Can you control your dreams?

I am, I'm feeling great and awake. And you were flying just now? I was. Were you aware that you were flying in the dream and that maybe that's a little abnormal? I was, well, Chuck, my friend, you were having what is called a lucid dream. Wow, we should talk about that. Yeah, we should. I mean, like, this

is this is podcast old. You just happen to be having a lucid dreams And both of us have the how Lucid Dreams Work article in front of us, right in front of us, written by Katie Lambert, who's actually an editor by day and apparently a lucid dream writer by night. And we should say that this we've probably gotten more fan mail requests for Lucid Dream podcast than any other. I mean literally dozens and dozens of requests for this, so we can't read down the list of

names because I haven't kept them. But this is for all of you. Yes, thanks to all of you for writing in and saying do it now. So we are Yep, this is it. Let's just get this over with, shall we think? We're gonna teach you how to lucid dreams so you won't ever have to you know, you can do it yourself, which I find interesting. Are you planning on doing this? I'm gonna try it for sure. I'm gonna try it to if I can remember. I get

very tired before I sleep. I've heard that. So back to the beginning, right, alright, chuck um, So while you were flying in your dream, the fact that you were aware that you were flying in that it was weird and aware that it was dreaming, right, correct? Yeah, Okay, that that is what makes it a lucid dream. That's pretty much. An elucid dream is a dream where we realize we're dreaming. That's the hallmark of it. Right, You're still dreaming and you're you can control what happens. In

your dream that my friend is up for debate. Yes, the control part is up for debate. There's nobody. It's

not me, buddy. I would never say that to you if other people hadn't already um there there there is a big debate actually over you know, not whether whether or not lucid dreams exist, that's taken as fact, but whether or not we can control what goes on in our dreams, which is the other aspect of lucid dreaming generally, Like you know, what did did you adjust your yaw at any point in time while you're flying in your dreaming? You have great y'all control. So Chuck, let's let's get

let's kick this puppy off show. Okay, are you gonna kick this puppy off? You know, lucid dreaming has been around for a while, chuckers. Yeah. I think they said they traced it back to the eighteen hundreds and even though even before Aristotle, right, you know it's funny, is you just confused your research for a body dysmorphic disorder? Yeah, which we'll get to in about twenty minutes or two

or three days for you folks. Yeah, okay, yes, Aristotle much further back than the eighteen hundreds wrote about lucid dreaming. He did. He didn't call it lucid dreaming, but he described it in one of his writings. Um, And apparently Tibetan Buddhists have been engaged in trying to control their dreams lucid dreaming. Uh, not quite as far back as Aristotle, if I'm incorrect, because I think Aristotle came oh a thousand or so years before Buddha. But they have something

called dream yoga. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. It does. The name alone sounds pretty cool. Have you ever done yoga? Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I thought I found it difficult. It is that like bending over right. Plus I think being, you know, slightly overweight thirty eight year old is not the time to start doing yoga. Well, the apparently there's never a wrong time to start, but you just kind of have to go in and go. I'm going to shoot a duck at some point in time, and yeah,

it's a young man's sport. If you ask me, it requires more yaw control than either one of us are capable of. Downward dog. So tell me a little bit about dream yoga. Schuckers Josh, dream yoga, as you said, Buddhist, why are you giggling? That's funny? Uh? That is your your goal there is to probe your consciousness. And basically it's sort of like enlightenment, bring yourself to a constant state of awareness, right, because I mean, if you're which is a tenant of Buddhism, like just to see things

as they are. But why waste all of your you know, conscious awareness on um, I guess waking life? Why you know, take time off while you're sleeping. Yeah, so apparently dream yoga is actually like being cognizant that you're dreaming and then saying, okay, hey, why am I dreaming about this? Or you know, why is that dog attacking me? Rather than you know, curling up in my feet? So it's

a goal for constant awareness. And they figured, hey, why take the night off, Let's just carry this right into sleep, right, because that's what Buddhists do. They have a work ethic like you would not believe, my friend, how do you feel about that about people going up to like the mountains and just meditating for their entire lives productive member of society or no, oh yeah, why not? What are they doing. It's like, that's the most egocentric pursuit of

human can engage in. You think, going sequestering yourself from the rest of humanity to to achieve nirvana or enlightenment and just you know, probably dying the moment you get it. What's what's the point? What have you done? As a social animal, which humans are by nature? You have brought nothing to the table. You probably didn't even bother to

reproduce while you're up there. Well, I think there are many paths, my friend, and that you don't have to be a contributing member of society to be validated as a human. You're a hippie. I think I'm just jealous. I would love to spend the rest of my life on a mountaintops. God, I would get so bored. I would drive myself crazy. If I had to be alone in a cave with myself, I would go nuts. All right.

