How often would you say you remember your dreams? Believe it or not, you spend two hours each night dreaming. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH), “everyone dreams,” and you “may not be able to remember most of your dreams.” Learning about when dreams occur, what you can do with them, and the science of how a phenomenon called Lucid Dreaming works, could potentially be life-changing to you.

 NIH stated, “Dreams can be experienced in all stages of sleep, but usually are most vivid in REM sleep.” When you sleep, you go through multiple stages of sleep, but the most interesting one is “REM sleep,” a stage during your sleep cycle in which your pulse and breathing speeds up and increased eye twitching occurs. “REM sleep” takes place at totally different times for most individuals, but can happen anywhere from 30-90 minutes to 4-6 hours after falling asleep!

 Learning about when dreams occur and what “REM sleep” is is very important to understanding the term Lucid Dreaming. Medicinenet best describes Lucid Dreaming as “The process of being aware that one is dreaming.” Lucid Dreaming is something that everyone is capable of, including you. When you are aware that you are dreaming, you can train yourself to, as crazy as it sounds, control your dreams. Many celebrities have claimed to have had Lucid Dreams, one of the more famous ones being Albert Einstein. In these dreams, you can fly around or create things; anything’s possible because this is just a state of imagination, and we all know how realistic dreams can feel.

 Many studies on the subject have been done, “one study monitored subjects with electroencephalograms (EEGs — a test of the electrical brain activity) as they slept,” as seen on science.howstuffworks.com. The brain activity that is seen throughout tests like this are very much like the activity seen while being conscious. Some scientists disagree and blow this off as if it was impossible, but people who experience it, along with the scientists who study it, fully believe this phenomenon.

 There is so much to this subject, it just can’t be fully explained in one article. There is still the entire process of actually learning how to do it; there are plenty of sources on the internet that can go further into depth on the matter. I highly encourage you to make this something you learn, especially because this is something that you can only enjoy, unless you make it otherwise. Expand your imagination and embrace your amazing secret talent. Be creative, be aware, be lucid.

 

Lambert, Katie. “”How Lucid Dreaming Works”.” 21 May 2008. howstuffworks. Web. 30 August 2017.

“Medical Definition of Lucid dreaming.” 09 June 2016. MedicineNet.Com. web. 30 August 2018.

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep.” 10 July 2017. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. web. 30 July 2017.