DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, I believe that lucid dreaming does have an impact on the way that one views the world surrounding them. Lucid dreaming allows people to realize that they have more control over themselves then they think they do. After being able to come in contact with your subconscious mind during a lucid dream, you are forced to realize a lot about yourself as a person. Once one is able to take control of their dreaming habits, taking control of their actual habits is not that far off. Lucid dreaming also creates self awareness in the world.

 In addition, lucid dreaming could have an even bigger impact on someone's day to day life if they were able to use it to overcome fears of some sort or to begin to heal a sickness. From the perspective of an artist, lucid dreaming could be the next big outlook into idea development. As Miguel Jimenez described, after lucidly dreaming, you begin to pick out every little detail in the world surrounding you. Through a new awareness, you notice things you would have never noticed before.

I strongly believe that this will be sufficient ground for development of things in the art world such as new movie plots, video game ideas and even campaigns for certain companies. There is so much information out there about lucid dreaming, but I have yet to be convinced that someone has used lucid dreaming to accomplish a new feat of creativity in the real world. Once lucid dreamers can learn how to use their dream world in their real world and let the impact that lucid dreaming has on their life become a reality, something new and great will occur. 

MIGUEL JIMENEZ'S EXPERIENCES WITH LUCID DREAMING

Miguel Jimenez, age 18, pondering his thoughts on lucid dreaming

Miguel Jimenez is one of my best friends and his experience with lucid dreaming is


much more detailed in comparison to Willy's or Ibrahim's. 

Katrina: How did you first gain interest in lucid dreaming?

Miguel: Gonna be honest, the movie Inception got me interested in lucid dreaming. I
know, lame as f***. 

Katrina: How did you feel during your first actual lucid dream?

Miguel: I had attempted lucid dreaming dozens of times before actually being able
to do it. It wasn't hard to realize I was dreaming, but it was hard to not wake up
once I had that realization. The first time I actually stayed asleep was kind of surreal.
I flew over hills and jumped really really high, exploring the world I created without
any laws of gravity. It didn't feel like a long time and I woke up because my phone 
vibrated.

Katrina: Was that what you expected a lucid dream to be like?

Miguel: No, it was a lot more surreal and uncontrollable than expected. Yes, I had
control of the dream, but it wasn't like I could do absolutely anything. In a sense, I
was limited to only the things I could envision and I felt like i could only inhabit 
certain spaces that I had pre-thought out. 

Katrina: How did you feel the next day?

Miguel: I was so excited about the fact that I had finally accomplished a lucid dream. 
I thought about it all day....I couldn't wait to go back to bed hahaa

Katrina: How did lucid dreaming effect the way that you perceived the world around you?

Miguel: Well for one, I began noticing the structure of everyday items. I didn't realize 
how much detail we skip over in everyday life. One thing that was interesting about 
being in a dream and knowing it is realizing how many details in dream worlds are 
skipped over. You never have the right amount of fingers on your hand. I personally 
never really have faces on people in my dreams either. Also in my dreams there 
aren't always three dimensions, often times its almost as if there isn't really a setting 
to my dreams at all...just things passing in and out...very...."lucid"

Katrina: How do you get out of your lucid dreaming state?

Miguel: I usually wake up because of my phone. You usually text me (laughs). 
Sometimes though you just slowly fade out of the dream world. You feel like you are 
slowly waking up and gaining consciousness. 

CAN YOU DISTINGUISH A LUCID DREAMER?

When looking as to whether you can distinguish a lucid dreamer from a regular dreamer, it was found

that avid lucid dreamers have a different look to them. Most noticeable is Stephan LaBerge. After a long

time of lucidly dreaming, one grows to have deep, piercing eyes. Spooky. You can just tell that they are

different (as seen in the pictures below).

Image of Stephen LaBerge is above. Notice his dark, 

beady and almost omniscient eyes. 

Above is Robert Monroe, another man who is an avid

 lucid dreamer and a founder of all of the ideas surrounding

 lucid dreaming. He also has very similar dark, beady eyes.  

