Over a decade ago, a movie called Inception captivated the minds of the audience due to its unique concept of controlling and manipulating dreams. But did you know this can happen in real life too? It’s called lucid dreaming.
What is a lucid dream?
Lucid dreams are dreams where you are aware that you are dreaming while asleep. Simply put, you are aware that the events happening in your dream are not real but the dream feels very vivid and real. Lucid dreaming allows you to control your dreams and dictate the narrative.
According to studies, almost half the people would have had at least one lucid dream in their lifetime. They happen only a couple of times a year.
Lucid dreams are most common during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. It is a period of deep sleep marked by eye movement, more brain activity and faster breathing. A person usually enters REM sleep approximately 90 minutes after falling asleep. It lasts for 10 minutes or so, and as you sleep, each REM period becomes longer than the previous one, finally lasting up to one hour.
Why do we get lucid dreams?
Not much is known about how and why people get lucid dreams. But scientists have some ideas. Some studies suggest that people who tend to be self-reflective are more likely to have lucid dreams, while a study in Germany, which tracked brain activity in volunteers as they slept made researchers think that lucid dreaming may be a between state where you are not fully awake but not quite asleep as well.
Can you have a lucid dream?
Many researchers suggest a few things one can try to trigger a lucid dream. These include: Reality testing where you pause at different times of the day to see whether you are dreaming. You could try to do something impossible to check if you are dreaming or not.
Researchers also suggest that you wake up after five hours of sleep, stay awake for a brief period of time and then go back to bed to try to enter a REM sleep period.
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