelings of oneness. ‘Nuf said.

In all of the above cases, trying to remain in the dream may be missing the point, and perhaps an opportunity.

[pullquote]Waking from the dream is a metaphorical gift of bridging the gap between worlds[/pullquote]

After all, dreams bring new information and emotional truths into awareness. Waking from the dream is a metaphorical gift of bridging the gap, as the information has crossed the boundary into the waking world.

My longest lucid dreams (somewhere in the 30-40 minute range) have not proven to be the most impactful… or the most memorable. In fact, some of my most powerful lucid dreams probably lasted less than two minutes after I became self-aware.

Here’s an example of a lucid dream that was short-lived but involved a powerful realization:

I’m in a version of my apartment. Some objects are out of place—I notice the microwave in the living room and realize I’m dreaming. I call to my younger brother, “Hey, this is a dream!” He comes down the steps and looks excited. He looks strong, and there are light etchings like tattoos all over his face that look like rock art spirals. I tell him, “This is my dream but you are still real—you have your own consciousness, I get that now.” He smiles broadly and his eyes flash with intelligence. I am emotional, full of love, respect and trust. He feels like he’s my older brother. I wake up, my heart full of hope. (3/30/11).

In this dream, I realize the profound respect I have for my younger brother, and how he sometimes carries my strength and resilience. He reveals himself as a warrior; the etchings on his face I interpret as symbol of our shared lineage in Ireland and Scotland. It is one of a long series of lucid dreams that has opened up a portal to my own indigenous roots and allowed the strength of my ancestors to spill into this world.

That’s my myth anyways…

So honor these short and sweet dreams by writing them down before you go back to sleep. You will forget them!

And even better, waking is the perfect time to reset an intention and go back into the dream, letting the storytelling process continue with a new chapter.

The essay is adapted from my mastermind guide the Lucid Immersion Blueprint.

First Image: CC 2010 In this Fairytale World by JerryCharlotte

Video is below.

Some topics that came up include:

• How to break out of Cognitive Domestication

• Foundational practices for greater lucidity

• How positive mental habits become permanent traits over time

• The importance of playfulness for lucid dreaming induction (and why most people are working too hard)

• And what to do if you’re having TOO MANY lucid dreams.

Give it a whirl!  We used Skype to record it, so the video is a little jumpy in some places.

And here’s where to find out more about Lucid Immersion Blueprint.

The good news is that your rate of success skyrockets when you know how to focus your motivation towards the tendancies and habits that frequent lucid dreamers do everyday.

Some of these come naturally —the way you sleep, or the way you are wired emotionally. Others are lifestyle habits that appear to push the buttons of the embodied mind for going lucid in a dream.

Below is the collective avatar—the personality traits and habits—of frequent lucid dreamers. I’m not saying all lucid dreamers have all these traits. (That would be kind of intense…)

But if you find yourself in just one or two of these traits below, you actually stand a really good chance for going lucid if you haven’t already. With further training, you could begin lucid dreaming with higher frequency too.

Without further adieu, 

you know you’re predestined to be a lucid dreamer if you:

Are a light sleeper.

Self-awareness is a delicate state associated with heightened cortical arousal during REM sleep. Light sleepers are especially wired for this. All hope is not lost if you are a heavy sleeper who usually collapses without any remembered awakenings, or if you rarely wake up from disturbances. Instead, you may want to consider biphasic sleeping and other sleep disturbance tactics.¹

Have time to sleep in.

Lucid dreams are more likely in the lengthy REM periods of the morning. If you are sleep deprived, and never have a chance to sleep in, it may be difficult to achieve the lucid zone. However, stealing away for an afternoon nap when your circadian rhythms naturally dip may be the second best time for lucidity.

Have good dream recall.

One of the advantages of being a light sleeper is that multiple awakenings lead to more remembered dreams. Regardless of how you sleep, without the skill of remembering dreams, there is no room for lucidity. Luckily, dream recall can also be improved—quickly too.² 

Have an ongoing mindfulness practice.

