June 29, 2021 • 38 mins
Lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness where a person is aware they're dreaming. This gives them a level of control over it. With practice you can increase this ability and explore your greatest fantasies. I spoke with E.S. Fein. An author and lucid dreaming expert who teaches us all about lucid dreaming and how to do it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. I've never
placed much importance on dreams, Like was that dream I
had of Danny de Vito starting in Neil Salon really
that relevant to my subconscious? I mean it was weird,
but probably not. But what about recurring dreams? They make
more sense to me. It feels like a representation of
(00:22):
trauma or insecurity, trying to break out of my brain.
What's even more interesting to me is that millions of
people share the same recurring dreams, like how does that work?
Teeth falling out is a very common one. I used
to have that all the time. Another recurring one I
have occasionally is going back to school and showing up
(00:43):
for final exams. But I forgot to go to some
of the classes. This episode isn't actually about whether dreams
are meaningful or not. I mean, I have no idea.
It's about controlling them. My name is Lowell l Ante
and this is Prodigy. Bring me bum Bum. Make him
(01:09):
the cutest I've ever seen. E. S. Fine is an
author and expert on lucid dreaming. Also, he's just a
super nice dude that's become more like a friend than
a guest. I'll let him, explain what lucid dreaming is,
why it's so cool, and how you can do it?
(01:29):
Bum bum bum, Please turn on your magic be mr So.
I'm the author of a science fiction novel called Points
of Origin and working on my second novel right now
called A Dream of Waking Life, which is all about
lucid dreaming and insanity, uh and drug use. Very excited
(01:52):
to be here talking about lucid dreaming, and I'm thinking
you had a lot more questions for me. Can you
explain what lucid dreaming is exactly? Yeah, of course. So
a lucid dream is a dream in which you know
you're dreaming, and you have full control of that dream.
A lot of times people think that they lucid dreamed
just by knowing that they're dreaming. Um, but a full
lucid dream would be one in which you have full
(02:13):
control of that and you can have powers. You can
ultimately do whatever you want. It's kind of just the
extent of your imagination. At first, you're not going to
be amazing. I know a lot of people say, Hey,
I can't wait to start lucid dreaming. I'll be able
to do whatever I want instantly. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
It's very much like the superhero movies where they get
their powers and they got to learn how to use them.
It is very very similar. Um, you are using a
(02:35):
whole new part of your mind in a very new way.
I have known many people who are naturals who say, hey,
they have full extent of powers. When I say powers,
I mean flying, you know, meeting people having sex, uh,
you know, lazer eyes. Literally whatever you can think of.
If you can say it, if you if you can
speak it, then yes, you'll be able to do it,
(02:55):
if you can conceptualize it. Um. At first though, for me,
I couldn't even fly. I would put my hands up
in the air and try to Superman fly and it
just wouldn't go anywhere. Um. So for a lot of
people to learn powers and to kind of unlock those
things and stop yourself from limiting yourself, you've got to
kind of anchor yourself to reality. So I started by
going to the top of the building and just jumping off,
(03:17):
and I started by gliding slowly down. And once I
felt that I could glide and kind of disobey gravity,
it became a lot easier to start the Superman flying Um.
Twenty years later, though, I'll tell you what, I still
have to do little swim motions to keep myself fully
in the air, So I still don't have it fully unlocked. Uh,
certain things you're just going to be limiting yourself on.
(03:38):
And if that's just up to the person, off to
the mind, Yeah, I heard, you gotta pay extra they
get the full flight features of the lock nowadays. Yeah,
he's got full control of it. So why would somebody
want to lucid dream? Um. Obviously there's the recreational aspect.
You can have fun, you can do whatever you want,
meet whoever you want. Um. But there's also a deeper
aspect to it. There's the philosophical nature of it. You
(03:59):
can explore or parts of yourself that you simply otherwise couldn't.
For example, you can request from the dream, hey I'd
like to meet the creative part of myself, and you
can talk directly to the creative aspects of yourself. Um.
You can even go so far as to begin changing yourself.
You can alter the eagle, you can do some metaprogramming ultimately,
so it's a form of meditation in that way. It's
(04:20):
also a form of Catharsis. You can revisit dead relatives. UH.
You can revisit moments of your life that you'd like
to redo, and you can redo them. Uh. You can
also revisit nightmares. Uh. When I was a kid, I
had a nightmare of the Wicked Witch of the West
and Dracula because I used to watch those when I
was a kid. And UH, later in life, when I
started lucid dreaming, I revisited those characters even though I
(04:42):
hadn't had nightmares and very long and I basically became
friends with them, and they are now recurring characters in
my dreams. And you know, all that, the old nightmares
and the old trauma from that, it's gone. I was
able to fully heal it. So there's many reasons you
can do this. UM. I know a lot of people
that claim to do sports in lucid dreams and improve
their motor functions, which a lot of studies have shown
(05:05):
that is reasonable. You know, just by thinking about certain
exercises you do get some uh neurological connections going on
there from muscle to brain. But I'm not a big
sports guy. I've never really attempted that, but I did
study for classes in school, I was very academically inclined, um,
and so I would you know, do memorization and uh,
I'd bring different topics into the dreams and hone my
(05:27):
skills there, h language, especially when I was learning Spanish.
So it really is a multitude of reasons. If you
can think of it, go for it, man, you can
do it in the dream escape. It's uh, it's so
funny to me when you say I would use my
Lucid dreaming to study. It's just like it's just funny,
you know, looking back on it as the person I
am now, it is absolutely hilarious and I'm like, really, dude,
(05:49):
that's what you were doing in there. Um. But yeah,
that that was very important to me at the time.
So yeah, because I mean I've had Lucid dreamed a
couple of times. You know, I didn't like to do
it on purpose. It was sort of an accident. But yeah,
like obviously at that point, I I can barely imagine
how somebody would study in it, you know, Yeah, once
you get used. I mean this was probably three or
(06:10):
four years into you know, doing maybe five Lucid dreams
at night, when I was really really good at it,
and this was before the consumption of cannabis. To cannabis
definitely clouds the experience definitely makes it harder. UM and
regular cannabis user now, so probably maximum doing maybe three
four lucid dreams a week. It's very hard to do
it multiple times at night now too. But without the
(06:32):
use of cannabis, especially when I was younger, explosive amounts
of lucid dreaming, yes, just so so much, especially as
a And I'll be honest as a kid too. You know,
you're you're meeting celebrities and you're having fun. So I'm like, yeah,
every night, absolutely, I want to be having fun. Here.
Come on. Yeah, I have an inappropriate joke to make,
but I'm a hold back, but I am buying floor you.
(06:54):
I encourage you to say it. Um. But I was
some questions like, how did you get into it is
a dreaming? Very synchronistically, very randomly. I had a friend
at the time. I was kind of a big loaner
when I was young, but I had one of my
only friends at the time just randomly said, hey, man,
I ran across this at the library, this thing called
lucid dreaming. I feel like it's something you'd be into
(07:16):
it was like, I've never heard of it, but I'll
check it out. Yeah, I was absolutely into it. Um
So that was it. It's just a buddy told me
about it. I got lucky. But how long ago was this?
This is when I was thirteen, so this would have
been just about twenty years ago. How I really you know,
got even more into it though, and it kind of
explored it and really learned how it works. Was through
a forum I'm pretty darn sure still exists called l
(07:39):
D for all, uh the number four all and just
a giant community of lucid dreamers that like to help
each other and kind of give tips. All the ranges too,
of ages. There's fifty year olds on there and there's
ten year olds on there. Um. So I started on
there when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I haven't
been back there in about ten years. But unbelieved dobably helpful.
(08:00):
They were so cool. We did a lot of cool
experiments on that forum too. We tried shared dreaming hundreds
of times. Um. So we would we would get close
to certain people and we would exchange passwords and we
would try to go to the exact same place in
our dreams and give each other those passwords, and then
when we woke up, we would have to state what
the password was and see if it worked. It never worked.
(08:21):
Shared dreaming has never worked once. I don't think it's possible,
but it was kind of fun to try out and see.
So how does someone go about lucid dreaming? Sure, so
in the beginning, you really want to use techniques that
are a little more passive. There's there's passive, and there's
direct technique. So the passive technique would be number one.
(08:42):
Get a dream journal, either a voice recorder or a
physical journal. I found I found a voice recorder much easier. Um,
but start writing down or speaking what you experience in
your dreams, whatever you can remember a lot of people say, hey,
I don't I don't dream at all. First of all,
you do dream, you just don't remember them. So other
people would say I don't remember my dreams. It's so
point though, especially as you go about your day thinking
(09:02):
about dreaming, thinking about lucid dreaming, this type of functionality
throughout the day is going to make you dream. I've
never met a person that said it didn't work to
some degree. So when you start dreaming, write down anything,
whether it's an emotion of color anything. The very next night,
your dream recalling vividness will increase significantly. So the number
one thing you want to do is think about lucid
(09:23):
dreaming throughout the day, be writing in your dream journal.
