Lucid dreaming is a state of sleep where you know that you are dreaming.
Neuroscientists are now determining why the subconscious allows us to have lucid dreams, and how people can control dreams for the improvement of their health. Certain therapies are using lucid dreams to allow better states of sleep, cure PTSD, and reduce anxiety and depression. In this episode, we interview Stefan from HowtoLucid.com on his experiences with Lucid Dreaming, as well as some easy techniques to begin to Lucid Dream. In an exploration of the subconscious sleep states, you’ll discover tips to meditate for better sleep, supplements, and daily practices to help access Lucid Dreams.
For more information and to do a 30-day course on How to Lucid Dream, visit www.howtolucid.com or daily videos on lucid dreaming on their Youtube Channel
Here’s the full transcript for this episode:
Steven: [0:01:05] Hey, Stefan, thanks for joining us today.
Stefan Z: [0:01:08] Hey, thanks very much for having me on. It’s good to be here.
Steven: [0:01:12] Yeah, no problem. So you’re based in the UK, the south of England – sunny Brighton at the moment?
Stefan Z: [0:01:18.18] That’s right, just near Brighton. One day of the year that it’s actually sunny for once [laughs].
Stefan R [0:01:23] Very different to what it’s like over here in Sydney. I’m wearing two jackets and cardigan, and Steven’s got a pretty similar get-up, It’s the middle of winter, quite late at night.
Steven [0:01:36] You can only really [inaudible 0:01:40] complaining about the weather is a little bit hypocritical though, isn’t it?
Stefan Z: [0:01:46] I suppose it’s hot most of the time, isn’t it?
Steven: [0:01:49] Absolutely. But we’re really excited to jump into lucid dreaming with you. You’re the founder of the site, HowToLucid and we’ve been following some of your work for quite some time now. We’re really interested to find out how you’ve been using lucid dreaming, but also what you’ve learned along the way. So we’d love to hear a little bit more about your story on how you discovered lucid dreaming and some of the life-changing things that have happened to you along the way.
Stefan Z: [0:02:21] Sure. Well, I don’t really know where to start. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. So I had my first lucid dream, which was kind of an accident, when I was very young. I must have been about 10 or 11, I can’t remember the exact age, but I was very young, and I’d been misbehaving, as most young kids do, and I’ve been confined to my room. At the time, I was sharing the room with my brother, he was out for the day, I think. I was in the top bunk bed and I wasn’t able to leave my room – one of the punishments, as a kid, was just being confined to my room.
I didn’t have a phone at the time, I didn’t really have anything to do other than just sort of sit there. And I had all this energy. I was very energetic at the time, I was hyper, mild ADHD, I think at the time, as well. So I had this energy built up inside me and I just didn’t know what to do with it. So I ended up just falling asleep, just to pass the time. I just essentially went for a nap. And what happened is I had an accidental lucid dream. It must have lasted just a few seconds, and at the time, I didn’t really know what it was, I didn’t know how to describe it, it was just a very brief encounter with lucidity, where I was aware of the fact that I was in a dream, but I didn’t understand. I was very confused, as you can imagine. I was very confused as to where I was, what the state was, I thought, “is this real? am I imagining this?” And then I very quickly woke up, I exerted myself doing that and essentially just woke up. And I ran downstairs and was screaming, I think it was to my mom at the time, I was just screaming like, “what happened? I just had this weird experience”. So from then I sort of dabbled in and out of lucid dreaming for a number of years, up until now, essentially.
But really, in the last five to eight years, I’ve really dived in and just been experimenting with it, experiencing lots of different things, researching, learning, and, as well, just sharing what I know – teaching, making YouTube videos, writing articles, and that sort of thing. So that sort of led me to where I am now. One of my passions is lucid dreaming and experiencing and experimenting with states of consciousness.
Steven: [0:04:33] It’s a fascinating concept. How have you found working with lucid dreaming has benefitted or changed your life? Obviously, you had this experience when you were younger, but what’s been the effect, having it as an integral part of your day to day life?
Stefan Z: [0:04:52] Well, there’s a few ways I could answer this. I think the main way that it impacted my life is it’s just brought this deep sense of awareness. So, all day long, I’m just thinking, “what am I doing, why am I doing it?” And so that awareness, certainly in a lot of people, that isn’t there. Most people go through life on autopilot. They’re not really present in what they’re doing, they just sort of do it because, subconsciously, they think they have to, or they’ve been told to do a certain thing. So that sort of lucidity and awareness has seeped into every aspect of my life. So now I question most things, like career paths, or where I should go to, what information I am taking in. And it’s incredible.
