Study Dreams
People throughout history have tried to study dreams. It’s a deep subject having to do with everything from why people dream to dreams that seem to be real.
Lucid dreams are often brought up when people study dreams. In lucid dreams people realize they’re dreaming. It’s also called a conscious stream because the conscious mind is active. A lucid dreamer can change the dream. People can be placed into the dream, or the entire plot altered. To lucid dreamers the dream is nearly real.
Those who study dreams talk about a dream initiated lucid dream. It starts as a normal dream. Something makes the sleeper aware that it’s a dream.
The other main category of lucid dreaming is the wake initiated lucid dream. This is when a person falls asleep directly into a lucid dream. The conscious mind is active the whole time. In other words the conscious mind is active when the person is awake, and remains conscious when the dream begins.
A woman by the name of Celia Green did study dreams. In 1968 she performed a study called Lucid dreams. She examined every aspect of this unique kind of dream. She was the first to conclude they were not like other dreams. She tied REM sleep to lucid dreaming. This is rapid eye movement sleep. It’s a sleep phase associated with the eyes moving up and down and side to side.
To study dreams Celia also examined false awakenings. This is a dream about awakening from sleep. However the dream continues. A woman tells of dreaming that she was being chased by a pack of dogs. Just as they pounced she woke safe in bed. Suddenly a pack of dogs burst into the room, jumping on her. She screamed, and then really woke up. Celia theorized that false awakenings and lucid dreams were part of the same phenomenon. The conscious mind is still in control in both dream states.
Another person who wanted to study dreams was Norman Malcolm. He wrote a book called Dreaming in 1959. He connected the fact that eye movements within dreams cause the physical eye to move with lucidity in dreams. His theory wasn’t proven until the 1970s in which a study involved a subject sending signals to the waking world from with in his dream. He did this by moving his eyes in predetermined patterns.
It’s possible to study dreams with the help of the Internet.
