Taking Control of Your Personal Dreamscape, No Spinning Tops Required
Author: Yumnah Jafri
Imagination and reality collide when we sleep. As we saw in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, we can build stunning and impossible landscapes, fight enemies in zero-gravity, and experience true love, heartbreak, and find deeper meanings about ourselves while we dream. However, what exactly are dreams?
Dreams are mental experiences occurring during our sleep. They include thinking of things or people from our memories such as our loved ones, or feeling like we are moving or falling, and experiencing strong emotions like confusion or terror. Considering how humans have been dreaming for millenia, one would assume that by now the reason behind why we dream would be crystal clear.
However, scientists still don’t have a clear answer as to why! This is because studying dreams is extremely challenging, especially because most people don’t remember their dreams after waking (“I had the craziest dream last night! I’m pretty sure we were on a train…no wait, a bus driving to school? Or maybe it was to the beach…”). Not to mention, dreams vary greatly from person to person.
No matter how bizarre, the average individual will view their dreams as being real while experiencing them. Research has shown that our most vivid dreams typically occur during the Rapid Eye Movement, or REM stage of our sleep cycle.1
This final stage of our sleeping cycle lasts around 60-90 minutes and includes increased and varied brain activity compared to other stages. REM sleep gets the amygdala and the hippocampus all fired up—the brain’s dynamic duo for learning, memories, and emotion—to create sequences of electrical messages between brain cells, or neurons which lead to emotional processing and memory formation. These electrical impulses firing away while we sleep may be why we feel such intense emotions and see people, places, or things from our lives in our dreams.
Sometimes though, dreams can become so vivid that dreamers become self-aware that they are actually in a dream! This is also known as lucid dreaming. Compared to regular dreaming, it includes experiencing conscious awareness of dreaming while still being asleep.2 When some dreamers realize that they’re in a dream, they can control their own behavior to do amazing things like flying or shapeshifting. Lucid dreaming has been compared to virtual reality or being in a first-person video game, with dreamers gaining the ultimate dreamscape experience!
Although how exactly lucid dreaming works is still unclear, researchers think it happens in a middle ground between deep sleep during REM sleep and being fully awake. When analyzing brain activity patterns during lucid dreaming, results show a hybrid (or mix) of activation in brain regions involved in REM sleep and when we’re awake. This shift from REM sleep to waking, activates the frontal cortex (the brain region that’s basically the CEO of decision-making and problem-solving), which can make you super self-aware. This self-awareness allows the dreamer to be able to recognize the bizarreness of their dreamscape and conclude that they’re not awake.
Lucid dreams can also be triggered on purpose by training your brain to recognize weird happenings in dreams. One tip from consistent lucid dreamers is to check the time if you think you’re in a dream! If you’re dreaming, the time will constantly be flip-flopping all over the place, but if you’re awake, it will barely change.3
Fair note of warning though, experiencing this hybrid of wakefulness and REM sleep may also unintentionally trigger sleep paralysis.4 This is characterized by muscle paralysis while being fully awake and aware of your surroundings. The brain shuts down muscle function during REM sleep to avoid acting out movement from dreams, so you don’t hurt yourself or others in real life when you’re fighting goblins as a mighty and fearsome warlock, for example. Sometimes, your brain accidentally mixes up its electrical messages which causes you to “wake up” before undoing your muscle paralysis, which may cause your brain to conjure up scary hallucinations like dark figures, sounds, or feelings of someone sitting on your chest seemingly in the real world. Eek!
While some people may naturally experience lucid dreams, there are many resources to guide even the least self-aware person to trigger lucidity in a dream. Understanding the science behind lucid dreaming unlocks exciting opportunities for consciousness in a dream. Just like in Inception, where characters were able to change the business decisions of a wealthy heir by planting an idea into his subconscious, mastering lucid dreaming may also empower you to delve into your own subconscious, shape your thoughts and actions, and unlock new creative potential.
Summer J, Singh A. 2021. REM Sleep: What It Is and Why It Matters. Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep/rem-sleep.
Voss U, Holzmann R, Tuin I, Hobson AJ. 2009. Lucid dreaming: A state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep. 32(9):1191–1200. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/32.9.1191. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737577/.
Nunez K. 2019 May 15. How To Lucid Dream: 5 Techniques, Benefits, and Cautions. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/how-to-lucid-dream#how-to-lucid-dream.
Ableidinger S, Holzinger B. 2023. Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming—Between Waking and Dreaming: A Review about Two Extraordinary States. Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming—Between Waking and Dreaming: A Review about Two Extraordinary States. 12(10):3437–3437. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12103437.