Developing lucidity in the dream world is impossible if you are not very “lucid” in waking life. That’s probably why meditators are also frequent lucid dreamers compared to the general population.³ Concentrative meditation strengthens the mind’s ability to stay focused for long periods of time and improves emotional intelligence. But if you are not into meditation, there are plenty of other hobbies you probably already enjoy that can focus the mind in similar ways.  

Have good spatial skills.

Strange, isn’t it? One crucial but often overlooked factor of self-awareness is maintaining centeredness during periods of dream flux: those times when your senses are confused and you don’t know up from down.  Lucid dreamers tend to have good balance and may be more field independent than non- lucid dreamers.⁴ This trait involves the degree to which you are influenced by inner or environmental cues in orienting yourself.  Having or starting an ongoing body practice—yoga or gymnastics for example—may increase your odds, and so may playing certain types of video games. 

Excel at multi-tasking.

Lucidity is a balance of knowing you are in a dream and being involved in the drama. Not surprisingly, frequent lucid dreamers perform well on cognitive tests like the Stroop Task, a psychological test that measures attention during interference of multiple tasks at the same time.⁵

Are creative and/or artistic.

Many lucid dreamers are creative people who tend to see outside the box. They are imaginative and prone to fantasy.⁶

Are sensitive.

There is also a correlation with spontaneous lucid dreamers and having thin boundaries, which is a psychological term for having high levels of social alertness, and sometimes, social anxiety.⁷ Self-awareness is a double-edged sword, as some frequent lucid dreamers are also prone to nightmares. If you have been told before, “You are too sensitive,” you may have the markings of a powerful lucid dreamer.

Are willing to take risks.

A 2011 study found that students who had more lucid dreams than their peers also performed better on the Iowa Gambling Task, a test that measures emotional-based decision making in unknown situations.⁸  This is an important clue about the importance of regulating emotions—and integrating them with other forms of cognition—for mastering lucid dreaming.  

Have a strong desire to stick with it.

Patience, in other words. We live in a culture of “instant success guaranteed!” But the truth is that most successful lucid dreamers have a strong, internal desire to become aware during their dreams. They don’t give up easily. They set intentions and keep trying.

Take mental breaks.

It’s also important to take a break now and again or you’ll just get frustrated, not lucid. Cognitive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Finding Flow, has much to say about the importance of idle time for all creative projects. Taking time off from a serious pursuit—be it an invention, a puzzle, or a quest to go lucid—allows “simple rules of association” to form.⁹ You got to know when to let your training seep in, and let the work go underground.

So do you find yourself somewhere in this collection of traits and habits? Chances are, you stand a pretty good chance of going lucid. Recent demographics suggest 1 in 2 people have had a lucid dream.¹⁰

It’s not actually that difficult to get started, provided you set strong intentions and follow through with effective practices for developing the embodied mind.

This essay is adapted from my ebook Lucid Immersion Guidebook, the central piece of the Lucid Immersion Blueprint.

First image: CC Dancing Statues by dixie_law

References

¹ LaBerge, S., Phillips, L, Levitan, L. (1994). An hour of wakefulness before morning naps makes lucidity more likely. NightLight, 6(3).

² Kahan, T. and LaBerge, S. (2011). Dreaming and waking: Similarities and differences revisited. Conscious and Cognition, 20, 494-514.

³ Gackenbach, J. (2010). Psychological considerations in pursuing lucid dreaming research. International Journal of Dream Research, 3 (1), 11-12.

⁴ Gruber, R.E., Steffen, J.J., & Vonderhaar, S.P. (1995). Lucid dreaming, waking personality, and cognitive development. Dreaming, 5 (1), 1-12.

⁵  Blagrove, M, Bell, E., Wilkerson, A. (2010). Association of lucid dreaming frequency with Stroop task performance. Dreaming, 20 (4), 280-287.

⁶ Schredl, M. and Erlacher, D. (2004). Lucid dreaming frequency and personality.  Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1463-1473.

⁷ Galvin, F. (1990). The boundary characteristics of lucid dreamers. Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, 15, 73–78.

⁸ Neider, M., Pace-Scott, E., Forselius, E., Pittman, B., and Morgan, P. (2011). Lucid dreaming and ventromedial versus dorsolateral prefrontal task performance. Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 234–244.