So that's dream yoga, which is also called nondual awareness, right, it's another name for it yet, which mystics like to call it, but it's essentially the same thing. It's exploring what's going on in your dreams and trying to figure out why, which actually kind of falls into one. Um one camp of the explanation for dreams, it's pretty much split down the middle between physiological and psychological. That would be that would subscribe to the psychological camp that when

we dream, we're basically our our innermost fears desires. But you know how when they say, like, um uh, the drunk person, the words of a drunk man, or the thoughts of a soberman. Yeah, in vino veratas, I think, is that right? Well, I mean so more concept, my goodness, chuck you like that? In wine there's truth. Of course, we all know that. Gotcha? Sure, um man, I'm impressed with you right now because I spoke a dead language. Yes it's not dead, though. You're gonna get us some

listener mail. Um So. The psychological camp, which was spearheaded by Sigmund Freud, said that our dreams were trying to tell us something. Essentially, your mind is telling you something like, hey, um, you eat way too many doughnuts because your mother neglected to breastfeed you. Something like that, especially along the Freudian lines, because everything was about sex and specifically having sex with your mother. To Freud, yeah, a lot of it came

back to that. For sure, although he did say sometimes the cigar is just a cigar. That is true as well. But no, to him, anything that was even slightly phallic in nature represented a pallast and anything that was an opening or a hole or something like that was vaginal in nature. He saw the world very much in black and white, and it was the aduct of his society, the uber repressed Victorian society. So, I mean his theories were kind of dated. Yeah, I guess so. And actually

lucid dreamer, not that I not that I am aware of. Curious, you know who did? A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick von Aiden. He's the guy who came up with the word lucid dreaming. And he was actually very much into his dreams. He kept counting of them, and he found that he flew in a lot of them, and apparently that he could control them, and this is where the lucid dreaming, the

term lucid dreaming came from. Pretty cool. He also said that there were nine different kinds of dreams, and only nine. I'd like to see that list. I didn't see that list anywhere, I know, but I could see that my dreams are generally kind of I could categorize in nine different groups. I find the number nine daunting. That's a lot of different dreams I have to have at night. I don't I don't want that kind of responsibility. You know, well, I don't think you always have to have all nine.

I think that that's just the broad category they would fall under, Like you may always have dreams that you're naked at work, which means whatever. I'm not sure what that means. I don't either. What do you think that means? I don't know. I mean when you go to dream books and things like that, there's usually a bunch of different conflicting theories. I used to have a dream that my teeth were either falling out or being or chattering,

and I've heard different different explanations were choking me. Have you had that one too? It's just it's that that Wow, it's that jah voo again. No it's not. It's deja vu. No it's not. It's you bringing up something that's already been brought up. Have I said this before? Dude? This happens a lot. Chuck Eggs Benedict, alright, mo Beta, okay, I mean come on, Chuck' sorry, I have no no

explanation for this. So I think if if you are having a lucid dream where you're in control and you still show up to work naked, does that make you a sick of Yes, okay for sure, Well chuck. Lucid dreaming and the fact that it's even a concept that's being discussed right now. The only reason we shlves are talking about it is because of a guy named Stephen Lebert. Yeah, he's he's kind of the leading researcher for this. He's

a Stanford guy, Stanford many psycho psycho physiologist. Yeah, which I imagine you go, you get some schooling to get that title. Yeah, probably some dark days in that man's life with that kind of title. Yeah, And he got one from Stanford, which legitimizes him to a certain extent in my opinion. Right, he calls himself a dream sailor, which de legitimizes him to a certain extent. In my opinion,

