[HN Gopher] The new science of controlling lucid dreams
___________________________________________________________________
The new science of controlling lucid dreams
Author : cainxinth
Score : 169 points
Date : 2024-12-27 13:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| Willingham wrote:
| https://archive.is/ZDSVY
| xterminator wrote:
| Perhaps science and technology should stay out of the only
| remaining area of untouched human nature.
| hammock wrote:
| Can't wait until there is a lucid dreaming pill I can take,
| personally
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Calea Zacatechici and Silene Capensis have existed since
| forever... I've personally found them very effective
| LawrenceKerr wrote:
| I mean, there's galantamine... Although the experience for me
| is different than a naturally induced lucid dream. (And in
| many countries it's a prescription drug for dementia, so
| don't take this as advice)
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Kind of already touched by drugs?
| bsenftner wrote:
| The new fraud, this will be filled with questionable companies
| and untrustworthy experts. Reason enough to avoid the entire
| sphere.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| What is the fraud you're specifically referring to? Lucid
| dream induction?
| bsenftner wrote:
| I lucid dream myself, which I recognize as impossible to
| productize. Yet, the productization of lucid dreaming will
| be attempted, will be successful, and will have nothing to
| do with lucid dreaming, it will be marketing tie ins with
| all manner of nonsense.
| Kiro wrote:
| > which I recognize as impossible to productize
|
| How so? I also lucid dream and could never say anything
| about that.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| How long til I start seeing ads in my dreams?
| LawrenceKerr wrote:
| Why? I mean, nobody forces you to use tech tools for lucid
| dreaming.
|
| This is like saying science and technology should stay out of
| the area of... whatever, say, running. Nobody forces you to
| wear high-tech gadgets while running.
| speff wrote:
| I used to be heavily into lucid dreaming back in the early 00s
| along with others in the Dream Views forum. That was a wild time
| with people making new ways to induce a lucid dreaming (with
| techniques usually ending in -ILD). If you told us this back then
|
| > This research could lead to wearable devices programmed with
| algorithms that detect opportune moments to induce lucidity in
| people as they sleep
|
| -we would've lost our minds. Above most other recent inventions,
| this really feels like the future
| hasbot wrote:
| Why did you stop? Did you gain any insights from your
| experience.
|
| I think many of us nerds are intrigued by the concept of lucid
| dreaming but haven't actually explored the space. I skimmed a
| book on the subject in the mid 80's, but only tried the
| techniques a couple of times. Oddly, I still remember a couple
| of my lucid dreams.
| speff wrote:
| At the time, the two most popular ways for getting lucid in a
| dream was
|
| 1. Doing a reality check habitually in real life. Eventually
| you'll start doing it in dreams and have it fail. This
| _usually_ kicks you into lucid territory
|
| 2. Estimating when you're going to be in a REM state and
| setting a timer to wake yourself up. Then, after gaining
| consciousness fully, trying to make your body go to sleep
| while your mind is awake
|
| Can you spot why I stopped doing it after a period of time?
| It end up feeling like a lot of work every day just for a
| chance (a low one in my and most people's cases) of having a
| lucid dream. Sleeping was no longer a passive, let's-relax
| type of activity. I just wanted to reclaim that period of
| time in a way.
|
| I think my biggest takeaway from my lucid dreams was just the
| feeling of being in one. It's hard to describe, but the rush
| that comes along with the realization you can do anything you
| want is quite exhilarating.
| CPLX wrote:
| What are examples of reality checks.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| A few are: Look at a digital time twice, in a dream the
| numbers will usually change. Try to read fine print.
| Perfect vision with no glasses if you wear them.
| lsiclait wrote:
| I would just ask myself "Am I dreaming?"
|
| When I'm awake, I immediately answer "no," but when I'm
| asleep, I'm not sure. That's enough to know that I'm not
| awake.
| smokel wrote:
| You could simply look this up on the internet, but for
| those of us who are exceptionally lazy, here goes:
|
| Every now and then, say every hour, or whenever you think
| of it, look around you. Try to check if what you see is
| real. Are things floating around and is gravity not
| working as expected? When you look over your shoulder and
| back, did the room change color, and did the table just
| turn into a tree? Try to touch something with your hand.
| Do you not feel any resistance when your hand drops
| through the couch? If so, you are probably dreaming.
| jgilias wrote:
| Two that I used was:
|
| 1. Trying to put your index finger through the other
| palm. In a dream this works, it just goes through;
|
| 2. Press your nose closed and continue breathing
| normally. In a dream this works.
|
| I stopped for a similar reason as the other poster. It
| really interfered with my ability to get the much needed
| rest while sleeping. It doesn't come free (but is awesome
| when it works)
| speff wrote:
| Nice - these two were my go-tos as well. The nose-plug
| one felt especially weird once you realized what was
| happening.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| Mine as well -- nose-plug was most effective but also
| least discrete and most awkward to do in public. Checking
| a clock was my second go-to..
