How Does Lucid Dreaming Work?

Science has proven that we can be aware of our dreams while we’re in them. But can we control our dreams? Christian breaks it to you gently.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain stuff,
it's Christian Sager here. Have you ever heard of lucid
dreaming before? Well, Lucid dreaming is simply being aware that
you are dreaming while you're in a dream, and it's

(00:22):
not a new thing. Aristotle wrote about it, and Tibetan
Buddhists have been practicing dream yoga called milam for centuries.
A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick van Eden actually came up
with the term lucid dreams in nineteen thirteen, and it's
become popular in some scientific circles since the early eighties,

(00:43):
largely because of the work of psychophysiologist Dr Stephen Leberte,
a Stanford grad who founded the Lucidity Institute in Researchers
have confirmed that lucid dreaming is possible. The way they
do it is by having sleepers give you a distinctive,
predetermined eye movement signal when they become aware that they're dreaming.

(01:07):
So how does that work? Well, generally people are dreaming
when they're in the fifth stage of sleep r e M.
Sleep or rem REM is marked by rapid eye movements,
paralysis through the rest of our muscles rises in heart rate,
breath rate and blood pressure, changes in body temperature, and

(01:27):
acceleration of brain wave oscillation to the type we have
while we're awake, which are alpha waves. These are all
part of REM. Note that some of these can happen
during other stages of sleep and transitions between those stages,
signaling what's known as covert REM dreaming. So you can

(01:49):
monitor for these signs and your predetermined signal with machines
like a polygraphed or an e G or an e MG.
But what about the whole thing about controlling dreams, right?
That sounds cool, Let's get back to that. Some researchers
are skeptical that it's possible. That's because there's no empirical
way to test for it. We don't know enough about

(02:10):
how memories work or how dreams work to see and
experience what people are thinking or dreaming, so we've only
got their reports to go on. Sure, some subject report
being able to control their dreams, but even when people
are trying to be honest about their memories, they can't
always succeed. That's because memories are electrochemical patterns in the brain,

(02:33):
and every time we call one up, we change it.
Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Some research indicates that
the harder we're trying for perfect recall, the more we
mess our own memories up. Okay, but you are here
because you want to learn how to control your dreams. Right.
There are lots of books and workshops that are totally

(02:54):
willing to help you at varying expenses. Of course, this
is another reason why we're skept to go about lucid dreaming.
Here at how stuff works. But here are some tips
for lucid dreaming no dream control promised. First, you could
practice mindfulness while you're awake. This is what they call
reality testing. Throughout your day, pay attention to how it

(03:16):
feels to be awake and the cause and effect nature
of reality. Like when you flip a light switch, a
light turns on, and if it doesn't, there are steps
you can take to figure out why. Well. The idea
here is that by being more aware of what it's
like to be awake, you'll be able to notice differences
while you're dreaming. Secondly, keep a dream journal when you

(03:36):
wake up, immediately right down what you remember of your dreams.
The immediacy is important because we tend to forget dreams
much more quickly than waking events. One Freudian era dream
researcher by the name of L. Strumple hypothesized that that
is because the strength of our memories is based in
association and repetition, which we don't get in dreams the

(04:00):
way we do in waking activity. The idea here is
that by paying closer wakeful attention to your dreams, you'll
be able to recognize them while you're asleep. Third, disrupt
your dream cycles. Set an alarm to wake yourself up
after ninety minutes after bedtime. That should give your brain
enough time to cycle through the sleep stages and reach REM.

(04:24):
Or set an alarm to wake yourself up a couple
hours early, stay awake for about half an hour, then
go to sleep again. The idea here is that by
waking yourself up in the middle of rem sleep, you
should be able to remember your recent dreams more clearly
than usual. And finally, there's Laberge's MILD technique. And that's

(04:44):
MILD in all caps because it stands for pneumonic induction
of lucid dreaming. This is one of Laberge's most famous techniques.
When you wake up from a dream, try your best
to remember it fully, and when you go back to sleep,
keep telling yourself that you're going to remember that you're
dreaming during your next dream. The next step is to

(05:05):
picture yourself back in the dream that you just had
and look for a sign that the dream is a
dream and not reality, like the fact that you're flying
through the air with wings. Leberts calls these dream signs.
At this point, remind yourself that you're dreaming and continue
the visualization. Keep doing this until you fall asleep. If

(05:29):
you liked that and you want to learn more about
lucid dreaming, my other show, stuff to Blow Your Mind,
has a real deep dive into the topic where my
co host Robert and I talk all about lucid dreaming,
it's history and all of the dream types that Frederick
Van Eden came up with. Check out the brain Stuff

(05:52):
channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.