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Question

First of all, thank you for your time. I realize that this is on a volunteer basis and that you do this for nothing but smiles. Thank you.

Now,I have recently begun getting interested in Lucid Dreaming, after having experienced it a few times, and am now trying to practice it to where I can do it every night. Since sleeping is when your brain organizes information, can shaping my dreams to my will stop that process?

Also, I’ve read that there are “practical” applications of Lucid Dreaming, but all of them seem to be about nightmare therapy or some other type of therapy.

My question here being: Could you use Lucid Dreaming to practice something in a “real life” application that you learned early in the day?

Answer

Dear Ryan,

First of all, you might want to read my answer to a similar question, although connected to a difference situation, in the blog post Lucid dream – sleep or wakefulness? As to the practical application, there indeed are quite a few techniques and interesting researches. For instance, lucid and control dreams were associated with all electronic media use but most strongly with video game play (Electronic media and lucid-control dreams: Morning after reports. By Gackenbach, J. Dreaming, Vol 19(1), Mar 2009, 1-6). You might read a full text, not too technical commentary on “The neurobiology of consciousness: Lucid dreaming wakes up” by J. Allan Hobson. However, the scholarly conclusion is so far that there’s a “poor reliability of lucid dream induction techniques (for a review, see Price & Cohen (1988). Lucid dream induction. An empirical evaluation. In: Conscious mind, sleeping brain.Perspectives on lucid dreaming (pp. 105-134). NY: Plenum Press).

If however you don’t need scientifically proved methods, there’s anecdotal evidence of control upon dream content, for instance, in the Silva Method, which is essentially guided imagery.

To your question whether it can stop the processing of information in the brain, I am not aware of reliable research results confirming this idea. I’ll double-check it and if I’m wrong, I’ll update my answer.

Tanya Zilberter