How to control your Dreams (Oprah's O Magizine)

This article is from ⚘Oprah's⚘"O Magazine"
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How to Control Your Dreams

Christian Gerki posted it in his California Dreaming Facebook page from Robert Waggoner page.

How to Control Your Dreams

By*Serena Alagappan

Jun 28, 2019

Ever wish you could ice skate across a winter sky, catching crumbs of gingerbread, like flakes of snow, on your tongue? How about conquering a monster in a nightmare, bouncing between mountain peaks, walking through walls, or reading minds? Have you ever longed to hold the hand of someone you loved and lost?

If you want to fulfill your fantasies, or even face your fears, you might want to try taking some control of your dreams (try*being the operative). People practiced in lucid dreaming—the phenomenon of being aware that you are dreaming while you are asleep—claim that the experience allows adventure, self-discovery, and euphoric joy.

Dr. Barrett, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School and specializes in dream research, explains that “most people can learn to lucid dream, but it comes much more easily for some people than others.”

“It’s always a continuum,” says Dr. Barrett, author of*The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving-And How You Can Too, and “it varies for every individual.”

The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving-And How You Can Too

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https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a28220...tUd0Oy83FIR4Yg

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Some lucid dreamers recognize they’re dreaming but gain no control. Others can control their emotional reactions, but not their surroundings. Still others may “script it completely, as if creating a computer-generated animated film with a program.” Despite the striking differences between people, Dr. Barrett says that the majority of people who can recall their dreams most nights, can also increase their chances of lucid dreaming by adhering to certain techniques.

First, a brief history on the research behind lucid dreaming.

According to Dr. Barrett, two studies conducted in the 1970s, one by English psychologist Keith Hearne in 1975, and another by Stanford University researcher, Stephen LaBerge, scientifically validated lucid dreaming. Dr. Barrett recounts that “they both dreamed up this concept, that everything is paralyzed in your body during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, except your eyes. So, they came up with the idea of people doing eye signals out of a dream to indicate that they were lucid, and they both succeeded.” The act of lucid dreaming had been described for centuries, but before those studies, many dismissed self-reports. Barrett says Hearne and LaBerge proved that people “saying they were aware in their dreams, could indeed eye signal out of what was dreaming sleep,” which was evidence of their lucidity.

⚘Robert Waggoner,⚘ the former president of the*International Association for the Study of Dreams, states that lucid dreams are not only scientifically proven, but also more common than people think: "half the population naturally has an occasional lucid dream, and when it comes to college students in the United States, surveys show up to*71% have had lucid dreams."


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It's nice to see LDing getting some more widespread attention. Apparently both Laberge and Hearne both thought of the REM eye movement experiment independently of each other with Hearne having thought of and performed it a few years earlier with participant Alan Worsley.