It’s brought this awareness into my life where I’m a lot more clear in terms of what I’m doing, and I can spot things a lot more easily. Like, say, if I start engaging in like bad eating habits, for example, I’m very easily able to spot that and recognize that it’s a problem and sort of change it. Whereas with a lot of people that don’t have that awareness, it’s hard to recognize that. Maybe like in a few years’ time, you’ll start thinking, “oh, maybe I should eat healthier”, for example, or whatever the case is. So, I guess in layman’s terms, it’s just brought more awareness to my life.
Stefan R: [0:06:09] That’s so interesting. I feel like that’s a very common story among a lot of people – not being 100% present throughout their whole life, and being really aware of the day to day actions, and sort of running on autopilot in a way. I was wondering, how long did it take you from having that first experience as a child to deciding, “there’s something really profound going on here, I need to explore this, and I need to take it a bit more seriously and try and work out what’s going on”?
Stefan Z: [0:06:41] To be honest, it probably did take a few years because when I had my first lucid dream, I was very young. And although it was very exciting, I didn’t have that awareness, that sort of ability to go and research things and decide I wanted to dive into this. It was just sort of a fun experience at the time. So it really took a few years for that to become a bigger part of my life.
I think one of the turning points for me, as well, was when I started to watch films that would hint at altered states of consciousness or transcending your limits and things like this. I think Inception was one of the big ones that made me dive back into researching lucid dreaming and things like that. But really, it’s just been always in the background, through whatever I’ve done. It’s always been in the background. It started as a hobby, as an interest I had that I would explore every now and then, and then it just became a bigger and bigger part of my life as time went on.
Steven: [0:07:40] For those that aren’t familiar, how would you describe or define lucid dreaming as opposed to a normal dream?
Stefan Z: [0:07:48] So there’s a few ways. I think that the easiest way of describing it is that you’re in a situation, whether it’s running down the street, climbing up a mountain, having a conversation, you’re in a situation. You normally find yourself in the middle of doing something, you never really remember the start of a dream. So you’re in a situation and you suddenly sort of snap into awareness and instantly realize, “this is a dream” and you look around and you have this deep knowledge that it’s not real and that you’re dreaming. While at the same time you also have this knowledge or this idea that you can still control what you do, you can guide yourself – you can decide where to walk, what to do, what to say. And so those two facts, I guess you could say, those two pieces of information combine into what we call a lucid dream, where you’re aware of the fact that you’re dreaming while you’re still asleep. I guess that’s the easiest way of explaining it.
Steven: [0:08:44] So it’s the difference between actually being aware and having this… I have only experienced it a few times, but I feel the experience is far more sharp than a normal dream –
Stefan Z: [0:09:02] Oh yeah.
Steven: [0:09:04] You’ve got this feeling that you can interact and change things. How do you resolve this in terms of what dreams are and what the brain is doing during dreaming? How do you explain this in terms of why we lucid dream and what’s actually happening?
Stefan Z: [0:09:22] There’s a few ways I can take this. So firstly, the reasons that we lucid dream aren’t really known, even the reasons why we dream in general. People have hypothesized that we dream to consolidate memories, things like synaptic pruning and all of this stuff. But in terms of what actually happens to your brain during a dream, there’s a few different stages. So you’ve got four stages of sleep; three of them are Non-REM sleep, and then the last stage, stage four, is REM sleep, which is Rapid Eye Movement.
So what happens is, in the first stage, you’re very easily interrupted. If someone wakes you up during stage one, you’re very likely to not realize that you were even asleep. You might say, “my eyes were just closed” or something like this. And then in stage two, you have like slightly deeper sleep, memory consolidation, that sort of thing. Stage three, you get into what’s known as deep sleep, still Non-REM sleep. And in stage three (deep sleep), this is where things like human growth hormone are released, your immune system starts to repair itself, and recover, and things like that. And if you’re woken up during that time, by the way, it’s not good. You’ll be angry and confused, whatever.
And then after that, you have stage four, which is the most exciting stage, REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement sleep). This is basically where dreams happen, this is where lucid dreams happen. It happens towards the end of the sleep cycle, and it can last anywhere from 3-15 minutes. It varies from person to person. This is where lucid dreaming happens. So what happens, in scientific terms (I’m not going to go into too much detail) but your prefrontal cortex is activated. It should be asleep, but in the lucid dreaming state, it’s more activated – not as activated as it is when you’re awake, but it’s sort of somewhere in the middle. So it’s this hybrid state. It’s also been called the paradoxical state or stage where you have this prefrontal cortex activity, you’re aware of what you’re doing, but you’re also still asleep. So it’s like a hybrid. And it’s very exciting.
