Lucid dreaming is beyond bizarre to most of us. You are asleep and dreaming yet you know you are dreaming, and many lucid dreamers can affect actions and outcomes in dreams just like they do during waking moments. Only in dreams, you can do much more fantastical things – bend steel, fly, stop bullets, and finally talk to that girl at the coffee shop that always makes you so nervous.
We already know that lucid dreamers have some of the highest brain wave frequencies on the planet, but what if you could induce a lucid dreaming state – known for helping to drastically change your waking life – simply by applying the right electrical current at the right frequency to the brain? What if you could also train your brain to have more lucid dreams?
Scientists are starting to realize that the rabbit hole between our conscious and unconscious worlds is more deeply connected than previously assumed.
Several studies suggest you can even apply tools to create an environment which is ripe for lucid dreaming.
For example, one study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that the brains of people with high and low dream lucidity were different.
Subjects with high lucidity had greater gray matter volume in the frontopolar cortex, compared to those with low lucidity. This brain region also showed higher activity during thought monitoring [awareness while in a waking state] in both high- and low-lucidity subjects, with stronger increases in the high-lucidity group.
The scientists concluded that lucid dreaming and metacognition share some underlying mechanisms, meaning that those who are more conscious in their waking state, are better able to lucid dream.
An Oxford study suggests that some people are just “made” for lucid dreaming:
“The neurophysiological correlates of dreaming remain unclear. According to the “arousal-retrieval” model, dream encoding depends on intrasleep wakefulness. Consistent with this model, subjects with high and low dream recall frequency (DRF) report differences in intrasleep awakenings. This suggests a possible neurophysiological trait difference between the 2 groups.”
But that doesn’t mean you can’t make your brain more like those people who dream lucidly with ease.
Read more HERE.
About the Author
Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and *See the Big Picture*. Her blog is Yoga for the New World . Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing The Body And Mind Through The Art Of Yoga.