Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
Maybe you can even use this special state of mind to directly influence your body - say - boost immune-system function, regeneration/repair-effects, maybe even help with more complex stuff like chronic pain..?
Maybe esp. in nREM LD for some things
Yea! this is something that I have first hand experience with. One example is when I was a little kid, about 12, I had these warts on my hands and nothing the doctors did would make them go away. They tried burning them, freezing them, chemically burning them, cutting them out, nothing would work. So the doctor finally told me that I should try to use my mind to get rid of them. So I came home and meditated for a couple hours on my immune system recognizing them and getting rid of them. It was one of the first times that I have focused so intensely on controlling my body. Three days later, the great wart civilization died and fell off my hand and it has never returned.

And you mentioned the placebo effect. I believe that it is the single most powerful, underutilized tool in western medicine. I also suspect that the extent to which you can use the placebo effect is tied in with the very skills that are developed in lucid dreaming. It's one of the things that I really want to research