Thread: Science Fair + Lucid Dreaming?

If you could get a good number of volunteers, and if you had enough time, you could run an experiment to see if one technique is more effective than another in increasing the frequency of lucidity.

Ah that would be a good idea! I have until February to get everything done. That would actually make it very easy to make a hypothesis and prove it. But there is only one problem. That would require human subjects/surveryee's which would mean I would need to get a signature. Additionally I would need a parent signature for those under 18. However, if there was a poll already conducted and I took information from there I could possibly work it. My only problem is convincing my teacher the information is from a legitimate source.

There is an experiment that i've been wanting to try, but i don't get ld's frequently enough to try yet. I've been wanting to test whether or not a person can directly control the physical body's breathing while in an ld. I know that eye movement can be controlled, because i'm pretty sure that stephen laberge proved it. So i was wondering if breathing could be controlled also.

The experiment:
1. Make up a pattern of breathes that is easily memorable and short. Maybe it could be a part of the rhythm to your favorite song.
2. Set up a way to audibly (even better with video) record yourself while you sleep.
3. Get into an ld and do the breathing pattern. Try to do it 2 or 3 times so that in the recording it is easily discerned. But you have to be careful, because i think a dramatic change in breathing could potentially wake you up.
4. Listen to the recording and search for the breathing pattern. If you find it, then hypothesis proved! If you don't find it, try the experiment a few more times.

Anybody have some feedback?

^^ That is very interesting! I can't think of any other way to consciously control your breathing unless you are lucid. But is there any practical use for that experiment or just to prove you still have some control over your physical body while sleeping?

I'm not sure if there are really any practical uses for the experiment . I know that i want to see what happens with the experiment out of sheer curiosity. I know that dreams can effect your breathing (e.x. nightmare = excessive breathing, maybe feeling of being out of breath). I think that this would prove that even while dreaming you can still have some control over your physical body. This experiment would add one more thing to the small list of bodily things you can control while in a dream: eye movement and breathing (granted that the experiment works). I don't think anything else can be controlled since sp cuts off communication with the rest of the body.

Another thing that this could potentially be used for is a signal from the dream world to real life. If someone were to be watching you while you sleep and you give this breathing pattern (signal); it could be like you were saying, "Hey! I'm lucid dreaming right now!" This could be used as a method to determine almost the exact moment you become lucid. If you become lucid, you could immediately give the signal, and someone watching you or the device that is recording the experiment could determine when you became lucid. Maybe this could even determine whether dream time is real time. Let's say you have a set breathing pattern with a set speed at which it is performed. When you get into an ld and perform the breathing pattern at that set speed, you could then check the recording to see if the speed is consistent. If the breathing pattern is slower in the recording than what was performed in the dream, then perhaps the dream time was moving faster than real life time, or just the opposite could be true. I know there is a lot of room for underlying variables that could throw off the dream time part of the experiment, but there could be potential there. One problem could be that each individual dream moves at its own rate; one dream could progress faster or slower than the next dream.

I know that at the beginning of the post I said that i couldn't think of any practical applications for the experiment, but they've been coming to me as i've been typing this post. This next one is my favorite application out of all of them and this just popped into my head. What if you could use your breathes as morse code? I know that it would be a one-way communication, because nobody could have a conversation with you in the real world while you were dreaming, but this could be a means by which someone could send a message from the dream world to the real world. Maybe this could be used as a way to describe what your dream is like as it is happening. One problem i see with this is that morse code my tend to be too lengthy. This could result in you having an ld in which you are doing nothing but giving strange breathe patterns while you are lucid. So maybe there could be some set breathing patterns that are both short and distinguishable that could be used as a more effect way of communication than morse code. Maybe for example 2 short exhales could represent "no" and 3 short exhales could represent "yes". I know that saying yes or no implies that you are answering a question and to answer a question, someone has to ask you a question (you might be thinking, that's not possible because i'm dreaming), but you could go into a dream with a question already set beforehand so that no two-way communication would be required. Perhaps you could make a language that was based purely on breathing patterns, where 3 or 4 breathes don't represent just one letter like in morse code but words instead. The only downside would be that trying to create a breathing language would be very complex and it would be a lot of memorization for a person to go though. Yeah, i know a breathing language sounds kind of far fetched, but i just had to throw it out there.

I'm sure there could be more applications for this, but i think one big hurdle to overcome would be that most of time, a dramatic change in breathing can wake you up. So if you are spending a lot of time in an ld making strange breathing patterns, then your chances of waking up could increase exponentially. One possible solution for this is for someone to just practice doing the breathing patterns in an ld. I think that maybe with practice; a person could train themselves to stay in an ld longer, even though they are breathing erratically.

