Thread: Erh! Is LDing Bad For You

Originally Posted by Tyler Durten

Dreaming is unconcious, if your Lding we're basically concious in the sense that 1, we wake up - hence breaking our sleeping cycle and 2, we're concious and our minds are still working - cause we are deciding what to do in our dreams

so isnt this bad for the brain - cause we need our sleep

The REM cycle is not broken during lucid dreaming.

Our minds are often MORE active during normal REM than when awake.

Decades of research and experience have demonstrated no ill effects whatsoever from lucid dreaming, and certainly nothing implying that it might be "bad for the brain." We're still getting our sleep!

No this is stupid. If you use some techniques you can sleep for 3 hours a day so our brain dont need that much rest.

Hey,

I've heard this argument a lot (just never from a psychology student who, in my humble opinion, should know better )

It goes from the faulty assumption that the unconscious and the conscious are two different things. They are not. Any decent theory on consciousness will tell you that your consciousness is PART of the unconscious. Its a part of the unconscious that has become conscious. They are not two seperate entities.

That means that any dream in which you're conscious, is still governed by unconscious dynamics. There's just something added to it (the conscious aspect).

Now additionally, take any lucid dream you want, and if you actually pay attention to it, you will notice it is still 99.9 percent an unconscious thing. While we may control our own actions, everything else tends to remain unconscious.

Even if we had really great dreamcontrol and decided to change our dreamscene, and consciously chose to 'be at the beach' so to speak, the entire makeup of the beach would be unconscious. The countours, the shapes, the grain of the sand, the line of the sea, the waves, the color of the water, the color of the nightsky, the amount of stars in the sky. Even the most conscious lucid dreamer would directly control only a miniscule part of his lucid dream. Everything else remains firmly under unconscious control.

So I think the argument that lucid dreams could be dangerous to ones health on the sole premise that 'dreams should be unconscious' can be safely filed away and forgotten

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-

All of these replies are great responses as to why lucid dreams are not dangerous. Even if none of these arguments sway you, however, keep in mind that even the likes of Stephen LaBerge don't lucid dream in every dream of every night. Most of us aren't even close. There are still plenty of normal dreams if you're worried about your brain needing sleep. Rest assured, however, that lucid dreaming will never harm your brain. It never really "shuts off" anyway, just goes into more relaxed states.

I believe pj is correct, your brain has to work more to create the dream scapre and every little detail in the dream, that could also be why you dont know your dreaming most of the time, you brain is too busy building the dream.

In no way is lucid dreaming dangerous, its just like a regular dream, but you know its a dream, and regular dreams are not dangerous. so dont worry, tell your sister she is wrong and totaly safe.

Not read replies but my poersonal opinion is I am no more tired when my LDs are DILDs than a normal nights sleep - my sleep pattern means I wake up throughout the night anyway!

If I wake to WILD I might feel more tired though as the WBTB means I beak my sleep consciously!

Adam

Actually my experience tells me the opposite might be true: Lucid Dreams might actually be good for enhancing the amount of rest you get in a night's sleep + it may positively influence brain-chemistry:

Roughly 3 years ago I had a restless night. I couldn't fall asleep, but finally did fall asleep at 6 in the morning. I woke up again at exactly 9 in the morning. Having had only 3 hours of sleep you'd expect to feel like a weak pile of shit, but in those 3 hours of Sleep I had a Lucid Dream. It wasn't a very long one, but I was significantly lucid and had quite alot of dreamcontrol in it. I awoke in wonder, since I seemed to have "marched right out of the dream" back into Waking Reality with no period of hazyness/unconsciousness in between.

Instead of awakening exhausted and sleepy, I awoke refreshed, awake and cheerfull after only 3 hours of sleep, suggesting that Lucid Dreams may actually give MORE rest than an "unconscious night of sleep". Also I felt really alive and kicking and cheerfull/motivated to start my day and do stuff: Indicating my Serotonin-production was positively influenced by the Lucid Dream.


Also have you ever heard of people who were negatively influenced by lucid Dreaming? Physically or Mentally? If it would really interfere with natural sleep and be negative for you then via sites like these it would have been known allready.

Nope, It's not dangerous in any way! You will wake up in the morning, Or if you over-work your concentration, In the middle of the night. But will still feel fully rested, Probably a whole lot more!

Dangerous, through illusion with obsession.

Everything is completely harmless.

cloudWalker

No..

Read up on sleep paralysis..

No, wait, that is all crap..

Experience it! :p

We even dream, when not in REM ...
How is that for a claim, for you sister?

I bet she wil refuse it strongly..

Tell her to look at the MR scans of a sleeping brain..

Ok first of all in dreams you are usuly conscious to some extent, if you arn't conscious you wouldn't beable to think, people strangely assume that lucid dreams means conscious, infact it's just the awarness of the fact that one is dreaming, the word lucid is usualy implied with high levels of conscious awarness though, the two go together, but dreams arn't unconscious, I know it's a very diffrent way of thinking but yeah, we think in are dreams and thinking is a conscious act, even if you say we think unconsciously, can't you recall a time in a dream were you made very clear dicioutions?

Next is obssession, now thats not the word I would use, you'd better beleive as soon as I start having lucid dreams on command and learning to control 100% I'll be obssessed, it's more of the fact that you start paying less attention to real life thats the problem.