For this week's assignment, you will need to start several days before the due date.
The goal is to become more aware the fact that you do dream by remembering that you have dreamt and becoming better at recalling dream content; once that is tackled, you can work on becoming lucid in your dreams (knowing your are dreaming while you are dreaming).
There are two things you will start doing all at once:
The first is to keep a dream journal. A note pad or your phone's recording device by your bed side will work. As soon as you wake up, jot down what you remember from your dreams, even if only a few key words. Do this for several days.
The second is to ask yourself during your normal waking day "Is this real? Am I dreaming." The reason being, that you will gain practice at asking yourself these very simple questions. Habit is habit, and you may eventually find that you will spontaneously ask yourself these questions while you are dreaming, which can trigger a lucid dreaming experience. Do this also for several days.
These two things combined often trigger lucid dreaming in people after a few days. You may startle yourself awake the first time you lucid dream. That's ok! Lucid dreaming is a skill, and does take practice.
There is some information here http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#LD that you may find helpful. Not all of this information has been scientifically validated (though some has), but it won't hurt you to read it and make use of some of the techniques :)
There's also some interesting information here: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/09/21/how-to-lucid-dream/
There is also a lot of junk and untested techniques on the internet if you good how to lucid dream. So beware, use common sense, and have fun with it.
For this assignment, you do not need to divulge the content of your dreams :) Rather, discuss the PROCESS by which you attempted to lucid dream, and the progress your made throughout that process.
List your psychological terms at the bottom.
I spent 4 nights and 5 days attempting to lucid dream. After looking at the instructions given to me on the psychology website, I immediately and unavoidably went to the guru for any and all methods for learning something: Wikipedia. Despite the flack it catches for its inaccuracy, Wikipedia has taught me more about some of my classes than the actual class. And sure enough, I found 3 different methods for how to best attempt to lucid dream. However, in the end I went with the method laid out in the psychology blog, due to its simplicity and the fact that Wikihow told me that was the method most likely to work.
The part that was the hardest to remind myself of was the need to ask myself “am I dreaming” several times a day. This surprised me, because this shouldn’t have been the hardest thing for me to do by any means, but it’s just hard to remind yourself to do things like that when you’re so busy with other activities. Also, I felt inclined to speak out loud when asking this question, and that tends to get a few odd looks. Usually I’d manage to remember about 3 times a day, which I felt was adequate enough to get the job done.
The second thing I made sure to do was to write down what I had dreamt about that night. I thought this was really fun, because usually I forget what I had been dreaming about, and I always regret that—dreams can be really fascinating. I also for some reason kept waking up in the middle of the night during this specific time frame, so I got to keep double the dream journal, which I felt was probably beneficial to the process. I discovered that I dream really odd impossible situations, but ones that are always really comical or happy, which was nice.
Despite the vivid quality of my dreams, I am certain that I did not lucid dream, and I feel like I would have known. My dreams remained similar to what they’ve always been, at least in quality and how they felt. I did realize that even though I didn’t experience lucid dreaming, I really want to keep trying to attempt it, because I think it would be a really cool experience. I also really love sleep (like, REALLY love) and so combining that aspect of my life with dreams and fun would mean a whole new realm of happiness for me. I would really love to feel that I can do something while sleeping, because my least favorite part of the beauty of sleep is the time I lose in which I could be doing something else. The opportunity cost of sleep, if you will. Because of this loss of time, I will continue to attempt to lucid dream, not only because it seems to be an economical use of time, but because this assignment feels like a challenge to continue to try.
dream journal
vivid
quality
lucid dreaming
dreams
I find the whole process of lucid dreaming to be extremely interesting. Since it’s such a rare thing, it is even more fascinating to experiment with. I was very excited for this experiment and I laid out a plan to help me lucid dream more quickly. I wrote “is this real or am I dreaming” on a sticky note and put it by my desk. That way, every time I pass my desk I ask myself this question. I also taped a piece of notebook paper to the ceiling above my bed and put a pencil in my bunk caddy so that when I woke up I could write down my dream before I forgot it. I planned to practice lucid dreaming from last Thursday until today, Wednesday.
