How useful can lucid dreaming be?

Hey, I have recently gotten back into lucid dreaming and my first lucid dream after the break was a very useful one for me, I would say. I am into art and I went to a dream art gallery, which gave me a lot of inspiration, it was very useful to me in real live. I painted one of the paintings that I saw in the gallery, everyone thought it was a very interesting painting.

Anyway, I know that lucid dreaming can be very fun, but how useful can a normal lucid dream be? Do you have any ideas for things someone could do in a lucid dream that could help them in real life? Have you ever had a very useful lucid dream?

My interests are art, science and learning languages mostly, so if you happen to have some great ideas for what I could do please tell me :nodyes: If your ideas are only helpful for other hobbies please post them too, I am very interested.

It's most commonly useful for facing your fears and sparking creativity. And according to some info i've read, people can practice mechanical skills and things like presenting a public speech. Although i don't know how accurate mechanical skills are because of dream physics, mental barriers are easily a good benefit that we can use lucid dreaming to handle. Someone afraid of heights can lucid dream and intentionally put themselves in a safe environment that would be very close to the real thing (heights but it's totally safe since it's a dream and you can't get hurt), so that's that.

They can be useful for self exploration. Normal dreams can too. I sometimes have strong emotional responses or DCs will act in extreme ways such as crying or yelling at me. Sometimes I did not realize conciously that any issue existed, but the dream forces me to question "why would that be in my dream."

How useful can living be?

I do have an idea when it comes to learning a new language. It stated that are hearing with in our ears is not completely shut down while we sleep. There are video's out there on Youtube for your desire language, that usually range from an hour to 5 hour sessions. Try falling asleep to this with head phones or ear buds and become lucid, you should be able to hear the video with in the dream environment.

Learning while lucid is much easier surprisingly. Practice and memorize the word while you are dreaming and when you wake up it should feel like solid knowledge. I always like to think of it as downloading. You can do this with other things besides language as well.

I think the possibilities are endless.

One of the most common uses is for therapeutic purposes... finding and working with traumas, fears, closure with someone, etc.

I've also heard stories from people that healed a physical issue or disease through lucid dreaming.

As jzinser said above, the possibilities are limitless.

Given your interest in art, lucid dreaming is perfect for artistic inspiration! I can't remember exactly where, but someone on the internet has made many of paintings from lucid dreams! Amazing!
Dreams in general, have also made breakthroughs in science. You could win a Nobel prize. :P

Keep lucid dreaming. :)

Edit: Found the art: Check out Epic Dewfall's work.

Clare Johnson is a lucid dream researcher who did a phD thesis on the applications of lucid dreaming for creativity - interviewing people who used lucid dreams for their own creative work - so mostly looking at the ways artists and writers can use it to explore potential directions for their work.

She has some chapters on this in her new book "Llewellyn's Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming" - I've not read it, but you can get an idea of where she went with it in any of her online interviews, for instance :
http://www.dreaminglucid.com/wp-cont...ohnson-PhD.pdf