I would call myself a psycho physiologist for no doubt. Yeah, he's he's the he's the leading man in this category. And he runs workshops actually where he will teach you how to locid dream. And apparently they ain't cheap you know, a few thousand dollars, right, Yeah, And he'll also say that,

and I'm not saying this guy's a scammer. Of course it might be completely valid, but he says, oh, sometimes it'll take you several months of this too, several workshops, several paychecks to learn how to locid dream And you can either go to Dr Lebert's UM Lucid Dreaming Workshop where you can just read this article because there's some

actual um methods of teaching how how to lucid dreams. Right, we're not gonna do that right now that we're right, No, I think we should talk a little bit about dreaming part of the brain. Remember I said that there's two camps, psychological, right, and then the physiological. The physiological kind of came onto the scene in ninety seven, I believe came on like Gangbusters. Well, Josh, I think before we can talk about how to lucid dream we should talk about what lucid dreaming actually is

on the bo or not biological, but the physiological. Yeah, that's the other camp. There's a psychological and then there's the physiological as well. So we know we do know that lucid dreaming occurs during rim sleep, which is the fifth sleep stage when your body is just basically motionless. Your your body is literally paralyzed FIAT, and you don't have any sensory input as far as anybody knows, um, and you can't move except for your yeah, your eyelids.

And they this uh Stephen character has researched set up studies where they would have a pre planned eye movement. Correct, feel yourself falling into a lucid dream, you would signal the researcher, Hey, I'm having a lucid dream now right. So Liberisi and some of his crew hooked up some people who I guess reportedly had lucid dreams to an electro and cephalogram and measured their brain activity, the electrical activity in their brains um and then yeah, prearranged the signal.

I didn't did you get the impression what the signal was? But you have fluttered or something like that. I don't know, maybe a certain pattern of eye flutters or something. I don't know. Basically, it was somebody communicating from their their dream state. Yeah, they were saying, I'm having a lucid dream right now. That is super creepy and super cool. Yeah, but that's the closest that's the only evidence that we have, the only physical evidence that we have that there is

such thing as lucid dreams. Right, but it actually worked, Right, it did work. And that's that's not really supposed to happen, Chuck, Like we're we're basically our brain is supposed to be shut down, or at least the part of the brain that is um capable of, you know, sending a message from the dream world, you know, to the waking life world where a bunch of people are standing around you in white lab coats like watching your eyelids. Good point, thanks,

very astute. Thanks So Chuck, what was that? I don't know, um, what's going on in the actual brain too, that they could explain lucid dreaming, because you know, we shouldn't, we should be basically slaves to our dream states. Well, there's a doctor at Berkeley, you know this, Matthew Walker. Dr Matthew Walkers, a New York cardiologist. He uh, he's the director of a sleep lab in California at Berkeley, and

he and that's this theory kind of makes sense to me. Uh. The lateral prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that deals with logic and what he thinks is during rem sleep, this part of the brain is supposed to be asleep, but he thinks it's possible that actually wakes up. So your dream state and logic are both firing at the same time, So the dreamer is able to kind of recognize that you're actually dreaming, right, because since you know, if the logical part of your brain is working, you'd

be like, I don't really fly, must be dreaming. Or I'm falling now and I'm going to die yes, or another common dream. How about a Apparently lucid dreams are often sexy. Sexy dreams control erotic in nature. Yeah, I have a lot of celebrity dreams where I'm friends with some of my celebrity heroes. I have them all the time, well, not all the time. I have like five or six really detailed good ones a year that I'm like buddying around with Larry David or Gene Ween. Yeah, bo Luke, dude,

three of us. I'm writing Shotgun. He bet I do. Though my Emily always cracks ups. You think it's funny, So Chuck, let's um undermine Stephen Levert's just thousands of dollars per workshop. Come on and teach people how to have lucid dreams. Okay, let's do it. At the very least, we're gonna give you a few techniques that you could try. We make absolutely no claims that this will work, so we don't even try to sue us if it doesn't.