Unfortunately, my experiment was severely sabotaged by a severe cough that I came down with last Wednesday. For several nights, my REM cycles were so interrupted by my constant hacking that I am sure my brain didn’t even have time to form dreams! So in the end, I came up with only one very vivid dream. This dream was fun to write down and remember, however, because it had many strong feelings and was also quite comical. Other than the one dream I had last Thursday night, I struggled to even remember my dreams. I remembered parts of a dream that I had on Monday night and vaguely remembered having a dream on Tuesday night, but other than that I don’t remember any of my dreams. This is super frustrating for me as I really do enjoying dreams and I will probably work on strategies that will help me remember my dreams before I continue to try and lucid dream. Something that could help with this would be actually having the energy to reach for a pencil and write down the dream instead of sleeping for another five minutes and forgetting it altogether.
One other thing that I thought quite a bit about this week while I was trying to lucid dream was whether or not I actually wanted to lucid dream! I talked about this with some of my friends. They all wanted to be able to lucid dream because they wanted to be able to control their actions in their dreams and to shape the outcomes of the dream. However, I kind of enjoy dreaming where I can sit back and play it like a kind of movie. In my opinion, I spend so much time during my waking hours attempting to control my actions and outcomes, that I would probably miss being out of control during my sleeping hours. This could also have had a big impact on my lucid dream experiment because I may subconsciously have been stopping myself from lucid dreaming. I will have to decide whether or not I want to lucid dream before I continue trying my experiment.
Vocabulary: dream, lucid dream, REM cycle, subconscious
One of my classmates actually told me about the assignment taking me more than a night which helped me out a lot. I spent 5 days and 6 nights lucid dreaming. When I did see what the assignment was, let’s just say that I was not overly excited. While I find the idea of lucid dreaming to be interesting and I am always open to new ideas and trying new things, this lucid dreaming idea was not something I thought would work on me because I am a person that does not dream. The only time I dream is when I have nightmares and those I remember forever and sometimes have repeat occurrences of. Which is why I was surprised when I actually did lucid dream, once.
As I started the assignment, I looked up more information on different ways to try to lucid dream while keeping notes on my phone for my dream journal. I found it interesting that knowing when lucid dreams occur and meditating can help. Considering that I already meditate everyday while I am doing yoga I thought that this may help. One of the hard things to do was that I had to remember to ask myself if “I’m dreaming?” During the day. I actually had to write it down daily in my planner and set alarms on my phone just so I could remind myself to ask, “am I dreaming?”
For something to become a habit a person must do something fifteen times or more. So I actually placed these words in my planner when I opened it and to the day of, on my whiteboard, on my desk, by my water bottle, on the back on my door, and so on around my dorm room until it added up to fifteen. I made sure they were on colorful sticky note paper so that I would stop and look at multiple times in a day, unfortunately my roommate did get a bit annoyed with me because she would read the sticky note too.
When I did lucid dream, I found that my dream was really random and would abruptly change which I found very interesting. I was also aware of the fact that it was not actually happening in my subconscious. While it was nice to lucid dream and find out that checking my fitbit that I was less restless sleeping while lucid dreaming. Which is appreciated but I did not feel more well rested the next day then I do on a normal day, but i did feel slightly dizzy when I woke up. So I do not think I will continue lucid dreaming because I kind of like not having the craziness while I am sleeping nor do I appreciate my little side effects when I woke up and while I sleep restlessly, I have done that since I was a child so I am used to it and can deal with it.
Vocabulary: lucid dream, dream journal, meditating, dream, subconscious
As I read about this assignment I was a little nervous at first considering a lot of the time I do not remember my dreams at all. Nevertheless, I started right away to remember my dreams and start on the path to lucid dreaming. I tried to lucid dream for four days and four nights. During the first day I asked myself if I was dreaming about three times. I went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning and realized that I did not remember anything from my dreams the night before. Not letting myself get discouraged, I asked myself if I was dreaming several times that day and had better hopes as I went to sleep. The next morning I remembered dreaming. I quickly wrote down what I remembered and went on with my day. Day three I asked myself if I was dreaming a couple times and also read chapter six.
