Non Lucid Dreaming

Maya Chipana Suxo

WRD 104 SQ15

Formal Research Paper

On average the normal person sleeps around one third of his or her life. However, we put little to none attention to our sleep and dreams. Ever since we were born we experience dreaming and we are affected by them, but over time we start paying less attention to dreaming. This means we are literally ignoring around one third of our lives, but little do we know that we can actually do something meaningful with part of this time we spend on sleeping by lucid dreaming.

A lucid dream is a dream where the person is aware he is dreaming. Instances of waking up immediately on realising that one is dreaming do not count as lucid dreams. While lucid dreaming can be learnt, it also occurs spontaneously.

The frequency of spontaneous lucid dreams varies among individuals, with some being more likely to experience the phenomenon than others. Evidence suggests that as many as 82% of people report that they have experienced a lucid dream at least once in their lives according to the School of Psychology in the University of Lincoln, UK. The person realizes that he is in a dream by noticing something odd in the dream, by recognizing that it’s a nightmare or even it might be induced by different techniques such as sleeping listening to a recorded voice that repeats ‘this is a dream’. But what happens after we realize we are dreaming? Most people try to have fun with it by doing crazy things such as jumping from a building or swimming into the sea, after all the imagination is the limit when it comes to dreaming. But what if lucid dreaming could achieve more than just being a crazy dream? What if we can actually take advantage of lucid dreaming in real life or maybe get affected by it in a negative way? Many experts from different fields have questioned themselves that, and have conducted some research to give lucid dreaming meaningful functionality. Some say that is helpful and some say that is harmful but they all agree on one thing, it is not just a dream.
Lucid Dreaming is harmful
Addiction
Well since lucid dreaming could be fun some people would use it as a game or a built in simulator. The dreamer could built places better than in Minecraft or do some crazy ‘trips’ like if he was using drugs. As a result the dreamer could become addicted to these uses and therefore sleep more just to lucid dream, like a twelve year old boy with a new videogame. And just like the twelve year old might lower his grades, the dreamer might fail in some of his responsibilities. But since statistically not even the most skilled lucid dreamers can lucid dream neither every single night, nor they can lucid dream all night long. So even though the lucid dreamer would like to do so every time, this is not achievable therefore it can’t become an addiction.
Alienation
As I mentioned before this phenomenon doesn’t really happen to everybody, so when a lucid dreamer talk about this with a non-lucid dreamer, it might trigger some controversy and might make the lucid dreamer feel like he is alone.

Arno F. Wittig, Psychologist and Author of the book Schaum's outline of theory and problems of introduction to psychology explains that this happens especially with children that have gone through that and surprisingly found out that not everybody does this. The kid might think he is the only one in the world who does this and feel alienated. But of course, this is easily resolved by simply informing the person or most commonly the person will look for an explanation and will find it through a person or the

internet.
Dissociation
It has been argued that since people who lucid dream are more likely to remember their dreams they might start having a lot of memories from these dreams.

And maybe in the long run, start to mix and confuse real life and dreams. Like the example of someone finding something in the dream but in real life it is still lost, but the person is tricked by his dream memory.

Even though this is a fairly good point, mixing memories from reality and lucid dreams is not different from mixing memories from reality and normal dreams. So the lucidity of the dream doesn’t make it any less (or more) confusing.

Admittedly some of the cons of lucid dreaming are valid but only to certain degree rather than absolutely. Likewise there has been numerous research conducted for the possible benefits lucid dreaming could have to people’s lives. It is especially relevant to consider that even though lucid dreaming had become more popular among the last decade, it hasn’t reached the point where several fields of study have taken it into account. Nonetheless some have, and have portrayed their findings with the hope society starts using it as a tool rather than ignoring it.

