Unlock Your Inner Superhero: The Life-Changing Power of Lucid Dreaming
Discover how to take control of your dreams, heal trauma, and unleash limitless creativity while you sleep.
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be walking down the street and then, just on a whim, decide to take off into the sky just like Superman — and then actually do it? Feel the wind against your face, see the ground and the ant-like people below, fly across fields, forests, and oceans?
I’ve done this hundreds of times in my dreams, as do millions of people around the world. It’s called “Lucid Dreaming.” I first learned about it decades ago from a series of books written by Stephen LaBerge.
Once you train yourself to be ready for a lucid dream, you’ll be able to recognize — when you’re asleep and dreaming — that you’re dreaming and then take conscious control of the dream.
You can even communicate with the outside “real” world, according to recent research on lucid dreaming. One group was even able to learn to control a virtual cybercar while in REM sleep.
While there are several techniques to induce or start a lucid dream, the one I learned back in the 1970s is still considered the gold standard. It involves something I call “reality testing.”
First, you have to make reality testing a part of your normal, everyday waking routine. Look around wherever you are and notice something that normally doesn’t change, or only changes slowly. It could be a headline, a clock, or even a group of people or a landscape. Look away for a moment, then quickly look back and see if anything has changed.
In your normal waking state, reality is solid and doesn’t much change. The sign still says the same thing, the clock may be only a minute later than before you looked away, and the people or treeline outside the window all remain the same. When you do this reality test, note the “sameness” result by saying to yourself, “I’m awake” or asking yourself, “Am I dreaming?”
Do this a half-dozen times a day for at least a few weeks and you’ll discover, as it becomes a habit, that even when you’re dreaming you’ll carry that habit into your dreams.
But in a dream, when you look away and then look back, you’ll discover that things have instantly changed, often in inexplicable ways. Signs say different things (or disappear altogether), clocks change the time (or vanish), people and landscapes are instantly different.
When that happens, say to yourself, “This is a dream” and plunge into it, taking control of it. It’s hard to describe to somebody who’s never experienced it, but the feeling is exhilarating, a form of liberation we rarely experience in ordinary day-to-day life.
In addition to the good-old-fashioned fun of dreaming whatever you want, there are also therapeutic applications for lucid dreaming. These are best explored with the help of a therapist or sleep specialist who’s integrated lucid dreaming into their practice.
The scientific literature is now filled with research on using lucid dreaming to treat PTSD and resolve old crises and conflicts, particularly when the dreamer needs to interact with people who are no longer available because they’ve passed away or moved on.
One study published in the Journal of the American Psychological Association followed 59 individuals who all were clinically diagnosed with PTSD and then taught to lucid dream. After a few weeks of successfully lucid dreaming, the researchers found that 85 percent of the dreamers/patients felt that their PTSD was resolved, and in every case their therapists were no longer able to detect symptoms of the disorder.
The one caution is not to try this if you’re prone to psychosis or struggling with nightmares. This is not something for people with a very tenuous connection to our regular reality, although I can’t find any studies documenting harms from it.
The International Journal of Dream Research notes that lucid dreaming can enhance creativity, as well as be used for therapy and problem-solving. But for me, it’s just great fun.
Enjoy!