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Close your lips and try to breath through your mouth. If
| you can, you're dreaming.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Check the time on your phone/watch twice in a short time.
| kayge wrote:
| The famous example from the movie Inception is spinning a
| top; if it never stops you are probably asleep (or maybe
| reality broke, oops!). But most people don't carry around
| a top to do this, so the other replies give some more
| practical examples that LD practitioners have come up
| with over the years.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| My favourite was "how did I get here?". In walking life a
| story immediately appears, in the dream you were just
| kind of always there.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I can reliably meditate myself into a lucid dream if you're
| interested in learning the technique. You've probably
| encounteted it before. I also just regularly find myself in
| lucid dreams because I'm constantly looking for
| discrepancies and gain control the moment I find one.
|
| The basic technique is just to meditate to sleep by
| counting your breaths, while not moving at all. It is
| really hard to pull off until you get used to it, but with
| some dedication you can get decent success. If you do it
| right, your body enters sleep paralysis while your brain is
| still awake, and you get dropped into a dream.
| speff wrote:
| Counting your breaths seems like a better way to do it.
| When I tried wake-induced LD'ing, I didn't have any
| strategy in mind when it came to what I should be
| thinking of. When I was right at the boundary of
| dreaming, my thoughts would start racing and I would
| usually snap myself awake. Your advice would likely have
| saved me from a few failures.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Yeah, I've had some success with WILDs, which I'd
| typically practice on a Saturday or Sunday morning, but
| ultimately it was a crapshoot compared to just meditating
| myself to sleep.
|
| I'd also recommend lying on your back when attempting to
| lucid dream, it always made it much more likely to occur
| for me, along with sleep paralysis. There is some
| unexplored physiological reason for this, but it's real
| and many sleep experts have found the same results.
|
| I would also recommend not getting caught up in losing
| track of the count, simply starting over from 0 the
| moment you realize that you lost your place.
|
| I have severe chronic insomnia, ADHD, tourettic OCD and a
| predisposition for body-focused repetitive behaviors so
| if I can meditate myself to sleep, I'm pretty sure anyone
| can with some practice. The reason why I can't do it
| every night and "beat" insomnia is two-fold:
|
| One, because it paradoxically aggravates sleep avoidance
| for me. It's an excruciating experience spending 30-60
| minutes lying completely still while alarm bells are
| going off in my head, paired with intense urges
| commanding me to scratch an itch or adjust a limb, and
| it's anything _but_ meditative until the very moment
| sleep paralysis kicks in and my body goes numb.
|
| Two, it usually puts me into sleep paralysis which is
| just rolling the dice for a metric ton of adrenaline to
| get released during a paralysis hallucination. I've had
| sleep paralysis encounters keep me up for the next few
| days, shit gives me the creeps.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yeah that's exactly why I never actually got deep into
| these techniques, I dunno about any diagnosed mental
| conditions but I used to have the sleep paralysis thing
| just as like what felt as my brains last resort to knock
| me out or something, and sometimes it would flip me into
| a lucid dream while others I'd just have like intense
| nightmares where I'd get sucked into a black hole
| appearing in the sky or creepy faced creatures from
| beyond would show me future technologies. It just felt
| way too close to insanity lol
|
| I remember a friend of mine saying how he went manic and
| hadn't slept for days after trying some stuff he read in
| a book about 'dream yoga'. Always honestly left the
| impression that you can fuck this up just like you can
| pulling a muscle in your leg, except this is your mind
| you're talking about
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I like the analogy to pulling a muscle. You also got me
| reading about dream yoga, which I hadn't encountered
| before. Going to try that! I've done dream math and dream
| poetry/freestyle before, but I haven't tried dream
| meditating. Fascinating idea.
|
| The "getting sucked into the sky" dreams are always
| incredibly exhilarating. Had some like that.