⁹ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

¹⁰ Schredl M, and Erlacher D. (2011). Frequency of lucid dreaming in a representative German sample. Perceptual and Motor Skills. 112(1):104-8.

Success in lucid dreaming requires the ability to navigate a realm where gravity is not guaranteed.  And where comfortable chats in a café can be interrupted by sudden feelings of spinning, drifting, or falling down an infinite chasm. During the REM dreaming state, as well as during hypnagogia, these sensations ebb and flow thanks to activation in the inner ear as well as the supercharged visual processing of REM.

That’s why working out the inner ear is the key to mastering the weirder aspects of lucid dreaming.

Phasic REM and Vestibular Land Mines

Lucid dreaming tends to occur during the active form of REM sleep known as phasic REM, which includes greater brain activity as well as more eye movements than tonic REM. 

Lucid dreams remembered from phasic REM often include awareness of vestibular (inner ear) hallucinations and intense bodily sensations as well.

It’s a trip.

How do you develop confidence during these weird experiences? I have already discussed how playing video games influence lucid dreaming, which combines saturation of an activity with often confusing visual stimuli: perhaps the perfect workshop for developing proprioception.

But we can also take a hint by looking at professional athletes, who reportedly have spontaneous lucid dreams that can improve motor skills and focus. 

Furthermore, Hindu yogis and Sufi mystics develop lucid dreaming as a side effect of their bodily training.

These bodily practices all have this in common: the development of balance.

Pick up a Balancing Act

Incorporating a body practice that develops balance and focus is key. If you have lucid roadblocks involving confusion or getting overwhelmed by dizzying sensations, bodywork can help with developing proprioception and field independence.

[pullquote]Success requires the ability to navigate a realm where gravity is not guaranteed.[/pullquote]

You don’t have to become a master yogi though. Just find some activity that is attractive to you and in line with your interests. Some enjoy martial arts, especially the energetic art of Tai Chi.

There’s also rock climbing, bouldering and sailing. Fly-fishing is another example—this is lucid dreaming expert Scott Sparrow’s preferred body meditation.

And don’t forget the Wii.

Inexpensive habits include walking the rail of abandoned train tracks at your lunch hour or following along with a yoga video online.

Even a daily walking meditation develops bodily awareness. Simply take a walk and attend only to your breath and your body as you navigate the landscape. When thoughts come up, acknowledge them, and let them go.

Immerse yourself in the lucid landscape

Me in the Mojave Desert, 2002: showing off a rare Rosewood Springs point. I had so many lucid dreams during that archaeological survey in the high desert of CA, I had trouble finding time to write them down.

Personally, I am an avid hiker, stream-walker, and rock scrambler.

Recently, I took a hike in which I walked a fallen tree over a rushing stream. That night, I had a challenging dream that took place on a steel girder high above the ground.  I found myself balancing just as I had on the tree trunk in waking life. As I slipped and almost fell, I noticed I could die and that thought led to lucidity.

Rather than escaping the scene or trying to fly, I stuck with the situational physics of the dream and found a solution that led me to safety.  

I also enjoy walking terrain to find historic and prehistoric archaeological sites. The practice is intuitive, leading me to prehistoric hunter’s camps, mound sites, and rock clusters where women once pounded acorns and cornmeal while telling stories.

The practice is mirrored in my dreams, where I often discover beautiful ruins, golden treasures, and flint knives glowing in streambeds. The discoveries in the dreams inevitably lead to lucidity.

The beauty of developing a body practice for your lucid life is that you can simply redirect new energy to the things you already love to do. The practice also keeps you grounded and prevents the flighty spinning out that can sometimes accompany an intense new focus on dreaming.

So what’s your balancing act?

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This article is adapted from my new digital kit the Lucid Immersion Blueprint, a how-to-guide for really encouraging lucid dreaming.

This is not the same old tired stuff about WILDS and DILDS you’ve heard before. 

Rather, it’s the latest research in lucid dreaming combined with the ancient wisdom of lucid dreaming lore: the best of the old and the new.

Find out more about the Lucid Immersion Blueprint here.

The asclepieion on the island of Kos, where Hippocrates trained in dream interpretation.

Dream incubation is the art of inviting a dream into your life for problem solving or healing. The term comes from the Latin incubare, which means to lie down upon, or as we say today: just sleep on it.

