I know several people who have done and enjoyed lucid dreaming.
I did it for a while as a student, but stopped. I started with classic techniques for noticing (a word written on the back of my hand worked well for me) and after a month or so got good enough at it that I could tell dreams from reality just by being able to perceive the dream-like quality of my perceptions. The dreams were good fun. It even changed my experience of waking life too, making it more dream-like: more vivid and more fuzzy at the same time.
But eventually I noticed that I was finding it a lot harder to do challenging thinking tasks, like a difficult programming job, or a problem sheet, that I’d previously had no trouble with. Waking life had got less interesting—I’d basically be clockwatching until I could go back to bed and have lucid dreams again. The dream-like quality to waking life was also getting problematic—I’d find myself almost completely zoned out in situations where I really didn’t want to be and consequently got in trouble.
When I noticed all this, I was a bit freaked out, so I stopped completely. I trained myself out of the habit of noticing near-constantly whether I was dreaming or not, and developed a new habit of forgetting dreams once I was awake. (Mainly by not thinking about them once I’m awake—the don’t think of a white tiger trick is to deliberately think about something else.) Things returned to the previous normal quite quickly, and I haven’t done it since.
Looking back, I’m fairly sure I’d become quite seriously sleep-deprived. My guess is my lucid dreaming was making my sleep less restful. Now I have a lot more experience of sleep deprivation, I know that one of the insidious features of chronic sleep deprivation (for me at least) is that it zaps my metacognitive abilities as fast as it zaps my other cognitive functions. Which leads to a Dunning-Kruger death spiral: not only do I get less smart, I get less good at telling how smart I am.
I expect that many people who do lucid dreams won’t have that problem: I mention it as something that’s worth keeping an eye on. But perhaps wise not to do the experimenting in the run up to e.g. big exams, work deadlines, interviews, long drives, etc.
One of my absolute favourite lucid dreams was flying. I’ve since done a bit of flying light aircraft as a (very expensive) hobby. The thing about lucid dreams is that you’re aware that they are only dreams. In my experience, actually living your favourite dream is harder work, but way better.
I know several people who have done and enjoyed lucid dreaming.
I did it for a while as a student, but stopped. I started with classic techniques for noticing (a word written on the back of my hand worked well for me) and after a month or so got good enough at it that I could tell dreams from reality just by being able to perceive the dream-like quality of my perceptions. The dreams were good fun. It even changed my experience of waking life too, making it more dream-like: more vivid and more fuzzy at the same time.
But eventually I noticed that I was finding it a lot harder to do challenging thinking tasks, like a difficult programming job, or a problem sheet, that I’d previously had no trouble with. Waking life had got less interesting—I’d basically be clockwatching until I could go back to bed and have lucid dreams again. The dream-like quality to waking life was also getting problematic—I’d find myself almost completely zoned out in situations where I really didn’t want to be and consequently got in trouble.
When I noticed all this, I was a bit freaked out, so I stopped completely. I trained myself out of the habit of noticing near-constantly whether I was dreaming or not, and developed a new habit of forgetting dreams once I was awake. (Mainly by not thinking about them once I’m awake—the don’t think of a white tiger trick is to deliberately think about something else.) Things returned to the previous normal quite quickly, and I haven’t done it since.
Looking back, I’m fairly sure I’d become quite seriously sleep-deprived. My guess is my lucid dreaming was making my sleep less restful. Now I have a lot more experience of sleep deprivation, I know that one of the insidious features of chronic sleep deprivation (for me at least) is that it zaps my metacognitive abilities as fast as it zaps my other cognitive functions. Which leads to a Dunning-Kruger death spiral: not only do I get less smart, I get less good at telling how smart I am.
I expect that many people who do lucid dreams won’t have that problem: I mention it as something that’s worth keeping an eye on. But perhaps wise not to do the experimenting in the run up to e.g. big exams, work deadlines, interviews, long drives, etc.
One of my absolute favourite lucid dreams was flying. I’ve since done a bit of flying light aircraft as a (very expensive) hobby. The thing about lucid dreams is that you’re aware that they are only dreams. In my experience, actually living your favourite dream is harder work, but way better.