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Over the past few decades personal development has become a huge industry, and in recent years the internet has fueled the surge of new products and programs devoted to self-improvement. Unfortunately, the tremendous growth in the industry has opened the door for scam artists hoping to make a bundle of cash before anyone realizes their products are useless.
These companies attempt to lull prospective customers into a false sense of security by littering their marketing copy with catchy phrases that sound high-tech or scientific, despite their so-called science being nothing more than made-up nonsense. You've all heard the buzzwords before. (Can anyone say "quantum"?) They fill their advertisements and web sites with pseudoscience and hope consumers will be hypnotized by the apparent magic of it all.
Yesterday someone sent me a link to a personal development web site so I could check out a video featured on the site's home page. In the video, the host explains how her company's system can release your subconscious fears and transform your life by "tapping into the quantum field", and their method is supposedly an effective cure for all your problems because "every single perception you've ever experienced is stored as images in the water molecules in the microtubules of your brain" and "those images are projecting onto the quantum field and reflecting back at you."
I'm sure neuroscientists around the world would cringe upon reading such claims. Quantum physicists probably would cringe right along with them.
Did you notice how in just a few brief sentences she managed to incorporate enough buzzwords to …Continue reading
In the spirit of the season, I'm holding a contest to give away a Personal Development Gift Bundle to one of my readers. The winner will receive these items:
How to Enter:
The contest will be open for entries until midnight (Eastern Time) on December 15th. To enter the contest, simply send me an email and type the word "CONTEST" in the contact form. Please be sure to enter a valid email address so I can contact you if you are selected as the winner.
On Sunday, December 16th, I'll select the winner via a random drawing. Good luck to everyone who enters the contest!
If your local cable television network offers the Discovery Health channel, keep an eye out for a new series called Dreamzone. The first episode is scheduled to air on December 22nd. Here is a description from the Discovery Health web site:
"Do you ever dream that you're flying? Or being chased? Your dreams be telling you something. Unravel the mysterious world of dreams on Dreamzone, premiering Saturday, December 22 at 9:00 pm.
This series examines, in some depth, but in a fast moving style, our inner universe as dreamers. Everybody dreams. Some people remember their dreams, some don't. But we all dream several times per night. And we are all fascinated by what they might mean. Are they the remains of the day? Could they be foretelling the future? Or could they be our subconscious helping us sort out life's problems? Dreams are a very mysterious, yet common everyday experience."
The Discovery Health site also features a section called the Sleep & Dreams Center, which includes information about sleep cycles, theories about why we sleep and why we dream, and a series of articles called "Sleep Expedition" chronicling journalist Vince Rause's quest to find a good night's sleep. Rause interviewed Stephen LaBerge, Jeremy Taylor, Gayle Delaney, Patricia Garfield, and several other prominent sleep/dream researchers, so his series is worth the read.
Last night I watched a new movie called Paprika, and I think anyone who studies dreams might find the movie interesting. It's an anime film, but even if you don't like anime or if you've never seen an anime film before, you'll probably enjoy this one because it features everything a dream enthusiast could want — lucid dreaming, shared dreaming, technology to tap into dreams, dreaming used as a form of therapy, and more.
The story involves a small group of scientists and therapists who have developed a device that allows one person to enter the dreams of another person. It also allows other people to view the dreams on a computer screen at the same time. Their goal in creating the device was to provide a way for therapists to enter the dreams of their patients, to see what a patient is dreaming about and to use the dream to help the patient work through problems or anxiety issues. They're still in the process of testing the technology and its existence hasn't been made public yet.
The problems begin when they discover the device has been stolen. Things get even worse when they realize the mind of anyone who was ever connected to the device is now …Continue reading
I recently got my hands on a copy of Explorers of the Lucid Dream World, a new documentary about lucid dreaming. The DVD arrived in the mail on Friday and I immediately popped it into the player and watched the documentary and all the special features that accompanied it.
The documentary covers the basics of lucid dreaming, what it is and what it can be used for. It includes interviews with prominent researchers in the field — Stephen LaBerge and Alan Wallace, among others — along with comments from longtime lucid dreamers involved with the Lucidity Institute.
The documentary won't teach you how to have lucid dreams, but it offers a good introduction for people who are new to lucid dreaming. It includes a description of how to perform a reality check using text, so it gives aspiring lucid dreamers a place to begin their practice. One thing I especially liked was how the documentary subtly emphasized the fact that while lucid dreaming can be a vehicle for entertainment it also can lead you to a much deeper understanding of your unconscious mind.
The special features on the DVD were a highlight for me because there are additional interviews with each of the people featured in the documentary. The interview with Alan Wallace is more than thirty minutes on its own, and how can you go wrong with 30+ minutes of Alan Wallace? (Answer: You can't.) Patricia Keelin also offered some great insights in her interview.
Explorers of the Lucid Dream World was written, produced and directed by Richard Hilton. You can order a copy of the DVD through his web site in exchange for a small donation.
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? …Continue reading
