Enter dreamland: Lucid dreaming

Have you ever experienced awareness that you were dreaming, even though you were still asleep and in your dream? Found yourself in a dreamworld that you can control in any way you want? Directed your dreams like a scene from Inception or Paprika?

If the answer is yes, you have experienced what is called lucid dreaming. (Positive Psychology 101: Emotion Regulation and Resilience)

What is lucid dreaming and how often do we have lucid dreams?

“Lucid dreaming is the experience of achieving conscious awareness of dreaming while still asleep. Lucid dreams are generally thought to arise from non-lucid dreams in REM sleep”. So what  really happens when we have a lucid dream?

A meta-analysis on 34 studies from 1966- 2016 showed that more than 55% of the world’s population experiences at least one lucid dream in their lifetime, while 23 % experience it once in a month.

*source 1. LaBerge S, Levitan L, Dement WC. Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. J Mind Behav. 1986;7:251–58. [Google Scholar]

*source 2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810016301283?via%3Dihub