Once you've been doing that for a couple of days,
you want to start doing what's called reality checks, and
throughout the day you want to either look at your hand. Um,
you can try breathing without opening your mouth. You can
try touching surfaces and seeing if your hand goes through them. Yeah,
heard touching your hand like putting your finger into your palm.
(09:43):
Sure finger in the poems another one of them. Um,
I really like looking at clocks or text because it's
always weird in my dreams. For other people it isn't.
But when you do that, you're gonna ask yourself and
my dreaming. Actually, when I was eighteen, I got a
tattoo on my wrist. It says awake with a question mark,
and that is an exceptional reality check. And so constantly
throughout the day, I'm just seeing that tattoo and going,
(10:03):
am I awake? Am I awake? By repeating these questions constantly,
over and over and over again. You're just setting up
these algorithmic patterns in your brain and giving yourself a
much much better chance of that same question coming up
during your dream naturally. So now that you've combined your
reality checks, you're constantly thinking about dreaming. You're writing down
(10:23):
your dreams in your notebook to increase your vividness in
your recall. As you go to sleep, you're gonna do
what's called mild new monic can douce lucid dreaming reported
lest This is something Stephen Leberg kind of created, one
of the fathers of lucid dreaming. Um, so what you're
gonna do is just relax. You can utilize any relaxation
technique you want as you're falling asleep. I'd like to
tense my body up really tight and then let go.
(10:43):
That provides a lot of relaxation to the muscles. And
then you're gonna imagine in your head that you are
doing something very specific, have a goal. For me, it
was always flying in the beginning, So I'd imagine myself,
I'd feel myself flying through the air and I'd repeat
affirmation to myself, I am going to dream. I am
going to lucid dream. This is gonna work. I am
gonna lucid dream. As you pass into the dream, you're
(11:06):
it's kind of just a gamble. You're hoping that the
reality checks you did and your focus and attention will
allow you the question to come up and will allow
you to go, Hey, am I dreaming? No? I yes,
I am dreaming that this is this is crazy. Here
we go now I'm lucid um if. Once you get
good though, and I highly recommend people try this anyway,
you can utilize a combination what's called wake back to
(11:26):
bed and wild wake induced lucid dreaming. You really you
can use weake back to bed anytime. That just means
you wake up in the middle of the night, stay
up for a few minutes to an hour, and then
go back to sleep. Your recalling dream vividness will be
markedly increased. But wild wake induced lucid dreaming this is
It's very simple once you get the hang of it,
and it's very dependable. You lay down, you imagine a
(11:48):
certain scene. For most people, it's a repeated scene. For me,
it's like a pine grove forest, and as you're falling
asleep into the hypnagogic state kind of feeling that dream
coming over you. You just step foot directly into the
scene and you're awake. You don't have to hope for
a gamble, you don't have to hope for the question
to come up. You're just instantly lucid. Um. That one
took years to master. But anyone can do mild and
(12:11):
wake back to bed. Anyone can do that. So that's
where you want to start. All right, let's take a
quick break. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Prodigy.
For any sources mentioned, visit the episode page at prodigy
podcast dot com. Since you're seemingly, you know, lucid or
slightly awake, is it not bad for your like r
EM sleep. There's numerous studies on this, numerous numerous studies.
(12:35):
As far as we can tell, we don't really see
any long term or even short term problems. There are
reported problems from other people saying, hey, I'm tired when
I do this. I'm very tired. As far as like
brain scans are actually concerned, it is a discernible state.
It's discernibly different between rem and waking life, and it's
a hybrid of the two. Um. So yes, there are
(12:55):
many many concerns from sleep scientists that say, hey, this
might not be good. We could be doing significant damage here.
So far, we can't find any damage. We can't find
any psychological or physical issues going on. That's not to
say in the long term that there aren't. I don't
know it is Personally, I don't get tired at all
from lucid dreaming. I feel perfectly rested. I've talked to many,
(13:17):
many people that say, listen, man, this is one of
the reasons I don't want to lucid dream anymore. I'm
exhausted in the morning. I can barely function throughout the
day because of this. So yet it's it seems to
be kind of fifty fifty depends on who you are. Apparently, yeah,
it's like that half state. But maybe you know you're
not doing it the whole night. You're just doing it.
I mean, because time, how how does time manifest in
(13:39):
lucid dreaming? It seems very one to one. UM. I've
known many people that say they can perform time dilation.
This is pretty much all I do nowadays. I try
to do time dilation and I've never succeeded, even not
even close. Um. But some people claim to be able
to experience years in their dreams. It feels like years.
They can have whole lives. I never got into inception.
(14:01):
I have a lot of doubts when I hear these
things too. I'm like, it sounds like they're just trying
to impress people. But we could be wrong. A lot
of people think lucid dreaming in general is ridiculous. I'm like, no,
it's definitely real. So that might be how those people
are feeling. When I say that, no, I immediately believe
it because, um, it's happened to me before I've realized
I was dreaming while I was asleep. So you especially
when we directly experience something there you go right right, Um,
(14:24):
but I would you know, I've had this this thing
where like I was kind of like realized I was
dreaming and I was trying to do something and like
with flying, and I couldn't really get off the ground
and so just a little bit. And so I assumed
it was like a representation, just a dream I was
having about how like I feel powerless or something. But
maybe it was I just hadn't practiced my lucid dreaming
(14:45):
techniques that could very you know. The the topic of
dream interpretation in general. Is very controversial to me to
my own mind, because I think that I really do
think dreams are just mostly random. That being said, I've
had many dreams or I can't help inter reparuting it
and going no, this is meaningful, This is very important
to me. So I'm kind of conflicted even in my
(15:06):
own self on that issue. Well, you know what blows
my mind is that tons and tons of people have
the same dream, like the tooth falling out, Like that's
super common. Uh. And there's some other ones too that
a lot of people have, the naked thing, or like
the college one where you think you've gotten to like
show up to a class till the exam right, or
(15:27):
if you've ever been a server, the serving dream. Oh
I don't know that one. Okay, So anyone that's been
in the restaurant industry, you all at some point have
the serving nightmare where you can't keep up with your tables.
My wife and I still get it from time to time.
We haven't been servers in many, many years. Um, that's
another common one. How about the old Hag? How weird
is it that so many people dream about the Old
Hag in such specific detail? What is going on? There.
(15:49):
All right, So I've had sleep paralysis once or twice
before two, Can you explain what that is? Sure? So
sleep paralysis a lot of people think it's like a
disease or something. Everyone experienced a sleep paralysis. The only
people that aren't experience and saying proper sleep paralysis or
people that sleep walk or sleep talk. Sleep paralysis is
a necessary function of sleep to ensure that you don't
act out your dreams. It's important that you have sleep paralysis.
(16:09):
So when people say, hey, I had sleep paralysis, what
they mean is they became conscious during that phase of sleep.
So sleep paralysis is when you wake up during this
state and you can't move. You feel like you're in
a horror movie. It is admittedly terrifying the first time
you first few times you experience it um and you
just you feel like you're you're completely stuck, but you
can still kind of move around your eyes and you
(16:31):
can still kind of moan. You're like, it's kind of terrifying.
But very commonly what people experience is they hallucinate that
the reason they're paralyzed, that there's something on top of them.
And this something almost always comes in the form of
what's called the old hag. It's happened to me many times.
It's just this like shadowy squat old lady that's just
(16:53):
menacingly staring you down and just staring into your soul hatefully.
Why very just seems so freaking random, but it's so common. Yeah.
I didn't experience that, but I do remember being scared UM,
and I remember being like, you know, like wake up,
wake up, wake up. And I wanted to ask, I
guess you mentioned UM in the beginning that you were
(17:14):
trying to help somebody stop lucid dreaming, and I wanted
to ask why. Yeah, so this was also surprising to me.
A few years ago, the first person ever came to
me and said, Hey, I can't shut it off. Since
I was young, I locid dream, you know, every single
dream throughout the night. So five six times a night,
and it's it's seven days a week. This is just endless.
(17:36):
The reason was is I kind of delve deeper into
what was going on in their life. They had a
lot of PTSD, they were they had done multiple tours
and war. I don't want to give any specific information away,
but uh, they were going through a lot of mental
issues and their dreams were just constant nightmares and they
were living these nightmares again because they were experiencing endless lucidity.
(17:58):
So they wanted advice on how how how can I
just if I am in the lucid dream? How can
I stop? How can I fall back into it? And
I gave him advice. There was definitely able to help them.
They came back and said that, um, but also, how
can I just stop it completely? Unfortunately I was not
able to just stop it completely. I don't know what
to say in that respect. Maybe some type of substance.
I hate to have to depend on that. But if
(18:19):
it's that bad, um, But there are many techniques we
can utilize to shut it off. Other people have stated
they want to stop it because they get tired. Uh.
They just wake up exhausted and they got work the
next day, right, and they're like, look, it's fun, but
it's not worth being tired at work. I need to go,
you know, make money. So yeah, So I guess some
certain people experience it bit differently, and uh, how about
(18:44):
I mean to me, it sounds amazing, um, but you know,
sometimes UM, I am under the influence of maybe I
had a couple of drinks or you know, some other
like very mild substance or a benda drill or something like.