After reading the chapter, I switched up my method for trying to lucid dream. I thought about the different things in chapter six right before I went to bed; in order to see if I would think about the ideas in the chapter while I was dreaming that night. I went to sleep for night three. The next day I woke up and recorded what I remembered from my night of sleep. I noted that I had had dreams that night but could not remember the details. There were a couple “pictures” from my dreams the night before that I wrote down in my dream journal for good measure. Along with remembering a very small amount of my dreams I woke up a lot during that night but still had no luck with lucid dreaming. The final day of trying to lucid dream I asked myself if I was dreaming twice. I went to sleep that night after thinking about the sleep cycles in the chapter and hoping to remember my dreams and possibly lucid dream. I woke up the next day and remembered that I had had dreams but could not remember what my dreams were about. I believe that my dreams were in the preconscious state because it was like the content of my dreams was right on the tip of my tongue but I just could not quite bring my dreams to the conscious state in order to write them down.
This experiment was very interesting to me. I did not have much luck with remembering my dreams or lucid dreaming, however I plan on continuing my dream journal and finding other ideas to try in order to lucid dream someday. I would love to get to a point where I remember my dreams on a regular basis. My next idea for trying to remember my dreams and possibly lucid dream is to place a notepad by my bed instead of writing things on my phone. Also, I am going to set an alarm in the middle of the night to see if it will induce lucid dreaming. I am excited to continue this experiment and see where it leads to.
Vocabulary: dreams, lucid dreaming, preconscious state, dream journal
I was fascinated by the concept of lucid dreaming. I always thought that it meant being able to control your dreams, which I have never been able to do, but I was surprised to learn the true definition: being aware that you’re dreaming as it happens. It turns out, I have done this in the past, although never intentionally, it seems as though it occurs for me more than many people. I was really excited to try the techniques listed on the website to see if I could get to a state in which I could manipulate the events of my dreams. I only had three nights to try these techniques, so I’m sure I would’ve gotten better results had I started sooner, but I fully intend to keep working on this after I submit the assignment.
I’ve been trying to get in the habit of questioning whether I’m awake or asleep at various points in the day, but I’m a pretty forgetful person. I do it whenever I remember, but that unfortunately isn’t more than 3 or 4 times a day at random times (I read that it works better if you do it at the same time of day, or each time a certain event occurs, like when you’re going to work.) I also tried the watch technique; every time I look at my watch or read a specific line of text, I look away for a few seconds and then I check again to see if it says the same thing. So far, this has only happened when I’ve actually been awake, but perhaps that’s because I haven’t done it enough for it to be a true habit that will occur in my dreams as well.
As far as results go, as I said I have not been able to manipulate my dreams. However, I have had much better dream recall than normal. Normally I’m only able to recall a certain image or person and usually how I felt in the dream -- scared, happy, angry, excited, etc. -- for the rest of the day, and usually by the next day that memory is mostly gone. However, today I found myself remembering tons of details from my dream Tuesday night, including whole sequences of imagery and events, as well as a surprising amount of details and events from my dream from last night (Wednesday). I’m starting to see a couple of recurring themes, and I’m curious as to what these might mean. I’m going to continue to record the imagery and symbols in a dream journal to see if this helps with the lucid dreaming process.
Overall, this has been a really cool experience over the past couple of days, and I really want to continue it. I think it would be awesome to have the ability to do anything you wanted in your dreams, and I really want to experience it for myself, so I will keep trying these techniques in hopes of improving my lucid dreaming.
Terms: dreams, lucid dreaming, dream journal
Going into this assignment I was a little bit nervous. Generally I do not dream, or do not remember my dreams, so I was scared that I would have nothing to share. While I did not have any luck with lucid dreaming, I did dream twice over a 5 day period.
I must admit that I did not do a great job of reminding myself to ask, "am I dreaming?" throughout this experiment. I found myself so preoccupied with various other activities that I did not focus on asking myself that question very much. This could have something to do with my inability to take part in lucid dreaming. I did however, keep a dream journal next to me in bed so that I could quickly write down anything I remembered dreaming about during the night.
