History of lucid dreams

We will start this journey, with the masters of antiquity, such as the Tibetans and the Indu, then we will continue with some advances that were made in the western part, in the ancient middle and modern ages, finally we will talk about the latest advances that were made on this matter.

The first who began to discuss the subject of lucid dreams were the Tibetans and their practice was called “dream yoga”

They taught it as part of their development to be able to reach enlightenment, it is like a spiritual journey and to be able to communicate with their masters.

Something similar but not so transcendental happened in India, where they practice the art called “yoga nidra” which refers to doing yoga in a sleeping posture, it is a very effective system to relax your body by the way

Now we’ll look at how the topic of lucid dreams has progressed among Westerners.

The first thing we need to understand is that dreams are already complex, and lucid dreams will be even more so. As a result, the earliest records we have of them date back to antiquity. Dreams were interpreted as divine messages in cities such as Egypt and Greece. There were no references to lucid dreams in the literature.

Something similar happened during the Middle Ages. They refused to discuss the subject because it was taboo. Many people linked it to demons. They didn’t start looking into these issues until the modern era, the golden age of knowledge and reason.

Finally, in the contemporary age, we have Sigmud Freud, who spoke about dream interpretation, emphasizing the importance of this topic, but the subject of lucid dreams was not yet fully explored.

Celia Green proposed in 1968 that there was a new category of dreams distinct from ordinary dreams, and these dreams were linked to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

In 1905, Dr. Keith had the idea of sending messages directly from dreams to the real world. He worked with an experienced lucid dreamer, who agreed to make a predefined group of eye movements which would be recorded by an electrooculogram or EOG, successfully achieving the delivery using eye cues.

Stephen LaBerge conducted a pilot study in 1985 that revealed that time perception in dreams and real life is nearly identical. While dreaming, lucid dreamers counted for ten seconds, signaling the start and end of the count with a preset eye signal.

In a separate study, LaBerge compared singing and counting while dreaming. The right hemisphere was most active during singing, while the left hemisphere was most active during counting.

A recent experiment was carried out as part of a study to see if the ability to have lucid dreams could be achieved through the use of a drug.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in 2018, 121 patients were given galantamine. When compared to self-reports from the previous six months, some participants found a 42 percent increase in their ability to lucid dream, and ten people experienced lucid dreaming for the first time. Galantamine is thought to allow acetylcholine to accumulate, resulting in increased collection and awareness while sleeping.