It's much harder with that, right, significantly harder. Most substances
with very few exceptions, and we can talk about those
(19:06):
are going to hinder and cloud and limit the experience,
especially alcohol. Alcohol is a big problem for lucid dreaming. Again,
there's there is always exceptions to the rule. I've met
many people that are like, no, it doesn't affect me
at all. I could slam out my head like they
probably had like a glass of wine about five pm,
though not like not like a mixed drink right before
they went to bear. I've talked to guys that say
(19:28):
they get hammered and they have lucid dreams immediately after that. Yeah,
it's very very So it just shows you how unbelievably
varied our brains are, you know. It's just there's always exceptions.
What's the word, some kind of route my friend was
telling me that's supposed to be good for lucid dreaming. Um,
there's a few things. There's like blue lotus. I'm not
sure the route he's talking about, but she said, like
(19:49):
muck root, mud root. She's gonna kill me when she
hears this, because she listens to probably mugwort. Mugwort. A
lot of people like mugg war. I've tried mug wart,
to be honest, it didn't really do anything for me.
Feel like I was spoiled by the plant that I
used first, which is called klia z klaia zakatucici. This
this blows everything else out of the water. It's unbelievable
(20:09):
how effective it is. So you can use blue lotus,
you can use mugwort. Um. People talk about St. John's work.
Nicotine patches do work as well. I just don't recommend
it for health reasons. They you don't even addicted nicotine exact,
just get addicted for lucid dreaming. Um. Yeah, please don't
do that, guys um. But calia z it's it's fully legal.
(20:30):
It's it's as far as we can tell safe. There's
not that many studies on it, to be honest. But
you consume it as a t or you can smoke
it as a joint. I'd rather just do the tea.
It's unbelievably bitter. It's very hard to stomach, but it
has no effects in waking life. Whatsoever. But when you
go to sleep, the vividness and the recall is multiplied
by a hundred. If it honestly feels like you're tripping
(20:51):
in your dream, it is unbelievably strong. Um I recommend
fully legal. Ye, you can just buy it online. I'll
link this stuff on the episode Pitge. Yeah. I'm definitely
gonna try it um or some when we get off
try it out, man, I I it's kind of unreal
how effective it is. And like I said, you're gonna
laugh because you can drink ten cups and I drank
(21:12):
a lot, a lot a lot of calais at once
before zero effects, no effects whatsoever during waking life. Very surprising.
What are some of the most interesting things that you
can do or should do when you start loosely dreaming?
So this is one of the biggest questions that come
up for people. At some point you kind of get
bored of just flying around and using fire on people
(21:33):
and um, some of the things that I think and
banging Come on, man, let's be honest. That's you would
have You would have laughed if you saw how many
personal messages I got after the Reddit m a of
people being like dude, I didn't want to bring this up,
but I got to ask you about this and this,
right um. Um, So, some things that you can do,
speaking of banging, alter your sex and experience what it's
(21:56):
like to have an orgasm as the opposite sex. You're
blowing my mind right now. Okay, yes, man, this is
something I did constantly as a kid. To be honest
with you. Um, that's that's amazing. Something else you can
do is alter your not just your species, but your
entire state of being at the macro level. So become
(22:17):
like a bacterium and experience what it's like to travel
through something's body as a bacterium. Another thing you can do,
this is one of the most fun in my opinion,
is just the the ultimate roulette of walking through a mirror. Um.
You have no idea where you're gonna end up. Could
be good, could be bad, could be terrifying. Um So,
another thing we'd like to do is set up a
(22:40):
chain of mirrors. This is something that a guy in
LD for All came up with. This is another inception
thing where she like closes the two mirrors and it
like brea scene. Yes, this is it. This is really
got inceptions. They just hired some lucid dreamers. Um. Yeah,
you set up the chain of mirrors and you just
continuously go through them and create this infinite flicker of
(23:00):
new scenery. And so you're just flying through thousands and
thousands of different new things created by your mind. Um.
Something that I really like doing is asking your brain
for creative things. So as an author, I will ask
my brain, hey, show me the scene that I've been
working on. Let's see it end up in a way
that I haven't thought of before, and it will show
(23:21):
me a lot of musicians I've heard utilize lucid dreaming
not just to help them with their songs, but to
come up with the songs. They'll say to the dream,
give me some music. I've done that many times before too,
and I get songs stuck in my head that my
brain made up that I have no recollection of coming
up with. Um. So that's a very cool experience too. Definitely. Yeah,
woken up before and been like, oh my god, that
(23:42):
like dream, the thought I had was revolutionary, But of
course it's gone in like a minute or I just
so maybe it wasn't that great. But sometimes it's that too.
So let's say when you're first starting out, you just start,
you know, you hit your first couple of lucid dreams.
You're getting hanged it. What should you do to like
sort of um, you know, brain train or whatever to
(24:03):
get more advanced. The way you want to get more
advanced is stick. You do want to stick to the basics.
You do want to stick to your dream journal. A
lot of people fall off of that because you're like,
I did it. I guess that became a lucid dreamer.
I'm kind of done with that. Now stay on the basics.
It creates frequency, It creates these algorithms that really really
hammers and ingrains all of this into your mind. Um.
But to really start getting good, you've got to start
(24:24):
utilizing some of the techniques that I've given my guide to.
For example, if you have to keep the dream going,
it's very hard to to keep the lucidity going. You
fall back into the normal dream flow. So you've got
to utilize techniques like saying increased lucidity. That seems to
work for everyone. You just scream increased lucidity and it
(24:44):
increases um or or spinning on your axis for some reason.
That helps a lot too. But really what you're trying
to do is get to know yourself. So, for example,
I know that as long as I have music or
something playing in my dream, it'll keep me going. I
fall back into the normal dream flow. So at all
times when I go into my lucid dreams, now I
have this little speaker next to me and it's just
(25:06):
constantly playing music of my voice included going you're you're lucid,
Stay awake, You're lucid, You're lucid. This helps significantly. Um,
it sounds silly, but a lot of people have just
very very specific means that they learn about themselves. Um,
if you if you really want to get to that
super advanced state, though, this has to become a lifestyle.
(25:28):
A lot of people don't like that, and they're like, look,
that's kind of what turned me off a lucid dreaming,
that I have to invest so much waking lifetime into this.
That's what it comes down to. Though. The more time
you spend investing this in your waking life and researching
and reminding yourself and doing affirmation and doing reality checks,
the more advanced and more likely you're going to be
during your dreams to come up with this. Well it
(25:49):
seems like, you know how people talk about like, oh,
you spend a half you know what do they say
half your life is third or a third of your
life it's just wasted? Like, well, I mean, I don't
think it's wasted, but you know, I feel like I
do need that from reality. But yeah, I mean, it
seems like we'll first let me ask this. Let's say
someone tries lucid dreaming for like a week, ten days, whatever,
and they haven't succeeded, Like, what advice would you give
(26:10):
somebody at that point? This is step one of my
entire guide. Do not get discouraged. The more discouraged you get,
the more hopeless you feel, the less likely it's going
to happen. You have to believe this is gonna work.
You have to believe in yourself and give yourself positive affirmation,
which is why the first lucid dream you get, it
just explodes your mind open. You're like, oh it is possible,
Oh my god, this is possible, and suddenly it's much easier.
(26:33):
But for the person that's been doing this for ten days,
I'll tell you this, I'm a highly advanced lucid dream
or not. I've been doing it. For twenty years. It
took me four months to get my first lucid dream,
and I was actively practicing. I am not a natural,
so a lot of people are. They're like, hey, I
tried it on my first night. Dude, thanks for the tips.
What are you kidding me? I'm like so jealous. Um,
But yet, do not get discouraged. You have to understand
(26:56):
your brain is capable of this. Everyone is able to
do this. It's just going to take more time. I've
never heard of someone taken four months. Man. I feel like, honestly,
I look back on it, I'm like, holy Chris, I sucked.
How did it take you that long? Yeah, most people
are not that long. Have you ever had somebody not
be able to succeed if they tried hard? No, I've
never had someone not succeed to some degree. The worst
(27:19):
I've ever seen as a person who just couldn't get control.
They just they kept having half lucid dreams, um and it.
It took them years. They got the half lucid dreams
within weeks, though they were fully aware they'd go to sleep,
they're aware it's happening. They just couldn't get that level
of control they wanted. It took him a couple of years,
but they did get it eventually. So there's a lot
of variation, but for most people they can get there
(27:41):
in like a week, two weeks maybe most people. You're
gonna get your first lucid dream if you're serious about
this and you're active during the day, within a week.
All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to Prodigy. For any sources mentioned, visit the
episode page at Prodigy podcast dot com. Tell me about
your guide. This is a guide I published on one
(28:02):
of my websites, one Progressive dot com. I wrote it
like about ten years ago, about maybe nine years ago,
and it just covers step by step what you need
to do to not only get your lucid dream, but
to retain your lucidity. It goes over different ideas of
what you can do in your dream. It has a
whole troubleshooting section. It covers calais and all that. It's
(28:23):
kind of just not only a beginner's guide, but kind
of an intermediary guide to lucid dreaming as well to
start it and to keep it going. It's totally free.
