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Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking
Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 (CDT) by Thoth
 The kiss you share with the exquisite stranger is electric, deep and seemingly endless — that is until you open an eye and see drool on your pillow.
If only you could have slept long enough to consummate the seduction. Then again, you had no idea you were dreaming. Besides, you cannot control the nightly ride on the wings of your subconscious. Or can you?
Maybe, if you learn to practice “lucid dreaming,” a state in which a sleeping person becomes aware he or she is dreaming and may even be able to direct the action. Those who regularly experience the phenomenon say that like the physics-defying characters in “The Matrix,” they are able to generate or manipulate the fantastical events that unfold.
They can fly
without wings, play instruments they never learned, go bowling with T.
S. Eliot — and, yes, indulge sexual fantasies.
It is likely some people
have always had such dreams, said Jayne Gackenbach, a professor of
psychology at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, Alberta, who conducts
research into lucid dreaming. But the esoteric practice, which has been
acknowledged in the West since at least 1867, seems on the verge of
becoming much better known.
A film exploring its
allure, “The Good Night,” written and directed by Jake Paltrow and
starring his sister, Gwyneth, Penélope Cruz and Martin Freeman, is
opening Oct. 5. Depressed by his waking life, the film’s main character
is determined to master the art of lucid dreaming to escape to an
inspiring, sensual unreality with a lacquer-lipped knockout. “What I
find myself most attracted to are things that can actually occur,” Mr.
Paltrow said in an interview. “There’s really nothing in this movie
that couldn’t happen.”
For those wishing to become
lucid dreamers, a nine-and-a-half-day instructional retreat, “Dreaming
and Awakening: Lucid Dreaming, Consciousness and Dream Yoga,” is
scheduled to begin Oct. 1 in Hawaii. Don’t want to pay the airfare? On
Oct. 3, an online chat about lucid dreaming takes place, part of the
PsiberDreaming conference of the International Association for the
Study of Dreams. There are new and soon-to-be published books, like
“Lucid Dreaming for Beginners: Simple Techniques for Creating
Interactive Dreams” (Llewellyn Publications) and “Between the Gates:
Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection and the Body of Light in Western
Esotericism” (Weiser Books).
“It has gone from this very
obscure type of dream to being discussed at the various dream and
consciousness conferences,” Dr. Gackenbach said.
But it is not only dream
experts discussing the topic. Two filmmakers described their lucid
dreaming earlier this year. Michel Gondry, who directed “Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” described for The Guardian lucid dreams
in which “I generally end up having sex with the first girl I can
find.” Guillermo del Toro, the director of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” mentioned
his lucid dreaming on the National Public Radio program “Fresh Air.”
“Pan’s Labyrinth” brings to life a twiggy mythological creature (a
faun) he encountered in lucid dreams as a boy; the film won an Oscar
this year for its surrealistic makeup.
Other films, including
“Waking Life” and “Vanilla Sky,” have woven lucid dreaming into their
plots. So have television series like “Alias,” “Star Trek” and “Ed”
(Daryl Hall and John Oates make an appearance in Ed’s dream). Novelists
including Stephen King, William Boyd and Graham Joyce have written
about lucid dreaming, and the Verve, a British rock band, sang about it
in “Catching the Butterfly.”
“Lucid dream” is the name of pop and jazz CDs, small businesses, modern artworks, even a sex toy.
Still, many people have
never heard of it. Established sleep researchers say lucid dreaming is
occasionally reported by subjects, though it is difficult to validate
scientifically. “Yes, lucid dreaming exists,” said Dr. Rodney Radtke,
the medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Duke University.
“Yes, people certainly can, within their dream, realize ‘this is just a
dream’ and continue to participate.”
“Do I believe that someone
could potentially alter or interact with their dreams in such a way
that they could change the dream? Yes,” he said. “Do I think that you
could essentially design a dream — ‘Oh, I want to go to Honolulu and
have this big hunk hit on me’? It’s a bit of a stretch. But I can’t say
it can’t happen.”
He added: “Only in New York or California do they worry about this stuff.”
Stephen LaBerge, a
psychophysiologist and the founder of the Lucidity Institute
(lucidity.com), conducts lucid dream research and teaches people to do
it.
“It’s kind of fun to do the
impossible,” Dr. LaBerge said. “Fly. Dream sex. That’s what everybody
likes to do. There’s also the possibility of creative problem-solving,
overcoming nightmares and anxieties, learning more about yourself.”
A student at Stanford
University, where Dr. LaBerge conducted much of his research, wrote in
The Stanford Daily: “In one of my earliest experiences with lucidity, I
announced to an auditorium full of people that I was their god (wasn’t
I?). When they did not respond deferentially, I used telekinesis to
send one of them flying across the room.”
It can be particularly
appealing to those who have nightmares, as it allows them to realize
while still asleep that they are just dreaming.
