What Is Lucid Dreaming?

Every person around the world has dreaming about something once in a while. When they sleep, they will dream sometimes. A lot of people think that dream is an illusion which is made by our brain because that is our desire. It is just like poll that conducted by Newsweek, a major 43% of Americans believe that dreams reveal unconscious desires and wishes. However, there are also people who think that dream is an event which will happen in the near future; whether that is on tomorrow, on day after tomorrow, or on next year. This distinction brings out a question what is the true meaning of the dream we have.

Dream content reflects aspects of waking-life experiences. After memories are made, they are often fragmentally merged with other information to construct larger, holistic dreams. Autobiographical memories are predominantly represented in dreams in comparison to episodic and semantic memories. Among various characteristics from waking-life experiences such as places, people, and events, emotions are highly incorporated into dream content. There is also a decreasing relationship between the cognitive demand of an activity and the frequency in which that activity occurs in dreams. Dreams tend to include material from experiential memories and events from the preceding day as well as experiences from 5-7 days prior. The recurrence of memory content in dreams seems to support the hypothesis that dreaming helps with memory consolidation, or particularly the content which is reflected in dreams.

To many people, dreams are the thoughts that occur while sleeping, having almost mystic qualities. For millennia the significance of dreams has escaped even the brightest of philosophers and intellectuals. Many people have speculated about why people dream and what meanings the dreams have but in recent times two theories have gained credibility in answering those questions. The first theory is Sigmund Freuds and the other is known as the cognitive theory of dreams also known as biological determinism.

Everyone in the world has had at least one dream in their lifetime. Most people do not think much about the dreams that they have, unless they are recurring. Dreaming is “a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during REM sleep.” Most people today wake up from a dream or nightmare saying, “thank god that was a dream,” or “too bad that was just a dream.” Many times these dreams or nightmares have more meaning than we may think. If people took more time to consider the meaning behind the dreams they have, then dream interpretation could be used as a means to help resolve issues in our awaken lives, including helping to

The journal entry begins by introducing the concept of nightmares and the negative emotion that is followed by such occurrences. People who are experiencing negative emotions more frequently are often times more likely to having nightmares or other intolerable dreams. The journal also points out how many people who experience nightmares also experience frequent dreaming in general. All the data contrived from people who experience frequent nightmares found that these people experience a wide variety of dreams that are usually triggered by a state of severe emotion. Another form of dream experienced by such people is Day-dreaming. The journal explains that people with a higher occurrence of nightmares, experience dreams in many other forms. They also are more prone to letting their mind wander even when they are not fully asleep. These people may experience similar states of

As we lay ourselves down every night to put our bodies to rest, our brains begin doing something extraordinary. It begins piecing together images, creating scenarios, simulating sensory perception, and adding in emotions and fears. They can make us wake up with a smile on our face or in a cold sweat. Dreaming is such a strange and often inexplicable phenomenon, but something we all do just about every night. People have theorized the process and the utility of dreams for centuries. However, much of the accepted knowledge we have a bout dreams today is still only theory. In fact, hardly anything about the dreaming experience is concrete because it is an experience

An obsessive student experimenting with lucid dreams becomes infatuated with a troubled female co-ed that leads to a deadly decision.

In the article, “The Lucid Dreaming Frequency and Alarm Snooze Button,” Lucid Dreaming was first introduced by Van Eeden. Lucid Dreaming refers to the term in which a person asleep is aware that they are sleeping. Edeen figured out that approximately 50% of the general population have had at least one experience of having a lucid dream, while 20% of the general population experience lucid dreams on a daily basis. Eeden also found that lucid dreams occur during the stage of sleep rapid eye movement (REM). These stages suggest that there is a state of arousal. During REM sleep the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex usually deactivates, but the occurrence of lucid dreams allows the cortex to be active, which presents the awareness of the dreams. Research

Dreams are often liberating experiences, fantasies that take people away from the demands of the waking world, especially if they are lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are when someone is in a sense, awake in a dream. The person knows that they are dreaming and can sometimes even manipulate the very fabric of the Dreamscape. Dreams are a very important part of life, humans spend over one third of their lives asleep, but it is all too often that dreams are forgotten or muddled. This study was conducted in order to investigate a possible way to remember dreams more often and to have them be clearer instead of vague and blurry.