|
| I had an extraordinarily rare moment a few years ago
| wherein I actually had one single 8-hour interrupted
| sleep session. For the entire 8 hours, I was sucked in a
| single, continuous lucid dream that took place over a
| full day of school. I was completely convinced that I'd
| died or was dying in my sleep and was experiencing an
| extended DMT-fueled hallucination.
|
| I was literally running my hand across surfaces and
| studying reflections in the CRT monitors trying to find
| imperfections or proof that it was just a normal dream.
| But everything was hyperrealistic and vivid and
| continuous. The dream even started out with me waking up,
| getting ready, getting on the bus and arriving to school.
| Even the clocks were behaving.
|
| During the dream, between classes, there was a hole in
| floor of the main hallway which just got bigger and
| bigger each time I saw it. And each time, there was a
| larger crowd of people surrounding it. Eventually, I saw
| someone jump in. Towards the end of the day, there was a
| full-blown hole cult worshiping and praying to the hole,
| wearing religious garb, making offerings, etc. It took a
| few weeks to recover from that dream.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yeah just be careful with all this stuff. People end up
| doing these things and having experiences I barely
| understand like 'kundalini awakenings' which to all
| appearances to me just look like mania or light
| psychosis, these aren't particularly enjoyable
| experiences to go through and alot of the time I see
| people who seek that kind of thing out, they end up going
| through it for like a whole year or so before getting
| back on their feet. You can lose your job and all sorts
| of other life disrupting side effects which is why I'm
| pretty sure there's religious infrastructure to handle
| people who take this path in life in cultures where doing
| this kind of thing is normal. Maybe start with reading a
| book or some meditation classes or something before
| jumping into the advanced techniques right away I think
| is the wise way to go with anything that requires
| discipline
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Thanks for the advice. I'm mainly curious if some of the
| neurological or psychological benefits of yoga or other
| meditative techniques might still exist or at least be
| simulated during a directed dream.
|
| For example, I once had a dream that I smoked DMT and had
| a full-blown psychedelic experience during my dream. I
| then woke up and felt "high", in some kind of altered
| state, for over 12 hours. Under the right circumstances
| or simulated environment, the brain seems able to induce
| a variety of sudden or gradual psychological and
| neurological changes.
|
| Imagine someone without control of their limbs being able
| to benefit from practicing tai chi or yoga in their
| sleep. Obviously, feedback from an instructor is
| important, but imagine a distant future where we are able
| to record and decode our dreams and allow instructors to
| review footage.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I kind of figured we already had that on a basic level
| [1], no idea how accurate it is or if it's just some
| nonsense but I seem to recall research even like ten
| years ago which was around these lines, also from Japan,
| on way earlier iterations of the technology [2], this is
| just through stable diffusion now...
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-re-
| creates-what-p...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22031074
| fowlie wrote:
| Similar story happened to me once: I had recently got my
| drivers license, and one day went to bed early
| (completely sober). In my dream that night I got drunk,
| took my dads car and wrecked it. When I woke up next
| morning, first thing I did was to take dads car to pick
| up a friend of mine. I felt so hung over, and was driving
| like I was "still drunk". I had that feeling the whole
| day. Still remember it well today, even 20 years later.
| macNchz wrote:
| I was casually into this stuff like twenty years ago-read the
| forums, tried various techniques etc. I did have a bit of
| real success with it, also having some lucid dreams that are
| memorable years later, however I didn't actually like the
| experience of consistently remembering lots of details from
| my dreams, which was, I think, most of why I stopped.
|
| At the time, at least, the recommended starting point was
| dream journaling-writing down everything you can remember as
| soon as you wake up. Practicing that even for a few days has
| the effect of helping you retain quite a bit more detail from
| your dreams. It wasn't so much that I had unpleasant dreams
| as it was that remembering them made the night seem somehow
| less restful, as though I needed the relatively blank gap of
| sleep in the filmstrip of my memory to be able to wake up
| with a clear head.
