What is a lucid nightmare?

What is a lucid nightmare?

A lucid is a state where you are neither asleep nor awake. If you have ever had a dream where you knew that you were dreaming, then that is a lucid state. So imagine having a nightmare and being able to feel it? Isn’t that scary? A lucid nightmare is whereby you are having a nightmare, and yet you don’t have the desire to end it. Instead, you are controlling the characters in your nightmare to make the dream more fun.

A lucid nightmare is a lucid dream which is a lot darker and causes fear and anxiety in you when you have it. Just like a lucid dream, you will be aware that what you are seeing is not real and you will know for sure that you are dreaming. Unlike in the lucid dream where you want the fun to go on and on, in a lucid nightmare, the wonder is not there, and you don’t want to see the end of the outcome that you are dreaming; you wish to wake up and get over with the nightmare.

Even though you know for sure that it is just a dream, your mental state makes the nightmare to be more vivid, and it will feel more real than the normal nightmare.

Why do you have lucid nightmares?

You might be wondering loudly what make you have lucid nightmares. Dreaming is a time for your unconscious mind to shine. If you perceive dreams as your mind is sorting through your daily thoughts, then it is right to imagine that, sometimes, fears and anxieties are brought into dreams by your consciousness. The lucid nightmares may be a result of things you don’t want to realize and you are worried or stressed or scared of aspects in your waking life.

Lucid nightmares could also be as a result of your body trying to communicate something to you instead of the mind. Dreams at times act as health warnings, and if you have a repeated nightmare which shows you scenarios or images that are related to health or a particular disease, it could be that your body is trying to communicate to you that there is something wrong as far as your health is concerned. So if you have a lucid nightmare, don’t dismiss it that fast, it might be communicating something that you should take seriously.

When do lucid nightmares happen?

As with any other nightmares, lucid nightmares happen generally when you are experiencing stress. A good example of a time when one is stressed is during exams, and it is a season when bad dreams and nightmares come your way. You could have a nightmare of having your exams canceled or failing exams.

Trauma can also cause you to have lucid nightmares. People who have post trauma syndrome could often find themselves being terrorized in their sleep by terrifying dreams which normally manifest the memories of the trauma. You can take charge and control what you dream at night; avoid thinking about the past events which are not pleasant when you are going to sleep. Try and live in the present.

What is the Implication of Lucid Nightmares?

There are a lot of psychological triggers which make people have lucid nightmares. Let’s firstly look at these nightmares in adults, which include, but is not limited to anxiety and depression. Post-traumatic stress disorder is also known to cause chronic nightmares. When having lucid nightmares, you will be able to discriminate the real from the unreal, thus, making you to differentiated from someone who is insane. As opposed to the normal nightmare, this type you will be able to have the ability to engage and reason in logical thoughts as they are intact. You will be able to consider, entertain, and imagine what you are thinking or feeling in your dream. You will be able to take dialogue, interactions between yourself and the characters in your nightmare just as in waking life. The characters act as if they had full mental autonomy and capacity, and they act contrary to your wishes, and that is how it becomes a nightmare. All the constituents of the mind which you take for granted in your waking life are normally in existence when having a lucid nightmare.

How can you utilize lucid nightmares?

Though they are scared, lucid nightmares can. Because you are fully aware that it is a dream, you can look past the fear and maybe out of it, you will discover something which could have been at the back of your mind for some time, and now, it is coming out in the form of a lucid nightmare. Out of the dream, you can then address the problem in your real life and get rid of it.

Though it is a nightmare, you might not enjoying having it in your lucidity and could wish for it to end, but, it is important that you let it go to a conclusion so that you can get the full meaning of it. If you manage to have control of your fears in the lucid nightmare, it might just lessen the terror of the same in your real life experiences and also make you have less or no lucid nightmares in the future.

If you can manage to change the view of the dream, you might then be able to enjoy the nightmare and become the Superman in it! I am sure you have once watched a horror movie and liked the thrill of it all. Imagine the dream to be a horror movie and watch it to its conclusion and get the thrill; remember if it is just a dream and not real.

How do you stop lucid nightmares?

Lucid nightmares are unusual, and in most cases, if you have a lucid dream which slips and becomes a lucid nightmare, you lose your consciousness. Most lucid dreamers have dreams without terror, and they use them to fight terror and not to induce them. But if you remain lucid in your nightmare, then you should look for ways to do so. You can try and have a good and consistent sleeping routine, and this will automatically sort out the nightmares.

