A team of researchers from the University of Adelaide, in Australia, coordinated by psychologist Denholm Aspy, claims to have discovered that people who follow a very specific combination of techniques are more likely to experience lucid dreams. In these types of experiences, the sleepers are aware that they are dreaming . In fact, there are individuals who claim that they are able to control to some extent the events that occur in reverie; that is, they manage to modify the setting at will, introduce new elements and characters, change their appearance … Some psychologists refer to these people as oneironauts.
The Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden defined this type of dreams in 1913, in his work A Study of Dreams , but Aristotle, in the 4th century BC. C., and the doctor Galen of Pergamum, in II, already speculated on the nature of this phenomenon, which is cultivated in some schools of yoga. However, it is not something that happens frequently, and some experts associate lucid dreaming with hypnagogic hallucinations that sometimes occur in the transition time between wakefulness and sleep.
Believe is power
In the last 30 years, different researchers have promoted the study of this type of dreaming, its possible applications and the way to induce them. Among them, probably the best known has been Stephen LaBerge, a psychophysiologist at Stanford University who, for this purpose, founded the Institute of Lucidity in 1987. However, Aspy and his colleagues point out that the initiatives that have been put in place so far have not yielded satisfactory results . Thus, they have presented a system that, in their opinion, favors the development of these dreams.
In a study published in the journal Dreaming , they analyze the effectiveness of three techniques: the reality test – in which the environment is checked several times a day to check whether or not one is dreaming; waking up and going back to sleep – in essence, this consists of getting up after five hours of rest, staying awake for a short period of time and going back to sleep, which favors entering the REM state, in which daydreams occur; and the so-called mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD, in its acronym in English). Like the previous one, the subject must wake up after having spent five hours of sleep, but before falling asleep again, a motto must be repeated that convinces him that he is going to experience a lucid dream, such as: “next time let him dream, I will remember that I am dreaming ”.
Aspy’s team examined the reactions of 47 individuals who combined the three approaches to try and experiment and found that in just one week they succeeded 17% of the time. The result was significantly higher than that of those who had not practiced these techniques. In the case of those who managed to fall asleep within the next five minutes after having followed the aforementioned MILD strategy, the success rate reached 46%.
Psychological and physical benefits
“The MILD technique is related to the so-called prospective memory, that is, the ability to remember the actions we want to carry out in the future. When we repeat a phrase that allows us to remember that we are dreaming, we actually fix in our mind the purpose that it will be so , which opens the door to experience lucid dreams, “says Aspy. “What’s more, individuals who successfully use the MILD technique have less sleep deprivation the next day, indicating that having lucid daydreams does not negatively affect the quality of rest,” he adds. “Our study involves taking a further step towards the achievement of an effective system that allows inducing these types of experiences and taking advantage of them to treat different disorders, such as recurrent nightmares, or even enhance some physical abilities by practicing them in sleep,” concludes Aspy .
Reference: Reality testing and the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams: Findings from the national Australian lucid dream induction study . Aspy et al. Dreaming , Vol 27 (3), Sep 2017, 206-231. http://bit.ly/2hZG2Vh
