Imagination and creativity have both been associated with more frequent lucid dreaming. Introspection , and a tendency to rely more heavily on internal thoughts rather than external information have also been linked to lucid dreams. Research shows that people who can effectively split their attention between different tasks, or points of focus, may be more apt to have lucid dreams. And some research suggests that stronger overall dream recall—a greater ability to remember all types of dreams after waking—may be linked to a greater capacity for lucid dreaming.
Recently, studies have shown lucid dreaming is more common in people with narcolepsy. In narcolepsy, brain activity is atypical, and some of the neural activity that promotes wakefulness and suppresses sleep are altered. This results in poor sleep control, intense and persistent daytime sleepiness, difficulty sleeping at night, and dream-like hallucinations.
People with narcolepsy tend also to have more nightmares and better dream recall than people without the disorder. Some fascinating recent research conducted by scientists in the United Kingdom has also linked lucid dreaming to sleep paralysis, another striking sleep experience. Sleep paralysis occurs when we wake from sleep unable to move or to speak. Both sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming appear to be related to transitions in and out of REM sleep.
And REM sleep is a sleep stage characterized by vivid, active dreaming. This research showed an association between the frequency of sleep paralysis and the frequency of lucid dreaming. It also highlighted some important differences between the two sleep phenomena. Sleep paralysis was connected to higher stress and to lower sleep quality.
On the other hand, lucid dreaming appeared to be a much more positive sleep experience. In this study, lucid dreaming was not associated with stress or reduced sleep quality. It was linked to more positive waking daydreaming experiences, and to more vivid waking imagination.
You might be asking: why would people want to encourage lucid dreaming? But dreams have long been thought to be vehicles for emotional processing, problem solving, idea exploring and creativity. Since ancient times, dreams have been thought to be a forum for both healing and discovery related to our waking lives.
In our modern age, rigorous scientific study has given us data to support all of these long-held thoughts about the usefulness of dreams. Scientists, sleep experts and therapists including me! Working intentionally with lucid dreams can be effective in reducing the intensity, frequency and emotional disruption of nightmares. In a lucid dream setting the dreamer has the capacity to push back against negative and disturbing dream narratives, emotional content and events.
No matter how much practice we get at observing how the real world works, and no matter how many times we see weird things happening in a dream, we never seem to realize, at the moment when our father turns into a giraffe, that this is most likely to happen in a dream world, and that we are therefore dreaming. This is a shame, because most guides to lucid dreaming assure us that once we realize we're in a dream, we can direct the dream the same way we can direct our imagination.
Whether the kind of real, directed, I-can-fly lucid dreams that these guidebooks describe exist or not, there does seem to be some kind of link between imagination, awareness, and critical thinking.
One of the first studies on sleep found that two things are missing during dreams: critical thought and imagination. Lack of critical thought is obvious. When we are asleep we accept at face value all kinds of weird stuff. Lack of imagination is less obvious, but another major part of dreaming.
Although, when conscious, we can imagine being impossible places or doing impossible things, we almost never are able to use our imaginations in a dream.
No one dreams about day-dreaming. Two more studies suggest that people who have lucid dreams may be more creative. While these findings are preliminary and more research is needed before any concrete assertion can be made, Dr.
Roth says. And dreaming is the process of your brain organizing and placing things. Nightmares, Dr. Roth notes, occur when your brain is trying to organize things in a detrimental way.
And one way to help you break that pattern is a treatment called imagery rehearsal therapy. The patient will then rehearse the dream, rereading the narrative and visualizing it.
Some patients, she says, even choose to make their own movies of the rescripted version with their smartphone. But for people interrupting their sleep pattern to induce lucid dreaming, that can lead to sleep deprivation which can affect alertness, memory, stress and even lead to issues like high blood pressure and diabetes.
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Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Mental Health. Medically reviewed by Elaine K. Luo, M. When lucid dreaming occurs. How to experience lucid dreams. The benefits of lucid dreaming.
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