Lucid Dreaming

Three ways it leads to a better life.

- Elli Jacobs

Lucid dreaming can improve our mental health, help us overcome personal challenges, make us more creative and give us answers to existential questions which make our waking lives better. But what exactly is it and how can we make it happen?

“Lucid dreaming is the art of knowing that you’re dreaming while the dream is still happening,” explains Dr Denholm Aspy, lucid dreaming researcher at the University of Adelaide. “In regular dreams, we don’t actually realise it and just go with what’s happening. In a lucid dream you become aware – ‘Aha! I’m dreaming!’ – while you’re still asleep.”

What goes on in the mind during lucid dreaming occurs between rapid eye movement (REM) – the stage of sleep where we have the most vivid dreams – and being awake. The validity of this was first demonstrated in experiments by psychophysiologist Dr Stephen LaBerge.

Dr LaBerge had his subjects signal the onset of a lucid dream through eye movements and fist clenches, which were monitored by a polygraph, revealing that these had occurred during REM sleep.

“In a lucid dream, the pre-frontal cortex regions of the brain involved in self-awareness and critical thinking while we’re awake are reactivated during lucidity,” explains Dr Aspy. “This seems to be what allows you to experience the dream state consciously and with self-reflective awareness.”

The potential benefits of lucid dreaming can be vast. “For one, it’s a lot of fun. You can have extraordinary experiences like flying around or walking through walls,” explains Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: Plain and Simple.