The ‘dream training’ that neuroscientists think could help cure insomnia

From telegraph.co.uk

By Ian Taylor

Can trippy lucid dreams really help you sleep better? 

Claudia Picard-Deland likes to fly in her sleep. She takes off like a superhero, sometimes hovering right there in the room, other times soaring above the oceans, her arms stretched out in front of her. It’s exhilarating, but she’s not strictly conscious and she doesn’t, at any point, leave her bed. 

Picard-Deland is a lucid dreamer, which means that sometimes, when she’s dreaming, she’s not only aware that she’s dreaming - she can control what happens. Her dream, her rules. To hell with gravity. 

“It can be extremely vivid,” she says. “My movements are fluid and I can go fast and control where I’m going. Other times it’s more awkward. I float a little bit and I’m slow and my body is tilting, or I get stuck in tree branches.”

It sounds mind-bending, but a lucid dream is essentially any dream where you’re aware that you’re dreaming. Your conscious mind is engaged, your senses alert. You might do things you can’t do in the real world or even things that help you in waking life. Not many people do it often, but it is a learnable skill.

For Picard-Deland, lucid dreaming – good flight or bad – is a beautiful sensation and she wakes up feeling like she slept well. 

That bit’s important, because Picard-Deland is not just a lucid dreamer – she’s a doctor, an insomniac and a sleep researcher at the Dream and Nightmare Lab at the University of Montreal. She is both an expert in sleep and someone who struggles to get much of it. 

The waking nightmare

Along with a handful of other researchers, she wants to know if lucid dreams could offer some respite to other people like her, by treating the waking nightmare that is insomnia.

“There are pros and cons, but I think lucid dreaming might be helpful, at least for a subtype of people with insomnia,” says Dr Picard-Deland. 

According to most estimates, a third of people in the UK are insomniacs. Those who suffer either struggle to get to sleep, wake up multiple times during the night or lie awake and can’t drop off again. There’s fatigue, of course. But insomnia is also linked to long-term health risks for conditions such as stroke, heart disease and depression.

Treatments exist, but none of them are perfect. Sleeping pills are rarely prescribed any more because of unwanted side effects and addictive qualities. Breathwork and yoga nidra, which means yogic sleep, can work but not everyone is open to them.

“Cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] is our first line treatment,” says Prof Jason Ellis, the director of the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research at Northumbria University. “It’s fantastic. It works in 70-80 per cent of cases, but unfortunately it’s very limited in getting face-to-face appointments.” Waiting lists are long and private therapy is unaffordable for many. “So we do need an alternative to CBT.”

Startling results

This is where the dreamscape comes in. Prof Ellis is the author of the only scientific paper yet published on whether lucid dream training can improve people’s insomnia. Published in 2020, it was a small study observing 48 insomniacs. 

“We taught them how to lucid dream over a period of two weeks,” Ellis says. “Very simple stuff, five or six techniques that are appropriate for people with insomnia.” 

After the training, 77 per cent of participants had a lucid dream, and most of those reported significant improvements in their sleep. “We saw significant reductions in insomnia symptoms, depressive symptoms and anxious symptoms,” adds Ellis. “So it seems to have a benefit in terms of mood as well.”

Ellis admits the results were not as good as those typically seen after CBT, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a potential life-changer for people with long-term insomnia. “We also looked at the effect size,” he says. “What we saw was that we brought a lot of those people under the threshold of insomnia.”

In other words, they were cured. 

Deep dive into deep sleep

'It sounds mind-bending, but a lucid dream is essentially any dream where you're aware that you're dreaming,' writes Taylor

Scientists are always keen to press the need for more research. But if the study’s results are replicated elsewhere, then it does raise an obvious question: how do semi-conscious, trippy dreams give you a better sleep?

There are a few theories. One is that lucid dreams interrupt and change other dreams that might be stressful or frightening. “We know that people dream very negatively in the first half of the night,” Ellis says. “They’re doing a lot of problem solving and reviewing all of that chaos or stress or trauma that they’re going through.

“If we teach people to control their dreams, that could be one of the pathways by which it actually helps people with their insomnia. Because they’re not having those negative dreams or they process them faster and more effectively.”

Another idea is that lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of sleep that is different to the rapid eye movement (REM) state associated with dreaming. Brain scans of people having lucid dreams look remarkably similar to those of people practising deep mindfulness meditation, Ellis says. If lucid dreaming is a form of half-conscious meditation, maybe that would also account for improvements in mood and anxiety levels.

