By definition, lucid dreaming refers to any occasion when a sleeping person is aware that they are dreaming. But, it’s also used to describe the idea of being able to control those dreams. Think: Inception. Today, lucid dreaming has evolved into an industry worthy of a discussion.

Allan Hobson, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, puts it rather simply:

We don’t really know if there are real psychological advantages, but I can tell you that it has huge entertainment value. It’s like going to the movies and not paying for your ticket.

Lucid dreaming has a rich history: In 1867, Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys wrote an instruction manual entitled Dreams and How To Guide Them before a Dutch psychiatrist, Frederick Van Eeden, coined the term “lucid dreaming” in the early 20th century.

Then there is this:

An early “dream machine” was created in the late 70’s by Keith Hearne.

A lucid dreamer himself, Hearne was determined to prove the phenomenon in a series of trials at Liverpool University.

From a bed in a laboratory, wired up to a polygraph machine, a sleeping subject was able to move his eyes according to a pre-agreed pattern – left then right many times in quick succession.

The study was then repeated by Steve LaBerge in California.

Hobson said this was the “first time you could show that there were objective correlates between dreams and the outside world.”

But references to lucid dreaming stretch back at least as far as Tibetan Buddhists in the eighth century. For them, this was one stage in the practice of “dream yoga”.

Rory Mac Sweeney, a dentist and lucid dreaming expert from Islington, London:

You’re only bound by gravity if you believe in it. A couple of years ago there were about four or five people organising meetings, now there are closer to 50, and that’s in the capital alone.

An industry has thus been born, and a spate of innovations from smartphone apps to specialist eye masks, are all promising the ability to influence our dreams.

Dreaming groups are booming, and people are paying £40 for interpretations.

Dream:ON, the most popular of the many new smartphone apps now, was developed by psychologist Richard Wiseman (no relation).

His app has seen over half a million downloads in just six weeks. “The new wave of interest is led by technology,” he explains.

He says his app allows users to choose their dream before bed, and it then plays sound cues once they have entered the right phase of sleep.

One user said:

When I selected birdsong, for example, I found myself dreaming that I was in a green and sunny field.

Strictly speaking, that isn’t lucid dreaming, because it doesn’t offer users the ability to control the dream from within the dream because they had been prompted by a sound, but there are many more apps which promise just that.

Singularity Experience, Dreamz, Sigmund and Lucid Dream Brainwave all work in a similar way, by playing subtle audio cues whilst the user is asleep. Not enough to wake them, but hopefully sufficient to trigger awareness inside a dream.

More curious still are the specialist sleep masks which attempt to make a lucid experience more likely.

The Remee, from Brooklyn based inventors Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan, is the latest such device, and it confirmed the public appetite for dream control.

Attempting to raise $35 000 to develop the product, the pair saw a deluge of public contributions totalling over $500 000.

“We wanted to bring lucid dreaming into the mainstream,” says McGuigan.

By firing a set of LED lights over the eyelids once the user is asleep, the mask claims to offer a visual reminder to a dreamer who hopes to gain control.

Interesting.

Either way, movies like Inception and the Science of Sleep have paved the way and opened channels for thought and discussion on the matter.

Mac Sweeney continued:

Inception has been a major factor, it’s helped to shed the new age connotations. Now it’s seen as glamorous, even sophisticated.

Disappointingly, Hobson is honest: “lucid dreaming is very hard work and won’t happen for everyone.”

There is also definitely no guarantee that the apps work, but through patience and discipline, more and more people are actively finding themselves inside a dream, which they can begin to manipulate.

[Source: BBC]