Now we have moved into explaining what the lucid nightmare is but what about trying to understand what lucid dreaming really means. Yes, I know. I should have explained what lucid dreaming was at the beginning of this article but I thought you might be worried about encountering a nightmare dream. I want to go over what lucid dreaming is then I will provide a link to how I lucid dream and the technique I use. You maybe having nightmares because you are not properly going into a lucid dream state. I want you to really understand what lucid dreaming is so please read on. So Lucid Sleeping Explained: What does it mean to be lucid sleeping; awake yet you are sleeping? Most people believe that dreaming is something that is completely different from our day to day life. When you wake up in the morning from a dream where you were chased around by a dangerous Lion, or fallen in love with the Prince of Wales, you will either be relieved or disappointed depending on what the dream was all about.

Lucid sleeping is different from the above as it happens when you are sleeping, and you are aware that you are sleeping; in case you dream during this period of lucid sleeping, you will tend to control your dream. It is different from normal sleeping, and you will notice the difference once you wake up. The experience will be that of waking up in your dreams, and it is like you come out and you find out that you are in the middle of a dream in your sleep.

Lucid dreaming has become a new age fad whereby there are gadgets and machines which you can acquire from special clubs that can help you to induce lucid sleeping and having lucid dreams. The commercialization of the whole process is making people forget the real fascination caused by these type of dreams. They are the type which will leave you asking about the deliberate control of your actions; the nature of consciousness and that of the imaginary world.

Is Lucid Sleeping Real or Not?

A Dutch psychiatrist is the one who came up with the lucid dreaming/sleeping phrase to mean that, you have a dream where there is re-integration of the psychic functions that you reach a state of perfect awareness and are in a position to control your attention and attempt to do different acts freely while at the same time, the sleep is still intact, refreshing and deep. It means that during this type of sleep, you are conscious.

During lucid sleeping, not all the muscles are paralyzed like in the REMs dreams and thus, you can signal your eyes during the lucid dreaming. It commonly occurs very early in the morning, an hour to REMs period and towards the end of a burst of rapid eye movement. They are normally short and last between two to five minutes in length.

Things You Didn’t Know about Lucid Sleeping

Did you know that the first lucid dream was recorded in the Ancient Egyptians? More than 5000 years ago, the Egyptian was advanced as far as civilization is concerned. They believed in three bodies; ba which is the soul; shat representing the corpse body, and ka which is the living physical body. Ba was a person but in another form which could be referred to as out of the body state. So it could mean that ba represented the lucid sleeping.

You can map lucid sleeping as a separate state of consciousness different from any other. Though it is hard to make a distinction, it is very possible to visualize how the conscious states are mapped in a multidimensional space. Did you know that in every five people, one lucid sleep every month or more? There is a survey which was carried out in 1988 by Snyder & Gackenback which came out with the revelation that, 20 percent of people claimed that, they had frequent lucid dreams on a monthly basis while 50 percent had done it once. This means that lucid sleeping is not a rare occurrence as we may think. From the survey, it seems quite normal to have control over your dreams, especially when you are a child. Why children? Because they are prone to nightmares which can become emotionally intense and highly vivid. It is this which awakens the part of the brain responsible for self-awareness which they then use to wake themselves up while others transform the nightmare into a dream that is pleasantly guided.

Lucid sleepers can be able to talk to the outside world. It is also possible for you to talk to someone who is in a lucid sleep situation. When you sleep, the brain becomes ignorant to most of what is happening in the outside world. For the sake of survival, there is part of you which retain some awareness and responsive to some types of external stimulus. So if you are hit on your chest you will somehow feel it in your lucid sleep, If the hitting is hard, it will make you wake up from your sleep.

When in a lucid sleep, once you close your eyes, you wake up. When having a nightmare and you close your eyes tightly, you will stop the nightmare. Same case with lucid sleep, when you are lucid dreaming, and then you close your eyes, you will stop the dream. And if you do wake up by accident, it is possible to continue the lucid sleep from where you stopped it from. As long as you keep your body still and close your eyes immediately, there is a chance that you will continue your lucid sleep.

Lucid sleeping springs from a special part of the brain. When you are lucid dreaming, you recognize that you are dreaming. The working memory and self-awareness are stimulated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during this period. The moment lucidity is activated, you will tend to walk a fine line of staying asleep, while at the same time, maintaining your consciousness to remember that you are dreaming.

Lucid sleeping is linked to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which is what causes REM to sleep, and you start dreaming. The more vitamins B6 you take, the more likely you are to recall and intensify your lucid dreaming. Taking a 100mg of B6 daily is okay especially if it is taken in prolonged dosages. Taking over 500mg daily for several months can lead to pain and numbness to the extreme. So make sure that if you have to take it to enjoy your lucid sleeping, take the correct dosage. Depending on how it occurs, lucid sleeping is fun and enjoyable and if you think it is not as frequent as you would want it to be, use boosters to make it more vivid and frequent. If though you are having nightmares of lucid dreaming it may mean that you need to meditate. Finally, my technique of lucid dreaming, please click here to uncover how I lucid dream and this should help prevent any of those nightmares.