* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Friday, June 6, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

    Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

    Shows to Watch – The Advocate

    Must-See Shows You Can’t Miss!

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, is now streaming on Prime Video – About Amazon

    Experience the Thrills of ‘Sinners’ Starring Michael B. Jordan – Now Streaming on Prime Video!

    California Mid-State Fair announces entertainment lineups for Frontier and Mission stages – KSBY News

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for California Mid-State Fair’s Frontier and Mission Stages!

    Spotify & OpenAI: Will Gen AI ‘Hollow Out’ Entertainment? – Technology Magazine

    Will Generative AI Transform the Future of Entertainment

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) Stock Price Expected to Rise, UBS Group Analyst Says – MarketBeat

    UBS Analyst Predicts Surge in Micron Technology Stock Price!

    Domo to Participate in the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit – Business Wire

    Domo Set to Shine at the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit!

    When fiction becomes fact: 3 pieces of modern technology inspired by Star Trek – Redshirts Always Die

    From Screen to Reality: 3 Modern Technologies Inspired by Star Trek

    The Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology – UCF, ZPP, and IRR10 – Alma Research and Education Center

    Exploring the Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology: Innovations and Insights from UCF, ZPP, and IRR10

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

    Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

    Shows to Watch – The Advocate

    Must-See Shows You Can’t Miss!

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    Fox News Entertainment Newsletter: Celebrities mentioned during Diddy’s high-profile sex trafficking trial – Fox News

    ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, is now streaming on Prime Video – About Amazon

    Experience the Thrills of ‘Sinners’ Starring Michael B. Jordan – Now Streaming on Prime Video!

    California Mid-State Fair announces entertainment lineups for Frontier and Mission stages – KSBY News

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for California Mid-State Fair’s Frontier and Mission Stages!

    Spotify & OpenAI: Will Gen AI ‘Hollow Out’ Entertainment? – Technology Magazine

    Will Generative AI Transform the Future of Entertainment

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

    Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) Stock Price Expected to Rise, UBS Group Analyst Says – MarketBeat

    UBS Analyst Predicts Surge in Micron Technology Stock Price!

    Domo to Participate in the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit – Business Wire

    Domo Set to Shine at the D.A. Davidson Technology Summit!

    When fiction becomes fact: 3 pieces of modern technology inspired by Star Trek – Redshirts Always Die

    From Screen to Reality: 3 Modern Technologies Inspired by Star Trek

    The Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology – UCF, ZPP, and IRR10 – Alma Research and Education Center

    Exploring the Isfahan Center for Nuclear Technology: Innovations and Insights from UCF, ZPP, and IRR10

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Inside the tedious effort to tally AI’s energy appetite – MIT Technology Review

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

What is lucid dreaming—and how can you learn to do it?

December 13, 2023
in Science
What is lucid dreaming—and how can you learn to do it?
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ScienceMind, Body, Wonder

Lucid dreaming has been shown to reduce insomnia and anxiety, and even help people process their grief. But for most of us, it doesn’t come naturally.

ByStacey Colino

Published December 12, 2023

• 8 min read

If you’ve ever felt like you were in a movie and watching a movie at the same time while you were dreaming, you have probably experienced lucid dreaming. But you may not have known that’s what it was called—or how it can benefit your health and well-being.

Simply put, a lucid dream is one in which the person is aware that they’re dreaming and can either exert some control over the dream, or passively observe its unfolding while maintaining awareness that it’s a dream. This gives the dreamer an opportunity to potentially influence their dream life—perhaps by consciously interrupting a nighttime narrative to rescript a new outcome—which can be especially helpful for reducing the frequency of nightmares in those who have them, according to research in a 2023 issue of Encephale. Research has also found that engaging in lucid dreaming can help people reduce the severity of their insomnia, along with symptoms of anxiety.

“Some people who lucid dream don’t want to alter the dream—they want to explore the dream and see what it offers them,” notes Antonio Zadra, a professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and co-author of When Brains Dream. “It’s a way of exploring your own mind and opening opportunities to engage with different parts of your psyche.”

There’s also entertainment value in lucid dreaming, says Benjamin Baird, a cognitive neuroscientist and a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s like having your own form of virtual reality.”

