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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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