Thread: Article - Is it a good idea to cultivate lucid dreaming ?

Thanks for sharing! I think I’d swap any night - sleepless or not for a night with a lucid. Even with sleep disruption you can still wake feeling energized and with uplifted mood .

I think it is a fantastic idea to cultivate lucid dreaming!

But....as an older dreamer who gets up at 4:00 AM every day I have had to make serious concessions to the need for sleep during my first year of training. My intention has always been to make lucid dreaming an integral part of my life so, with that in mind, I made the decision early on to not try to achieve lucidity through sleep interruption.

I have instead worked hard at creating a bedrock of intrinsic dream clarity and awareness through strong daytime practices. I have also worked hard on increasing dream recall in general. When those two are working together well on a good night these days, I can get to bed early, sleep very well for six hours or more, get up and write down two or three very clear dreams.........and then get back to bed with an hour or more of prime lucid dreaming time still in front of me.

These days I am attaining strong lucidity once a week or so through wake/hypnagogic or sensory induced techniques while still getting all the sleep that this old body craves.

Hmm, I haven't seen one of these papers for a while. It's odd that, while combing all those references (pretty much the sum total of scientific research to be found, I'd imagine), the author didn't find any conclusions about real danger.

The author did mention a relationship between poor sleep quality and LD'ing, but failed to confirm that it was the LD'ing causing poor sleep quality, instead of the chance that a person who experiences poor sleep quality in general has a better chance to be lucid. For instance, a person who fully wakes up several times a night (like, say, me) has a much better chance to be lucid than a person who sleeps soundly through the night, because the light sleeper has more opportunity to induce LD's and -- given that his waking-life consciousness is hovering closely throughout the night -- his resultant mindset may provide a clear advantage. Oh, and yes, psychotics probably should not practice LD'ing, but that I think rates a "duh," more than a warning.

I guess any studies of the LD'ing process are worth having, but I have a feeling that a study of the dangers of LD'ing will come up empty; unless someone proves that the occasional night of slightly broken sleep is a real hazard, which I doubt.

Oh, and anecdotally, I've had many thousands of LD's over the last 40 years, and I'm still here and my mental health, as far as I know, is reasonably sound... if anything, thanks to my LD'ing -- and my overall prioritizing of my dreaming life in general -- I may be in better shape mentally and cognitively today than I would have been had I not interrupted all those sleep cycles.

I hope members here will take the warning with a grain of salt (I have a feeling that will happen anyway )

I've just finished reading that article and it coincides with my recent concerns regarding the regular usage of sleep disruption techniques such as WBTB. Would there be any detrimental side effects of doing WBTB, say, everyday for a few decades without stopping? Similar to the author's experiences, I myself still haven't been able to find any conclusive studies on this; it seems like most lucid dreaming material is biased in favor of lucid dreaming.

While it may be true that there are not a lot of studies to help guide us into the night we are fortunate to have this site with experienced dreamers like Sageous as an amazing resource.

Originally Posted by vbflame

Would there be any detrimental side effects of doing WBTB, say, everyday for a few decades without stopping?

I think we need to look at the studies that do exist regarding the importance of sleep to good health and correlate those studies to how we practice. Like Sageous, I wake up naturally a few times a night. I have learned to use that natural cycle to create lucid induction protocols that work for me.

There is no question as to the importance of getting good sleep and in my brief time on this path I have figured out a few things that work well for me:

1. Concentrate on sleep during the early sleep cycles and save those WBTB's for the last cycle......or even for the weekend nights when you may be able to sleep longer in the morning

2. Be flexible. if you are feeling a little drained, call an audible (sorry...it's football playoff season here in the States) and go for a MILD or SSILD instead that night so you can go to sleep and take what comes your way.

3. Get to know your personal sleep cycle and work with it.

Originally Posted by lenscaper

I think it is a fantastic idea to cultivate lucid dreaming!

But....as an older dreamer who gets up at 4:00 AM every day I have had to make serious concessions to the need for sleep during my first year of training. My intention has always been to make lucid dreaming an integral part of my life so, with that in mind, I made the decision early on to not try to achieve lucidity through sleep interruption.

I have instead worked hard at creating a bedrock of intrinsic dream clarity and awareness through strong daytime practices. I have also worked hard on increasing dream recall in general. When those two are working together well on a good night these days, I can get to bed early, sleep very well for six hours or more, get up and write down two or three very clear dreams.........and then get back to bed with an hour or more of prime lucid dreaming time still in front of me.

These days I am attaining strong lucidity once a week or so through wake/hypnagogic or sensory induced techniques while still getting all the sleep that this old body craves.

I've never been a fan of on purpose get-up-stay-up-WBTB. I've done accidental WBTBs after realizing I just can't fall back to sleep, getting out of bed and doing something until I feel drowsy, then going BTB and dreaming. But the kind where you wake up, get up on purpose, sit in a chair, meditate, etc., just is not for me. And I've attempted numerous micro-WBTBs (wake, then perform WILD/DILD/SILD attempts -- usually these have the affect of fully waking me up). I wake up very quickly, so if I want to sleep more after a bathroom break, I generally need to immediately lie back down and blank my mind in order to fall asleep, or I risk tossing and turning for hours.

So my approach has always been just like yours, lenscaper: strong daytime work on enhancing clarity/attention/reflection/memory, emphasis on dream recall, with strong intention/goal setting for LDs. As a result 99% of my LDs are DILDs, and I have had a ton of semi-lucids, and quite a number of "epic" non-lucids: long, vivid, present, highly detailed, which I value just as much if not more than my LDs (which tend to be short-ish in comparison).

p.s. I think dream practice, with the emphasis on becoming a lucid person in general, is a very worthwhile goal .

I hear often from some people that "they wish they could stop LDing because they always wake up feeling unrested".. It is not the case for me. Even if I have several long LD's a night I always wake up feeling refreshed. In regards to sleep disturbance and SP - I did notice after practicing regularly that I experienced more SP and also that I would more fully wake up after each dream (REM phase). It was never hard for me to fall back asleep though and I believe that is key to keeping your dream architecture intact. I am unsure as to the sleep disturbance due to WBTB and other methods and/or techniques because I don't use them.. As a natural LDer, almost all my lucid dreams occur spontaneously or sometimes from WILD.

Also, having worked in a sleep lab, I must say that everybody except pediatric patients wake up after REM phase of sleep, perhaps only for a few seconds (not long enough to remember) but the brain does wake up before returning to a deep sleep phase.


... I have to give them points for using the word "indubitably" though. lol

I definitely believe it could leave some feeling unrested. Especially someone with a history of insomnia or someone attempting new techniques. A couple months ago I spent 2-3 days attempting wild technique (it left me in a strange semi awake groggy trance for hours). Also w insomnia if your body is 'resting' basically laying in bed 2/3 hrs without sleeping, you'll typically feel worse in the morning. New techniques often require much patience and persistence (could be weeks/months of practice..when not technically sleeping)) Depending on route w dream experimentation, it's not illogical same thing could happen (as with body 'resting') Not exactly dangerous..but could leave someone tired.