Sorry for rambling. I know that there are probably all kinds of things that need to be tweaked in the above paragraphs, but please let me know what you think. I think that this has a lot of potential. Please, feedback anybody?

Whatever you choose, I'd like to see it...

LaBerge did a time experiment. He had people estimate 10 seconds while awake, then do the same in a lucid dream. They signaled the start and end of the 10 seconds by moving their eyes back and forth. It was the same both while awake and while dreaming.

Originally Posted by dark_grimmjow

whether or not a person can directly control the physical body's breathing while in an ld

You can. You *do*.

Nuh-uh!

Okay, so now there are two sides. Test one. Deal done.

I didn't even read this.

The answer: People will think its witchcraft or something, and wont accept it.

Well, they would in Utah. :\

Ok, since you can control your physical body's breathing through an ld, what does everybody think about using breathing as a means of a signal or maybe one-way communication?

What, like morse code? Short pants and long inhales/exhales for dots and dashes?

Originally Posted by Vidule

What, like morse code? Short pants and long inhales/exhales for dots and dashes?

Yep, that's the general idea. The only problem is it would take a lot of breathes to make one word, so the process would have to be refined a little bit. One approach could be use the type of grammar that most people use in texting or instant messaging. Like if you wanted to say the word "weight" or "wait" you could just use the "breathing code" to say "w8t". There would have to be patterns to represent the numbers, but in the long run, it could save a lot of breath and time. Another way to streamline the process, like i mentioned in my earlier post; someone could create patterns to represent entire words rather than individual characters.

Edit: Another thing i forgot to mention is that with morse code, you only have a beep. With a beep there can only be 2 variations, a short and a long beep. So that means you only have to symbols with which to represent the 26 in the alphabet, and if you include only the necessary numbers 0-9, that would add up to 36 symbols being represented by combinations of only 2 symbols. The good thing with the "breathing code" is that you have 4 symbols that you can use instead of only 2. You could have both long and short exhales and long and short inhales. That way the combinations could be made more compact, allowing the conservation of breath and time.

Originally Posted by C-Fonz

^^ That is very interesting! I can't think of any other way to consciously control your breathing unless you are lucid. But is there any practical use for that experiment or just to prove you still have some control over your physical body while sleeping?

When you hear good music in LDs it's easy to forget it by the time you've woken. What would be great would be to find a simple way - perhaps using breaths and eye movement - to communicate the music.

You'd probably need to be a good musician and also pitch perfect I'd guess.

As for two way communication, could you not use a REM-dreamer type device (either by flashes or beeps) to do the outsider-to-dreamer communication part? Again, if someone were pitch perfect then one note could equal one letter. Or you could use morse for that.

Originally Posted by TheWeirdnessSymposium

When you hear good music in LDs it's easy to forget it by the time you've woken. What would be great would be to find a simple way - perhaps using breaths and eye movement - to communicate the music.

You'd probably need to be a good musician and also pitch perfect I'd guess.

As for two way communication, could you not use a REM-dreamer type device (either by flashes or beeps) to do the outsider-to-dreamer communication part? Again, if someone were pitch perfect then one note could equal one letter. Or you could use morse for that.

That REM-dreamer device could work. The only thing that could be a problem is how the dream interprets the flashes of light or beeps. Depending on how the dream interprets the external stimuli, the dreamer may mis-interpret the meaning of the outside signal or miss the signal altogether. It would probably have to be done by somebody really good at EILD's.

What if you wrote a list of yes or no questions about the lucid dream and you answer it by deep breathing once for "yes" and pause for a moment for the next question and if it is a "no", you breath deeply twice.

What kinds of questions? Not sure, like maybe "Does the dream take place at your house" and you answer.

The trick would be that you would have to really memorize the questions in order and very thoroughly so that your subconscious doesn't mess it up.

Okay wait I just thought of this but I'm not sure where you would get the technology, what if you found a way for an observer to ask questions via microphone to a device that can be hooked up with ear/head phones. Since it is possible to hear the external envioronment, I can see this being a possibility but you would have to find your volume. Something not too loud or to quiet so you can hear it without waking up. But I don't know what kind of device would link a microphone and earphones so I don't know.

So like the observer can ask yes/no questions, and you respond with the breathing.

Sorry for the wall Just some ideas of mine.

Some people can hear what people are saying while they're asleep. My mom and my aunt used to have sleeptalking conversations with each other.