This is where lucid dreams happen, as I said, and the length of the REM sleep varies depending on how far into the night of sleep you are. So what I mean by that is there are roughly 4-5 sleep cycles in an average night sleep (8-9 hours), and what happens is, your REM sleep gets longer and longer, the closer you are to waking up. So the best time to actually lucid dream is just before you wake up in the early hours, like between 4-5-6am. These sorts of times is where your REM sleep is the longest, your serotonin levels are starting to rise, to get ready to wake you up. So you’ve got that awareness and the prefrontal cortex is more activated. But because you’ve had three or four sleep cycles of deep sleep, and you’ve already had that sleep, so your body’s restored itself, you’re very relaxed. It’s basically the perfect time. The sweet spot to lucid dream is between 4-6am in the morning, where your REM sleep is at its longest.
I feel like I sort of went off on that. I don’t know which area you wanted me to cover, so I just gave you all of it.
Stefan R: [0:012:41] Thanks for that. I think it’s really important to get an understanding of the physiology of what’s actually happening in the brain. I was wondering, are there certain things that you prepare for before sleep that help you get into that really lucid state, like maybe drinking tea, or not looking at any artificial light after dark, or trying to get into that state?
Stefan Z: [0:13:09] Yeah, there’s loads of stuff. I think I wrote an article on howtolucid.com and there’s 50 different things you can do, at least, to get ready for sleep and to give yourself more of a chance of lucid dreaming. All sorts of things. Like you say; avoiding blue light exposure a couple of hours before sleep, there’s programs you can get, for example, f.lux, you can turn on night shift mode if you have an iPhone. Basically, you just want to make sure that you don’t have any blue light coming into your retinas in the couple of hours before sleep so that you can start producing melatonin, which is the hormone of darkness that’s going to help you fall asleep and relax, et cetera.
There’s also things you can do – like you can meditate, and that’s good for a number of reasons, not just lucid dreaming, but just awareness and mental health in general, meditation is huge. So you can do that. I think we can go into supplements later, but there’s a few notes I have on supplements. Most of them are used in that sweet spot time, so between 4-5am, but you can also take supplements before you go to bed, for example, Vitamin B6, which is good during recall and memory. So yeah, there’s a number of things you can do to prepare for sleep.
I think the most important things are probably just to get in line with nature and how humans, historically, have functioned, which is to go to sleep when the sun goes down in general, and wake up when the sun rises – so the circadian rhythm. If you just get in line with that, you’re going to have a very easy time falling asleep. If you also combine that with not exposing yourself to blue light in a few hours before sleep, and I don’t really need to go into some of the more obvious things like no caffeine before bed, alcohol, drugs. These things will damage your sleep quality. That’s fairly self-explanatory, but you’d be surprised how many people email me saying like, “I smoke a lot of cannabis for example, or I drink a lot, and for some reason, I can’t remember my dreams very well, or I can’t lucid dream”. But yes, I just thought I’d mention that.
Steven: [0:15:09] And so in the different stages of sleep, scientists can actually now measure the different types of brainwaves. And as you mentioned, REM is a different type of brainwave, the activity is much more like an awake state. Have you seen anything on the different types of brain waves occurring between dreaming and lucid dreaming, or is there differentiation between that? Because it’s quite interesting, basically, as you say, the body goes through this process from Non-REM to REM sleep and the body will kind of clear itself out. And then REM sleep seems to be an inner process where the brain is sorting itself out and this is where dreams happen. What have you seen in terms of that, because there’s lots of interesting research coming out in these types of areas now?
Stefan Z: [0:16:06] I think from, what I remember, it’s gamma and theta which is most strongly linked to lucid dreaming, those brain waves. I’ve actually been doing some experimentation with binaural beats, and these are really an interesting way of actually sort of guiding your brainwave frequencies into certain frequencies, essentially. There’s a lot of different research coming out at the moment and I’m sifting through it all, and I’m going to be putting together a big sort of summary of everything related to brainwave frequencies and lucid dreaming. But that’s as far as I know, at the moment.
Steven: [0:16:48] Music and sound is definitely one that we know changes brainwaves. So, have you found certain frequencies helping you put into a state that help you to dream? How have you applied this?
Stefan Z: [0:17:08] So with binaural beats, specifically, I found that the gamma and theta, but also between 140 and 150 Hertz, I believe, (I’ll have to look at my notes) has been the most useful for me. But you find weird things with the binaural beats and brainwave frequencies. You find people that listen to frequencies like for example, alpha even, that shouldn’t really be able to induce lucid dreams or support lucid dreaming induction, but for certain people it does. So what I would always say with this sort of thing, with frequencies and binaural beats is to experiment with every single type at every single different time of the night. Because you might find that for you in particular, something that traditionally doesn’t work will work for you. So I always advise just to experiment with it, just to download a range of frequencies and just experiment with them.
Steven: [0:18:01] And so you’ll listen to a track over the entire eight hours that you’re sleeping?