History of lucid dreams 

While awareness of dream states dates back centuries, it wasn’t until 1913 that the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik Van Eeden coined the term “lucid dream,” based on his own experiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers, including Stanford psychophysiologist Stephen LaBerge, proved that lucid dreaming was a phenomenon during REM sleep, when dreamers were asked to move their eyes in distinct patterns when they became lucid during their dreams.  

Meanwhile, practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism have long believed that people can train to be lucid while dreaming through a practice called dream yoga.

“All dream yoga is lucid dreaming,” explains Michael Sheehy, a Tibetan Buddhism scholar and director of scholarship at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “The difference is, in dream yoga you’re intentionally performing contemplative techniques while you’re in the dream. You are aware of what you’re doing while you’re dreaming and you’re doing things you can’t normally do when you’re awake.”

These intentional actions include conjuring unusual objects to appear in your dream, transforming the dream’s environment or location, or transforming one item into another, he explains.

After the dream, “you may experience cognitive flexibility, realizing how easily you can change your thoughts and mindset or how you perceive your circumstances. And you can imagine new possibilities, perspectives, and situational outcomes,” Sheehy says.

The breadth of benefits

The neurobiological underpinnings of lucid dreaming aren’t well understood, says Ken Paller, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. But preliminary research suggests there’s greater activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex—which regulates executive functions, such as thinking and problem-solving, and emotions—and the parietal cortex, which plays a role in processing and integrating sensory information and attention.

Using electroencephalograms (EEGs), which measure electrical activity in the brain, researchers have shown that lucid dreaming “constitutes a hybrid state of consciousness” with aspects of brain activity that are features of both waking states and REM sleep.

As far as the potential benefits of lucid dreaming go, Baird says they range from the scientific to the personal to the therapeutic.

“Traditionally, it’s been very difficult to study dreams—you’re trying to correlate reports of dreaming with what was going on physiologically in the brain,” says Baird. With techniques developed to induce eye movements and lucid dreams during REM sleep, researchers can essentially mark the start and end of a lucid dream, “which allows for precise alignment with subjective reports and brain physiology reports, [which] used to be impossible,” he explains.

On a personal level, lucid dreams can enhance creativity and contribute to people’s well-being by helping them learn things about themselves that they wouldn’t otherwise know. “They can learn skills, come up with answers to problems, and experience spiritual transformation,” says Paller.

Christopher Mazurek heard about lucid dreaming when he was in high school and tried for a year and a half to do it based on a book he read. It wasn’t until he volunteered in Paller’s lab in 2018, as a college student at Northwestern, that Mazurek had his first lucid dream. The lab uses the targeted memory reactivation technique, in which specific sounds are used to provoke a lucid dream while the person is asleep.

Once he was able to do it, Mazurek’s lucid dreaming was particularly healing; his grandparents had recently passed away and he was able to talk to them in his lucid dreams. “It was powerful and it helped me process my grief,” says Mazurek, who is now a research assistant at Northwestern University. “It was a very exhilarating, rewarding experience.”

Lucid dreaming also offers people opportunities to practice their skills. Research has found that practicing motor skills in lucid dreams is a form of mental rehearsal that improves subsequent performance in sports or games in real life.

Meanwhile, on a therapeutic level, lucid dreaming has been found to help with insomnia and nightmares. If someone has recurrent nightmares and learns how to engage in lucid dreaming, they can recognize that they are dreaming, that what they’re experiencing isn’t real, and possibly change the dream’s outcome. “This can be a powerful transformative experience, helping them reach some level of resolution or healing,” Baird explains.

Learning to have lucid dreams 

If you don’t have lucid dreams naturally (most people don’t), you can learn to induce them through a variety of techniques—but there can be drawbacks.

In a study published in the journal Sleep Advances, researchers examined and analyzed 400 posts on a lucid-dreaming discussion forum and discovered both positive effects and negative experiences. On the upside, many people reported dream enhancement, waking up in a positive mood, and fewer nightmares.

On the negative side, people reported feeling paralyzed—unable to yell or move—or having trouble distinguishing whether they were asleep or really awake, and less restorative sleep.

“Some people don’t want to have lucid dreams—they just want to sleep,” says Remington Mallett, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine at the University of Montreal.

If you decide to try lucid dreaming, a prerequisite is to have fairly good dream recall, experts say. “If you keep a dream journal, you will start to have better dream recall,” Mallett says.

The techniques used to induce lucid dreams have varying degrees of success and there isn’t one that works for everyone. “It’s a learnable skill but people make it sound much easier than it really is,” Zadra says.

