Erh! Is LDing Bad For You

[Tyler Durten]

I was talking about this with my sister. She studies Psychology at uni and as we were talking she mentioned something which caught my attention Dreaming is unconcious, if your Lding we're basically concious in the sense that 1, we wake up - hence breaking our sleeping cycle and 2, we're concious and our minds are still working - cause we are deciding what to do in our dreams so isnt this bad for the brain - cause we need our sleep

[pj]

Dreaming is unconcious, if your Lding we're basically concious in the sense that 1, we wake up - hence breaking our sleeping cycle and 2, we're concious and our minds are still working - cause we are deciding what to do in our dreams so isnt this bad for the brain - cause we need our sleep The REM cycle is not broken during lucid dreaming. Our minds are often MORE active during normal REM than when awake. Decades of research and experience have demonstrated no ill effects whatsoever from lucid dreaming, and certainly nothing implying that it might be "bad for the brain." We're still getting our sleep!

[TempleGuard]

No this is stupid. If you use some techniques you can sleep for 3 hours a day so our brain dont need that much rest.

[Redrivertears]

Hey, I've heard this argument a lot (just never from a psychology student who, in my humble opinion, should know better ) It goes from the faulty assumption that the unconscious and the conscious are two different things. They are not. Any decent theory on consciousness will tell you that your consciousness is PART of the unconscious. Its a part of the unconscious that has become conscious. They are not two seperate entities. That means that any dream in which you're conscious, is still governed by unconscious dynamics. There's just something added to it (the conscious aspect). Now additionally, take any lucid dream you want, and if you actually pay attention to it, you will notice it is still 99.9 percent an unconscious thing. While we may control our own actions, everything else tends to remain unconscious. Even if we had really great dreamcontrol and decided to change our dreamscene, and consciously chose to 'be at the beach' so to speak, the entire makeup of the beach would be unconscious. The countours, the shapes, the grain of the sand, the line of the sea, the waves, the color of the water, the color of the nightsky, the amount of stars in the sky. Even the most conscious lucid dreamer would directly control only a miniscule part of his lucid dream. Everything else remains firmly under unconscious control. So I think the argument that lucid dreams could be dangerous to ones health on the sole premise that 'dreams should be unconscious' can be safely filed away and forgotten Just my 2 cents, -Redrivertears-

[NewAgeGamer]

All of these replies are great responses as to why lucid dreams are not dangerous. Even if none of these arguments sway you, however, keep in mind that even the likes of Stephen LaBerge don't lucid dream in every dream of every night. Most of us aren't even close. There are still plenty of normal dreams if you're worried about your brain needing sleep. Rest assured, however, that lucid dreaming will never harm your brain. It never really "shuts off" anyway, just goes into more relaxed states.

[Sugarglider11]

I believe pj is correct, your brain has to work more to create the dream scapre and every little detail in the dream, that could also be why you dont know your dreaming most of the time, you brain is too busy building the dream. In no way is lucid dreaming dangerous, its just like a regular dream, but you know its a dream, and regular dreams are not dangerous. so dont worry, tell your sister she is wrong and totaly safe.

[G0MPgomp]

No.. Read up on sleep paralysis.. No, wait, that is all crap.. Experience it! :p We even dream, when not in REM ... How is that for a claim, for you sister? I bet she wil refuse it strongly.. Tell her to look at the MR scans of a sleeping brain..

[LucidDreamGod]

Ok first of all in dreams you are usuly conscious to some extent, if you arn't conscious you wouldn't beable to think, people strangely assume that lucid dreams means conscious, infact it's just the awarness of the fact that one is dreaming, the word lucid is usualy implied with high levels of conscious awarness though, the two go together, but dreams arn't unconscious, I know it's a very diffrent way of thinking but yeah, we think in are dreams and thinking is a conscious act, even if you say we think unconsciously, can't you recall a time in a dream were you made very clear dicioutions? Next is obssession, now thats not the word I would use, you'd better beleive as soon as I start having lucid dreams on command and learning to control 100% I'll be obssessed, it's more of the fact that you start paying less attention to real life thats the problem.