| replete wrote:
| I found another method: after waking up in the morning (with
| time to doze off again), nicotine pouch under the gum just
| after the heavy breathing starts. Super vivid lucid dreams,
| with obvious gotchas of using nicotine
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| That sounds like a stupid way to suffocate and die on
| something in your sleep but it does affect a neurochemical
| (acetylcholine) which are implicated in how dreams and the
| entire sleep/wake cycle work. There's safer alternatives in
| my mind, 'oneirogics' [1] as I remember them being called,
| which affect the same neurotransmitters with none of the
| horrible addiction or choking risk - can be as simple as some
| ancient shamanic technique one researcher in central america
| told me, which was a maracuya leaf placed in your pillow to
| remind you in your dream of the distinct smell from the
| waking world that you're dreaming so you may control it
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirogen
| prophesi wrote:
| AFAIK galantamine is the only drug with actual studies[0]
| for inducing lucidity. Participants would practice dream
| recall and reality checks each day, and fall asleep after
| reciting lucid dream affirmations. Then be awoken in the
| middle of the night to take galantamine, and fall back
| asleep while visualizing a continuation of the dream they
| were in last.
|
| Anecdotally, I become lucid whenever I take it without
| doing the rest of the study's rituals, but I've worked on
| improving my dream recall for years now.
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30089135/
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yeah, I used to be really into knowing a ton about this
| stuff because it was something I kept on having out of my
| control before - I used to have worsening sleep paralysis
| when I was young and into my 20s, and lucid dreaming
| would be sort of a side effect of it... I guess this is
| what that WILD (wake-induced lucid dreaming) thing tries
| to actually induce, like from what I was reading you sort
| of meditate your way into that state and flip your
| consicousness into a lucid dream. Honestly my sleep was
| crazy back then and I talked to a doctor who said it was
| grounds for going for a sleep study and getting tested to
| see if I had narcolepsy, but I just ended up moving way
| closer to the equator instead and something about the
| seasonality of the sun coming up and down at the same
| time all year round is what a doctor there said could
| have reset my circadian rhythm as it got more pronounced
| in dark winter time.
| jl6 wrote:
| The ultimate video game rendering engine.
| dismalaf wrote:
| You'd think so but everything is weird and little makes sense,
| even if you have some level of awareness and control.
| LawrenceKerr wrote:
| The experience indeed can be very much like the "Oasis" video
| game that runs entirely on fast transformer inference.
|
| Dream reality works by association and expectation rather
| than having a strict ruleset.
| SeptiumMMX wrote:
| Except, it doesn't render anything. It's the recently used
| parts of the higher layers of the inference network starting to
| have electrical activity of their own to do some kind of
| optimization/defragmentation.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Given lucidity more often arises in broken sleep, I wonder if
| historical biphasic sleep patterns meant that lucidity was much
| more common in the past. And so if there could be a correlation
| here with religious visions.
|
| I was in a conversation recently with a christian convert who
| seemed to operate on the principle that the tenants of a religion
| are real if there are religious experiences which indicate it to
| be so -- and it became clear they meant in dreams, but not
| exactly dream-like states. At the same event there was a muslim
| who had family members with visions (and so on). I made the point
| that localised to each region of the world are its own cultural
| beliefs 'replayed back' in such states -- this is especially
| noticiable in schizophrenia where psychosis-based delusions are
| _heavily_ mapped through a cultural lens (eg., some spy service
| is contacting them through 5G; and UFOs in a previous era; ghosts
| before then; and devils before then).
|
| It does seem plausible that lucid dreaming offers a plausible
| explanation of religious 'visions' which occur in well-
| functioning people; and likewise a mechanism for why they are so
| encultured -- with gods of one locale appearing to adhearents
| there.
|
| And if lucid dream were previously much more widespread, this
| offers an additional benefit of religious mythology, which is
| narrative material for the construction of these dreams.
| ndileas wrote:
| s/tenants/tenets/
|
| This idea is interesting, but unfalsifiable with our current
| methods of understanding history.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You don't even necessarily need lucid dreaming to explain these
| experiences. Practices clearly intended to altar mental &
| emotional state are endemic to all religions.
|
| Combined fasting, sleep deprivation, and focused attention are
| enough to induce hallucinatory experiences for a lot of people,
| specifically if that experience is sought out over time. Even
| in christianity this was widespread until relatively recently
| in the form of pre-feast fasting & vigil, and is still
| practiced by monastics.
|
| Lucid dreaming _may_ be part of these traditions I don 't
| really know. Religious experience is so broad and ancient it's
| hard to rule things out. But there are a lot of descriptions of
| visions, and while it's common for them not to distinguish
| between "visions" and "dreams" per se I've never read a
| description of something that sounds like lucid dreaming in a
| pre-modern source.