Turning bad dreams good

Then there’s sleep misperception and paradoxical insomnia. One of the cruel things about insomnia is that it tricks people into thinking they’ve slept less than they actually have.

“All our anxiety dreams are based on our worst fears,” says Charlie Morely, a lucid dreaming teacher and author of several books on dreaming. “Now, if your worst fear is that you’ve got insomnia and can’t sleep, then you might dream of being up all night with insomnia.”

Teaching people how to lucid dream may help with this phenomenon, too, because the practice is all about knowing that you’re in a dream. If you can learn to recognise when you’re in a dream, it becomes a reassuring sign for insomniacs that they are in fact out for the count.

Morley believes that it’s in fear and trauma where lucid dreaming can be most powerful. He works with tech execs and people looking for creative or spiritual experiences but he says that some of his most meaningful work is with military veterans who suffer PTSD.

“Imagine a veteran with a recurring dream that they’re back in Iraq,” he says. “If you can get that person to be lucid and the next time they have the dream, they fly off to safety or the bullets coming towards them turn into flowers, or they just walk towards the danger knowing that it’s just a dream, just an illusion. As far as the brain is concerned, that actually happened.” 

Studies on lucid dreaming as a treatment for PTSD show promising results, with self-reported PTSD symptoms and nightmare distress falling sharply. At the end of one study that Morley conducted, 85 per cent of participants were no longer classified as even having PTSD based on the scores they returned. 

Dream on

There’s power in dreams – that much is clear. Other research on lucid dreaming has helped people tackle addiction or improved physical rehabilitation. And in 2023, a controversial US start-up called Prophetic even created a headband designed to induce lucid dreaming so that people can work in their sleep. 

There is caution, too, however. Especially when it comes to insomnia. Researchers stress that using the wrong techniques to practise lucid dreaming could make symptoms worse, because they involve waking people up multiple times through the night. Fatigue can increase. Some report sleep paralysis or even derealisation.

For researchers such as Ellis and Picard-Deland, they’re intrigued enough to want to know more. Both are currently seeking funding for further research on lucid dreaming and insomnia. 

And, of course, Picard-Deland is one of her own test subjects. She believes the lucid dream training that she practises herself has helped with her own insomnia. 

“I’m extremely biased because I’m a dream researcher,” she says. “But when I wake up after a lucid dream, I feel like I’ve had the best sleep.”

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How to lucid dream

Four beginner-friendly steps to master your dreams from lucid dreaming teacher Charlie Morley

Plan your dreams

The fun thing about lucid dreams is, because you’re consciously aware that you’re in them, you can control what happens. Want to fly? Go for it. Be best friends with Beyoncé? No problem. But like any holiday from normality, it pays to plan out what you want to do. Think about it before bed. The planning actually makes it more likely that lucidity will happen.

Practise dream recall

You can train yourself to remember your dreams. In the drowsy state before sleep, practise mantras in your sleep like “Tonight I will remember my dreams” or “I have excellent dream recall”. This makes it more likely that you’ll remember your lucid dreams the next day.

Start a dream diary

Once you’re in the habit of remembering your dreams, write them down. Researchers say this is a powerful way of not just remembering your dreams but processing their content, especially if you’re working through distress or trauma. Keep a notebook by your bed or use the notes app on your phone.

Watch out for dream signs

The final step is to train yourself to recognise when you’re in a dream. When you have conscious thought or agency in them, look for things that shouldn’t be there like a deceased relative or celebrity. Look in a mirror and see if there are any changes in your appearance. Once that “a-ha” moment arrives, the dreamscape is yours to control and explore.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/sleep/dream-training-neuroscientists-cure-insomnia/

Is it Possible to Dream Away Your Sleep Problems?

From psychologytoday.com

Research on lucid dreaming suggests a new way to reduce those sleepless nights

You may be familiar with the quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there’s the rub,” but have you ever considered the reverse, “to dream, perchance to sleep?” People with insomnia not only have difficulty remaining or falling asleep, but also report the experience of dreams with more negative content. Perchance it is the nature of your dreams that's interfering with your sleep quality.

Indeed, Hamlet’s observation itself reflects the idea that dreaming could interfere with sleep, because as he goes on to observe, “… for in that sleep of death, who knows what dreams may come?” Hamlet goes on to explain that the sleep of death literally implies “shuffling off this mortal coil,” but if you have insomnia, you may have a similar dread of what images and events you’ll experience throughout the night.