FURTHERING LUCID DREAMING

My opinion:

I always thought that it would be cool if you would be able to actually record your dreams. Whenever I


think that I remember a dream, I can never actually recall everything that happened. It seems next to 


impossible. Since lucid dreaming allows you to control what happens in your dream, it is apparently 


much easier to recall what happened since you got to decide.

What surprised me:

        While researching lucid dreaming and its effects on the human mind, I came across information 


regarding the research of new technology which would allow you to record your dreams for playback.

        It started with scientists at the Max Planck

Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and then moved all

the way to UC Berkeley with different information

being discovered at each step of the way. When the

experiments started in Munich, the lucid dreamers

were told to signal to the researchers once they were in

a lucid dream. They were to signal them by blinking

their eyes in a certain way and clenching their fists.

From this, the “functional magnetic resonance imaging scans

enabled the researchers to gain a live view of what goes on in

the brain during this lucid action” (Hobson, Allan J). When the

lucid dreamers clenched their fists in real life to signal the

scientists, the same areas of the brain were also active during

the lucid dream. The same phenomenon occurred even if the

lucid dreamer just imagined themselves making a fist.

The conclusion was drawn that through a combination of sleep EEGs and

imaging methods, people will soon be able to record, interpret and playback dreams. Once this i

information became knowledge of the rest of the researchers that were debating the topic. Researchers at

UC Berkeley were continuing the experimentation. After scanning the blood flow in their own minds as

they watched Hollywood movies, the team developed 18 million seconds of random YouTube clips that

acted as a sort of, as Hobson J. Allan put it, “paint pallete” that they could then work from. The

computer would then piece together the different colors from its “paint palette” to attempt to recreate

what the subjects were seeing in their dreams.

On the left is the movie clip being watched by the lucid dreamer. 

On the right is reconstructed "paint pallet" reconstructed from the MRI. 

This could lead to a whole new form of creation in the modern world. If people could record their own

dreams, this would lead into creations from the subconscious mind. In my opinion, this would lead to

more artistic people in the world. I already have an artistic mind, but many people that say they are not

artistic would be surprised with what their subconscious could come up with.

Sources Used:

Hobson, Allan J., Edward F. Pace-Schott, and Robert Stickgold. "Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a

        Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious States." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2000): 793-

        1121. Print.

BENEFITS OF LUCID DREAMING

One benefit of lucid dreaming is the ability to be able to rehearse events that have actually occurred in

your life. In addition to rehearsing what you already know, lucid dreaming allows you to communicate

with your subconscious mind (Hobson).

Lucid dreaming can also help you to prepare for an upcoming event. In Willy's interview a few posts

ago, he talked about how lucid dreaming helped him feel way more goal orientated. There are an

abundant amount of examples of scientists and researchers who see lucid dreaming as an outlook to a

Image of Craig Webb

valuable means of skill rehearsal.



For example, Craig Webb, runner of

DREAM (Dream Research and Experimental

 Approaches to the Mechanisms of Sleep),

competed as a swimmer at the national level.

Craig Webb said, “I was working out the neurons to have the

perfect breaststroke” (Ferguson). He would practice his

swimming techniques while he dreamt.




"When you can't do it by design, sometimes the subconscious goes to work and does it for you"

(Nicklaus, Jack) Jack Nicklaus, in addition to Craig Webb, is one of the people in history that has been

Jack Nicklaus, aka "The Golden Bear"

able to use lucid dreaming to his advantage. As a golfer, he

was able to correct his swim flaws while

dreaming. Through skill rehearsal in lucid dreaming, one can

improve in areas of life that they choose to impact. In addition

to helping with goals and sports skills, other noted people have

found inspiration in their sleep. Sue Fergusen talks of how

Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul McCartney, Charles Dickens,

Sting and numerous scientist and inventors have found

inspiration in their lucid dreams (Ferguson).