| dtkirby wrote:
| I'm surprised there's no mention of inducing/controlling lucid
| sex dreams for therapy or entertainment, but maybe I'm weirder
| than I thought.
| joncrane wrote:
| You guys are having sex dreams?
| speff wrote:
| Induced LDs back when I did it were fairly... fragile, so to
| speak. It was annoying, but if you got "lost in the moment" in
| the dream you could easily lose lucidity. It's likely still a
| problem with modern methods of LDing.
| xeonmc wrote:
| So you mean, lurid dreams?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I've found it's pretty hard to induce specific dreams, but once
| I'm in a dream it's straightforward enough to modify it to my
| liking.
|
| The hard part is altering the dream significantly without
| leaving a theta state and collapsing the dream. It all becomes
| about energy management. For example, two nights ago I found
| myself in a dream, and a few moments after I walked outside I
| realized the scene was too bright and noisy, and that my brain
| would wake up too much processing it.
|
| So I had to hurry back inside, but I couldn't run either or
| that would release adrenaline. It took a lot of concentration
| and deliberate movement to get back inside before my dream
| fully collapsed, and it did collapse soon anyway minutes later.
|
| With lucid sex dreams, it's similar. Energy conservation is key
| to extending the experience.
| latexr wrote:
| I haven't had many lucid dreams, but this mirrors my
| experience. Whenever I realise I'm in a lucid dream, the
| trick to keep me in it is to manage how much control I exert.
| If I start to direct it too much I can feel myself waking up
| and have to "let go" and not react to what's happening,
| letting the dream carry me wherever it seems fit. After a
| while I begin to feel consciousness drifting away and can
| again exert some modicum of control to explore my
| surroundings. Rinse and repeat, until I inevitably wake up.
| darepublic wrote:
| I only experienced lucid dreaming as a child. And perhaps one
| or two times I would find my crush and give them a kiss. I
| dunno how I feel about lucid dreaming now. I tend to remember
| dreams and I like to interpret what my subconscious is trying
| to express through what happens. If I consciously just try to
| engineer some scene of maximum pleasure instead would
| something be lost
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Absolutely. Lucid dreaming is such a gift, and it would be
| a huge disservice to yourself to waste it purely on
| dopamine-seeking hedonistic scenarios. It's a chance to
| deeply explore the mind and test hypotheses.
|
| As an example, one thing I like doing is telling my dream
| subjects that they're in a dream and studying their
| reactions.
| krackers wrote:
| >studying their reactions
|
| Well what are their reactions?
| butterNaN wrote:
| If I know anything about humans, this is a good vehicle to get
| investment for innovation - porn has been a silent driver of
| internet technology.
| mcshicks wrote:
| I used to be into lucid dreaming, a pretty long time ago. I
| stopped mostly because in order to reliably enter them and
| remember the dreams just involved too much stuff that messed
| with me getting enough sleep. But I did read one of Stephen
| LaBerge's books on the subject. I'm pretty sure it was
| "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming", but I'm not certain it
| was that one. But it definitely mentioned sex in dreams as a
| motivation, at least early in his practice. So I certainly
| don't think your the first or only person who's had that
| thought.
| munchler wrote:
| Headline: "even be induce specific dreams just for fun"
|
| Where are the editors? Scientific American has fallen a long way.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Funny enough, AI wouldn't have made that specific error. Though
| non-AI checkers would catch this easily.
|
| Is this just WordPress-like churn that no-longer involves
| decent tools and processes? Is the whole thing written in a
| browser?
| binary132 wrote:
| eventually as the quality of the public internet's training
| corpus declines, we'll get there
| esafak wrote:
| They be on vacation, yo.
| b0dhimind wrote:
| Any budget-friendly lucid dreaming devices that work?
| woolion wrote:
| A simple app was discussed recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42165849
|
| Although it's not about a magical device but about practice.
| plipt wrote:
| The Monroe Institute sells a series of audio clips that emit a
| different tone in each ear with which the brain creates a third
| oscillating tone. This third tone is known as binaural beats
| which they allege to synchronizes the brain's hemispheres.
|
| The series is called the Gateway Experience. Its a kind of semi
| guided meditation using the binaural beats that is intended to
| induce out of body experiences.
|
| I tried it years ago and although I never experienced a OOBE it
| did seem to induce lucid dreaming. Its a bit new-agey but not
| in a preachy or religious way.
