Lucid dreams, or how to interfere with our dreams and change their content

The night cream is done. The lights are off, and you sink into the arms of Morpheus. You dream that you are Cleopatra in the haze of a dream. you say to yourself “Ah, I’m dreaming, I’m not the queen of Egypt at all.” Well done! You just had a lucid dream, and probably not the first one.

Inserm recently estimated that 55% of adults have at least one lucid dream in their lifetime, and 23% have two or more each month.In one-third of cases, lucid dreamers can also control their dream, for example by altering it location or scenario, or even deliberately choosing to wake up.

Being conscious during dreams is an ancestral practice specific to certain initiatory traditions. Indian shamanism speaks of the art of dreaming. Tibetan Buddhism, dream yoga. The Greeks built temples where they could spend the night and practice dream-stimulation techniques, hoping to heal themselves through dreams. Like meditation, self-hypnosis, or energy work, lucid dreaming allows us to explore the unconscious and find solutions when we’re stuck; even to stimulate creativity.

It was in a dream that the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev imagined his famous periodic table of the classification of elements that Giuseppe Tartini compiled. Devil’s Trill Sonata, or that the mathematician Jerome Cardan solved the cubic equation. The magic of lucid dreaming will work just as well on motor learning; The great golfer Jack Nicklaus would “see” how to hold his club to improve his swing. This unique discipline would also reduce insomnia and anxiety, help with grief… and even lose weight.

Canadian psychologist and researcher Jane Guckenbach, an expert on dreams, for example, studied the case of a woman who avoided fatty foods throughout the day, knowing that she could eat them in lucid dreams that she controlled by will.

Insight and spirituality

For nearly fifty years, science has been studying this nocturnal “sport”, which is as unusual as it is promising. The advent of electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices has allowed a leap forward in understanding the phenomenon.

In 2009, researchers at the Neurological Clinic of the University of Frankfurt confirmed that lucid dreams correspond to a hybrid state of consciousness that is distinctly and measurably different from the waking state and paradoxical sleep. ,” brain areas associated with self-esteem and self-perception (including the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) is significantly activated within seconds.”

In short, during a lucid dream, we don’t wake up, but a part of the brain is reactivated to allow us to consciously experience the dream, in an introspective state. observes Charlie Morley, author. Simple dreams for everyone (Medici Editions): Self-taught since the age of 17, he practiced dream yoga.

At age 25, he even became one of the first Westerners to be officially “authorized” to teach lucid dreaming as a member of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism (one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism that emphasizes meditation). and thanks to lucid dreams, we can use this black hole of about thirty years for our psychological and spiritual growth,” he believes. the expert.

Open your eyes

Several studies from Harvard University show that most of us live 47% of our lives disconnected from ourselves, outside of the present moment by Charlie Morley We can learn to “wake up” in everyday life as we do in our dreams.

Cultivating a little simple awareness, even in a few minutes of our nights, according to the expert, will be such a powerful tool of liberation that it can lead us to an incredible state of waking clairvoyance; otherwise, they are as experienced as those who are asleep.” Dream yoga also helps us open our eyes to our negative projections, our doubts, our illusory boundaries, the highway to shaping our destiny, to what we could become if we only dared to dream it.

“What separates frequent lucid dreamers from non- lucid dreamers is simply practice. As with any skill, developing a consistent life through lucid dreaming takes time and effort,” explain Norma and Nish Burton. , authors. Simple dreams, simple lifestyle (Éditions Eyrolles) The techniques used to induce lucid dreaming (read the box below) have varying success rates, and no one works for everyone.Experts recommend experimenting to see which works best for you.

You can also use them all.Beware of the wow effect of the first successes… Adrenaline brings us to consciousness, the heartbeat… Gone are the days of dreams. “But with practice, it’s possible to stay in a lucid dream for as long as you want,” reassures Charlie Morley. “Don’t try to control the dream, but rather direct it. Keep a dream journal.” to remember better. And of course, do your exercises every day… About our pajamas.