Robert L. Van de Castle explains how "one of the most thrilling rewards of playing the dream game is

that this type of consciousness, with its feeling of "other worldliness," begins to manifest itself much

more frequently as self-awareness grows through dream work" (History of lucid dreaming).



Van de Castle explains how lucid dreaming allows you to have your own self awareness in the world,

Watch out for monsters under the bed!

not only in the dream world,  but it is also a useful

tool for helping people "overcome recurring

nightmares or work on problems facing them in real

life, and even enhances healing" (Willett, Ed). Many

children have overcome nightmares through lucid

dreaming and the idea of enhancing healing can be

played out with the idea of forming new self-

awareness in the dream world.

Sources Used:

De Castle, Robert L. "History of Lucid Dreaming." The Gazette (Montreal) 1294th ser. 0384 (1995):

        B4. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.

Ferguson, Sue. "PUTTING DREAMS TO WORK: Learning to Use Lucid Dreams." Maclean's

        (Toronto) 0024-9262 (2003). LexisNexis Academic. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Hobson, Allan J., Edward F. Pace-Schott, and Robert Stickgold. "Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a

        Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious States." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2000): 793-

        1121. Print.

Willett, Ed. "Lucid Dreaming Lets You Be in Charge." Leader-post (Regina) 2870th ser. 0839 (2001):

        D.4. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

HOW DOES LUCID DREAMING WORK?

Aside from all of the basic knowledge associated with dreaming, lucid dreams involve a different part of

the brain. It has been discussed that dreaming takes place during REM sleep, lasting only about 10

minutes to half an hour, but occurring more than a few times over the duration of your sleep (considering

that you are sleeping for a decent amount of time.) This is hard to believe, especially since when actually

recalling dreams, it seems as though they took place over such a long period of time. When one goes to

sleep, a lot of the parts of the brain shut down.


Have you ever wondered what keeps you from "laughing during a funeral" or


"turing our momentary desire to throttle an annoying person 


into an actual murder?" (Willett, Ed). The prefrontal cortex controls all of your

impulses. It allows you to make rational choices, furthermore providing you with a sense of self-


discipline.

During REM sleep, the prefrontal cortex is inactive. Since the prefrontal cortex controls

our common sense pretty much, this explains why you can do the impossible while 


dreaming. The prefrontal cortex, when active, forces you to stay within the realms of reality. While

lucidly dreaming, the inactive prefrontal cortex cannot control your actions anymore, therefore allowing

lucid dreamers to fly or scale a 60 story building or morph into a shark and stay underwater for the rest of

their life.

Sources Used:

Willett, Ed. "Lucid Dreaming Lets You Be in Charge." Leader-post (Regina) 2870th ser. 0839 (2001):

D.4. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

HISTORY OF LUCID DREAMING

Lucid dreaming dates as far back as the early eight century AD in Tibet. Tibetan Bhuddists were able to

 make the real world an illusion through their lucid dreaming processes.

 Not only did Tibetan cultures encourage lucid dreaming, but Islam

culture saw that if a person could control their thoughts in a dream,

then they would gain overall greatness and an attainment of the

abilities that they desire (De Castle, Robert L.). Being able to dream

lucidly was seen as having greatness. It was a way to see into a

different world, a world that may have belonged to the gods or just to

a new view into one's own identity.




Once the 19th century rolled around, lucid dreaming became a bigger topic for researchers. Many

different scientists toyed around with the idea of lucid dreaming.

Frederick Van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist, is generally accredited

for coining the term "lucid dream." Van Eeden used lucid dream to

describe dreams when he "had full recollection of (his) day-life and

could act voluntarily" (De Castle, Robert L.). Van Eeden realize

that through certain actions, he could control his voice and his

movements while dreaming.




Hugh Colloway discovered lucid dreaming independently in 1902.

Colloway described a lucid dream where everything felt so

real because he realized he was dreaming and able to experience the vividness of the world surrounding

him. Colloway, in his lucid dreams, felt "free as air, secure in the consciousness of my true condition and

 the knowledge that I could always wake if danger threatened" (De Castle, Robert L.).