How does this relate to lucid dreaming? Lucid dreaming induction can be thought of a specific form of dream incubation in which we are not looking for a dream message, but a specific form of dream cognition: self-awareness mixed with the magical thinking of the dreamworld.

The Great Forgetting

The practice of dream incubation is well documented throughout the ancient world, with deep roots in our Western culture. Over the centuries, however, Christianity slowly began pulling away from the idea that dreams can contain wisdom, leading to a loss of this important ability.  

But the writing is literally on the wall.

Statue of Aesclepius from the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. CC: DerHexer, 2008.

The work of archaeologists and classicists has reconstructed the Western practice of dream incubation based on ruins, documents and statues. During the Hellenistic era (the first three centuries of the Common Era), the practice took place in dream incubation temples that were staffed by priest-physicians.

In fact, dream temples made up the single most popular spiritual healing institution in the Mediterranean world. These restful sanctuaries were designed to produce dreams that provided healing wisdom—and also instant cures—if we are to believe the boasts of ancient graffiti.

The dream healers of ancient Greece were also surgeons and herbalists, teaching their young doctors the art of empirical observation coupled with an environment of safety and spiritual cleansing.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, learned from his dream healing mentors to make empirical observations rather than simply following untested beliefs.

By the way, Hippocrates also wrote a medical dream dictionary that focused on a number of common dream symbols that indicate bodily ailments.  So cool.

The divine figure associated with these dream temples is Aesclepius, the Greek god of healing. When doctors take the Hippocratic oath today, they still give thanks to Aesclepius and his daughters.

Aesclepius was commonly depicted standing with a large staff with a snake curling up it, identifying his origins as an earth spirit related to healing and the animal powers.

5 reasons why the ancient dream temples are relevant to lucid dreaming

•    Sleeping practices. Clients slept on special ritual dreaming beds known as klines. More like a couch, the kline often included a stone neck or head rest, facilitating clients to elevate their heads and sleep on their backs. These sleeping styles are known today to encourage lighter sleep, more awakenings, as well as longer experiences in REM sleep.  Given the universality of sleep biology, it seems as if Aesclepian temples directly encouraged vivid dreams as well as realistic hypnagogic hallucinations.

•    Disruption of circadian rhythms. When those seeking healing crossed the threshold of the healing sanctuary, they entered an inner sanctum where sleep and prayer intertwined until a strong dream came. This pattern can also seen in Native American vision quests,  where disrupted sleep (and attempts at night-long vigilance) leads to powerful visions often involving visitations with larger-than-life figures.

•    Positive expectation. Clients hoped for and actively sought an interaction with a healing figure.  Priests and priestesses also whispered in the ears of the sleepers to encourage dreams of Aesclepius. Today we know that dreams can incorporate sounds and suggestions into the dream narrative, as well as smells. LaBerge’s DreamLight may be considered a modern variation of this technique.

•    Relaxation and cleansing. Before the intense dreaming incubations began, dreamers relaxed in baths, walked around the beautiful gardens around the temple, and took naps. They were removed from their everyday life in order to focus on healing. They also adhered to a cleansing diet while staying at the temples, further setting the stage for ritual purification in the final part of the healing process.

•    Good dreamsigns. Snakes roamed the temple unmolested. As an ancient symbol of healing, snakes are at the center of the Aesclepian worldview. Dreams about snakes were taken to be dreams of Aesclepius himself. So, physician-priests made good use of the startling presence of snakes. According to lucid dreaming educator Tim Post, this is the perfect example of an effective dreamsign: one that is focused, meaningful and has an element of the bizarre.

Introducing Lucid Immersion

This article is drawn from the Lucid Immersion Blueprint, which will be available for download Thursday, December 8! UPDATE: January 2, 2012.

Drawing from the wisdom of dream cultures like the Aesclepian sanctuaries, as well as the latest in lucid dreaming research, Lucid Immersion Blueprint is a home study course. 

The Blueprint sets you up with a container of mindful and structured rituals to effectively stimulate greater self-awareness in the dreamworld…. and waking life.

Interested? Watch my short video about Lucid Immersion.