During the first night of my experiment, I slept next to my boyfriend. I always sleep better next to him and feel much more well rested when I wake up. I am also more likely to dream on those nights. Indeed, I woke up remembering what I had dreamt about. I will not divulge what it entailed, but I will say that the textbook is correct in what it says a person is likely to dream about during the REM stage of sleep. The next night I did not have as great of luck. I either did not dream, or did not remember my dream. During the day on Monday I thought about the possibility of dreaming. I pretty much assumed that I wouldn't be able to because Monday and Wednesday nights I wake up at least once or twice before getting up at 5am to go to work. They are my most restless nights. I was correct. I did not dream and in fact, I woke up at 2am and at 4am much to my dismay. On Tuesday night I wanted to see if I could somehow induce myself to dream. I have noticed that whenever I take ibuprofen PM I am more likely to remember my dreams so I decided I would try it out. It did help. I remembered dreaming about my mom's boyfriend fixing my truck at his body shop. I don't have a truck and he doesn't own a body shop. Either way, I was able to remember my dream so I consider that a win. The final night of this experiment, I again took ibuprofen PM. I woke up feeling like I got a "deep sleep" and to my surprise, I never woke up during the middle of the night like usual. While I did actually sleep through the night, I did not remember dreaming about anything. So, overall, I would say I didn't have much success with this experiment. I think something that may have caused this was my initial skepticism. If my subconscious thoughts were negative about lucid dreaming, it could have impacted my results.
I find the concept of lucid dreaming to be interesting, but not enough to try and continue this experiment. I've had friends who try to lucid dream every now and then just out of pure enjoyment. I give them props for that but I think I will first try to get more and better sleep before I focus on my dreaming.
Vocabulary Terms: dreams, dream journal, lucid dreaming, experiment, REM, sleep stages, subconscious
I was really excited to try this assignment out and see if I could become aware that I was dreaming. I began Saturday night with trying to become conscious during my dream. I wasn’t able to do it the first night but I did remember the dream I had that night, it was more like a nightmare because before I fell asleep I was watching a weird show and I guess that some of the things I watched affected my dreaming. I started this activity being really focused but when Tuesday came around I started to get really stressed and I couldn’t really focus on remembering my dreams or becoming aware that I was dreaming. It didn’t help much either that I wasn’t getting that much sleep. Perhaps trying to meditate every day can help me with this. I also tried to ask myself during the day if I was dreaming. It sounds weird but I have always asked this question to myself, not necessarily for the purpose of lucid dreaming but just because I get bored. Whenever I think about whether or not I’m dreaming my eyes lose focus and I get dizzy which makes me feel like I’m dreaming but I’m not. During this period, the only dreams that I was able to remember were the ones where I would be worried about something. These usually woke me up in the middle of the night and kept me up. I can honestly say that this wasn’t the ideal week to try and lucid dream, because there were too many things that I had to focus on.
I am definitely going to attempt to lucid dream once I get the chance. I would like to experience lucid dreaming and be able to control my dreams. I think there were some instances in the past where I have come close to lucid dreaming. I remember reading something that may or not have been true that said, if you want to know that you are dreaming, try looking at the clock twice and if the time changed drastically then you were dreaming but if it didn’t then you are dreaming. After reading this I constantly remember trying to remind myself to look for clocks in my dreams. After a couple of weeks of trying I didn’t get anywhere until one night it happened! I looked at a digital clock and noticed the time and then when I looked at an analog clock, it wasn’t the same time. I woke up shortly after but I didn’t comprehend that I was actually aware that I was dreaming until I woke up. I don’t really know if I experienced lucid dreaming then or if the clocks in my dream were just set at different hours.
Vocabulary: Conscious, meditation, lucid dreaming, and dreams
Lucid dreaming, the concept of it and the ability to do it, has always fascinated me and been something I’ve wanted to experiment with. However, I have never quite committed to the process required to acquire the skill of lucid dreaming and therefore have never had much luck with it in the past. So first off, knowing that this was an assignment for class, was both exciting and nerve-racking. It could possibly get me to commit to the process required to lucid dream, or I could yet again fail to follow through and prevent myself from completing a school assignment. Nonetheless, I tried my best and spent 5 days and 5 nights attempting to lucid dream.
