Lucid dreaming means
dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The term was coined by who used the word
"lucid" in the sense of mental clarity.
Lucidity usually begins in the midst of a dream when the dreamer realizes
that the experience is not occurring in physical reality, but is a dream.
Often this realization is triggered by the dreamer noticing some impossible
or unlikely occurrence in the dream, such as flying or meeting the deceased.
Sometimes people become lucid without noticing any particular clue in the
dream; they just suddenly realize they are in a dream. A minority of lucid
dreams (according to the research of LaBerge and colleagues, about 10 percent)
are the result of returning to REM (dreaming) sleep directly from an awakening
with unbroken reflective consciousness.
The basic definition
of lucid dreaming requires nothing more than becoming aware that you are dreaming.
However, the quality of lucidity can vary greatly. When lucidity is at a high
level, you are aware that everything experienced in the dream is occurring
in your mind, that there is no real danger, and that you are asleep in bed
and will awaken shortly. With low-level lucidity
you may be aware to a certain extent that you are dreaming, perhaps enough
to fly or alter what you are doing, but not enough to realize that the people
are dream representations, or that you can suffer no physical damage, or that
you are actually in bed.
Lucidity is not synonymous
with
dream control. It is possible to be lucid and have little control over
dream content, and conversely, to have a great deal of control without being
explicitly aware that you are dreaming. However, becoming lucid in a dream
is likely to increase the extent to which you can deliberately influence the
course of events. Once lucid, dreamers usually choose to do something permitted
only by the extraordinary freedom of the dream state, such as flying.
You always have the
choice of how much control you want to exert. For example, you could continue
with whatever you were doing when you became lucid, with the added knowledge
that you are dreaming. Or you could try to change everything--the dream scene,
yourself, other dream characters. It is not always possible to perform "magic"
in dreams, like changing one object into another or transforming scenes. A
dreamer's ability to succeed at this seems to depend a lot on the dreamer's
confidence. As Henry Ford said, "Believe you can, believe you can't; either
way, you're right." On the other hand, it appears there are some constraints
on dream control that may be independent of belief. See "Testing
the Limits of Dream Control: The Light and Mirror Experiment" for more
on this.
Lucid dreaming means
dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The term was coined by who used the word "lucid" in the sense of mental clarity.
Lucidity usually begins in the midst of a dream when the dreamer realizes
that the experience is not occurring in physical reality, but is a dream.
Often this realization is triggered by the dreamer noticing some impossible
or unlikely occurrence in the dream, such as flying or meeting the deceased.
Sometimes people become lucid without noticing any particular clue in the
dream; they just suddenly realize they are in a dream. A minority of lucid
dreams (according to the research of LaBerge and colleagues, about 10 percent)
are the result of returning to REM (dreaming) sleep directly from an awakening
with unbroken reflective consciousness.
The basic definition
of lucid dreaming requires nothing more than becoming aware that you are dreaming.
However, the quality of lucidity can vary greatly. When lucidity is at a high
level, you are aware that everything experienced in the dream is occurring
in your mind, that there is no real danger, and that you are asleep in bed
and will awaken shortly. With low-level lucidity
you may be aware to a certain extent that you are dreaming, perhaps enough
to fly or alter what you are doing, but not enough to realize that the people
are dream representations, or that you can suffer no physical damage, or that
you are actually in bed.