|
| https://hemi-sync.com/gateway-experience/
| mmh0000 wrote:
| I am shocked to see The Gateway Experience mentioned. I
| specifically clicked on this story to post about it.
|
| Anyway, TGE is a fantastic resource if you put the time into
| it. I've gotten to levels of meditation through it that still
| make me question reality.
|
| On the one hand, I'm very much facts, data, and
| reproducibility oriented, and "I know" that everything I
| experienced was just my brain having fun.
|
| On the other hand, WTF. Maybe I am more than my physical
| self, and there are alternate dimensions I can teleport
| myself to.
| thr0w wrote:
| > I've gotten to levels of meditation through it that still
| make me question reality.
|
| I don't know if this matches anything you achieve through
| meditation, but I've had some incredibly complex and vivid
| dreams that make me question everything about myself and my
| brain. I tend to agree that it just comes down to an
| astonishingly powerful organ flexing its power.
| CPLX wrote:
| For those of you who are not crusty aging Gen-Xers such as
| myself, perhaps I can introduce you to the movie "Dreamscape"
| which I found pretty captivating as a pre-teen.
|
| Looks like it's out there on streaming services still:
| https://www.tvguide.com/movies/dreamscape/2000115208/
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was really hoping repeating the mantra "mind awake, body
| asleep" would be the trick as suggested by Elliot from Mr Robot
| soulofmischief wrote:
| As you get close to the threshold when meditating yourself to
| sleep, your thoughts turn to goop. I've found it much easier to
| just count my breaths, simply starting over if I lose track.
| The hardest part is to not forget what you were doing as your
| mind drifts.
| toddmorey wrote:
| The new science is... podcasts. I fell asleep listening to
| Ologies and dreamed I was building a new cabin in the woods. (She
| had a cabin architect on as the guest.)
| latexr wrote:
| Caveat emptor. Whenever the discussion of lucid dreams comes up
| on HN, invariably there are reports of people who did it
| regularly but had to stop because apparently doing it a lot makes
| the dream world and reality begin to blend too much and you end
| up tired all the time and not sleeping well.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Also, issues with lack of dreaming. It's easy to detect when
| you start dreaming, but the next steps are hard (stay in a
| dream state, control the dream). You can end up falling back
| into deep sleep and suppressing dreaming which will lead to not
| being rested regardless of how many hours you spend in bed.
| farafkirl wrote:
| If/when I find myself in a lucid dream, I look for a place to
| sleep.
| sollewitt wrote:
| I was expecting the article to explore how you are basically
| interrupting sleep to achieve this.
|
| The purpose of sleep isn't to dream, it's to garbage collect.
| Activating parts of the brain to control dreams means they aren't
| sleeping anymore, which surely is getting in the way of the
| primary function?
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| The GC hypothesis is an hypothesis of one of the possible
| functions of sleeping. Nature never does 1 thing and 1 thing
| alone.
| butterNaN wrote:
| I suppose I can hunt and peck but it would be nice to have links
| to the studies/papers mentioned. I wonder if they pay attention
| to any side-effects of lucid dreaming - after all, there is a
| reason we sleep the way we sleep, and tempering with it must have
| some cost.
| freediver wrote:
| > In the lab we can prime sleepers to have lucid dreams by waking
| them and then prompting them as they fall back asleep.
|
| This felt odd to read.
| KetoManx64 wrote:
| The key difference between this and FBI's Guantanamo techniques
| is there is no force involved.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I began lucid dreaming at the same instant that I began having
| sleep paralysis about 20 years ago, at age 9. I had a vivid
| dream, which I still remember in great detail, in which I was in
| a graveyard and was cursed by a ghost due to the actions of my
| grandfather.
|
| I woke up from the dream in a state of sleep paralysis, and
| predictably tried screaming but to no avail. Since then, I would
| lucid dream at least a few times a week for many years. I would
| also constantly get sleep paralysis and night terrors. The night
| terrors were nothing new, I'd had them for as long as I can
| remember. But they would consistently occur when I was in sleep
| paralysis.
|
| During paralysis, before falling asleep or after waking up, I
| would hallucinate beings entering my room, shuffling things
| around, staring at me, touching me and speaking to me. I've been
| visited by ghosts, people, giant spiders, the grim reaper,
| succubi, elves, all sorts of things. Usually there is a great
| feeling of terror or impending doom. Sometimes I'm told specific
| things or asked to do favors for the beings.