Among the more proven techniques are cognitive ones that are performed during the day, or while you’re falling asleep.

With the reality testing technique, you stop what you’re doing at regular intervals throughout the day, and ask yourself whether you’re in a dream or reality then go back to your usual activities, Zadra explains. The idea is that these “reality checks” eventually can become incorporated into “a person’s dream, enabling them to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness realities, which in turn induces dream lucidity,” according to research published this year.

A technique called the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams involves rehearsing a dream during the day and visualizing becoming lucid while telling yourself, the next time I’m dreaming, I’ll recognize that I’m dreaming.

With the Wake-Up-Back-to-Bed technique, the person sets an alarm clock to go off after about six hours of sleep, stays awake for approximately 30 minutes, then goes back to bed with the intention to become lucid if they start dreaming. Another one, called the Senses Initiated Lucid Dream technique, involves waking up after about five hours of sleep and repeatedly shifting your attention between visual, auditory, and physical sensations before going back to sleep.

Of these three techniques, a 2023 study found that rehearsing a dream during the day was the most effective.

Through a process of trial and error, you could see which one works for you. Or, “you can stack them up and use them all,” Baird says, because they can work together.

Regardless of the frequency, lucid dreaming can help people gain a sense of “agency or control over their dream content,” Mallett says. Which is helpful, he adds, “because the effects of dreams can carry over into waking life.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/therapeutic-benefits-lucid-dreaming

Tags: dreaming—andLucidscience
Previous Post

Why yule log has become a Christmas favourite

Next Post

Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill Says He Thought His Ankle Was ‘Gone’ After Injury vs. Titans

Ecological Restoration Service Market to Reach USD 87.9 Bn by 2031, Growing at 9.4% CAGR – openPR.com

Ecological Restoration Service Market Set to Soar to $87.9 Billion by 2031 with a Robust 9.4% Growth Rate!

June 6, 2025
Boise State moves forward with plans for new science building, signaling an investment in STEM majors – The Arbiter | Boise State

Boise State Unveils Ambitious Plans for Cutting-Edge Science Building, Boosting STEM Education!

June 6, 2025
The Science Of De-Extinction Is Providing Hope For Nature’s Future – Forbes

Reviving the Past: How De-Extinction Science Offers New Hope for Our Planet’s Future

June 6, 2025
Cardi B Slams Offset For Allegedly Not Helping With Kids’ Six-Figure Lifestyle – HOT 97

Cardi B Calls Out Offset for Failing to Support Their Kids’ Luxurious Lifestyle!

June 6, 2025
Hollywood legend Tom Cruise becomes record holder for his fiery Mission Impossible stunt – Guinness World Records

Tom Cruise Sets the Bar High with Record-Breaking Fiery Stunt in Mission Impossible!

June 6, 2025
India could become third largest economy in the world this year: Borge Brende – MSN

India Poised to Become the World’s Third Largest Economy This Year!

June 6, 2025
9 things to do this weekend in Lake County plus a look ahead – Leesburg Daily Commercial

Discover 9 Exciting Weekend Adventures in Lake County and What’s Coming Up!

June 6, 2025
Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

Property Technology Magazine Unveils “PropTech Top 50 Index” and the “2025 PropTech Trends Report – The Great Rebuild.” – Business Wire

June 6, 2025
Graphics: China’s ecological, environmental quality keeps improving steadily – news.cgtn.com

Graphics: China’s ecological, environmental quality keeps improving steadily – news.cgtn.com

June 5, 2025
The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil – Eater

The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil – Eater

June 5, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (670)
  • Economy (684)
  • Entertainment (21,590)
  • General (15,267)
  • Health (9,725)
  • Lifestyle (687)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (685)
  • Politics (691)
  • Science (15,902)
  • Sports (21,187)
  • Technology (15,669)
  • World (669)

Recent News

Ecological Restoration Service Market to Reach USD 87.9 Bn by 2031, Growing at 9.4% CAGR – openPR.com

Ecological Restoration Service Market Set to Soar to $87.9 Billion by 2031 with a Robust 9.4% Growth Rate!

June 6, 2025
Boise State moves forward with plans for new science building, signaling an investment in STEM majors – The Arbiter | Boise State

Boise State Unveils Ambitious Plans for Cutting-Edge Science Building, Boosting STEM Education!

June 6, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version