Um I've had. That's kind of what really got me
into helping people. And since I published it on my side,
I've had just tens of thousands of people reach out
to me over the years, which is very exciting. So
I'll link it on the website. Let's say somebody is
(28:44):
interested in getting some like help from you, Like, how
do how do they go about doing that? Do you charge? Like?
What's what's the deal? No? Actually, for Lucid Dreaming and
all that, I don't charge at all. I do have
a private business where I do a lot of consultation.
But now as far as Lucid Dreaming, man, I really
just want more people to be in the Lucid Dreaming.
I feel like it's my my quest in life to
get more people into it for free. So they can
(29:04):
they can reach out to me on my website email
officially as fine dot com, officially as fine at gmail
dot com, or through uh E find zero four one
nine at one progressive dot com, any of those. It's
probably easiest to just go to my author's site. Yeah,
I'll link it all on the on the episode page. Actually,
I gotta say one thing real quick. This this blew
(29:26):
my mind. This happened just a week ago. I had
a woman reach out to me on my email and said,
I did not know that not lucid dreaming was a
thing my entire life. I have only lucid dreamed, and
just recently I got sick and I was in the
hospital and I didn't lose a dream for the first
time ever. I didn't even know people that could happen.
(29:48):
Is there something wrong with me? Do I need to
go to the doctor? I was like, no, it sounds
like you, she said, she's thirty three years old. Sounds
like you're doing fantastic. I'm remarkably jealous of you. But
I this was just very interesting. I didn't know that
could happen. Yeah, that's funny because a lot of people
synesthesia say that too. They didn't realize that other people
don't have that, Like a lot of people with um
even disorders like a d h D and stuff like that.
(30:09):
They don't realize that other people don't experience the same thing.
But so, the other thing I want to ask is
what sort of studies back this up, you know, for
somebody who's maybe skeptical about it. Sure, Yeah, that's this
is what's most surprising about me. When people doubt lucid dreaming.
There are undeniable federal funded studies all across the world.
There are dozens of dreaming institutions, lucid dreaming institutions now
(30:32):
devoted to objective, empirical, fully back, peer reviewed, blind and
double blind studies on this. UM, we know without a
doubt not only is lucid dreaming possible, it is happening.
It is a discernible state, completely hybrid and different from
waking life UH and rem sleep. UM. We have had
people be given directions before entering a lucid dream. We
(30:56):
have scanned their brains. As they enter the lucid dream,
we can say, ah, they are in a discernible state
different from rem sleep and waking life. And we've told
them when you're in there, tap your finger six times,
five times, then five times, then too. Whatever it is.
We give them a code and they can follow those
codes over and over and over again with repeated validity. UM.
So we also have a lot of studies on the
(31:18):
therapeutic benefits of this. A lot of individuals with PTSD
are studied on to see how lucid dreaming can help them,
and the results are miraculous. The results are just absolutely incredible.
It shows highly highly effective, especially for individuals where nothing
else seemed to be helping. You know, they tried medicine,
they tried cognitive behavioral therapy, it just wasn't working for them.
(31:40):
And lucid dreaming does work for them because again, they're
able to go directly back to those states in which
the PTSD occurred, revisit it, and become more comfortable with it.
I think there's a lot of stuff, you know, exposure therapy.
It's effective, but it's difficult. So they're doing a lot
of different, you know sort of research now like oh,
can you take kintamine? Can you take you know, psychedelics,
and then and then do exposure therapy because it's sort
(32:02):
of like makes it a little bit easier to approach,
and it seems like lucid dreaming would be sort of
an effective way to do that. Yeah, it's it's perfectly safe,
right especially don't even have to worry about o D.
I know that some of the concerns with some of
these substances like kenemine, Hey can we get this truly controlled?
Which I think they can. I think it's a fantastic substance.
But um, as far as lucid dreaming is concerned it
(32:23):
could not possibly get more safe. You're never going to
die from dreaming. Um. So this is a truly effective
and safe means of like you said, doing exposure therapy.
And the results speak for themselves. People can All of
this is freely available, hundreds and hundreds of different studies
showing the exact same results. This is real, it works,
it's highly effective. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna link all this
(32:44):
stuff on the episode page. But you know, like, where
would you want people to follow up or check you
out or get your book or what? Yeah? By all
means So my main website is officially s Fine dot
com um. If anyone official e S Fine yep, officially
EI N yes F E I N you got it um.
(33:05):
And so if you guys want to check out the guide,
that's on one progressive dot com um and if anyone
wants to follow up with me, you can do it
through the site absolutely. But I would love if anyone
wants to check out my book. It's called Points of Origin,
very philosophical metaphysical space exploration. UH, kind of a typical
sci fi book and uh, I think you guys would
(33:27):
like it if you if you're into philosophy and you're
into you know, wondering about what the nature of reality is,
you'll be into it. That's awesome. And yeah, like, I mean,
this is the second time we've recorded this episode because
we upgraded your equipment. So I'm glad though. This is great. Um.
But yeah, so you're we're working on a podcast, thinking
about doing one about related to psychedelics. I guess, like, hello,
(33:47):
psychedelics like influenced your life. Psychedelics have completely changed my
life for the better. I was born without a pectoral
muscle right pack and caused immense, immense self hatred, self loathing,
and insecurity when I was young, and I was very
suicidal to um. But psychedelics were the first thing in
(34:07):
my life that really allowed me to see the world
in a completely different way and and see myself in
a loving way, UM and kind of just accept reality
for what it is. UM. So, at this point in
my life, I don't really do psychedelics anymore. But when
I was in university, I tripped thousands of times in
total on different substances. A lot of it also was
(34:31):
for just self exploration. There was a great deal of
therapy for an individual extremely curious about the nature of
reality and death and life. UH, to be able to
explore areas that simply cannot be explored otherwise, um, but
are accessible to the mind, often in places like deep meditation,
which I'm getting better at nowadays. UM. But at the
(34:52):
time I was young, I didn't really care about meditation,
and I just wanted the easy way. And psychedelics can
do that for you, especially things like i U OSCA.
I'm sure you've heard, like D. M. T. Brews. These
just allow you to to connect to the inner workings
of your mind and the metaprogramming of your mind at
a level that you just you weren't aware that existed before.
(35:15):
It's it's kind of it's really hard to describe in language,
to be honest. Well, yeah, but it does sort of
like you get to experience reality through a different lens.
And I think that even if it doesn't like you
don't have some like grand revelation, like, it is beneficial
to see it from the other perspective, to know that
there's more out there, to know that your ego and
(35:35):
the way that you see the world is not the
only way, and in fact, it's a very limited way.
You know, reality is a lot about perception, right, so
at least how you experience it. Yeah, what are your
thoughts on micro dosing as like a you know, potentially
positive benefit for therapy or just you know, for like happiness.
I think it's fantastic. I don't personally micro dose. I've
(35:56):
tried macro macro does I do macro dose? At least?
I used to write macrow dosing was more for me,
But I've I've tried micro docing. You know, I've done
tiny amounts of shrooms and tiny amounts of LSD repeatedly.
It didn't I don't know, it just kind of, to
be honest, it kind of disrupted me. I would constantly
just want to sit down and meditate and ponder the deep,
deep truths of reality. So it really hindered my ability
(36:18):
to be a highly functional individual. Um, but I know
many many people that that's simply not the case. I
actually I would never use any names. I know a
lot of people that are highly, highly successful individuals with
highly professional careers who micro dose every single day of
their lives. Yeah. You seem incredibly intelligent. And you're an
academic too. Write sure. My private business that I run,
(36:38):
I teach uh every ap class. You can imagine. I'm
I'm an expert at numerous fields of study, so yeah,
I I really enjoy knowledge. I read like three books
a week. That's probably part of it. To my cognition
is just extremely fast at this point. But yeah, it's
even for me. Micro docing didn't work right, So clearly
it isn't for everyone. Um, but I don't I don't
(36:59):
think that's a reason to make it illegal or something.
If it helps people and it doesn't cause issues, great,
well that's beautiful. I mean, you know, weeds illegal and
alcohol is legal, and you know, we don't have to
get into all that. But and then you just did
you just have a baby right? We're about to in
like two three weeks. Oh wow, congratulations, that's awesome. Yeah,
thank you very much. Man. We were very excited. Um,
(37:21):
kind of just get in the house ready right now,
getting ready for the craziness. Great, that's really exciting. But yeah,
it was great talking to you. Is there anything else
that you want to say? Uh? The only thing I
want to say is everyone listening to this. You are important,
You matter, People love you, and you love people even
if you don't feel it right now, there is love.
Thanks so much to E. S. Fine. You can find
(37:43):
him on Instagram at author E. S. Fine on his
website at official E. S. Fine dot com. Fine is
spelled F E I N and his book is called
Points of Origin. I'll have those links along with this
Lucid Dreaming Guide and anything else in this episode at
Prodigy podcast dot com. Prodigy was creating produced by me
(38:04):
lowberal Ante and yes that is my real name, not
a pen name. The executive producer is Tyler Clang. Thank
you so much for listening. If you want to help
me out, you can follow the show and Apple podcast,
or share an episode with a friend. I also really
appreciate it when listeners send me messages and I respond. Everyone.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. I've never
placed much importance on dreams, Like was that dream I
had of Danny de Vito starting in Neil Salon really
that relevant to my subconscious? I mean it was weird,
but probably not. But what about recurring dreams? They make
more sense to me. It feels like a representation of
(00:22):
trauma or insecurity, trying to break out of my brain.
