How To Turn a Nightmare Into a Lucid Dream
November 15th, 2007
In my last article, I described some techniques to help you remember to perform reality checks and to help you turn a false awakening into a lucid dream. Today, I'm going to offer two easy techniques to help you become lucid during a nightmare.
Technique #1
This technique might seem silly at first, but give it a try anyway. It's actually very effective.
Think back to the last nightmare in which you were running from something. Perhaps you felt like you couldn't run, like your muscles just wouldn't move fast enough or wouldn't even move at all. Or maybe it felt like you were running through waist-high molasses, like your legs were slogging through something so thick you could barely walk, let alone run.
Now try to remember the last nightmare in which you tried to yell or scream. When you tried to yell, did it feel like you couldn't get enough air, like you were breathing water instead? Or perhaps no matter how much you yelled there was no sound and the only thing that came out of your mouth was air.
These problems are common in dreams. Scientists have speculated it is the mind's way of interpreting the paralysis that occurs during REM sleep. While we dream, the brain halts the release of certain neurotransmitters, causing a lack of stimulation to motor neurons and resulting in muscle paralysis. This state is referred to as REM atonia, and it's generally assumed that this happens in order to prevent us from acting out our dreams while we sleep.
Unfortunately, this sleep paralysis also translates into nightmares in which we can't seem to get our body to move quickly enough. Your mind doesn't really want you to be swallowed up by the three-headed hydra that's been chasing you down the road. It's just that while you're trying very hard to run away, your brain is working just as hard to keep you still.
So how can we use this to our advantage to help us have lucid dreams?
Start by finding a place where you can be alone, if only because you might look a bit silly practicing this technique. It only takes a minute or two, so you don't have to set aside much time for it.
To begin, inhale deeply. Take in as much air as you possibly can. Now try to yell, only don't really yell. Instead, pretend you're in a dream and you've run into the usual problem — you try to yell but only air comes out, not sound. Exhale forcefully, as if you are screaming soundlessly in a dream. While you exhale, think, "This is a dream. I'm dreaming."
Do this a few times in a row. Inhale as deeply as possible, and then release all the air in one powerful, continuous breath while imagining you're yelling in a dream. Be sure also to think "This is just a dream" while you let out your dream scream.
How will this help you have lucid dreams? By practicing this technique, you'll condition yourself to think "I'm dreaming" whenever you find yourself yelling in a dream. Next time you have a nightmare, or even just a dream in which you're yelling, you'll realize you're dreaming.
Technique #2
The next technique involves a very simple visualization. Look in your dream journal and locate the entry for your most recent nightmare. (If you don't already keep a dream journal, you should. The previous article titled The Best Dream Journal Methods For Lucid Dreaming will help you get started.)
Look at your journal entry and read the description a few times until you're able to vividly imagine the dream events. Replay the nightmare in your mind once or twice in the way it actually occurred. Now, replay it a third time, but this time picture yourself becoming aware that you're dreaming. Imagine the realization suddenly dawning on you in the middle of your nightmare.
Imagine yourself becoming fully lucid, and picture yourself successfully willing the dream environment to change into something less frightening and more pleasant. As an alternate approach, picture yourself becoming lucid, calmly facing the source of your fear, and either conquering your fear or asking what it represents in your waking life.
Practice this same visualization technique for a few other nightmares you've written about in your dream journal. If you practice this method every once in a while, it will eventually filter into your dreams and the next time you have a nightmare you'll find yourself becoming lucid without even trying.
One Final Note About Becoming Lucid In Nightmares
Becoming lucid doesn't mean you have to face the source of the fear or probe the depths of your nightmare to find out whether or not it contains some deeper message. Sometimes it's helpful just to get the heck out of there and move on to a happier dream or wake yourself up instead. You can always be a dream warrior tomorrow night.
Lana says:
It goes to show how many people don't understand dreaming states very well–I'm always disheartened by people who refer to normal sleep paralysis (& other REM symptoms,) as having been "possessed by demons," etc. It can be disheartening, considering that many of these people won't accept the scientific reality as a valid answer!
Nov 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
reality shifter says:
Hi Lana,
Thanks very much for your comment. It certainly is discouraging that so many people choose to adhere to superstition even in the face of scientific evidence that explains the cause of the events in question. On the other hand, there's so much we still don't know about how the mind works or how the universe works. Ryan Hurd recently posted an interesting entry about night terrors and sleep paralysis on his Dream Studies Portal blog, and one thing in it really resonated with me. He wrote, "From my perspective, this isn’t evidence of the 'supernatural' but an indication that we still need a more radical materialism to account for what is natural." He and I are definitely on the same wavelength in that regard. There is so much science hasn't figured out yet, and many of the things we now consider supernatural may one day be explained by new developments in science.
~ Kris
Nov 15th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Bill Perry says:
Kris,
The technique #1 is rather ingenious. I don't really have nightmares to try it out on though. I've never really had nightmares that much. But the technique does sound like it will work, like any other exercise in anchoring. You know how fond I am of anchors though;)
I think I'll modify the approach in technique #1, though, so I can start working more on control.
I've not been getting a lot of sleep lately, I'm back to my habit of only sleeping 3-5 hours a night, because I've been working online a lot lately. So, sadly, my lucidity is very rare here lately.
But I have noticed that when I DO go lucid, the anchors I installed to help with my ability to maintain the dream are finally happening automagically.