Stefan Z: [0:18:08] Yeah, you can do. It depends on the technique that you’re going for. For example, if you’re going for the ‘wake back to bed’ technique, which involves targeting that REM sleep towards the end of the night, then you might as well just have a normal night’s sleep and then wake up with your alarm at, say, 4am, and then put on a binaural beats track of gamma, theta, alpha, or whatever one you’re experimenting with, and then listen to that as you fall back to sleep with the intention of lucid dreaming. Or you can get these 8-10 hour sleep tracks now, where they are actually designed to slowly move you into the different states throughout the course of the night. I tend to not use those as much, I prefer to just target the REM sleep towards the end of the night. But yeah, I’ve heard very good things about those tracks.
Steven: [0:18:56] I’d love to hear about some of your more recent lucid dreams and what you’ve experienced. Are they increasing in detail and complexity, or is there like a theme happening? How have your experiences kind of mapped out in that way?
Stefan Z: [0:19:17] There’s a few different things that influence them. So mainly recently, I’ve been doing a bit of traveling – every now and then I’ll go on trips, or I’ll go to new places and see new things – and I find that every time I do that, my lucid dreams skyrocket. I experience different types of lucid dreams; they’ll be more vivid or they’ll be more detailed. Sometimes they’ll just be completely random, like I’m just talking to someone in an underground bar. But sometimes they’ll be more unusual and abstract like they’ll be a visualization of a concept. For example, the way that ants keep track of each other is through pheromones, so they can actually see pheromone trails. And so sometimes I have lucid dreams where I experience that – like I’m in an ant colony and I can see the pheromone trails and follow the other ants around. Really, really weird stuff. You’d probably think I was crazy if it wasn’t in the context of lucid dreaming.
So there’s all sorts of things that influence them. Travel is one of them, experiencing new things. I recently did a skydive (my second skydive, actually), so, obviously, a couple of nights after that, my lucid dreams were about flying and skydiving, falling, that sort of thing, levitation. So I find that the things that I do in waking life have a big impact on what I dream about. That’s what influences them, mainly, I think.
Stefan R: [0:20:47] Through your experiences, have you found that you can sort of preempt or decide what you want to lucid dream about before you fall asleep? It’s like, say, if you have an intention about the classic dream of flying, do you find that you can have some sort of pull on what eventuates for that specific night of sleep?
Stefan Z: [0:21:11] Yes and no. There is a technique called the VILD, it’s a visually induced lucid dream where you essentially try and create a specific dream scene and then enter that scene. So I have experimented with that, it does work. It’s not that easy. If you haven’t done things like the WILD before, it’s not the easiest technique, but it does work. It basically involves just looking at the dream scene that you want to create, several times throughout the day, and then using that as a sort of inspiration for when you go back to sleep in the early hours of the morning, when you combine that with the ‘wake back to bed’.
What I found, though, is that even if you do that, even if you manage to decide a dream scene or a dream situation, enter that dream scene, it’s very, very easy for the lucid dream or your subconscious mind essentially to just sweep you into something completely different, if you just have one fleeting thought of a memory or an emotion. It can be literally anything. A dream character could say something, and the next thing you know, you turn around, the dream scene is completely changed, and you’re in a different situation.
So while you can sort of decide which dream to enter, I find it’s not really worth spending energy doing that because it probably is just going to change as soon as you enter that dream anyway, your subconscious mind is just going to sweep you into something different. So I find the best thing to do, if you want to dream about something specifically, just get lucid in whatever way you possibly can, whichever technique you want to use, and then once you’re actually lucid, then decide, “okay, now I want to manifest this particular dream, or I want to go to a beach for example, or I want to fight a dragon”. So I find it easier to just enter this dream first and then decide what the dream is going to be about.
Stefan R: [0:22:51] This is sounding very bizarre. It’s almost like, like you mentioned before, the movie Inception or other films that explore the world of dreaming. I was wondering, have there been any lucid dreams that you’ve had where things have gotten a little too real and you found it difficult to differentiate between the lucid dream that you may be in or the reality of when you wake up?
Stefan Z: [0:23:17] Oh, yeah, definitely. The one that I can remember most vividly is I was lucid, so I’m flying around – I like to experiment with superpowers, I’m quite a superhero film fan. So I was flying around, moving objects around, telekinesis, that sort of thing, but I was completely lucid at this point, by the way. And suddenly this other dream character starts flying up to me, and challenging me using his telekinesis powers, or whatever, so almost like a fight scene from the film. And he put me onto this rooftop and sat me down, and I couldn’t really move. I was powerless. I was still lucid. And he basically said, “this isn’t your dream, you can’t just start messing around with this stuff without realizing who’s in control”. And that was really weird for me because, in my head, I was completely lucid, I thought I was in control, I thought obviously this is all my creation, like, I’m the boss here. So when the dream character said that…
I thought about that for a few days after and I was really confused. I’ve thought about it before, recently, maybe I wasn’t as lucid as I thought. But at the time, I felt pretty in control. I definitely felt 100% lucid and aware of what’s going on. So that was a weird one. That was a very strange one.
