First of all, about lucid dreams.
Lucid dream was put forward by Dutch doctor Frederick van Eden in 19 13. 1970, British psychologist Keith Hearne supported this concept. In the experiment, Alan Worsley used eye movements as signals to mark the beginning of lucid dreams in polysomnography. In 2003, Celia Green's Lucid Dreams was the first book to admit that lucid dreams are unique and have potential for scientific research. With the development of neuroimaging technology, the relationship between lucid dreams and rapid eye movement sleep (REM) has been further confirmed. Lucid dream is a state of consciousness between lucidity and sleep. Matthew P. Walke, a psychologist in California, USA, believes that both lucid dreams and ordinary dreams will occur during REM sleep, but in lucid dreams, the dorsolateral prefrontal lobe, which is responsible for logical reasoning, makes the brain jump to a "lucid" state and makes itself understand that it is a dream.
Second, how to control dreams
Undoubtedly, everyone has three to seven dreams at night, mainly because we can't remember them. In fact, knowing that you are dreaming, it is feasible to control your dreams after some training.
The first step to lucid dreaming is to record your dreams. This is conducive to recalling the content of dreams and strengthening the realism of dreams.
The second step is to monitor the sense of reality. Doing simple things in dreams, such as reading sentences, counting your fingers, or looking at the time, will be incredible in dreams. Let's have a try now. Look at the time, then look away, look at other things, then look at the time. If you are not dreaming, you should watch it twice for about the same time. However, in dreams, the time and sentences you see will change. If you want to control your dreams, the key is to practice monitoring your sense of reality when you are awake until you become your second natural instinct. In this way, when you are dreaming, you can or may do such monitoring, and then different things will happen to enter the dream.
After that, a skill called "memory guides lucid dreams" will be formed. When sleeping, try to recall a recent dream, and then imagine yourself waking up from it, so as to exercise the consciousness of how to know that you are dreaming in your dream. Next, repeat this sentence repeatedly to imply that I will have a lucid dream tonight. If you wake up for half an hour in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep with this awareness, you will have a greater chance of success.
Finally, when you successfully learn this skill, you can also try the ultimate skill of "lucid dream awakening". The purpose is to keep the brain awake when the body is asleep, but there is a risk of "sleep paralysis", commonly known as "ghost bed".
What can lucid dream research do for psychology?
1, cure "ghost press bed". The above-mentioned "sleep paralysis", which is a very common phenomenon, is to keep your body stable while sleeping. But when you are "awake", it may be a little scary. When you experience sleep paralysis, there will be some pranks in your brain, which will make you feel that there is a horrible unknown object approaching. If you know your situation, maybe you can continue to use the skill of "memory leads lucid dreams" to end this nightmare.
2. Treat nightmares by controlling dreams. From Freud to Jung, psychologists have never stopped studying dreams. Dream interpretation, hypnosis and positive imagination play an important role in clinical psychotherapy. For the study of lucid dreams, trying to control the nightmare of visitors can alleviate the pain of visitors to a certain extent and improve the quality of sleep.
3. The study of lucid dreams has enhanced people's medical understanding of the conscious region of the brain.
4. Put forward the objection that dreams and reality are separated or unified. After all, from the perspective of neural functional activity system, dreaming to do one thing is the same as actually doing one thing. Are you sure you are not sleepwalking? Yes, perhaps, it can also provide support for the study of sleepwalking.
Okay, I'm going to bed, Zzzzz. "Come like the wind, go like the wind, otherwise everything is just a dream."
(Author: Lai Donghui)