The most difficult aspect of the process to teach myself to lucid dream was to keep a dream journal. I am a busy (and lazy) college student, so often times I wake up in the morning with just enough time to get myself out of bed, dressed and to class, without spending the time to jot down what I had dreamed of the night before. So 2 mornings on my quest to lucid dream, I failed to write in my journal immediately after I woke up what I had dreamed of the night before. Both times I remembered later during class and attempted to update my journal, but by then the majority of my dream had become very unclear or had completely faded. Because of this, I feel like my process to lucid dream was slightly inhibited. As well as the struggle to remember to simply write about my dreams in a journal upon wakening is the struggle to even remember my dreams. I feel like this is definitely will improve if I continue the process to lucid dream, but at this point, remembering my dreams is very difficult. I often remember that I dreamed, and possibly the general context of the dream, but any specific details or even a “plot line” are things that I can never remember. This again, is another thing that inhibited my process to lucid dream.
The easier part of this process was asking myself the questions “Is this real? Am I dreaming?” I more easily remembered throughout my day that this was something I needed to be doing, and so I remembered much more often to complete this step. However, despite my best attempts to learn how to ask myself if I’m dreaming while in a dream, I did not have any success. My inability to learn how to lucid dream thus far was probably due to first of all the short time frame I tried to do it in. If I continue this process, which I plan to do, I will most likely find more success. The other setback was probably my inconsistency with keeping my dream journal. By not regularly recording my dreams, I was not fully committing to the process required to learn how to lucid dream. This again was a fear of mine before even beginning the assignment, but I did do better than I had originally thought.
Overall, even though I did not have any success lucid dreaming so far, it’s been a great experience and I definitely plan to continue the process. Having the ability to change the outcomes of my dreams would be something very beneficial to have, especially when I am in a dream that I am not enjoying. When I continue this process, hopefully I will become more committed to completing my dream journal, continue to keep the dialogue in my head of whether I am dreaming or not and eventually find some success.
Terms: Lucid dreaming, dream journal
Lucid dreaming is always a technique that I have wanted to learn and try to experience and it has always peaked my curiosity. This especially peaked my interest because I have lucid dreamt in the past. In fact, one time I pulled myself out of a recurring nightmare once because I remembered dreaming it before and realized I was dreaming and just flew out of the situation within the dream. I followed the steps of the website that was given and during the checks during the day I found that I was starting to stretch my imagination and it was fun to imagine myself within a dram doing fantastic things while I was still awake. I’d randomly during the day between events and homework check myself by reading off of a UNI coupon book. I would always find that I was indeed awake during the checks, and I always thought up the most imaginative situations when I imagined myself in a dream in the place that I was in.
During the nights I tried to experiment with lucid dreaming, I was unable to come up with any sort of event with lucid dreaming. Every time I would wake up in the middle of the night with a dream still in my mind, I would try to fall back asleep while focusing on the techniques within the lucid dreaming site to keep myself able to control my dream, but I would always either fall so deep into unconsciousness that I wouldn’t be able to control a dream, or I would wake up to my alarm before I realize a dream even started. I realized as I went along in these experiments that before when I lucid dreamt I had just focused on these dream more in my head before falling asleep so I tried that but it did not improve my results. Looking back on it I may have been too awake or pushed myself too far into consciousness by thinking about my dream too much before trying to fall back asleep. Because of this, I may have just been unable to keep the dream fresh in my mind long enough for me to carry my consciousness over to my dream. The last night I tested lucid dreaming, I felt like I was on the brink of starting to lucid dream because I felt myself become conscious within the dream, but then quickly after that, I woke up to my alarm going off for me to get up so sadly I was not able to fully experience it. Also throughout this experiment I kept a dream journal for some of the nights and found that I was having some strange and haunting dreams where I would randomly lose different objects so I’m wondering if my unconscious is trying to comment on something that is happening in my life. either way it’s really interesting to go back and think on these dreams even if I don’t fully remember most of them.