Steven: [0:24:34] Have you experienced anyone that’s had any contra effects or side effects from lucid dreaming, and would you warn anyone with any specific conditions about trying to lucid dream?
Stefan Z: [0:24:52] Yeah. I think the biggest one is, when you get beyond the beginner level of lucid dreaming, where you can fairly reliably have lucid dreams at least once or twice a week, when you get to that stage, what you’ll do is you’ll find that if you have a lucid dream about someone you know, so for example, a conversation, it’s very easy to mix up the memories of a lucid dream conversation and a real conversation. There’s been quite a few times when I’ve had lucid dreams, and for some reason, I’ve just spoken to someone I know and had a conversation in the lucid dream, and then a few days later, I genuinely can’t remember whether I’ve actually had that conversation in real life, or whether it was the lucid dream of that conversation. So I guess the best tip for that is just to try and lucid dream about things that would only happen in a dream, if that makes sense. Don’t enter a lucid dream, for example, and just speak to someone because it’s very easy to mix up the memories, at least from my experience.
Steven: [0:25:51] That could get you in a little bit of trouble in the real world, right? If you think someone –
Stefan Z: [0:25:54] Oh yeah, it definitely could. By the way, this is another reason why it is very, very important to always write your dreams down, especially if they’re lucid. Because that way you can flip back and look at them and double-check whether it was actually a dream or whether it was a real conversation.
Steven: [0:26:14] So do you keep a dream journal of all your dreams, including lucid?
Stefan Z: [0:26:19] Yeah, for sure. We can get into how to have lucid dreams because that’s an integral part of actually how to have a lucid dream. But I go one step further than that, and I actually write up my dreams into a digital dream journal so that if I need to go and double-check on a dream I maybe have had a few months or even a few years ago, I can just search for a keyword, and that dream will pop up instead of having to sift through dozens of notepads. So yeah, we can get into how to do that, in a minute.
Steven: [0:26:50] Yeah, definitely. Just going back a little bit , there’s some people that talk about how you can potentially reverse certain psychological situations or if something’s bothering you, you can use a lucid dream to kind of undo that. Have you heard or experienced anything like that?
Stefan Z: [0:27:19] Yeah, 100%. This is actually a kind of a weird area because I don’t want to say something that could be construed as advice, especially with mental conditions – it’s a very interesting area, and I don’t want to give the wrong advice to certain people. But what I found is that any problem that you might have, especially like fears, anxieties, worries, doubts, that sort of thing, I’ve found it’s very easy to confront those in a lucid dream. Very, very easy.
The best way of doing it, say if you’re afraid of something, let’s say dogs, for example, you’re afraid of dogs for some reason, what you can do is you can enter a lucid dream with the intention of finding a dog. It’s going to sound insane and you’re going to think I’m crazy, but you can literally have a conversation with a dog in your dream, and literally ask it why you’re afraid of it. You can literally say, “what do you represent? why am I afraid of you? how can I move past this fear?”. And your subconscious mind, which is really where the fear resides, will project itself through the dog, and it will genuinely give you an answer. It will have a conversation one-on-one with you as if you’re talking to a person.
And you can use that for all sorts of things. Maybe you have a bad relationship with someone, like a family member or something, you can interact with that element of your subconscious mind directly in the lucid dream. I’m sure you can imagine it’s very powerful for all sorts of things – negative beliefs, negative holding patterns, bad relationships, fears, all sorts of things like this. I’ve heard good things about it being used for things like PTSD, depression, all sorts of things, really.
Stefan R: [0:28:57] That is so interesting. I’ve never heard that explanation through the context of lucid dreaming, but I have heard people talking about retraining your self-consciousness by getting so close to falling asleep and repeating a mantra/repeating something that you want to change in your life or something you’re afraid of, and in the morning feeling that it’s been resolved. I guess that’s a step before lucid dreaming in a way, sort of sifting that down to the subconscious level without actually having the lucidity aspects attached to it.
Stefan Z: [0:29:34] Yeah, I find it so interesting, especially the subconscious stuff.
Steven: [0:29:38] What’s your take on that? What do you think, in your experience of lucid dreaming? There is good scientific evidence now that, obviously, the subconscious has a role in our conscious mind. What’s your interpretation of what dreaming is and what lucid dreaming is, and how we can potentially interact with these states of consciousness, and how do you interpret that into the real world? What’s your take on that?