What's even more interesting to me is that millions of
people share the same recurring dreams, like how does that work?
Teeth falling out is a very common one. I used
to have that all the time. Another recurring one I
have occasionally is going back to school and showing up
(00:43):
for final exams. But I forgot to go to some
of the classes. This episode isn't actually about whether dreams
are meaningful or not. I mean, I have no idea.
It's about controlling them. My name is Lowell l Ante
and this is Prodigy. Bring me bum Bum. Make him
(01:09):
the cutest I've ever seen. E. S. Fine is an
author and expert on lucid dreaming. Also, he's just a
super nice dude that's become more like a friend than
a guest. I'll let him, explain what lucid dreaming is,
why it's so cool, and how you can do it?
(01:29):
Bum bum bum, Please turn on your magic be mr So.
I'm the author of a science fiction novel called Points
of Origin and working on my second novel right now
called A Dream of Waking Life, which is all about
lucid dreaming and insanity, uh and drug use. Very excited
(01:52):
to be here talking about lucid dreaming, and I'm thinking
you had a lot more questions for me. Can you
explain what lucid dreaming is exactly? Yeah, of course. So
a lucid dream is a dream in which you know
you're dreaming, and you have full control of that dream.
A lot of times people think that they lucid dreamed
just by knowing that they're dreaming. Um, but a full
lucid dream would be one in which you have full
(02:13):
control of that and you can have powers. You can
ultimately do whatever you want. It's kind of just the
extent of your imagination. At first, you're not going to
be amazing. I know a lot of people say, Hey,
I can't wait to start lucid dreaming. I'll be able
to do whatever I want instantly. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
It's very much like the superhero movies where they get
their powers and they got to learn how to use them.
It is very very similar. Um, you are using a
(02:35):
whole new part of your mind in a very new way.
I have known many people who are naturals who say, hey,
they have full extent of powers. When I say powers,
I mean flying, you know, meeting people having sex, uh,
you know, lazer eyes. Literally whatever you can think of.
If you can say it, if you if you can
speak it, then yes, you'll be able to do it,
(02:55):
if you can conceptualize it. Um. At first though, for me,
I couldn't even fly. I would put my hands up
in the air and try to Superman fly and it
just wouldn't go anywhere. Um. So for a lot of
people to learn powers and to kind of unlock those
things and stop yourself from limiting yourself, you've got to
kind of anchor yourself to reality. So I started by
going to the top of the building and just jumping off,
(03:17):
and I started by gliding slowly down. And once I
felt that I could glide and kind of disobey gravity,
it became a lot easier to start the Superman flying Um.
Twenty years later, though, I'll tell you what, I still
have to do little swim motions to keep myself fully
in the air, So I still don't have it fully unlocked. Uh,
certain things you're just going to be limiting yourself on.
(03:38):
And if that's just up to the person, off to
the mind, Yeah, I heard, you gotta pay extra they
get the full flight features of the lock nowadays. Yeah,
he's got full control of it. So why would somebody
want to lucid dream? Um. Obviously there's the recreational aspect.
You can have fun, you can do whatever you want,
meet whoever you want. Um. But there's also a deeper
aspect to it. There's the philosophical nature of it. You
(03:59):
can explore or parts of yourself that you simply otherwise couldn't.
For example, you can request from the dream, hey I'd
like to meet the creative part of myself, and you
can talk directly to the creative aspects of yourself. Um.
You can even go so far as to begin changing yourself.
You can alter the eagle, you can do some metaprogramming ultimately,
so it's a form of meditation in that way. It's
(04:20):
also a form of Catharsis. You can revisit dead relatives. UH.
You can revisit moments of your life that you'd like
to redo, and you can redo them. Uh. You can
also revisit nightmares. Uh. When I was a kid, I
had a nightmare of the Wicked Witch of the West
and Dracula because I used to watch those when I
was a kid. And UH, later in life, when I
started lucid dreaming, I revisited those characters even though I
(04:42):
hadn't had nightmares and very long and I basically became
friends with them, and they are now recurring characters in
my dreams. And you know, all that, the old nightmares
and the old trauma from that, it's gone. I was
able to fully heal it. So there's many reasons you
can do this. UM. I know a lot of people
that claim to do sports in lucid dreams and improve
their motor functions, which a lot of studies have shown
(05:05):
that is reasonable. You know, just by thinking about certain
exercises you do get some uh neurological connections going on
there from muscle to brain. But I'm not a big
sports guy. I've never really attempted that, but I did
study for classes in school, I was very academically inclined, um,
and so I would you know, do memorization and uh,
I'd bring different topics into the dreams and hone my
(05:27):
skills there, h language, especially when I was learning Spanish.
So it really is a multitude of reasons. If you
can think of it, go for it, man, you can
do it in the dream escape. It's uh, it's so
funny to me when you say I would use my
Lucid dreaming to study. It's just like it's just funny,
you know, looking back on it as the person I
am now, it is absolutely hilarious and I'm like, really, dude,
(05:49):
that's what you were doing in there. Um. But yeah,
that that was very important to me at the time.
So yeah, because I mean I've had Lucid dreamed a
couple of times. You know, I didn't like to do
it on purpose. It was sort of an accident. But yeah,
like obviously at that point, I I can barely imagine
how somebody would study in it, you know, Yeah, once
you get used. I mean this was probably three or
(06:10):
four years into you know, doing maybe five Lucid dreams
at night, when I was really really good at it,
and this was before the consumption of cannabis. To cannabis
definitely clouds the experience definitely makes it harder. UM and
regular cannabis user now, so probably maximum doing maybe three
four lucid dreams a week. It's very hard to do
it multiple times at night now too. But without the
(06:32):
use of cannabis, especially when I was younger, explosive amounts
of lucid dreaming, yes, just so so much, especially as
a And I'll be honest as a kid too. You know,
you're you're meeting celebrities and you're having fun. So I'm like, yeah,
every night, absolutely, I want to be having fun. Here.
Come on. Yeah, I have an inappropriate joke to make,
but I'm a hold back, but I am buying floor you.
(06:54):
I encourage you to say it. Um. But I was
some questions like, how did you get into it is
a dreaming? Very synchronistically, very randomly. I had a friend
at the time. I was kind of a big loaner
when I was young, but I had one of my
only friends at the time just randomly said, hey, man,
I ran across this at the library, this thing called
lucid dreaming. I feel like it's something you'd be into
(07:16):
it was like, I've never heard of it, but I'll
check it out. Yeah, I was absolutely into it. Um
So that was it. It's just a buddy told me
about it. I got lucky. But how long ago was this?
This is when I was thirteen, so this would have
been just about twenty years ago. How I really you know,
got even more into it though, and it kind of
explored it and really learned how it works. Was through
a forum I'm pretty darn sure still exists called l
(07:39):
D for all, uh the number four all and just
a giant community of lucid dreamers that like to help
each other and kind of give tips. All the ranges too,
of ages. There's fifty year olds on there and there's
ten year olds on there. Um. So I started on
there when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I haven't
been back there in about ten years. But unbelieved dobably helpful.
(08:00):
They were so cool. We did a lot of cool
experiments on that forum too. We tried shared dreaming hundreds
of times. Um. So we would we would get close
to certain people and we would exchange passwords and we
would try to go to the exact same place in
our dreams and give each other those passwords, and then
when we woke up, we would have to state what
the password was and see if it worked. It never worked.
(08:21):
Shared dreaming has never worked once. I don't think it's possible,
but it was kind of fun to try out and see.
So how does someone go about lucid dreaming? Sure, so
in the beginning, you really want to use techniques that
are a little more passive. There's there's passive, and there's
direct technique. So the passive technique would be number one.
(08:42):
Get a dream journal, either a voice recorder or a
physical journal. I found I found a voice recorder much easier. Um,
but start writing down or speaking what you experience in
your dreams, whatever you can remember a lot of people say, hey,
I don't I don't dream at all. First of all,
you do dream, you just don't remember them. So other
people would say I don't remember my dreams. It's so
point though, especially as you go about your day thinking
(09:02):
about dreaming, thinking about lucid dreaming, this type of functionality
throughout the day is going to make you dream. I've
never met a person that said it didn't work to
some degree. So when you start dreaming, write down anything,
whether it's an emotion of color anything. The very next night,
your dream recalling vividness will increase significantly. So the number
one thing you want to do is think about lucid
(09:23):
dreaming throughout the day, be writing in your dream journal.
Once you've been doing that for a couple of days,
you want to start doing what's called reality checks, and
throughout the day you want to either look at your hand. Um,
you can try breathing without opening your mouth. You can
try touching surfaces and seeing if your hand goes through them. Yeah,
heard touching your hand like putting your finger into your palm.