It was not until the 90's that lucid dreaming became popular as a

topic in the United States. Carlos Castenada introduced lucid

dreaming in the US, yet he introduced it by writing about his

experiences with a Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan. In 1972, Castenada

claims that Don Juan taught him how to achieve a state of lucidity

while dreaming by telling him to "look at his hands in his dreams in

order to awaken his consciousness within the dream...because

they'll always be there" (De Castle, Robert L.).

Castenada also explained how if you concentrate all of your

attention on something in a lucid dream, for example your

hands, and they become fuzzy, you can choose a new object

to focus your attention on. He explains how accessible you are

 to power in a lucid state finding countless facts as you can

control whatever you want to.


Patricia Garfield devoted an entire chapter of her Creative Dreaming novel on lucid dreaming,

describing how you can learn to become your conscious while dreaming. From there, the research

surrounding lucid dreaming has become more and more sufficient. Researchers, scientists, writers,

scholars and students everywhere seem to have varied interests on the topic.


Sources Used:

De Castle, Robert L. "History of Lucid Dreaming." The Gazette (Montreal) 1294th ser. 0384 (1995):

B4. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.

RESPONSE TO IBRAHIM'S INTERVIEW: MARIJUANAS EFFECT ON LUCID DREAMING

In Ibrahim's interview, he mentioned that once he began to smoke more, he could no longer dream

lucidly. After thinking about what he had said, it came to attention that this could either be due to the fact

 that he just did not remember his lucid dreams or that the marijuana actually had an effect on his

dreaming abilities.

After reading many posts on other blogs in regards to

marijuanas effect on lucid dreaming, I found that

marijuana actually does have an affect on your

sleeping patterns. In 1975, an experiment was

conducted on the effects of THC on REM sleep

patterns. It was found that "administration of

 THC significantly reduced eye movement activity

 during sleep with REM and, to a lesser extent, the

duration of REM sleep itself" (Effects of high dosage delta-9-

tetrahydrocannabinol on sleep patterns in man).



From the information found by Feinberg in the 1975 experiment, it can be seen how smoking marijuana

alters ones ability to stay in REM sleep for enough time to complete a lucid dream. Not only does THC

affect ones REM sleep, but one can assume that it also affects the ability to recollect what was even

dreamt about, whether lucid dreaming occurred or not. The only other question this brings up in regards

to the initial research question is whether lucid dreaming had some impact on the urge to smoke more

marijuana. Ibrahim stated in his interview that he did not stop dreaming lucidly until after he started to

smoke. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any correlation between lucid dreaming and the motivation

to smoke, but the question is still debatable.

WHAT IBRAHIM KHAN SAYS

After conducting the interview with Willy, I was finally able to reach my friend 


Ibrahim Khan who had attempted to teach me about how he dreamt lucidly over the


 summer. 

Photo of Ibrahim Khan, age 18, taken in München, Deutschland

Katrina: I remember you telling me before about how excited you were during your first legitimate lucid dream, but I do not recall what it was about. Do you remember 
your first lucid dream?


Ibrahim: I remember I was in an urban environment, and then I just started flying. I 


wasn't really in control the first time, or at least not in as much control as I had 


hoped, but I learned that it was a freakishly real feeling. 






Katrina: Oh right, that is awesome. How did it end? Were you able to accomplish anything else?


Ibrahim: It wasn't really an expected or planned ending because it ended right as I 


hit the snooze button, so it kind of got cut short. 






Katrina: After you actually had a lucid dream, did it affect your daily life at all?


Ibrahim: I thought about it way too much actually. I would always be looking at my 


palms because the internet said in your dreams when you look at them there would 


always be something wrong with them. I kind of wanted all of my buddies to know 


about it too, so I got as many of them to try it as possible so they could experience 


the same things that I had. 






Katrina: Do you still practice lucid dreaming now?


Ibrahim: (laughs) No, not anymore. 






