EMDR and lucidity

I'm having some (free) EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy to deal with some bullying issues from my childhood.

Several years ago I tried very hard to lucid dream but failed to achieve very much. Then the night after my second session of EMDR I found myself lucid twice in the same night with some amazing visuals, but not much control.

Just had my third session yesterday and last night I got lucid again, twice. The second dream was the longest ever and I did all sorts and again the visuals were breathtaking - I looked at tree bark and then the flowers and the colours were just stunningly beautiful. I threw fireballs from my hands. I said my own name and knew exactly who I was in the dream. I can't wait for my next EMDR session next week!

What is this all about? It seems to be a very powerful way to induce lucid dreaming...

Anyone else experienced this?

This sounds awesome. Do you know of any online free tools that might work somewhat like your sessions?

Sorry Glen, I don't.

I didn't get to have another EMDR session, it's another week until my next one still. I did have another lucid 2 nights ago, and this is without any form of induction method -I'm not doing reality checks, or even really reading very much except when I report back on here.

I've done a search for EMDR induced lucid dreams and there's nothing except someone who says that dreams can be 'more realistic' after EMDR. I suspect that as not many people have had this therapy yet most people wouldn't even recognise that they were lucid and not notice it even happening.

There's a lot of scope for research here - is it the eye movements alone? the stimulation of left and right hemispheres? or the intense memory recall and visualisation that goes with it? If anyone wants to experiment I think it's an area that could be very rewarding.

Smudgefish, that sounds awesome!

believe it or not...a while ago i had this idea in mind for using EMDR for gaining lucidity and i wanted to start a survey (first of all on myself) but as life is sometimes a bitch various things crossed my plans so i had to delay it for later.
now your report gives me hope that it may work as i wish.

how long is your therapy? 1 hour?

thanx again and if you have news report it here i am glad to see new methods of gaining lucidity!
life is a mystery!
cheers! :)

SonatArctica,

My therapy has been for about 1hr per session of EMDR with about 30mins of talking wrapped around that.

I'm interested to know why you had the idea to use EMDR to induce lucidity? It wasn't something that I expected, but so far it has had a very pronounced effect.

I wonder if perhaps recalling dreams whilst doing the eye movements might even boost the effect and make it very specific to inducing lucidity. I wish I had the time to experiment.

PS I have found this online EMDR tool: Easy EMDR (although not sure if it's ok to post links here) - the 'fast' setting is about the speed my therapist uses.

That's it! I'm going to start experimenting...

tonight it's 2 minutes 1hr before bed, red blob, speed fast, recalling dreams during the eye movements

I will report back tomorrow.

Nothing after last experiment.

Tonight it's 4 x 1 minutes with 1 minute breaks, extra fast, blue blob, not thinking about anything in particular.