I feel like if I were to continue this process I would be able to lucid dream relatively soon and I can't wait to try it some more. I feel like I’ve actually been able to control myself more during the day because I’m actively trying to control and check myself during the day and it’s been interesting what has come out of these experiments. I hope that I will be able to lucid dream more in the future and be able to solve any problems within my dreams.
Terms: lucid dreaming, dream journal, unconscious
I was not able to lucid dream during this period. I did try the techniques, but I wasn’t ever able to control my dreams. I had had a hard time sleeping the few days before I tried this process, and was up late/woke up early for various reasons. So the days I actually tried the lucid dreaming techniques, I slept hard and didn’t have really any dreams, since my REM cycle was pretty short during this time. The dreams I could remember (and wrote down in my journal) were just fragments of dreams.
I really enjoyed keeping a dream journal. Sometimes, I have really crazy dreams that I just have to write down because they make me laugh whenever I think of them. Though I didn’t have very in depth dreams during this period, I was able to analyze some patterns in crazy dreams I remembered from the past. My dreams usually combine real life events and people with storylines from movies. Very often, they involve some deep, hidden fear or worry of mine that is in my subconscious that I haven’t even admitted to myself. I wonder what these dreams would be like as lucid dreams.
I tried the reality check process as well during this period. I asked myself “Is this real life? Am I dreaming?” and also did some of the techniques from the lucidity.com article. It was really fun sometimes to just imagine that I was dreaming, and decide what I would do if I was. A lot of the time, I imagined what it would be like if I told someone what I really thought of them. Other times, I imagined that I would be on a beach somewhere, and I imagined myself flying as I hurried to class.
Lucid dreaming is so fascinating to me. Though I didn’t have much success with it in the past few days, I’m going to continue doing it for the next week. I really want to know what it is like to lucid dream.
Terms: dreams, lucid dreams, REM cycle, dream journal, subconscious
I was never successful in lucid dreaming at all in my life. For this assignment, I tried to do what was recommended in the outline; be aware that I dream by remembering my dreams and asking myself if I was dreaming during my normal daily routine. Unfortunately, these techniques didn’t get me to lucid dream.
Before I started “working” on this assignment, I hadn’t remembered dreaming for quite a while. Once I started, however, I realized that I woke up the next morning aware that I had dreamt, or if I was lucky, remembering the actual dream itself. I have always had a hard time remembering my dreams. The ones that stick with me where usually scary, funny, or just downright ridiculous (if not all three at once). Every night I tried to lucid dream for this assignment, I woke up the next morning realizing that I had dreamt and could recall most of the dream.
When I do remember a dream, I always lay in bed trying to “analyze” the dream in my own way. I have appreciated the information-processing theory of dreaming and try to figure out where certain aspects of my dream came from. For example, one of the dreams I had while working on this assignment consisted of me playing timpani in one of my high school’s practice rooms while Dr. G (the director of the UNI Symphonic Band) was rehearsing a song. Eventually, my music theory professor came up to me and pretty much told me I wasn’t very good and was not going to be ready for the upcoming concert (but he was nice about it). I was able to trace the timpani playing part of the dream back to the memory of getting new music in symphonic band (a timpani part, to be exact) and having some trouble with trying to find the best technique to play it with. And I was also able to reference the appearance my music theory professor to the upcoming music theory and aural training tests that were coming up soon that I was having some anxiety about. I was never able to figure out why I was back in my high school, or for that matter, shoved in a practice room with four large drums trying to rehearse with the band. Maybe I’m getting homesick, who knows?
I also talked to a friend of mine who has experience lucid dreaming to see if he had some insight as to how to get there myself. Unfortunately, his response was “It just happens,” so he wasn’t very helpful trying to help me lucid dream, but he did help me understand some more about the actual dream itself. He helped me understand that the entire dream can change once you are aware of it; he told me of a dream where he was acting out his daily routine and suddenly realized he was dreaming so he changed the attitudes of the others in his dream, changed his surroundings, and was able to change the whole attitude of the dream because the dream was boring him.
I’m hoping that with some more practice, I will be able to lucid dream on my own and be able to experience the fun for myself.
Lucid dreaming
Information-processing theory