Stefan Z: [0:30:07] I think it should always come from two different places. So what I would always suggest to people to do is to use lucid dreaming as a tool. Don’t rely specifically on lucid dreams to do something. Say if, for example, you’re trying to improve your confidence at public speaking, which is a fear that a lot of people have. What you can do or what you should do, essentially, is to practice that skill in waking life, and then also practice it to consolidate it in a lucid dream. And by doing that, there have been studies that have shown that if you practice something in waking life, and also in a lucid dream, you will improve faster than someone who just practices in waking life. So it does give you an edge more than a placebo, definitely more than placebo. But the caveat of that is you have to actually practice it in waking life as well.
So, I would advise you to, basically, if you want to improve something or remove a fear, or whatever, work on it in waking life, as well as in a lucid dream. So what you’re doing is you’re just using the lucid dreaming time as extra time/bonus time just to give you that edge for whatever you’re trying to achieve, whether it’s removing a fear, improving your confidence, or whatever it is.
Steven: [0:31:23] Some people talk about how they interpret dreams. And this actually goes back to ancient Roman and Greek times where they would see dreams as omens and reflections of the real world. Scientists talk about how they interact with patients’ dreams, they talk about how a problem’s got to be pushed as far as it can be in the real world, you got to try and solve as best you can. But then there seems to be this process that you can undertake at night to really kind of untie certain things you get stuck on. It’s quite a remarkable concept, really, how you can build a lot of efficiency into your life by doing things when you sleep.
Stefan Z: [0:32:07] Yeah. A good example is, let’s say if you’re scared of snakes in waking life, it wouldn’t be advisable to come into contact with a lot of snakes. They are obviously dangerous and it’s quite terrifying. However, in a lucid dream, what you can do is literally lay down in a bathtub full of snakes. And because you’re lucid, because you’re consciously aware, it’s going to basically shift your fear to a lesser version of itself. You’ll still be sort of scared of snakes because we should be – they are dangerous animals if you get too near to them. There’s a reason we’re scared of things like snakes and spiders. However, because you’re experiencing them in a lucid dream like that, you don’t have that irrational fear. It’s a lesser version of the fear because you’ve actually exposed yourself to that stimuli. I hope that sort of makes sense with phobias.
Stefan R: [0:32:58] Yeah, definitely. Have you found that people that you’ve taught lucid dreaming have had positive results – overcoming fears or anxieties or real-life problems that they have been struggling to overcome without the aid of lucid dreaming?
Stefan Z: [0:33:15] Yeah. I think the most common story I hear, like in the emails I receive from people, is that they’ve used lucid dreaming, which a lot of people do, as escapism. So maybe there’s something going wrong in their personal lives, or they’re not happy or fulfilled, or whatever it is – stressed at school, for example, stressed at university, or at their jobs – and they use lucid dreaming as escapism to I guess, build up their awareness and confidence. And then they’ve taken that confidence back into their waking life and been able to change that as well.
So I think it starts as escapism. People just want to turn off and just go into a different reality. This is why a lot of gamers make good lucid dreamers because there’s that escapism aspect. And so yeah, a lot of people have been able to use that escapism to actually bring confidence back into their waking life and change that, which I think is really important. I think it’s a very useful tool for people to use.
Stefan R: [0:34:07] Steven touched on before, the Greeks and Romans interpretation of lucid dreaming and dreams in general. And I know throughout history, up until almost our culture, there’s been a person or people within a culture or a tribe that are assigned to interpreting dreams or to understanding their purpose, or reason, that sort of thing. Have you found that you’ve had any experiences that sort of warned you about things in the future or almost as if a message is being sent to you because you can be aware of these things where other people may not possibly be able to?
Stefan Z: [0:34:49] So you’re talking about like [inaudible 0:34:51] dreams, predicting the future, that sort of thing?
Stefan R: [0:34:54] Yeah, but not just for your own life, almost as if you would be used as a sort of signpost because that message might not be able to get put through otherwise, if it wasn’t coming to you personally in your lucid dream. Does that kind of make sense?
Stefan Z: [0:35:14] Sort of. I think with dream interpretation in general, I find that it’s hard to interpret someone else’s dream. But if I have a dream, for example, I can quite easily really recognize certain elements of it, and sort of deconstruct it and work out why I’ve had that dream – not necessarily why I’ve had it, but what it could mean and what my subconscious mind is essentially saying. Because a lot of what we dream about is our subconscious mind just bringing things to the surface that we’re contemplating or that we should be aware of, or whatever. So yeah, definitely I’ve had lucid dreams and normal dreams, where my subconscious mind has brought things to the surface that I need to be aware of, whether it’s like a situation that needs to change, something that I need to focus on, something that I’m not focusing on. It’s a very personal subjective area to talk about, but yeah, that is another use for lucid dreams and dreams in general.