I don't even have to think about staying in the dreams anymore, I just STAY.
I love it.
Nov 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 am
reality shifter says:
Hi Bill,
Thanks! I'm glad you liked the technique. I think you're right about how effective the anchoring techniques are. They seem to work as well as (and sometimes better than) reality checks and many other lucid dreaming techniques.
I'm like you in that I don't have nightmares very often, but it's always nice to have a way to become lucid whenever I do have one. I developed Technique #1 a few months ago after going through several weeks of having frequent nightmares. My usual lucid dreaming techniques weren't working well for me during those dreams so I needed something new. Fortunately, the nightmare trend eventually tapered off, though I did have a full night of back-to-back nightmares last night in reaction to a prescription medication. What a miserable night! I'll probably write a brief article about the effect of medications on dreams sometime this weekend.
~ Kris
Nov 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Skiba says:
I came here looking to find a bit of a fix for the many nightmares I've been having lately. The trouble is, I often realize I'm dreaming in many of my dreams, know when I have a false awakening, but every attempt to exert control has led me to be awake for brief seconds staring at my feet, willing them to move with all my might but watching as I barely lift my heel and fall back asleep again. The last false awakening nightmare I had was one where I said to myself, "This is a nightmare, wake up, wake up, wake up," but then reawakened in another nightmare.
The biggest problem I've been having lately is the appearance of actual events in my nightmares later becoming reality. After a nightmare in which an alarm went off at my school, the very next day, an alarm went off that sounded exactly like it. And just today in one of my classes, our teacher was about to show us a picture of something another teacher showed him, and upon scanning over the description, memories of a once-irrational fear and subsequent nightmare came flooding back to me and I had to excuse myself from class before I broke down completely.
So now I'm sitting awake though extremely exhausted but terrified to go to sleep because I may have a nightmare and have to sit there hopeless knowing it's all a dream but can't for the life of me wake up… and then wonder what part of it is going to become reality this time…
What can I do to stop this all from happening?
Jan 12th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Andrew says:
Skiba,
I think you may want to shift the way you think about dreaming as well as fear. Actually, lets start with the mind. What is the content of the thoughts and ideas in you head? Is it not PAST EXPERIENCE made real to you through memory and PRESENT EXPERIENCE made real to you through your sense organs (eyes, mouth, skin, ears, nose). Start with that. What is in your mind are ideas and concepts formed by present and past experience although this formation may be quite complex the underlining substance is just everyday, ordinary experience.
With this view of the mind, you will then see that the mental state of dreaming is founded in Present and Past Experience. It has nothing to do with the future, and so there is no worry that a terrible dream would actually become reality. I think one thing that is important to note here, and this is what lucid dreaming is about, in peoples average experience of dreaming there is a sense that we don't have control over what is happening to us as if all the events have been laid out for us and we are just reacting to them. But, everyday experience is not this way: human beings have a choice (free will) or at least a very strong feeling that we have free will (and that is enough). Your fear of experience you dreams in real life seems to me, at least at first glance, to be a fear of not having a choice–of some terrible sequence of events happening to you in which you can do nothing but sit idly by and observe. But, this is just plain false. If someone has a gun to my head and is about to pull the trigger, I have many options. I can curse at the gunman, stand up proud, pray to my concept of the divine, or kiss the gunman's boots and ask for mercy. In short, there are virtually an infinite number of things I could do and this is under the worse of circumstances. Now, lucid dreaming is about realizing this reality in your dreams, but because your dreams almost entirely consist as ideas (i.e. there is very little external reality imposing itself on your senses as compared to the amount of mental activity occurring), you can do things in the gunman scenario that would normally be impossible. For instance, you could in an act of courage wrestle the person to the ground, take his gun, and then carry him off to the police station. Or you could allow him to transform into a dear friend in which his gun dissolves into some kind of present for you. The possibilities are again endless.
More seriously, it is also important to realize that stressful dreams are apart of life sometimes. Dreaming is in large part learning. What's going on is your mind is replaying events in the past with variations. This variation is trying to reinforce why certain ways of acting in previous events in you life were overall disadvantageous and other variations will reinforce appropriate responses to these events. This is learning and what the brain is trying to figure out ways of acting and thinking that will help you be a happier person. So, bad dreams are not necessarily all that bad. This is all apart of growing as an individual and we don't stop learning and growing just because were 30 or 40 or 50 or even 90. We are constantly striving to become deeper, more effective, and happier individuals.
I would like to add that I have had a false awakening many times and it is a truly agonizing thing. When it is happening, I hate it. But, I have talked to many people and they have never experience such a thing. Just for experiencing this you are a deeper more full individuality with some insight into different states of consciousness. I think in some regards though, it could be related to sleep apnea which may be something you want to bring up to your doctor next time you pay him a visit. I don't have sleep apnea, but I do vividly remembering it happening when one time (it has happened maybe 5 times before) when I was sleeping on a couch with my face in the corner (as in the angle between the back of the couch and the place where you put you arse). Because of the low amount of oxygen I was getting, I think it was induced. But, it can also be brought on by stress. Then again there maybe no real cause at all. It just happens from time to time. One thing I do tell myself when it happens though (after I identify that it is happening), I say (or rather know) that it is only momentary. In fact, it is more like I am waiting to be able to move as if I have to wait for my body to catch up with what my brain is doing. It is terrible, but deep down there is the realization that in a few minutes I will be awake.
Mar 24th, 2008 at 10:02 am