According to Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research’s (UK) Jason Ellis and colleagues (2020), dreams may indeed “be a pertinent part of the clinical picture for individuals with insomnia.” People with insomnia report more dreams, and more dreams of a negative nature, than normal sleepers mirroring the waking experience in individuals with insomnia, often "characterized by stressful events, anxiety, and low mood”. Previous research on treating people whose PTSD is associated with nightmares shows how they can benefit from the pre-sleep autosuggestion of more positive imagery. Based on these findings, the British authors proposed that training people with insomnia to control the nature of their dreams could help restore normal sleep patterns.

The control of dream content, Ellis et al. further maintain, could be accomplished via the route of lucid dreaming, or “the capacity to know that one is dreaming and potentially change the dynamic of the dream itself” . Approximately half the population, the British authors report, have had a lucid dream and 20 percent report having a lucid dream within the past month. There’s a good chance, then, that you’ve had your own share of lucid dreams at some point in your life.

The content of your own lucid dream may vary depending on your occupation and interests, but consider a common scenario involves a situation in which something goes dreadfully wrong right before you're about to give a talk to a group of people (co-workers, supervisors, students, or members of a community group). You’re setting up the presentation mode, such as your laptop connected to a projector, and the software suddenly fails, leading everyone in the group to start laughing at you. Although this is definitely a situation that causes you to feel foolish, your lucid dream narrator allows you to “tell yourself” that it’s really only a dream and so your reputation in the group won’t really suffer.

Now imagine that same dream, except rather than just letting the calamity play out to its unfortunate conclusion, you actually are able to control the outcome. You won’t let that dream end badly, you “decide,” but instead will power through and actually fix that software problem. Now instead of laughing at you, people are amazed at your technological expertise. You can wake from this dream actually feeling more in control of your life than you did when you fell asleep, or what the British team call being in a better “morning mood.” Not only could training in lucid dreaming reduce insomnia in those who report this sleep disturbance, Ellis et al. hypothesized, but it could also reduce its associated anxious and depressive symptoms.

To test this hypothesis, the authors recruited a sample of 71 individuals from the community who fit the criteria for clinically diagnosable Insomnia Disorder. People with this disorder have difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep at least 3 nights per week for more than 3 months along with daytime dysfunction or distress, despite having adequate opportunities for sleep. Participants also had to be part of that 50 percent of the population who report never having had a lucid dream.

After taking into account these and other exclusion criteria, the researchers arrived at a final sample of 54 adults, about 50-50 males and females, averaging 30 years of age, with most between the ages of 21 and 39. By the end of the 2-week study, 48 participants remained, of whom 37 reported that they were able to develop the ability to engage in lucid dreaming as a result of the 2 weeks of training.

It’s important to note that, as you can see, there was no control group, a step that would obviously be required were the method to become recommended as a treatment for insomnia. Instead, the authors used a standard pre-test post-test approach in which each participant served as his or her own control. The authors were, however, able to perform somewhat of a control by comparing the post-test clinical findings of those who were able to engage in lucid dreaming and those who were not.

Looking at the training itself, the approach developed by Ellis et al. involved an at-home program in which participants first learned about normal sleep patterns and then in a second session gained practice in writing down the content of at least one of their dreams over the course of the night. In the third session, the researchers asked participants to engage in hourly “reality checks” during their wake time to make sure they weren’t dreaming by tapping each finger.

The key feature of the lucid dreaming training itself, begun in this third session, involved creating a “lucid dream affirmation” such as “I will dream tonight and be aware that I am dreaming.” In the fourth and final session, conducted at the end of the 2-week period, participants were asked to visualize the kind of dream they wanted to have. They were told to “practice changing one element of this dream to indicate to them that they are in the dream and have the capacity to change the dreamscape.” Finally, using the content of one of their previous dreams, participants were told to embed an element from such a dream into their lucid dream “as a cue to realizing that they are dreaming and lucid".

In a follow-up completed 4 weeks after training ended, the effects of lucid dreaming clearly seemed to support its value as a potential treatment for symptoms of insomnia. Of the 37 participants who successfully were able to report on a lucid dream at the end of the training period, 25 (68 percent) no longer fit the diagnostic criteria for insomnia compared to 1 (9 percent) of those in the non-lucid dreaming group. Furthermore, using a standard insomnia symptom measure, 17 showed a treatment response of whom 16 (94 percent) were in the lucid dreaming group. The lucid dreamers also showed reductions in symptoms of anxiety and depression, further supporting the study’s hypothesis.

