Thread: Examining the Effects of Meditation While Lucid Dreaming

Hello, my name is Chris and I am a student at the University of Texas at Dallas.
I am doing a project to examine the effects of meditation from within lucid dreams. While the general impact that meditation might have on lucid dreaming has been studied, to my knowledge, the effects of meditation from within lucid dreams has not.

I intend to gather 20 participants, ages 18+, who consider themselves frequent lucid dreamers. For the purpose of this study, I will consider "frequent" lucid dreamers to be individuals who, on average, have at least 1 lucid dream per week. A consent information form is attached to this post, but no confidential or sensitive information will be collected. This is provided for your benefit, and contains information about your rights and details of the study.

For this study, I am asking participants to lucid dream on two separate nights. Because lucid dreams do not always occur when we desire them to, I am collecting data for this experiment over the course of 2 weeks to allow ample time for at least 2 lucid dreams to occur.

Procedure:
The first night that you have a lucid dream, please carry on as you normally would, but do not meditate from within your dream. As soon as you are able once you wake up, please answer the questions provided below.

Next, on a separate night, attempt to meditate from within your lucid dream. For this "meditation", attempt to focus your awareness on the fact that you are dreaming, and that all of your senses are simulations rather than actual sensory input. From within this dream, your perceived eyes may be open or closed, whichever you prefer (by perceived eyes, I mean the eyes that you are "using" within your dream, instead of your physical eyes which are closed while you are sleeping). If you feel yourself slipping out of lucidity or your dream during this process, it might be helpful to imagine the continuation of your current dream scenario, or to imagine a new one entirely if you desire. Once you wake up, please answer questions #4-7 provided below again.

Questions
1. Do you provide consent to participate in this study? (A consent information form is attached. No personally identifiable information will be collected in this study)

2. What is your age?

3. What is your biological gender? You may answer as anonymous or undisclosed if you do not wish to provide this information.

4. How many lucid dreams did you have during your last sleep period?

5. How long do you estimate that you were lucid dreaming? If you had multiple lucid dreams, please attempt to answer this for each dream. (Example: First dream - 10 minutes, second dream - 15 minutes...)

6. Did you meditate, as described above, from within any of these dreams? If so, which ones? (First dream, third dream, etc.)

7. From within this/ these dream[s], did you have awareness that you were dreaming, control of your own actions, control of the actions of others or of the environment, or a combination of these? Please state all that apply.

*Optional* Did you observe any effects of meditation from within your lucid dream[s] that was not covered in the questions above?


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I would like to thank every individual who takes the time to participate in this study. Feel free to message me with any questions or comments you may have. You may send the results of your participation directly to my inbox, or post them publicly here. The results of this experiment will be shared in this forum after the analysis of data is complete!