|
| It's easy to see how people would mistake these incidents for
| real encounters with otherworldly beings during a time when
| science was less advanced. In fact, my Catholic guardians were
| convinced, and still are, that I was possessed by Satan. I never
| received help for my night terrors, which largely exist because
| of childhood torture by my guardians in the first place. My
| grandfather would shake me violently and tell me that Satan was
| inside of me and that I would never have the capacity to love
| another person, and that my nightmares and "possession" were a
| result of letting Satan in my heart.
|
| Eventually I realized that I was having lucid dreams and sleep
| paralysis far, far more often when I would sleep on my back. In
| my youth, sleeping on my side hurt and so I was stuck constantly
| having sleep paralysis. I developed a Pavlovian response to
| sleeping which fed into an already severe insomnia.
|
| I'm now a 30-year-old adult who still suffers from insomnia and
| constantly has nightmares about missing the bus, experiencing
| childhood abuse, being persecuted by police, being at school,
| etc. My dreams have become a window into childhood trauma where I
| continually get retraumatized and trigger flashbacks. However,
| because I often lucid dream, these dreams also afford me a chance
| to explore these traumas and experience control and safety in
| situations when I felt like I had neither. Also, I now cannot
| sleep on my back almost ever due to degenerative spine disease,
| and other chronic pains keep me up all night, so the nightmares
| happen a little less frequently. Silver linings.
|
| I think there is so much potential in the therapeutic application
| of lucid dreaming and I would love to figure out a way to use my
| knowledge and skill with lucid dreaming to help others.
| thr0w wrote:
| This was interesting, thanks for posting it.
|
| I experienced intense, complex night terrors when I was a kid,
| although I was never abused (that I know of). I wonder why.
|
| > being persecuted by police
|
| I have these too in my current life, but as a kind of weird
| anti-nightmare where I'm actually being extremely successful at
| escaping.
| SeptiumMMX wrote:
| Had similar shenanigans. Solved by consistently having half a
| glass of water before bed (yes, you'll need to wake up to let
| it out), and another half at night if there's any hint of sleep
| problems.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Great advice. In general I think water does help a lot.
|
| I do have to be careful though, because with lucid dreaming
| your body might not always stay paralyzed. I've learned over
| the last 20 years that any time I find myself peeing in a
| dream, I need to immediately wake up and go use the bathroom
| before I chance leaking any urine in my sleep.
|
| Luckily, even when not lucid dreaming I retain the ability to
| wake up at any time due to distress, a very useful coping
| mechanism from decades of night terrors.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| No commentray but I find it interesting that this is considered
| research by a scientific journal...
|
| >That was the conclusion of a recent study by Mallett, who
| surveyed 400 posts on Reddit to identify exactly when and how
| lucid dreams are helpful for improving mental health.
| pentagrama wrote:
| As a kid, I was so happy to "discover" that I could be mildly
| awake and control my dreams. It happened by mistake: I fell
| asleep while listening to loud music. I was in a middle state,
| half-awake because of the loud music, and half-asleep, dreaming.
| In the dream, I was an observer, aware that it was a dream. The
| music in the background was annoying me, and it was stressful.
| Later, I "improved" the technique and learned to control the
| dream while blocking out the annoying music.
|
| Disclaimer: My message before ChatGPT correcteded because my
| English isn't good enough to me:
|
| As a kid I was so happy to "discover" that I can be mildly awake
| and control my dreams. It happen by mistake, I fall at sleep
| while listening music loudly, I was in a middle state of being
| awake because the loud music, and being sleep dreaming, in the
| dream I was as a observer, knowing that that was a dream, and
| with the music on the backround annoying me, it was stresfull.
| Later I "improved" the technique and was able to control the
| dream, and discard the annoying music.
| smitelli wrote:
| Your English is actually pretty good, for what that's worth.
| Not sure how long you've been speaking it or what language(s)
| you're coming from.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Up until I was around 10, most of my dreams were lucid - I
| didn't have to do anything special to 'enter' them. Then they
| became less and less frequent. The last one was when I was 15
| or so.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| For anyone not familiar, a common class of techniques people used
| to use (still do? Not mentioned in the article) involve regularly
| testing yourself to see if you're in a dream. Counting your
| fingers; in dreams, you may not have 5 per finger. (Sound
| familiar from a modern take?) Or, look at numbers and words; a
| digital clock; in dreams they may not make sense, but in real
| life they do. (OK, this is really sounding familiar...)