(09:43):
Sure finger in the poems another one of them. Um,
I really like looking at clocks or text because it's
always weird in my dreams. For other people it isn't.
But when you do that, you're gonna ask yourself and
my dreaming. Actually, when I was eighteen, I got a
tattoo on my wrist. It says awake with a question mark,
and that is an exceptional reality check. And so constantly
throughout the day, I'm just seeing that tattoo and going,
(10:03):
am I awake? Am I awake? By repeating these questions constantly,
over and over and over again. You're just setting up
these algorithmic patterns in your brain and giving yourself a
much much better chance of that same question coming up
during your dream naturally. So now that you've combined your
reality checks, you're constantly thinking about dreaming. You're writing down
(10:23):
your dreams in your notebook to increase your vividness in
your recall. As you go to sleep, you're gonna do
what's called mild new monic can douce lucid dreaming reported
lest This is something Stephen Leberg kind of created, one
of the fathers of lucid dreaming. Um, so what you're
gonna do is just relax. You can utilize any relaxation
technique you want as you're falling asleep. I'd like to
tense my body up really tight and then let go.
(10:43):
That provides a lot of relaxation to the muscles. And
then you're gonna imagine in your head that you are
doing something very specific, have a goal. For me, it
was always flying in the beginning, So I'd imagine myself,
I'd feel myself flying through the air and I'd repeat
affirmation to myself, I am going to dream. I am
going to lucid dream. This is gonna work. I am
gonna lucid dream. As you pass into the dream, you're
(11:06):
it's kind of just a gamble. You're hoping that the
reality checks you did and your focus and attention will
allow you the question to come up and will allow
you to go, Hey, am I dreaming? No? I yes,
I am dreaming that this is this is crazy. Here
we go now I'm lucid um if. Once you get
good though, and I highly recommend people try this anyway,
you can utilize a combination what's called wake back to
(11:26):
bed and wild wake induced lucid dreaming. You really you
can use weake back to bed anytime. That just means
you wake up in the middle of the night, stay
up for a few minutes to an hour, and then
go back to sleep. Your recalling dream vividness will be
markedly increased. But wild wake induced lucid dreaming this is
It's very simple once you get the hang of it,
and it's very dependable. You lay down, you imagine a
(11:48):
certain scene. For most people, it's a repeated scene. For me,
it's like a pine grove forest, and as you're falling
asleep into the hypnagogic state kind of feeling that dream
coming over you. You just step foot directly into the
scene and you're awake. You don't have to hope for
a gamble, you don't have to hope for the question
to come up. You're just instantly lucid. Um. That one
took years to master. But anyone can do mild and
(12:11):
wake back to bed. Anyone can do that. So that's
where you want to start. All right, let's take a
quick break. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Prodigy.
For any sources mentioned, visit the episode page at prodigy
podcast dot com. Since you're seemingly, you know, lucid or
slightly awake, is it not bad for your like r
EM sleep. There's numerous studies on this, numerous numerous studies.
(12:35):
As far as we can tell, we don't really see
any long term or even short term problems. There are
reported problems from other people saying, hey, I'm tired when
I do this. I'm very tired. As far as like
brain scans are actually concerned, it is a discernible state.
It's discernibly different between rem and waking life, and it's
a hybrid of the two. Um. So yes, there are
(12:55):
many many concerns from sleep scientists that say, hey, this
might not be good. We could be doing significant damage here.
So far, we can't find any damage. We can't find
any psychological or physical issues going on. That's not to
say in the long term that there aren't. I don't
know it is Personally, I don't get tired at all
from lucid dreaming. I feel perfectly rested. I've talked to many,
(13:17):
many people that say, listen, man, this is one of
the reasons I don't want to lucid dream anymore. I'm
exhausted in the morning. I can barely function throughout the
day because of this. So yet it's it seems to
be kind of fifty fifty depends on who you are. Apparently, yeah,
it's like that half state. But maybe you know you're
not doing it the whole night. You're just doing it.
I mean, because time, how how does time manifest in
(13:39):
lucid dreaming? It seems very one to one. UM. I've
known many people that say they can perform time dilation.
This is pretty much all I do nowadays. I try
to do time dilation and I've never succeeded, even not
even close. Um. But some people claim to be able
to experience years in their dreams. It feels like years.
They can have whole lives. I never got into inception.
(14:01):
I have a lot of doubts when I hear these
things too. I'm like, it sounds like they're just trying
to impress people. But we could be wrong. A lot
of people think lucid dreaming in general is ridiculous. I'm like, no,
it's definitely real. So that might be how those people
are feeling. When I say that, no, I immediately believe
it because, um, it's happened to me before I've realized
I was dreaming while I was asleep. So you especially
when we directly experience something there you go right right, Um,
(14:24):
but I would you know, I've had this this thing
where like I was kind of like realized I was
dreaming and I was trying to do something and like
with flying, and I couldn't really get off the ground
and so just a little bit. And so I assumed
it was like a representation, just a dream I was
having about how like I feel powerless or something. But
maybe it was I just hadn't practiced my lucid dreaming
(14:45):
techniques that could very you know. The the topic of
dream interpretation in general. Is very controversial to me to
my own mind, because I think that I really do
think dreams are just mostly random. That being said, I've
had many dreams or I can't help inter reparuting it
and going no, this is meaningful, This is very important
to me. So I'm kind of conflicted even in my
(15:06):
own self on that issue. Well, you know what blows
my mind is that tons and tons of people have
the same dream, like the tooth falling out, Like that's
super common. Uh. And there's some other ones too that
a lot of people have, the naked thing, or like
the college one where you think you've gotten to like
show up to a class till the exam right, or
(15:27):
if you've ever been a server, the serving dream. Oh
I don't know that one. Okay, So anyone that's been
in the restaurant industry, you all at some point have
the serving nightmare where you can't keep up with your tables.
My wife and I still get it from time to time.
We haven't been servers in many, many years. Um, that's
another common one. How about the old Hag? How weird
is it that so many people dream about the Old
Hag in such specific detail? What is going on? There.
(15:49):
All right, So I've had sleep paralysis once or twice
before two, Can you explain what that is? Sure? So
sleep paralysis a lot of people think it's like a
disease or something. Everyone experienced a sleep paralysis. The only
people that aren't experience and saying proper sleep paralysis or
people that sleep walk or sleep talk. Sleep paralysis is
a necessary function of sleep to ensure that you don't
act out your dreams. It's important that you have sleep paralysis.
(16:09):
So when people say, hey, I had sleep paralysis, what
they mean is they became conscious during that phase of sleep.
So sleep paralysis is when you wake up during this
state and you can't move. You feel like you're in
a horror movie. It is admittedly terrifying the first time
you first few times you experience it um and you
just you feel like you're you're completely stuck, but you
can still kind of move around your eyes and you
(16:31):
can still kind of moan. You're like, it's kind of terrifying.
But very commonly what people experience is they hallucinate that
the reason they're paralyzed, that there's something on top of them.
And this something almost always comes in the form of
what's called the old hag. It's happened to me many times.
It's just this like shadowy squat old lady that's just
(16:53):
menacingly staring you down and just staring into your soul hatefully.
Why very just seems so freaking random, but it's so common. Yeah.
I didn't experience that, but I do remember being scared UM,
and I remember being like, you know, like wake up,
wake up, wake up. And I wanted to ask, I
guess you mentioned UM in the beginning that you were
(17:14):
trying to help somebody stop lucid dreaming, and I wanted
to ask why. Yeah, so this was also surprising to me.
A few years ago, the first person ever came to
me and said, Hey, I can't shut it off. Since
I was young, I locid dream, you know, every single
dream throughout the night. So five six times a night,
and it's it's seven days a week. This is just endless.
(17:36):
The reason was is I kind of delve deeper into
what was going on in their life. They had a
lot of PTSD, they were they had done multiple tours
and war. I don't want to give any specific information away,
but uh, they were going through a lot of mental
issues and their dreams were just constant nightmares and they
were living these nightmares again because they were experiencing endless lucidity.
(17:58):
So they wanted advice on how how how can I
just if I am in the lucid dream? How can
I stop? How can I fall back into it? And
I gave him advice. There was definitely able to help them.
They came back and said that, um, but also, how
can I just stop it completely? Unfortunately I was not
able to just stop it completely. I don't know what
to say in that respect. Maybe some type of substance.
I hate to have to depend on that. But if
(18:19):
it's that bad, um, But there are many techniques we
can utilize to shut it off. Other people have stated
they want to stop it because they get tired. Uh.
They just wake up exhausted and they got work the
next day, right, and they're like, look, it's fun, but
it's not worth being tired at work. I need to go,
you know, make money. So yeah, So I guess some
certain people experience it bit differently, and uh, how about
(18:44):
I mean to me, it sounds amazing, um, but you know,
sometimes UM, I am under the influence of maybe I
had a couple of drinks or you know, some other
like very mild substance or a benda drill or something like.