Interest in these potential
real-world benefits and the otherworldly freedoms of lucid dreaming —
as well as the questions it provokes about the precarious nature of
reality — has spurred the invention and evolution of seemingly wacky
dream aids. There are masks with lights and sounds; Orwellian devices
that announce THIS IS A DREAM! in the middle of the night; and pills.
At the Hawaii gathering
next month, attendees will be able to check out Dr. LaBerge’s
NovaDreamer, a mask meant to light up during REM sleep and cue the
person entangled in the sheets that he or she is dreaming. It is based
on the notion that people can make a plan while awake and then execute
it in their dreams. A light or sound is meant to remind them of their
goal of lucid dreaming without actually waking them up. Participants
may also take part in experiments with an herbal version of a drug that
impacts acetylcholine, a neurotransmitting compound that affects memory.
As bizarre as these things
may sound, there is a scientific rationale for cueing users during REM
sleep. “REM-sleep dreams are much more visual,” said Matthew P. Walker,
the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University
of California, Berkeley, and a former assistant professor of psychology
at the Harvard Medical School. “They have a strong narrative that runs
through them. They’re hallucinogenic.”
There are several reasons
for this, including that the lateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the
brain involved in logical reasoning and working memory, becomes more
inactive during REM sleep, while other areas of the brain, like the
visual and emotional centers, rev up.
Scientists, however, are
still trying to discover the difference between the dreaming brain and
the lucid-dreaming brain. The leading candidate, Dr. Walker said, is
the lateral prefrontal cortex. He thinks that during REM sleep, the
activity level of this logic-oriented part of the brain begins to rise
back to waking levels, and when it does, an invisible switch is flipped
and the sleeper gains lucidity. “In the next five years, I think
somebody will demonstrate that,” he said.
Lucid-dream researchers say
there are myriad mental exercises a person can do during waking hours
to try to become cognizant while dreaming. One technique involves
performing various reality checks many times a day — such as looking at
the numbers on a watch, looking away, and then looking at them again to
make sure that night has not suddenly become day. The theory is that if
a person does this regularly while awake, he or she will likely repeat
it while dreaming and will recognize inconsistencies — if, say, the
watch is melting in a Dali-esque way. Then the sleeper will think:
“This looks surreal. I must be dreaming.”
In “The Good Night,” the
would-be lucid dreamer performs a series of reality checks: he flips a
light switch on and off (light in dreams is not usually nuanced); looks
in a mirror (reflections in dreams are often obscured); and stares at
his hands (in dreams one’s hands may be elongated or have fewer
fingers).
Keeping a dream journal is
also said to promote better recall and to train people to identify
signs that indicate they are dreaming — chatting with the deceased,
floating cars, talking skeletons. Again, the idea is that when people
are sleeping, they will recognize these things as signs they are
dreaming and they will become lucid.
Waking up half an hour
earlier than usual, staying awake for 30 to 60 minutes and then going
back to sleep may also induce lucid dreams, Dr. LaBerge has found. Dr.
LaBerge honed his own lucid-dreaming abilities by writing his dreams
down immediately after waking and telling himself he intended to
remember and recognize his dreams.
Psychologists who study
lucid dreaming do not know why some people need more help triggering
full lucidity than others, though they agree that adept lucid dreamers
are excellent at remembering dreams. Dr. Gackenbach said they tend to
have strong visualization and spatial skills. They can look at a
machine and envision how the parts work inside, she said, or sew a
dress from scratch and know exactly what the finished frock will look
like. Many practice meditation.
Of course some professionals, particularly psychoanalysts, think orchestrating one’s dreams is not a critical goal.
“We distinguish between the
manifest content of the dream — the dream as you remember it — and the
latent content of it,” said Dr. Edward Nersessian, a clinical professor
of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a training and
supervising psychoanalyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and
Institute. “Whatever you manage or do not manage to do with the
manifest content isn’t really that relevant. That’s like a screen
behind which lies all sorts of answers which you have to go digging
for.”
When then asked if lucid
dreaming was a dangerous enterprise, he chuckled gently and said: “If
people who do it think it calms their anxiety, I’m all for it.”
Copyright: New York Times
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Re: Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking
by Dexter on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | Don't know what you need all those techniques for. I've been able to recognize that I'm dreaming since I was a little boy. As long as I can remeber Ive always been able to change the flow of the dream (in some cases more than others).
I had always thought that everybody was able to do it, never felt it as something unusual. |
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Re: Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking
by es9000 on Friday, September 21, 2007 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | I have been doing this since I was about 5. I can control my dreams and make anything happen that I want. I can also wake myself up or go back to sleep and dream the same thing again or take over where I left off. |
Re: Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking (Score: 1)
by Albior_BiBi on Saturday, September 22, 2007 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | could you guys write a blog or something and give a few practical advice about it? I've been using CDs but I can't say I'm satisfied... more like remote viewing than lucid dreaming. |
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