Ben Colandrea

1. Is Lucid Dreaming Possible and Legit?Lets Compare Lucid Dreaming to Nightmares and the Dreams Between. Ben Colandrea

2. A Little Vocabulary • REM – Rapid Eye Movement – REM sleep is the period of time when dreaming occurs and can be followed with irregular heart beat and irregular breathing. REM sleep is the fourth and deepest stage of unconscious sleep and is necessary for a restful sleep. • Sleep Paralysis – Can occur while sleeping or when awoken, sleep paralysis is a harmless paralysis that will probably leave the dreamer frightened. To avoid sleep paralysis a healthy amount of sleep and exercise will help to quell the sensations. Often sleep paralysis will lead to nightmares of quicksand or voiceless cry's for help. • OBE – Out of Body Experience – Typically occurs after strong vibrations, OBE’s are the step up from Lucid Dreams in which the body creates an astral body which can travel anywhere outside of the physical body, sometimes entering realms similar to near death experiences.

3. First Lets Differentiate the Different Types of Dreams • Lucid Dreaming • Repetitive Dreams • Predictive Dreams • Nightmares • All Dreams while may not be real, seem real due to the memories of the specific person that are recreated. • Dreams can reveal new ideas such as solutions to problems or can expose ones weaknesses and fears

4. Lucid Dreaming • Known basically as knowing that one is asleep and in a dream, Lucid Dreaming can be broken into two levels: Low-level lucidity occurs when the person has some realization to actually dreaming though lacking some illusions needed to achieve high-level lucidity, where the dreamer has full control and understanding of doing anything without consequence. • Lucid dreams are extremely entertaining as they are mostly the formation of the dreamers wants.

5. Diagram of Lucid Dreaming Test Figure 1. A typical signal-verified lucid dream. Four channels of physiological data (central EEG [C3-A2], left and right eye-movements [LOC and ROC], and chin muscle tone [EMG]) from the last 8 min of a 30 min REM period are shown. Upon awakening the subject reported having made five eye movement signals (labeled 1-5 in figure). The first signal (1, LRLR) marked the onset of lucidity. Skin potential artifacts can be observed in the EEG at this point. During the following 90 s the subject "flew about" exploring his dream world until he believed he had awakened, at which point he made the signal for awakening (2, LRLRLRLR). This signal, made in non-lucid REM shows that the precise correspondence between eye movements and gaze is not an artifact of lucidity. After another 90 s, the subject realized he was still dreaming and signaled (3) with three pairs of eye movements. Realizing that this was too many, he correctly signaled with two pairs (4). Finally, upon awakening 100 s later he signaled appropriately (5, LRLRLRLR). [Calibrations are 50 microV and 5 s.] (Lucid Dreaming)                

6. Results of Lucid Dreaming • As defined in the experiment in the previous slide, Lucid Dreaming is very real and possible. Lucid Dreaming is possibly caused by a lower responsiveness allowing for the brain to go into dynamic stabilization or DS. This makes sense because DS occurs during REM sleep (the time when dreamers dream), and the part of the brain affected by DS is used for conscious thought. Dreams can be considered an unconscious awareness, and Lucid Dreams can be considered a controlled unconscious awareness.

7. Repetitive Dreams • Typically in the form of nightmares, repetitive dreams or recurring dreams can take shape in different forms, while still bearing the same issue. In other words, displaying the same complication in different ways. Typically traumatic events cause repetitive dreams, which can cause fatigue if the person continues to wake up.

8. Predictive Dreams • Often caused by a fear of a certain upcoming circumstance, Predictive Dreams, while not always false, provide minor or major insight on the future. Some of these dreams find themselves as completely fictitious towards a future event, while still other predictive dreams have been true to the dreamers peril.

9. Nightmares • Nightmares are most importantly a bad dream. While ineffective to reality themselves, nightmares can cause morale depletion, causing decreased self confidence. Children are more susceptible to nightmares because they are new to the world and have more to fear. Children are also more in tune with the atmosphere, for example sensing emotion. With this said they can pick up extra problems that others may not perceive as such, or even notice.

10. Final Comparison • While nightmares are solely the inspiration of fears, they can further amplify the fear of the certain instance. In contrast, lucid dreaming can occur as a result of a change in hormones within the body and provide a more freeing experience then the sleep paralysis often paralleled with nightmares. Both however, seem to occur more so with children because they are more susceptible to the atmosphere.

11. The Affects of Lucid Dreaming on Reality • Lucid Dreaming is a powerful idea that can be the vision for inspiration. While not only offering peace of mind and solutions to problems that the normal mind would not realize or notice, Lucid Dreams can lead to OBE, which is an amazing entity in itself. • While extremely entertaining, Lucid Dreams also relax the mind, and in fact prove that the mind is clear of thoughts before the dream occurs, which is a good thing.

12. The Affects of Nightmares on Reality • The older a person is the less potent nightmares typically are. A child who experiences a terrible tragedy and suffers repetitive nightmares from the event may begin to fear falling asleep, causing severe exhaustion and many other problems if the condition does not improve. While older people typically have more problems, older people (at least 30 years of age) have too much on their mind and will fail to have a comfort level that will clear their mind and allow them to have a nightmare or a dream for that matter that they will remember in the morning.

13. Conclusion • In conclusion dreams can be a powerful force that should be respected, but following them may cause problems for the dreamer. All dreams can be insightful, even nightmares which can tell people what fears to quell.