It's much harder with that, right, significantly harder. Most substances
with very few exceptions, and we can talk about those
(19:06):
are going to hinder and cloud and limit the experience,
especially alcohol. Alcohol is a big problem for lucid dreaming. Again,
there's there is always exceptions to the rule. I've met
many people that are like, no, it doesn't affect me
at all. I could slam out my head like they
probably had like a glass of wine about five pm,
though not like not like a mixed drink right before
they went to bear. I've talked to guys that say
(19:28):
they get hammered and they have lucid dreams immediately after that. Yeah,
it's very very So it just shows you how unbelievably
varied our brains are, you know. It's just there's always exceptions.
What's the word, some kind of route my friend was
telling me that's supposed to be good for lucid dreaming. Um,
there's a few things. There's like blue lotus. I'm not
sure the route he's talking about, but she said, like
(19:49):
muck root, mud root. She's gonna kill me when she
hears this, because she listens to probably mugwort. Mugwort. A
lot of people like mugg war. I've tried mug wart,
to be honest, it didn't really do anything for me.
Feel like I was spoiled by the plant that I
used first, which is called klia z klaia zakatucici. This
this blows everything else out of the water. It's unbelievable
(20:09):
how effective it is. So you can use blue lotus,
you can use mugwort. Um. People talk about St. John's work.
Nicotine patches do work as well. I just don't recommend
it for health reasons. They you don't even addicted nicotine exact,
just get addicted for lucid dreaming. Um. Yeah, please don't
do that, guys um. But calia z it's it's fully legal.
(20:30):
It's it's as far as we can tell safe. There's
not that many studies on it, to be honest. But
you consume it as a t or you can smoke
it as a joint. I'd rather just do the tea.
It's unbelievably bitter. It's very hard to stomach, but it
has no effects in waking life. Whatsoever. But when you
go to sleep, the vividness and the recall is multiplied
by a hundred. If it honestly feels like you're tripping
(20:51):
in your dream, it is unbelievably strong. Um I recommend
fully legal. Ye, you can just buy it online. I'll
link this stuff on the episode Pitge. Yeah. I'm definitely
gonna try it um or some when we get off
try it out, man, I I it's kind of unreal
how effective it is. And like I said, you're gonna
laugh because you can drink ten cups and I drank
(21:12):
a lot, a lot a lot of calais at once
before zero effects, no effects whatsoever during waking life. Very surprising.
What are some of the most interesting things that you
can do or should do when you start loosely dreaming?
So this is one of the biggest questions that come
up for people. At some point you kind of get
bored of just flying around and using fire on people
(21:33):
and um, some of the things that I think and
banging Come on, man, let's be honest. That's you would
have You would have laughed if you saw how many
personal messages I got after the Reddit m a of
people being like dude, I didn't want to bring this up,
but I got to ask you about this and this,
right um. Um, So, some things that you can do,
speaking of banging, alter your sex and experience what it's
(21:56):
like to have an orgasm as the opposite sex. You're
blowing my mind right now. Okay, yes, man, this is
something I did constantly as a kid. To be honest
with you. Um, that's that's amazing. Something else you can
do is alter your not just your species, but your
entire state of being at the macro level. So become
(22:17):
like a bacterium and experience what it's like to travel
through something's body as a bacterium. Another thing you can do,
this is one of the most fun in my opinion,
is just the the ultimate roulette of walking through a mirror. Um.
You have no idea where you're gonna end up. Could
be good, could be bad, could be terrifying. Um So,
another thing we'd like to do is set up a
(22:40):
chain of mirrors. This is something that a guy in
LD for All came up with. This is another inception
thing where she like closes the two mirrors and it
like brea scene. Yes, this is it. This is really
got inceptions. They just hired some lucid dreamers. Um. Yeah,
you set up the chain of mirrors and you just
continuously go through them and create this infinite flicker of
(23:00):
new scenery. And so you're just flying through thousands and
thousands of different new things created by your mind. Um.
Something that I really like doing is asking your brain
for creative things. So as an author, I will ask
my brain, hey, show me the scene that I've been
working on. Let's see it end up in a way
that I haven't thought of before, and it will show
(23:21):
me a lot of musicians I've heard utilize lucid dreaming
not just to help them with their songs, but to
come up with the songs. They'll say to the dream,
give me some music. I've done that many times before too,
and I get songs stuck in my head that my
brain made up that I have no recollection of coming
up with. Um. So that's a very cool experience too. Definitely. Yeah,
woken up before and been like, oh my god, that
(23:42):
like dream, the thought I had was revolutionary, But of
course it's gone in like a minute or I just
so maybe it wasn't that great. But sometimes it's that too.
So let's say when you're first starting out, you just start,
you know, you hit your first couple of lucid dreams.
You're getting hanged it. What should you do to like
sort of um, you know, brain train or whatever to
(24:03):
get more advanced. The way you want to get more
advanced is stick. You do want to stick to the basics.
You do want to stick to your dream journal. A
lot of people fall off of that because you're like,
I did it. I guess that became a lucid dreamer.
I'm kind of done with that. Now stay on the basics.
It creates frequency, It creates these algorithms that really really
hammers and ingrains all of this into your mind. Um.
But to really start getting good, you've got to start
(24:24):
utilizing some of the techniques that I've given my guide to.
For example, if you have to keep the dream going,
it's very hard to to keep the lucidity going. You
fall back into the normal dream flow. So you've got
to utilize techniques like saying increased lucidity. That seems to
work for everyone. You just scream increased lucidity and it
(24:44):
increases um or or spinning on your axis for some reason.
That helps a lot too. But really what you're trying
to do is get to know yourself. So, for example,
I know that as long as I have music or
something playing in my dream, it'll keep me going. I
fall back into the normal dream flow. So at all
times when I go into my lucid dreams, now I
have this little speaker next to me and it's just
(25:06):
constantly playing music of my voice included going you're you're lucid,
Stay awake, You're lucid, You're lucid. This helps significantly. Um,
it sounds silly, but a lot of people have just
very very specific means that they learn about themselves. Um,
if you if you really want to get to that
super advanced state, though, this has to become a lifestyle.
(25:28):
A lot of people don't like that, and they're like, look,
that's kind of what turned me off a lucid dreaming,
that I have to invest so much waking lifetime into this.
That's what it comes down to. Though. The more time
you spend investing this in your waking life and researching
and reminding yourself and doing affirmation and doing reality checks,
the more advanced and more likely you're going to be
during your dreams to come up with this. Well it
(25:49):
seems like, you know how people talk about like, oh,
you spend a half you know what do they say
half your life is third or a third of your
life it's just wasted? Like, well, I mean, I don't
think it's wasted, but you know, I feel like I
do need that from reality. But yeah, I mean, it
seems like we'll first let me ask this. Let's say
someone tries lucid dreaming for like a week, ten days, whatever,
and they haven't succeeded, Like, what advice would you give
(26:10):
somebody at that point? This is step one of my
entire guide. Do not get discouraged. The more discouraged you get,
the more hopeless you feel, the less likely it's going
to happen. You have to believe this is gonna work.
You have to believe in yourself and give yourself positive affirmation,
which is why the first lucid dream you get, it
just explodes your mind open. You're like, oh it is possible,
Oh my god, this is possible, and suddenly it's much easier.
(26:33):
But for the person that's been doing this for ten days,
I'll tell you this, I'm a highly advanced lucid dream
or not. I've been doing it. For twenty years. It
took me four months to get my first lucid dream,
and I was actively practicing. I am not a natural,
so a lot of people are. They're like, hey, I
tried it on my first night. Dude, thanks for the tips.
What are you kidding me? I'm like so jealous. Um,
But yet, do not get discouraged. You have to understand
(26:56):
your brain is capable of this. Everyone is able to
do this. It's just going to take more time. I've
never heard of someone taken four months. Man. I feel like, honestly,
I look back on it, I'm like, holy Chris, I sucked.
How did it take you that long? Yeah, most people
are not that long. Have you ever had somebody not
be able to succeed if they tried hard? No, I've
never had someone not succeed to some degree. The worst
(27:19):
I've ever seen as a person who just couldn't get control.
They just they kept having half lucid dreams, um and it.
It took them years. They got the half lucid dreams
within weeks, though they were fully aware they'd go to sleep,
they're aware it's happening. They just couldn't get that level
of control they wanted. It took him a couple of years,
but they did get it eventually. So there's a lot
of variation, but for most people they can get there
(27:41):
in like a week, two weeks maybe most people. You're
gonna get your first lucid dream if you're serious about
this and you're active during the day, within a week.
All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to Prodigy. For any sources mentioned, visit the
episode page at Prodigy podcast dot com. Tell me about
your guide. This is a guide I published on one
(28:02):
of my websites, one Progressive dot com. I wrote it
like about ten years ago, about maybe nine years ago,
and it just covers step by step what you need
to do to not only get your lucid dream, but
to retain your lucidity. It goes over different ideas of
what you can do in your dream. It has a
whole troubleshooting section. It covers calais and all that. It's
(28:23):
kind of just not only a beginner's guide, but kind
of an intermediary guide to lucid dreaming as well to
start it and to keep it going. It's totally free.