Steven: [0:36:11] It’s fascinating. On your website, you go through some practical steps for people to start experiencing lucid dreaming, what would be your top three to five tips for people to begin lucid dreaming and how to start accessing this area of their consciousness while they’re asleep?
Stefan Z: [0:36:34] The first one is meditation. You should meditate every morning for about 10-15 minutes. Ideally, the same amount of time in the evening as well. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just literally count your breath from one to ten, when you get to ten, go back to the start again. And just do that for about 10-15 minutes.
Second thing, you want to start writing your dreams down every single morning. At the start, a lot of people won’t be able to remember their dreams enough to write them down. And that’s fine, that’s normal. But what you should do is just write down “no dreams recalled”. And what that does is train your subconscious mind to at least be aware of the fact that you want to remember your dreams. And so over the course of a few days to a few weeks, you will train yourself to remember your dreams. That’s a really important thing for a number of reasons.
The third one is you can start doing what’s known as reality checks throughout the day. A reality check is where you basically question whether you’re awake or not, and there’s a few different ways that you can do that. What you want to do, the most effective one that I use (this is one I always used to this day), is you take the finger of one hand, and you try and push it through the palm of your other hand. And as you do this, you really expect that the finger is going to basically bust through your hand and you’re going to see it the other side. Obviously in the waking world, unless you’re superhuman, there’s no way that you’re going to push your finger through your hand. It’s just always going to give you that same resistance, that same tactile sensation. However, if you do that in a dream, the thing is going to go right through.
So as you’re doing that reality check, as you’re doing that, you’re trying to push your finger through your hand, you ask yourself, “am I dreaming?” You ask yourself, “am I awake right now, is this a dream?” And if you do that enough times throughout the day (the ideal amount of time is between 10 and 20 times throughout the day), do that for a few days, what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to do that in your dreams. And as you can imagine, if you do that in your dream, the second you push your finger through your hand, you’re going to suddenly realize, “oh, it must be a dream, I must be dreaming”, and in that moment, you become lucid. Now, it doesn’t work all the time, but it specifically only really works if you really expect the action, in this case, the finger to go through the palm, you really need to expect that to happen. You can do this between, as I said, 10 and 20 times a day.
Also, you should do that whenever you see, hear, or experience something strange or unusual. Let’s say you’re walking down the street on your way to work and you see like a big banana mascot, for example. At that moment, you should do a reality check because we often dream about unusual or abstract things, and especially those unusual things. You’re more likely to dream about that guy in a banana suit than you are about just walking down the street, in general. So if you do a reality check at that moment, it’s going to link the memory of that unusual thing to a reality check, and when you dream about that later, you’re very likely to do a reality check and become lucid. So, that’s reality checks in a nutshell.
The fourth thing is a very debatable topic. In general, just try and eat and live healthier. I know that’s a very vague thing to say, but the healthier you eat, in terms of like, plant-based, or at least trying to be healthy foods, wholesome foods, and avoiding things like sugar, processed food, lots of salt, caffeine, the more you get in touch with the healthy foods, the better your sleep is going to be, your brain health, your dreams, that sort of thing has a knock-on effect. Same goes for exercise. I find that my sleep quality hugely improves on the days where I exercise, even if it’s just for 20 minutes. So, I would say just build in exercise and health into your lifestyle.
The fifth thing is experiment. So try various techniques, various methods, experiment with supplements, but obviously do your research well before you buy anything. And while you’re doing this, as I said, keep a dream journal/write down your dreams, but alongside that, write down notes on what you’re trying – what supplements, what sleep patterns, what wake up and go to sleep times you’re experimenting with, what techniques. What you’ll be able to do after a few weeks or months of doing that is you can look back and think and sort of realize which things have worked for you, and which things haven’t worked for you. This is huge. So many people will just experiment with random things, go from one technique to another, try a new tip that they’ve read on Reddit or something like this, and they’ll have no idea what works for them, really. So unless you start writing this stuff down and experimenting, you won’t know what works best for you because the technique that I use might not work for you, and vice versa.
It’s really important to just experiment, just keep that sense of wonder and curiosity about this. But always be curious and willing to try new things, new variations on techniques and everything like that. And you’ll have more fun that way as well, instead of just thinking you have to do it one particular way. You’ll have way more fun if you just experiment with it and treat it like a game.
Steven: [0:41:37] It’s really interesting. It seems like a very iterative process that depends on interacting with your own process. There’s some interesting studies that are coming out about supplementation, too. What, in particular, we don’t have to go into real detail, but some of the supplements that you’ve found are helpful?