But it's worth a shot. I think it makes sense. First, the first thing you have to be good at his dream recall. That's kind of like the setup you should do is keep a dream diary, they say, a dream journal, and you know, keep some paper in a pin next to your bed, and when you wake up, right down what you're dreaming, even if it's in the middle of the night. And um, as you as you do that, you'll become more attuned to the process and you'll kind

of train yourself to remember your dreams. Yeah, so that's a good start. Yeah. And uh, another another good technique, I guess is a mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming. You heard of this one, m I L D mild Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is one of Lebert's techniques, so apparently he's given it away. Um. Basically, what you do is when you wake up from a dream, you try to recall it important um, and then as you're going back to sleep.

This apparently would work best in the middle of the night when you go back to sleep, you are you. You keep reminding yourself that you're about to start dreaming, and pretty soon you're gonna you're going to dream again, and you actually want to go back to the last dream you had, so you're you're controlling things from the outset um. And then once you get to that dream again, you're gonna start you want to actively look for what Libert's calls dream signs. The dream sailor calls these dream

signs um. Right, Well, like if you have wings or you're flying. So you're looking for these kind of things, and you remind yourself that you're dreaming, um. And that apparently puts you in the driver's seat of your dreams and can give you lucid dreams that you're in control. I would have called myself the dream weaver. I would never call you that. Okay, um, they say, and this

was a little extra research, Josh, I'm gonna lay on you. Um. There's some old Mexican and Indian techniques in their cultures where you can look at your hands during a dream. Have you heard that one? No? Apparently, if you look at your hands during a dream, that's a signal that you can take control of it from that point on. But I guess you would have to be in control to look at your hands in the dreams. So I

don't know about that one. Yeah, but I'd be more willing to trust some like ancient culture practice than than this crackpot out in California. Well they have, they have more staying power. Yeah, yeah, so that's I mean, I'm gonna try that one. I'm gonna try and see if I can look at my hands because I don't notice if I even see my hands in my dreams. Well, my all time favorite lucid dreaming technique is called reality testing.

Yeah late on me, and it actually falls in line with the Buddhist dream yoga, where basically you walk around all day going I'm in my waking state, I'm in

conscious reality. Like when I opened when I turned this door knob, this door is going to open, and it's just gonna be a regular room behind it because I can predict things because this world is based on rationality and logic, right, So you basically just remind yourself that you're not dreaming all day, in the hopes that when you start to dream, you will be aware of the separation, the border between our dream state and waking life. And you can carry this over and say, now I'm dreaming.

When I opened this door, there's going to be like an eight headed dog on the other side. If you have to speak like your dreams, I've heard it helps. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, um, yeah, that's that's how I talk when I'm dreaming or when I'm reminding myself of anything like no, I've got to take the garbage out tonight. Yeah, I should really not drink this evening. That kind of thing. Yeah,

I know, that's a dream uh nova dreamer. You want to talk about this thing, But this is an actual contraption that the same doctor in California Liberts has built, I guess, and it is u. Katie describes it as a cross between a sleep mask and goggles. So you wear this puppy when you go to sleep, and what it does is when it when it knows you're in rim sleep, sensors track your eye movements to to let it know, and then it shines a light in your eye. Right.

It's kind of like looking at your hands. Yeah, the ancient technique, but you have a reliable reminder, right, so it shines a light in your eye and then your dream. I mean, I guess you stay asleep. I personally would wake up if someone's shine a light in my eye and be like what the Yeah exactly, and uh so that's the signal you know you're dreaming at the time, and you just take it from there. Yeah. Can we

be done with this now? Well, I think the dream weaver thellar question, Josh, have you ever had a lucid dream? I don't you know what, Chuck, I don't remember my dreams very often. I have, Yes, I have once. Let's hear it. Do you really want to hear it? A truncated version, sure, the twenty two minute version. Um, I I was basically I had a theme song. I wasn't actually a pimp, but like kind of like in the very slangy version of the word pimp, like it just

kind of walking along like what's up? My dog ran past me? But it was a she was a balloon dog, like a balloon animal. And um that was about it. That was about all I remember. But it was one of the very few times where I was ever like this is cool, and that to me is about the same as I'm dreaming, Like I was aware that I was enjoying like this dream while I was in the dream. You know what I mean. I think that's probably the