During dream we can regain our consciousness, and in that case we will have a special type of dreams called the lucid dreams. So, a lucid dream is a dream in which you know that you are dreaming. The scientists found some actions that can affect on the sleeper and make him have a lucid dream which are the number of awakenings per night, the number of times using an alarm clock and number of times using the snooze button per morning. The studies show that " the frequency of lucid dreaming has a significant positive association with frequency of alarm clock snoozing, the number of awakenings during a night, and dream recall frequency"(Smith & Blagrove, 2015, P 294). That means the frequency of having a lucid dream will increase if the

In lecture, we learned that the psychodynamic view of dreaming is the way our thoughts and emotions in our unconscious mind process in sleep (K.W. Brown, personal communication, September 8, 2015). Overtime there have been a variety of theories about interpreting our dreams. One theory is known as the “activation synthesis hypothesis,” this explains dreams as memories (Linden, 2011). Whereas the “threat simulation theory” is a way to counteract threats or things that someone sees as bad (Linden, 2011). Not only are there different types of theories but, there are also different types of dreams. Two types of dreams we covered in lecture are garden variety and lucid. Dr. K. W. Brown explained to us that garden variety dreaming describes an

Because of that, our view on attaining enlightenment through the lucid dreams diminished in to what little history and documentation could provide. Where the terms dream consciousness and dream logic meet is the description of lucid dreaming and Ryan Hurd, author and creator of Dream Studies provide support of explaining the differences between ordinary dreaming and “lucid dreaming”, that entails “lucid dreaming can be seen as a rediscovery of ancient practices as well as a recovery of our dreaming

It is said that a lucid dream is a dream that can be induced or controlled and is characterized by the dreamer being aware that he or she is dreaming (Lucid). When lucidity occurs, the dreamer “wakes up” inside the dream during fixed states of cognizance. Dreams are caused by things “…our mind knows, however which we cannot handle, is disturbing or something that we keep reiterating to ourselves” (Ganguly). This is why distinguishing significant dream symbols from ambient symbols is important for attempting this state. Many people propose dream interpretation to help better understand the conscious state, but some are said to lucid dream to not only control the dream, but to elate themselves while asleep.

The Robert Berezin M.D. author of the article “Reflections On Dreaming and Consciousness” discusses what we are dreaming when we are sleeping and how they operate when we are sleeping. In the article, he claims that during sleep our muscle goes to rest and all the waste products of muscle activity eliminated. The author supports most dreams are emotional conflicts and in my dreams are emotional conflicts, when I dream about the pain, the dreams help me to settle down my emotion because I took an action against pain in my dream. The author describes that people address conflict through the dreams such as pain, hopes, sexual interest. I strongly agree with him because whenever I face conflicts, the dreams help me to settle down my emotion because I took an action against conflicts in my dream and this make me feel better. The authors mention that we do not fully remember our dreams. I think the reasons people do not remember their dreams because I believe a dream is a fantasy world, dreams are not turning out as an actual real-life event. Whatever we do throughout the day and whatever consequences we face throughout the day converted into a story and we saw that image in our dreams, in fact, the dreams do not solve problems in our life, when we dream about addressing the problem we wish we could solve the problem this way. So, the dreams are kind of useless in our life, therefore, most people forget about their dreams and they only remember tiny portions.

Dreams are “hallucinations of the sleeping mind” (Loftus & Ketcham). Dreams can be very vivid, loud, and even emotional. This is why it is easy to confuse them with reality. Dreams are kind of like taking all of a person’s wishes and emotions and putting them all in a little “shadow world” (Bynum) when they go to sleep at night. “What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.” (Freud). A person may be experiencing an emotion or wishing for something without even realizing it at all. Dreams can sometimes show a person how they are truly feeling without even their own awareness of these feelings or wishes. A lot of a person’s reality and emotions are used in their dreams, however, this is not always the case. Dreams can also be extremely bizarre, confusing, and even repetitive. This is where the interpretation of dreams comes into action. Many people find it hard to believe that when they have a dream over and over again that it does not mean anything. These types of dreams are called recurring dreams. Recurring dreams happen