A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming (9 page)

absolutely finished.”

But after several more studies with additional subjects, the

anomaly seemed to be real enough. He brought in a veteran sleep

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scientist, Nathaniel Kleitman, and the two began to notice that

during this stage of sleep the heart rate and breathing quickened

and blood pressure rose. They noted that about four to five times

during a given night, their subjects’ brains would suddenly shift,

like a radio changing its frequency, to a very active and “wakeful”

brain state. At the same time, the subject’s eyes would move rap-

idly back and forth under closed lids.

The results that sprang from these experiments led to one of

the biggest breakthroughs in the scientific study of dreams. The

two men proved that despite previous thinking, dreaming is not

synonymous with sleep—dreaming occurs during a specific time

within sleep.

When it was time to name their discovery, they did what any

self-respecting scientist would do and gave it an incredibly boring

name: Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM for short). However, even

with a dull name, the discovery was profound. The bridge between

the waking world and the dream world was found in the eye of the

beholder. Science had figured out when we dream.

ONE BRAIN, TWO WORLDS

The dreaming brain might be more similar to our waking brain than we think.

Professors Llinás and Paré at New York University argue that REM sleep

and wakefulness are essentially similar brain states. The only difference is in
the sensory stimuli coming in. During the day our experience is shaped by the
sensory input coming from the external world, but when we dream our

attention is turned inward. Our thoughts and memories become the active
agents in creating our experience.

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REM and Stages of Sleep

While we don’t know for sure why we dream, we do know

some science about the nature of sleep. Throughout the

night, we cycle through two main phases of sleep: non-REM and

REM. Non-REM (also known as slow wave sleep) is characterized

by slow brain waves. Imagine it like a roller coaster—we rise and

fall between different stages of sleep like the up-and-down journey

of a thrill ride.

In the beginning hours of sleep, our REM (dream time) is

relatively short, five to ten minutes at the most. Most of our sleep

occurs in non-REM. However, as the night progresses, the amount

of time spent in REM increases. By morning, the other stages of

sleep disappear, and depending on how much sleep you get, your

last two REM stages can last up to fifty minutes each! Here’s how

a typical night goes:

Stage 1:
As you lie in bed and begin to feel your body dozing off,

you are already entering the first stage of sleep. This stage is the

bridge between our waking and dreaming selves. During this transi-

tion, you may experience images, lights, or other sensations, which

are known as hypnagogic imagery. This is the time where you may

experience hypnic jerks, those random twitches you get where you

kick or spasm just before drifting off, a natural occurrence that

your dog or spouse may know all too well. This stage is commonly

known as twilight (think more Rod Serling than vampires).

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Stage 2:
This is your body’s prep stage. Here you’ve already fallen asleep, but you aren’t quite in a deep sleep yet. Toward the end of

this stage, as you prepare for deep sleep, your body begins to lower

your heart rate as well as your core temperature. Things are begin-

ning to sloooowwww dooooowwwwn. No dreams here, my friend.

Stage 3:
Welcome to repair mode. At this point you’re in deep

sleep. Like a computer rebooting itself, your body is rebuilding

muscle and bone mass, making repairs to organs and tissue, and

strengthening your immune system.

We then begin our ascent back toward waking and away from

deep sleep. Like a roller coaster, we climb back up to the level of

stage two . . . then one . . . then . . .

REM Stage:
Finally! The fun stuff! Your brain is buzzing with

activity, and it seems like you’re about to wake up, but the roller

coaster plateaus and you enter the sweet spot—the dream zone.

In fact, your brain activity is so similar to being awake that if a

scientist was only monitoring your noggin, he or she would have

a hard time knowing whether you’re awake or dreaming. You just

entered the most important stage for the lucid dreamer—the very

seat of dreams.

All Aboard!

It would be hard to catch a train if you didn’t know when it was

leaving. But if you know the departure time, it’s easy enough to

jump on board before it pushes off into the distance. Similarly, it’s

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important to know when REM sleep happens because that’s when

you’re dreaming the most. To a lucid dreamer, this information is

pure gold. If you know when you dream, you can hone all your

lucid dreaming energy at that one target, increasing your odds of

hitting a bull’s-eye. Deliberately catching your last cycle of REM

sleep is one of the best tools to inducing a lucid dream, one that

we’ll come back to in the coming chapters. The last fifty-minute

cycle, those dreams in the early morning hours, is where our jour-

ney begins.

�

Summary

Dreaming occurs mainly in what is known as REM sleep.