As the authors note, the findings were based on treatment through lucid dreaming alone, and not the cognitive-behavioural therapy that may more typically be included in insomnia treatment, thus putting more of the onus on the lucid training method. It was also clear that lucid dreaming wasn’t for everyone, given that 11 participants could not acquire this ability. The authors also acknowledge the no-control group limitation, but point out that their effect sizes, in statistical terms, demonstrated a measurable impact of training in the pre-post comparisons.

One great advantage of the British study is that the participants were able to use this technique in their own beds rather than having it restricted to a sleep lab. As a result, it would seem that this is a method readily adapted for at-home use. Furthermore, as an alternative to pharmacological intervention, lucid dreaming carries with it no medical risks, certainly a major advantage.

To sum up, if you’re not a lucid dreamer, it might be worth trying this intervention out on yourself. Learning to monitor your dreams and even change their course may help turn some of your own night-time adventures into ones that can promote your fulfilment during the day.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/202005/is-it-possible-dream-away-your-sleep-problems

Lucid Dreaming Might Be A Cure For Insomnia

From webbyfeed.com

Lucid dreaming means awareness while dreaming — Awareness of the dream state, of the capacity to make decisions, memory functions, self-concentration and focus, dream’s environment, and meaning.

Lucid dreaming’s history

What is called today lucid dreaming was a common practice in the ancient Indian Hindu practice of Yoga Nidra and the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dream Yoga.

Lucid dreaming has become a subject for scientific debate in the nineteenth century, when sinologists Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis de Hervey de Saint Denys, inspired by his knowledge on Chinese culture first stated that anyone could dream while being conscious.

The term dates since 1913, and it belongs to psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden. Since then, lucid dreaming has proved to be a therapeutic instrument that can help with nightmare treatment. Patients who have PTSD showed improvement with nightmares with the help of lucid dreaming techniques.

The New Study

Made on 48 adults, a recent study showed evidence that lucid dreaming can be helpful with people suffering from insomnia. Along with insomnia comes anxiety and depression. One triggers the other, in a perfect symbiosis.

Usually, if one manages to reduce one of them, the other two will follow. So, it will be fair to say that lucid dreaming could help with anxiety and depression treatment also, but that can be subject to future studies.

Insomnia and Lucid Dreaming

Either if it doesn’t let us fall asleep or wakes us up after a few hours, insomnia has a lot to do with our dreams. However disputed, Sigmund Freud’s theory saying that dreams are the royal path to our unconscious might have a say in this. Freud used patients’ dreams as one of the main instruments in treating psychological disorders. He considered dreams to be the most truthful statement of oneself.

Dreams are unconscious wishes, he said. Wishes that we don’t allow ourselves to have, or can’t be fulfilled. In a dream, our unconscious takes advantage of our sleeping rational censor and gets wild by living the impossible dream. The more impossible to accept the wish, the more our dreams become cryptical, unrealistic, fictional.

In psychoanalysis therapy, the patient learns to decipher his dreams, thus deciphering himself.
Lucid dreaming is like the dreamer’s awareness taking the reign of his unconscious kingdom.
During the study, the subjects went through a period of lucid dreaming training, where they’ve learned to master specific techniques that would help them to become lucid while they would dream.

About 37 of the 48 participants were able to master the technique and achieved lucid dreaming. The rest of them, who didn’t get to have a lucid dream, or didn’t manage to master the method, were also the ones with the most severe symptoms of insomnia and anxiety.

The participants who managed the technique and had at least one lucid dream showed improved symptoms in both anxiety and sleep quality. More so, at the end of the study, 25 of the 37 successful lucid dreamers were no longer candidates for insomnia.

However, the 11 participants who were not successful in achieving lucidity during dreaming, raise questions on the range of lucid dreaming efficiency. Whether they need more training to get to master it, or it needs to be combined with another kind of therapy, such as psychoanalysis, or if lucid dreaming is inefficient with those struggling with severe insomnia. Further studies will hopefully answer them.  For now, the research proves that lucid dreaming is efficient for people suffering from mild insomnia and associated anxiety and depression.

https://www.webbyfeed.com/lucid-dreaming-might-be-a-cure-for-insomnia/7270/