Benefits of lucid dreaming

It enhances and improves motor

learning.
Daniel Erlacher, Docent at the University of Bern at Bern, Switzerland. Specialized in Sports and Recreatiion and Michael Schredl, Professor at The Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany believed that since we can do anything in our dreams, we could practice some physical activities in the dream and improve in these in real life. To demonstrate this, forty participants were asked to toss 10-cent coins into a cup and hit as many as possible out of 20 tosses. Waking performance was measured and recorded. Out of the forty, twenty participants were lucid dreamers and they were asked to achieve a lucid dream and practice tossing coins to a cup in their dreams. The seven participants that succeeded in having a lucid dream practiced the experimental task in their dreams. And the next morning these seven participants showed a significant improvement in the task. Erlacher and Schredl concluded that even though the practice is not in real life, lucid dreaming offers an alternative similar to virtual reality where our minds simulate real life logically and we can improve various tasks practicing in our dreams. These is because even though endurance cant be improved in dreams, the motor learning improves since the practice is being held, in other words, practice makes perfect. Various people have reported improving their skills such as sports or other technique activities by practicing in their lucid dreams.
Improves problem solving ability
Since Lucid dreamers are the ones who figure out that the dream is in fact a dream. That could also mean that they are hand by hand with details and when the dream is exhausting or a nightmare the dreamer resolves is a dream. But more than the reason why this is true Patrick Bourke, PhD, University of Lincoln made an experiment arguing that the ability of lucid dreaming could lead the person to be better at solving problems of insight(perspective, understanding, or deduction) which helps in the awaken life. To test this, sixty eight participants were recruited and were divided by groups in non-lucid dreamers, occasional lucid dreamers and frequent lucid dreamers. They were asked some questions about their dreaming habits like how often they recall their dreams and how often if ever they lucid dream, followed by the test which would be presented on a computer. This test consisted of a series of compound remote associate problems which assess deduction problem solving ability. In this study it was found that those who report a high frequency of lucid dreams are also more successful at solving insight problems. Specifically, they showed the ability to see the connections needed to solve compound remote associate problems.
Can help significantly Narcolepsy and PTSD
Both Narcolepsy and PTSD are been known to be cured or helped by lucid dreaming. One of the most important symptoms of Narcolepsy and PTSD is that patients experience constant nightmares affecting their lives by taking away the tranquility of simply sleeping and resting. People who suffer from narcolepsy have more lucid dreams. The reason people with narcolepsy may have more lucid dreams than others could be that the brain region responsible for lucid dreaming is more active during their sleep than in people who sleep normally. Narcoleptic patients are always on the border between waking and sleeping, and that seems to be a condition that enhances the probability to get lucid dreaming. Since nightmares are a frequent symptom in narcolepsy, Lucid dreaming, has been demonstrated to be of therapeutic value for recurrent nightmares. Since the dreamer can escape the nightmares by realizing that is a nightmare and beginning a lucid dream. "If you dream of a monster chasing you, and you suddenly become aware that the monster is not real and there is no real threat, that immediately either stops your nightmare, or at least takes most of the anxiety or the threat out of the nightmare," Martin Dresler, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, who was at the time the study was conducted, told Live Science. Once the dreamer knows that there is no thread because he realizes is just a nightmare, that realization eases the anxiety and either wake up or become a lucid dream. These findings suggest that people with narcolepsy could combat their nightmares even better by enhancing their lucid dreaming ability. Furthermore, narcoleptic patients that don’t experience lucid dreaming could benefit by learning how to induce it. Hence, after inducing successfully lucid dreaming several times this becomes a habit both conditions are significantly improved and eased by.
Clearly we can’t ignore the amount of time we spend sleeping on a lifetime, or even daily. Consequently, the possibility of doing something useful and meaningful within that time sounds amazing especially when it doesn’t require money, time or energy. The sole thought that a lucid dreamer can have a little fun sounds appealing, but after exploring the various qualities of it obviously there is so much more than just fun.
All in all lucid dreams can help people physically by improving motor learning, mentally by improving our ability to solve problems of insight and even spiritually by giving us the peace of mind that nightmares will no longer reside in our dreams.
Even though all these studies have been done for the sake of making a beneficial use for lucid dreams and have shown and proved surprising benefits, the number of research and conducted studies are extremely low. The beauty of lucid dreaming resides on the lack of limits of possibilities, shouldn’t the benefits be more? Or at least more widely used?
To put it another way, since we can improve motor learning in lucid dreams just like a football player practicing in virtual reality, how can the rest of athletes benefit by this? Especially those sports that need constant repetition and muscle memory like ballet dancing or synchronized swimming? And if someone can improve their insight (perspective, understanding, or deduction) how much could benefit students at school or college? Or maybe that could improve people overall IQ? Additionally if someone can ease nightmares by learning to lucid dreams, maybe parents could teach that to children so they don’t suffer from nightmares anymore. Finally, since it doesn’t require money, energy or time maybe busy people can use this as a tool to have a time for themselves and have a mini vacation through this. Possibilities are endless and hopefully in the next years there are more conducted studies, research and books about it so society could be better informed and use it if desired for different purposes.