•   When we enter REM, our brain shows patterns similar to 

wakefulness.

•   With no external stimuli shaping our reality, we turn inward, 

creating our experience from our thoughts and memories.

•   Knowing when REM occurs will be one of the most powerful 

tools in inducing lucid dreams.

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5

The Power of Intention

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Who looks outside, dreams;

who looks inside, awakes.”

—Carl Jung,

founder of analytical psychology,

truly a modern-day shaman

Some people are natural lucid dreamers. For them, being

aware during the dream state is something they did as a kid

and continue to do throughout their lives. For others, it

must be learned.

When we started teaching people how to lucid dream we were

surprised by a reoccurring event: people would often have their

first lucid dream just after discovering that lucid dreaming existed.

It was as if once they knew to look for it, it was much easier to

find.

It makes sense doesn’t it? In the early 1950s, the world record

for the mile race was over four minutes. It had been floating just

above the 4-minute mark for over ten years, and the public didn’t

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think a man could physically run a mile faster than that. But on

a windy May day in 1954, Englishman Roger Bannister broke the

record at 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Only six weeks later, an Aussie

named John Landy broke Bannister’s record with 3:58. Then,

later that same summer, Bannister and Landy went head-to-head

in a dramatic race-off. Bannister narrowly won and reclaimed his

record. Today, we’re still pushing the boundaries of what’s possible

with a world record held by Hicham El Guerrouj at a whopping

3:43!

It’s tough to bushwhack through a dense forest. But once the

path is cut, others can follow much more easily. Before you can

achieve a goal, you have to know what that goal is and that it’s

possible to achieve. You have to set an intention.

The same holds true for lucid dreaming. Once you set an inten-

tion to go to sleep and to wake up within your dreams, it becomes

much easier to do. It’s all about cultivating this strong desire.

This guide will teach you the tools you need to achieve lucid-

ity, but nothing is more useful than having the burning desire

to become lucid. Whether you want to remember your dreams,

incubate a specific dream, induce lucidity, or master any other

technique, intention is key. It is the foundation of lucid dreaming.

So What Is an Intention?

An intention is a purpose, a goal. A directed thought toward a

specific action. We set intentions all the time in waking life:

to eat healthier, become physically fit, work less, play more, learn

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a new language. When we lack intentions in life (or in dreams),

we sometimes wander meaninglessly and without direction. We

become vague and unspecific about what we want. How many of

us struggle with this problem when it comes to our careers or our

personal lives? When we’re clear about what it is we want, it’s a

whole lot easier to go out and get it.

Don’t worry, we won’t ask you to jot down all your life goals.

Fortunately, you already know what you want: to become lucid in

a dream. With this clear desire in mind, let’s look at the most effec-

tive ways to set an intention.

The Power of Thought

Have you ever heard of athletes mentally rehearsing as an

important part of their practice? Well, it’s possible that this

isn’t just superstition; science is finding out some pretty interest-

ing stuff, proving just how influential the mind can be over its

surroundings.

A study was done in which skiers were hooked up to an elec-

tromyograph (EMG), an instrument that measures the activity of

electrical waves associated with the skeletal muscles. The skiers

were asked to carry out mental rehearsals of themselves skiing. The

skiers were then told to visualize themselves performing their runs

on the slopes in their mind’s eye. What the researchers found was

that the electrical impulses of the athlete’s muscles were the same

as the ones they used when they were actually skiing.

“The brain sent the same instructions to the body whether

the skiers were simply thinking of a particular movement or

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actually carrying it out,” writes Lynn McTaggart, in
The Intention

Experiment.
“Thought produced the same mental instructions as

action.” In other words, their brain did not differentiate between a

thought and a real-life event.

Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic

Foundation, was also interested in the power of thought. All you

couch potatoes out there, listen up: He found that simply imagin-

ing exercise can significantly increase muscle strength. You read

right! He had a control group go to the gym and work their biceps

while another group simply imagined doing so. By just think-

ing about it, the average subject who imagined the workout had

increased muscle strength by 13.5 percent while the subjects who

went to the gym increased muscle strength by 30 percent. Throw

away that gym membership that you never use anyway and stick

with some focused thought.

We don’t need scientific experiments to tell us how powerful

thoughts are. Our lives are run by the intentions swirling around

in our heads. Even a small goal, such as baking a cake, begins with

a specific intention in mind. You first imagine what ingredients

you’ll use, the different steps along the way, and how delicious the