Katrina: Awww, why not? What made you stop?


Ibrahim: I guess because I just forgot about it...or in other words I stopped because 


of weed. Weed really really really makes dreaming hard to control. 






Katrina: I guess that is a legitimate reason then. Well, last question, did you ever at 


any point feel attached to lucid dreaming or like it made you a different person?


Ibrahim: I guess I got attached to it, because we sleep for 8 hours or more a day and 


that time is just wasted to me I feel like. I thought if I could make sue and have fun 


while sleeping, then that would be total "badassery" during sleep. Having control on 


what you think reality is is a pretty damn good feeling. 


Sources Used:

"Afterthoughts." E-mail interview. 4 Nov. 2011.

WHAT WILLY EXPERIENCED

The first step of my research process was to try and decide what secondary sources I wanted to use. I

thought back again to who my target audience was and decided that the best method for research would

be to use people from my target audience as my interviewees. I wanted to pick a few friends that had

experienced a lucid dream before and could attempt to explain what it was like and how it impacted

them.

Willy Nicholas was my first friend to tell me about a lucid dream that he had. I will never forget when he

 ran up to me at school one day only to tell me that he had finally had a lucid dream. Nicholas explained

 how he was able to make himself fly down the hallway of school in his dream. He also described how

things were not that detailed, but he felt completely awake and in control the entire time.

Photo of Willy Nicholas, age 18, taken in Chicago, Illinois

Below are some excerpts from the interview:

Katrina: How did your interest in lucid dreaming first evolve?

Willy: It was actually a friend of mine who was first to experience a lucid dream. After he told me about

 it, I immediately began to research lucid dreaming and attempt it on my own.



Katrina: After you had dreamt lucidly, did you notice yourself thinking about it a lot during the day?
 Were you hung up on your dreams, or would you not think about it until it was time for bed?

Willy: Lucid dreaming was nothing like I expected. Although I felt in control of my dreams, there were

still limitations and that was frustrating. Dreaming was so much harder to control than the websites and

researchers made it sound. I wasn't able to make myself do everything that I would think I wanted to do.

 It just wasn't that simple, but once I was able to do something I set my mind to, the feeling was amazing.



Katrina: How did lucid dreaming effect your everyday interactions?

Willy: Lucid dreaming made me much more goal oriented. I have diagnosed ADD, but lucid dreaming

 was able to make me more confident about reaching goals. I wish that I still practiced lucid dreaming

 because I have been struggling lately with reaching what I am determined to accomplish.



Katrina: Why did you stop?

Willy: I stopped lucid dreaming because I haven't been consciously thinking about it for awhile. To be

 honest, I kind of forgot about it until you asked me about my experiences this summer. I think lucid

dreaming is awesome and now I have been re-inspired to start up again.

Sources Used:

"Attempts of Lucid Dreaming." Telephone interview. 3 Nov. 2011.

WHAT IS LUCID DREAMING?

 Lucid dreaming is a term that refers to when you are able to control your dreams. While lucid 

dreaming, one has a greater connection with their subconscious mind. While lucid dreaming can

sometimes happen accidentally, many have trained themselves how to go into a lucid state while 

dreaming, therefore allowing themselves to gain more control over their own dream world. 

The man in the video is Stephan Laberge, the first scientist to prove the existence of lucid dreaming 

(Mavericks of the Mind). The video does a satisfactory job of explaining what lucid dreaming is. 

I have never actually experienced a lucid dream, yet a lot of my friends have. Over the summer, they

 would always be telling me about new experiences and epiphanies that they had from their lucid 

dreams. I always wondered why they were so obsessed and intrigued with what they had experienced.

 My hope through researching lucid dreaming and its effects was to figure out whether lucid dreaming 

effects perception, or whether its effects barely shine through from day to day. 

Sources Used:

"Stephan LaBerge." Mavericks of the Mind. Web. 08 Nov. 2011. 

<http://www.mavericksofthemind.com/lab-int.htm>.