|
| The idea is that when you check while awake, you will pass the
| awake-check, but set up a habit pattern. While dreaming, you will
| observe weird stuff when this happens, realize it must then you
| must be dreaming; you then become _lucid_ , and can sort of
| control the dream, or at least be aware you're dreaming.
|
| It may or may not have worked for me a handful of times. It
| certainly felt so, but only briefly, and I can't confirm it was
| the desired effect. Would wake up shortly after each time.
| mobiledev2014 wrote:
| > OK, this is really sounding familiar...
|
| So you're saying the simulation architects used an older
| diffusion model for dreams.
|
| > It may or may not have worked for me a handful of times
|
| Exactly my experience. I used the exact strategy you mention
| (add pinching yourself, as old fashioned as that sounds) and it
| was almost too easy how quickly it worked, couple days I think.
| I questioned if it was real or not
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _So you're saying the simulation architects used an older
| diffusion model for dreams._
|
| I think these concepts are actually related - the things that
| end up messed up in dreams and diffusion models are things
| that have high information density. Faces, hands, books,
| phone screens, ship layouts etc all have a lot of information
| in them from a human perspective. If we pay attention then we
| can see the (lack of) this level of detail.
|
| This kind of lucid dreaming advice has worked for me a
| handful of times. They've been very memorable dreams.
| isomorphic- wrote:
| > Counting your fingers; in dreams, you may not have 5 per
| finger
|
| That sounds horrifying. 5 fingers per finger. Do those other 5
| fingers also have five fingers per finger, like a finger
| fractal gone out of control?
| alganet wrote:
| It's not horrifying when dreaming. It's like "yup, 7 fingers,
| totally normal, let's move on".
|
| In dreams, I've seen people vibrate drastically until they
| become part of the scenery. Or other insane and horrible to
| describe things. However, to "myself" in the dream, that was
| not as surprising as my recollection of it.
| Anon84 wrote:
| A lot of the motional subsystems in your brain are turned
| off when you dream so you don't react to things as you
| normally would. Nightmares, etc happen when those
| subsystems stay on for some reason (PTSD, for example). See
| Chap 10 (IIRC) https://amzn.to/3DzSLva
| the__alchemist wrote:
| A fractal coast of feeling; a strange loop, recurring.
| Nightmares within nightmares.
|
| Or, a keyboard accident.
| Shadowmist wrote:
| I had to stop doing reality checks because I would wake up soon
| after realizing that I was dreaming which caused me to miss out
| on needed sleep.
|
| Also lucid nightmares and false awakenings aren't great. Spin
| around in circles fast so everything is blurry and you might
| buy some time.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| This is very common, one of best tricks is to start
| spinning/looking around as much as possible - it'll keep you
| inside.
| intended wrote:
| Carlos Castaneda ?
|
| Looking at your hands worked for me. It was definitely a fun
| thing when I got it to work
| iamthejuan wrote:
| But if a person decided to count fingers to check if he is
| dreaming then he is already in lucid dreaming right? Because
| normally you do not know you are in a dream unless you are
| already in lucid dreaming.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| The goal is to make reality checks a habit. It turns out
| dream-you still has their habits.
| gpderetta wrote:
| A spinning top.
| Levitating wrote:
| > Sound familiar from a modern take?
|
| I am not sure what you're referring to but I remember watching
| an episode of some fictional show on Netflix where this method
| was used. Where a couple would count their fingers throughout
| the day so they could dream lucidly together.
|
| If I'd have to guess I think it was "Behind Her Eyes".
| valiant55 wrote:
| My first thought was totems from Inception.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i have a very vivid imagination to the point that in some
| circumstances when i think back to what i was imagining the
| memory "feels" like a dream. It's hard to describe but i can walk
| through scenarios is fine detail and then a few days later when i
| think back it's like remembering a dream. It's sort of like lucid
| dreaming but it takes a few days to remember it as a lucid dream.
| tiahura wrote:
| Unfortunately, at some point in life, barely awake = realizing
| you need to pee.
| gverrilla wrote:
| I barely dream nowadays. But it was intense in childhood and teen
| years. Maybe because of all the violence and stress of
| family/school/christianity.
| kindeyoowee wrote:
| tbh some dreams be hitting more than others some are just messed
| up lol just a lil note to the dream police
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