Um I've had. That's kind of what really got me
into helping people. And since I published it on my side,
I've had just tens of thousands of people reach out
to me over the years, which is very exciting. So
I'll link it on the website. Let's say somebody is
(28:44):
interested in getting some like help from you, Like, how
do how do they go about doing that? Do you charge? Like?
What's what's the deal? No? Actually, for Lucid Dreaming and
all that, I don't charge at all. I do have
a private business where I do a lot of consultation.
But now as far as Lucid Dreaming, man, I really
just want more people to be in the Lucid Dreaming.
I feel like it's my my quest in life to
get more people into it for free. So they can
(29:04):
they can reach out to me on my website email
officially as fine dot com, officially as fine at gmail
dot com, or through uh E find zero four one
nine at one progressive dot com, any of those. It's
probably easiest to just go to my author's site. Yeah,
I'll link it all on the on the episode page. Actually,
I gotta say one thing real quick. This this blew
(29:26):
my mind. This happened just a week ago. I had
a woman reach out to me on my email and said,
I did not know that not lucid dreaming was a
thing my entire life. I have only lucid dreamed, and
just recently I got sick and I was in the
hospital and I didn't lose a dream for the first
time ever. I didn't even know people that could happen.
(29:48):
Is there something wrong with me? Do I need to
go to the doctor? I was like, no, it sounds
like you, she said, she's thirty three years old. Sounds
like you're doing fantastic. I'm remarkably jealous of you. But
I this was just very interesting. I didn't know that
could happen. Yeah, that's funny because a lot of people
synesthesia say that too. They didn't realize that other people
don't have that, Like a lot of people with um
even disorders like a d h D and stuff like that.
(30:09):
They don't realize that other people don't experience the same thing.
But so, the other thing I want to ask is
what sort of studies back this up, you know, for
somebody who's maybe skeptical about it. Sure, Yeah, that's this
is what's most surprising about me. When people doubt lucid dreaming.
There are undeniable federal funded studies all across the world.
There are dozens of dreaming institutions, lucid dreaming institutions now
(30:32):
devoted to objective, empirical, fully back, peer reviewed, blind and
double blind studies on this. UM, we know without a
doubt not only is lucid dreaming possible, it is happening.
It is a discernible state, completely hybrid and different from
waking life UH and rem sleep. UM. We have had
people be given directions before entering a lucid dream. We
(30:56):
have scanned their brains. As they enter the lucid dream,
we can say, ah, they are in a discernible state
different from rem sleep and waking life. And we've told
them when you're in there, tap your finger six times,
five times, then five times, then too. Whatever it is.
We give them a code and they can follow those
codes over and over and over again with repeated validity. UM.
So we also have a lot of studies on the
(31:18):
therapeutic benefits of this. A lot of individuals with PTSD
are studied on to see how lucid dreaming can help them,
and the results are miraculous. The results are just absolutely incredible.
It shows highly highly effective, especially for individuals where nothing
else seemed to be helping. You know, they tried medicine,
they tried cognitive behavioral therapy, it just wasn't working for them.
(31:40):
And lucid dreaming does work for them because again, they're
able to go directly back to those states in which
the PTSD occurred, revisit it, and become more comfortable with it.
I think there's a lot of stuff, you know, exposure therapy.
It's effective, but it's difficult. So they're doing a lot
of different, you know sort of research now like oh,
can you take kintamine? Can you take you know, psychedelics,
and then and then do exposure therapy because it's sort
(32:02):
of like makes it a little bit easier to approach,
and it seems like lucid dreaming would be sort of
an effective way to do that. Yeah, it's it's perfectly safe,
right especially don't even have to worry about o D.
I know that some of the concerns with some of
these substances like kenemine, Hey can we get this truly controlled?
Which I think they can. I think it's a fantastic substance.
But um, as far as lucid dreaming is concerned it
(32:23):
could not possibly get more safe. You're never going to
die from dreaming. Um. So this is a truly effective
and safe means of like you said, doing exposure therapy.
And the results speak for themselves. People can All of
this is freely available, hundreds and hundreds of different studies
showing the exact same results. This is real, it works,
it's highly effective. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna link all this
(32:44):
stuff on the episode page. But you know, like, where
would you want people to follow up or check you
out or get your book or what? Yeah? By all
means So my main website is officially s Fine dot
com um. If anyone official e S Fine yep, officially
EI N yes F E I N you got it um.
(33:05):
And so if you guys want to check out the guide,
that's on one progressive dot com um and if anyone
wants to follow up with me, you can do it
through the site absolutely. But I would love if anyone
wants to check out my book. It's called Points of Origin,
very philosophical metaphysical space exploration. UH, kind of a typical
sci fi book and uh, I think you guys would
(33:27):
like it if you if you're into philosophy and you're
into you know, wondering about what the nature of reality is,
you'll be into it. That's awesome. And yeah, like, I mean,
this is the second time we've recorded this episode because
we upgraded your equipment. So I'm glad though. This is great. Um.
But yeah, so you're we're working on a podcast, thinking
about doing one about related to psychedelics. I guess, like, hello,
(33:47):
psychedelics like influenced your life. Psychedelics have completely changed my
life for the better. I was born without a pectoral
muscle right pack and caused immense, immense self hatred, self loathing,
and insecurity when I was young, and I was very
suicidal to um. But psychedelics were the first thing in
(34:07):
my life that really allowed me to see the world
in a completely different way and and see myself in
a loving way, UM and kind of just accept reality
for what it is. UM. So, at this point in
my life, I don't really do psychedelics anymore. But when
I was in university, I tripped thousands of times in
total on different substances. A lot of it also was
(34:31):
for just self exploration. There was a great deal of
therapy for an individual extremely curious about the nature of
reality and death and life. UH, to be able to
explore areas that simply cannot be explored otherwise, um, but
are accessible to the mind, often in places like deep meditation,
which I'm getting better at nowadays. UM. But at the
(34:52):
time I was young, I didn't really care about meditation,
and I just wanted the easy way. And psychedelics can
do that for you, especially things like i U OSCA.
I'm sure you've heard, like D. M. T. Brews. These
just allow you to to connect to the inner workings
of your mind and the metaprogramming of your mind at
a level that you just you weren't aware that existed before.
(35:15):
It's it's kind of it's really hard to describe in language,
to be honest. Well, yeah, but it does sort of
like you get to experience reality through a different lens.
And I think that even if it doesn't like you
don't have some like grand revelation, like, it is beneficial
to see it from the other perspective, to know that
there's more out there, to know that your ego and
(35:35):
the way that you see the world is not the
only way, and in fact, it's a very limited way.
You know, reality is a lot about perception, right, so
at least how you experience it. Yeah, what are your
thoughts on micro dosing as like a you know, potentially
positive benefit for therapy or just you know, for like happiness.
I think it's fantastic. I don't personally micro dose. I've
(35:56):
tried macro macro does I do macro dose? At least?
I used to write macrow dosing was more for me,
But I've I've tried micro docing. You know, I've done
tiny amounts of shrooms and tiny amounts of LSD repeatedly.
It didn't I don't know, it just kind of, to
be honest, it kind of disrupted me. I would constantly
just want to sit down and meditate and ponder the deep,
deep truths of reality. So it really hindered my ability
(36:18):
to be a highly functional individual. Um, but I know
many many people that that's simply not the case. I
actually I would never use any names. I know a
lot of people that are highly, highly successful individuals with
highly professional careers who micro dose every single day of
their lives. Yeah. You seem incredibly intelligent. And you're an
academic too. Write sure. My private business that I run,
(36:38):
I teach uh every ap class. You can imagine. I'm
I'm an expert at numerous fields of study, so yeah,
I I really enjoy knowledge. I read like three books
a week. That's probably part of it. To my cognition
is just extremely fast at this point. But yeah, it's
even for me. Micro docing didn't work right, So clearly
it isn't for everyone. Um, but I don't I don't
(36:59):
think that's a reason to make it illegal or something.
If it helps people and it doesn't cause issues, great,
well that's beautiful. I mean, you know, weeds illegal and
alcohol is legal, and you know, we don't have to
get into all that. But and then you just did
you just have a baby right? We're about to in
like two three weeks. Oh wow, congratulations, that's awesome. Yeah,
thank you very much. Man. We were very excited. Um,
(37:21):
kind of just get in the house ready right now,
getting ready for the craziness. Great, that's really exciting. But yeah,
it was great talking to you. Is there anything else
that you want to say? Uh? The only thing I
want to say is everyone listening to this. You are important,
You matter, People love you, and you love people even
if you don't feel it right now, there is love.
Thanks so much to E. S. Fine. You can find
(37:43):
him on Instagram at author E. S. Fine on his
website at official E. S. Fine dot com. Fine is
spelled F E I N and his book is called
Points of Origin. I'll have those links along with this
Lucid Dreaming Guide and anything else in this episode at
Prodigy podcast dot com. Prodigy was creating produced by me
(38:04):
lowberal Ante and yes that is my real name, not
a pen name. The executive producer is Tyler Clang. Thank
you so much for listening. If you want to help
me out, you can follow the show and Apple podcast,
or share an episode with a friend. I also really
appreciate it when listeners send me messages and I respond. Everyone.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart
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