closest I've had to a lucid dream. Ask me, well, Chuck, is a time for listener mail, Chuck, tell me about your lucid dream, buddy. Well, I don't have one specifically, but it does happen to me from time to time where I'll be aware that I'm dreaming and really digging the dream and manipulating where I'm going in the dream and where do you go? Well, wherever Disney World, wherever I feel like at the time, so where I'm a dream sailor so you can't box me, and wherever the

high seas take me. So yeah, I've lucid dreamt And I also, um, I'm pretty good at waking up from a dream that I was really enjoying and falling back asleep and going back into that dreams. You just love to tease yourself, huh. Yeah, And I'm a light sleeper. So have you ever heard that if you tell people about your dreams. They'll like, if you have a nightmare and you tell somebody the nightmare in detail, like, you won't have it again. I have not, what's up with that?

And I've had plenty of recurring dreams too. Oh well, if you ever have a dream that you saddled with a nightmare or something like that, the sooner you tell somebody about it, the more likely you are to not have it the next time you go to sleep. Dr Clark speaks, Yep, that's it for me. We're gonna do a big dream podcast at some point. But the how Dreams Work article is thick and voluminous and filled with stats in numbers and Chuck and our drooling over it.

So look for how dreaming works in the future. Absolutely Until then, Chuck, let's do uh listen to mail. Josh. I'm gonna call this stuff we should know, and I also have a special little shout out at the end of it that's nothing to do with the mail. Okay, So this is from Mason and Ames Iowa. And remember when we talked about the carbon dioxide pipelines and how there's never been any accident deaths in that kind of thing, or there's been accents but no fittalent. Wait, hold on,

how how did it go? Let's listen, we're talking between six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none o yeah none zip and over the same period more than five thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid um petroleum. So whoo whoop. It sounds like CEO two pipelines are away safer, but lot there's a lot fewer. Yeah, boy,

that was a good one. That was awesome. Whoop whoop. Indeed, so Mason says, greetings, Josher's and Chuck Anoch is a little casual. I thought I thought so too, Mason. He says he just listened to the CCS Carbon Capture podcast. Oh, he's using CCS to impress his friends. Yeah, and he actually wrote down abbreviation, which I thought was kind of funny. I wonder if he's I can't say he grew up in a small town called Mule Shoe, Texas. And he says, um,

that should make my listener male read worthy already. And he's right, But he said he grew up thirteen miles west of Mule Shoe, and about five miles from my house, there was a station on a carbon dioxide pipeline that tapped the CEO two and stored it in those huge cylindrical tanks and it was shipped on big semi trucks from that plant. So he says, way back in two thousand two there was a catastrophic failure and one of the tanks and actually killed a worker and injured three others.

So the explosion shook all the dishes in our house from five miles away. That's pretty hardcore. And his father, who was an Air Force pilot, said he initially thought the noise was sonic boom from a jet, so he said it didn't act result from a leaking pipeline, but if there would have been no pipeline, there would have been no accident. Yeah, well, sorry about that, Mason. Sorry, we overlooked the local tragedy there. And mules Shoe, I'm surprised you can't hear about that. And now Josh for

our special little shout out. What is it? Chuck? This is to Sully who was Uh sounds like one of your pals. Yeah, it's a kid, his mom wrote in His mom Kristen wrote in from southern California. And I know Jerry it was a big fan of this email as well, and if you read them you would be as well. And uh, Sully is Sullivan. He just sounds like a really cool little kid. He's about my nephew's

age eleven and years old. I think, yeah, my my cousin, my nephew Noah, who was a very cool, smart kid, and they are both big fans of MythBusters and their really smart and into school and stuff. And Kristen just wrote us into thank us and I'm not gonna read her email, but um, we just wanted to say hi to Sully, and uh, thanks for listening. Little buddy, stay in school, keep studying, drink your milk, keep keep up what you're doing. Because your mom says you're a really cool,

groovy kid. He loves modest mouse right on at eleven. I mean, come on, and they might be Giants nice and I believe my nephew no It is a big they might be Giants fan as well, so sweet, So we just cool kids. Yeah, I want to say hi and thanks for the support and keep listening. Thank you Sully, and uh, thank you Mason, thank you to everybody. Who listens to us. If you want to send us an email describing how you built the bird house and your soul, you can send that to stuff podcast at how stuff

works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot Com and page brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you