You’re fast asleep, but dreaming. You are caught in a chase and are sprinting through dark alleys, climbing up tall buildings, and finding your way out of dingy corridors. You make your way to a terrace and try to catch your breath. It’s night, and you see the city scape lay open before you. The buildings look tiny with brightly lit windows. The roads are lively with speeding vehicles – loud and colourful.

Just at that moment, the door behind you flings open. You see a shady figure with a weapon. You run to the end of the wall and throw yourself into the air. You realise you can fly. You save your life and escape the attacker successfully. This is an instance of lucid dreaming. The sleeper is aware that they are dreaming and can control the narrative of their dreams.

Lucid dreaming enables you to ‘write your own story’ in your dream by directing the plot to what you’d want it to be. This takes place while the body is completely rested and asleep, but the mind is consciously awake. The science and understanding of such dreams is still being studied through extensive dream analyses.

Usually, when the sleep cycle reaches the stage of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for thinking and reasoning – goes offline, while the amygdala – responsible for sensory experiences – is awake and creates ‘normal’ dreams as the individual is asleep.

When considering lucidity, the prefrontal cortex wakes up and works with the amygdala to create out-of-the-world fantasy-like scenarios in your dreams. This is found to be a unique state of consciousness where parts of the brain are awakened mid-sleep, but the body is completely asleep physically.

Research suggests that people can practice lucid dreaming by controlling and conditioning the brain. When fully awake and going about your day, consider situations like trying to control the hands of a clock, or moving furniture with just a glance. These instances could then be dreamt of lucidly, and you will see how possible it is to ‘change’ time and transport furniture across a room in your imagination.

As much as superpower-like dreams tend to be thrilling, scientists claim that lucid dreams can have therapeutic benefits as well. They can amplify and improve real-world activities and skills that you engage in.

For example, if you’re learning to play an instrument such as the piano, moving into a state of lucid dreaming involving playing the piano is found to activate the exact same neural network that a physical practice session would. Similarly, if you want to master a sport or even a dance routine, dreaming lucidly about learning it well can improve the brain’ chemistry leading to physically enhanced performance.

Lucid dreaming can be effective in eradicating nightmares as well. When you experience a dream that startles you – disrupting your sleep cycle, try to go back to sleep with the same situation in mind, but this time, trying to consciously change the script of the nightmare.

As the brain is consciously awake, it will help in ‘deleting’ the scenes of the dream that cause you disturbance, thus changing the entire narrative for the good. This is possible because when you become conscious that you are dreaming, the visualised threat is replaced by self awareness.

This technique can be practiced to foster creative thinking, enhance imagination and even promote optimism. Dreaming lucidly about life’s goals, ambitions and how you visualise your life to be helps to create a sense of determination and increase productivity. It acts as a reinforcement and as a collaborative vision board to enable you to work towards your ‘ideal’ life; All starting with a simple dream. – Image credit: Freepik – editor@nrifocus.com

– The writer is a counselling psychologist, specialising in mindfulness therapy and researching the quirks of life.