June 23, 2009 • 26 mins
In a lucid dream, the sleeper is aware that he or she is in a dream state. Does that mean you can control these dreams? Where did this concept come from? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out more about lucid dreaming.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast Chuck. I'm flying, Chuck. Chuck. Brian is sleeping
(00:23):
right now flying um. He appears to be having some
sort of dream, possibly lucid dream. I'm flying? Are you awake? Chucky?
So lame it was? Should we keep it? Sure? Yeah?
How was your How is your sleep? You're feeling refreshed?
I am, I'm feeling great and awake. And you were
flying just now? I was. Were you aware that you
(00:45):
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
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:58):
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,
(03:18):
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,
(03:41):
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,
(04:03):
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
(04:24):
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
(04:44):
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
(05:06):
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
(05:28):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:10):
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
(06:35):
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,
(06:58):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:42):
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
(08:06):
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
(08:27):
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
(08:50):
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
(09:11):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:57):
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
(10:18):
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.
(10:39):
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
(11:00):
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,
(11:22):
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
(11:42):
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.
(12:05):
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
(12:27):
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
(12:49):
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
(13:09):
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,
(13:36):
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
(13:58):
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
(14:19):
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
(14:42):
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.
(15:02):
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.
(15:25):
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,
(15:45):
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
(16:09):
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,
(16:29):
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
(16:49):
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
(17:10):
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
(17:30):
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,
(17:50):
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
(18:10):
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.
(18:33):
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,
(18:54):
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
(19:15):
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
(19:36):
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
(19:58):
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
(20:19):
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.
(20:39):
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
(21:03):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:46):
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.
(22:12):
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,
(22:33):
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
(22:54):
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
(23:16):
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
(23:36):
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
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
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
(24:41):
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
(25:03):
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
(25:24):
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
(25:45):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. Want
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(26:07):
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast Chuck. I'm flying, Chuck. Chuck. Brian is sleeping
(00:23):
right now flying um. He appears to be having some
sort of dream, possibly lucid dream. I'm flying? Are you awake? Chucky?
So lame it was? Should we keep it? Sure? Yeah?
How was your How is your sleep? You're feeling refreshed?
I am, I'm feeling great and awake. And you were
flying just now? I was. Were you aware that you
(00:45):
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
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:58):
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,
(03:18):
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,
(03:41):
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,
(04:03):
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
(04:24):
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
(04:44):
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
(05:06):
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
(05:28):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:10):
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
(06:35):
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,
(06:58):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:42):
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
(08:06):
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
(08:27):
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
(08:50):
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
(09:11):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:57):
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
(10:18):
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.
(10:39):
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
(11:00):
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,
(11:22):
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
(11:42):
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.
(12:05):
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
(12:27):
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
(12:49):
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
(13:09):
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,
(13:36):
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
(13:58):
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
(14:19):
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
(14:42):
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.
(15:02):
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.
(15:25):
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,
(15:45):
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
(16:09):
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,
(16:29):
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
(16:49):
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
(17:10):
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
(17:30):
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,
(17:50):
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
(18:10):
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.
(18:33):
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,
(18:54):
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
(19:15):
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
(19:36):
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
(19:58):
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
(20:19):
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.
(20:39):
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
(21:03):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:46):
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.
(22:12):
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,
(22:33):
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
(22:54):
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
(23:16):
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
(23:36):
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
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
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
(24:41):
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
(25:03):
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
(25:24):
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
(25:45):
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
(26:07):
you
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