Stefan Z: [0:42:00] Actually, there are five main ones. The vast majority of them tend to be what are known as – let me try and pronounce this right – acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. So basically, they just stop the breakdown of acetylcholinesterase, which, in general, just makes your REM sleep last a bit longer. So by doing that, yes, you have more of a chance of lucid dreaming, and because your REM sleep is longer, there’s more of a chance that you will be able to have multiple dreams and some of them will be lucid.
The problem with that, and the problem with supplements in general, is that unless you have that awareness and that ability to reality check and actually work out if you’re dreaming or not, it’s not really going to make a huge difference, if you haven’t built up those skills in the first place. It’s like buying a brand new motorbike when you haven’t actually learned how to ride a pedal bike. You need to have the basic skills there first. That’s probably a bad analogy because you can learn one without the other, but you see what I mean, right? You need to have the basic skills there before you go and enhance it with things like acetylcholinesterase inhibitors – things like Galantamine, Huperzine A.
What I would suggest to do, however, is do the, I guess you could say the beginner supplements, things like Vitamin B6. This is basically just a dream recall supplement, it’s going to improve your memory, among other things. But alongside all of that, make sure you’re having a good multivitamin because it’s probably not a good idea to supplement a specific thing without having that base level of vitamins and nutrients anyway. So I would always advise just have a good multivitamin and try that Vitamin B6 and those other things.
There are some side effects with those, we just call them AChEI inhibitors – things like Galantamine and Huperzine A. There are some side effects, specifically with Galantamine. Huperzine A is like a weaker version, almost, of Galantamine, so people find it easier to take Huperzine A than Galantamine. A lot of people report stomach problems or nausea and things like that with Galantamine. So one to do your own research on and definitely try a much lower dosage when you first start with that.
Steven: [0:44:20] It’s interesting that Galantamine is used as an Alzheimer’s supplement too. It’s definitely got a significant impact on the brain. So, as you say, everyone should proceed with caution with those. They’ve published studies now that show it can induce lucid dreaming, which is really interesting.
Stefan Z: [0:44:41] Yeah. But as you say, definitely lots of caution. Make sure to do research and stuff. I actually wouldn’t advise most people to try supplements until they actually already can lucid dream reliably. It’s something like a cherry on top of the cake, as opposed to the actual cake.
But beyond that, you can experiment with things like melatonin, which you can get in sleep sprays now. You can get mint-flavored sleep sprays which actually contain melatonin which is going to help you fall asleep more deeply. The thing with that, and my opinion on that, and melatonin in general, is that your body produces it naturally unless you have some sort of sleep disorder. Your body produces melatonin naturally in line with your circadian rhythm, which, as we said towards the beginning, is based on you following when the sun rises and sets. So, in my opinion, you don’t really need to supplement melatonin, but people have reported very intense, vivid dreams when they try it. So yeah, just give it a try, experiment with it, and write notes in your journal as with everything.
Stefan R: [0:45:48] I feel like for me personally – I’ve never tried lucid dreaming, I’m quite new to even knowing it’s a possible phenomenon – but I do remember, about a year or two ago, I started writing my dreams down, and I did notice almost immediately (within two or three days) that I could recall dreams 50-60% more easily within the first few days. And then it just got easier and easier to the point where I was like, “I don’t need to write these down anymore, it’s all there”. But then it quickly started fading away. It’s really nice hearing you to describe this and describe that there are so many other benefits to not only writing your dreams down, but trying to enter a lucid state to try and get in contact with your self-conscious, or be more aware of things that you might need to change in your life, or to be aware of at least confronting. It’s a really nice way to put that all together.
Stefan Z: [0:46:48] Well, the best part about it is that it’s much like a muscle. If you stop using it, obviously it’s going to shrink and become weaker. But the flip side of that is if you then start writing your dreams down again, you can build up that skill again. So, yes, it’s one of those things that you either use it or lose it. If you write down your dreams like you started to do before, you’ll get better at doing it, and you’ll remember more dreams. But then if you stop writing them down over time, not immediately, but over time, you’ll start remembering less and less of them, because you’re basically telling your subconscious mind that you don’t want to do that. It’s a very efficient machine, so it will say, “well, you don’t want to remember your dreams, so I won’t remember them for you”. It’s much like a computer in that way.
Steven: [0:47:35] Stef, it’s a fascinating area. Thanks so much for sharing everything with us. I think a lot of people can take a lot of your takeaways and what you’ve learned about lucid dreaming, because to me, I feel that a lot of people do suffer with this own self-dialogue, and they do, potentially, maybe have mental conditions because of it. So it’s interesting that there are techniques out there to really kind of connect more with these levels of consciousness within us.
Where do you see this taking you? I’d love to know what you’ve got planned, and where people can find you online.
Stefan Z: [0:48:10] The place I see it taking me, as it has done with my other site, transcendyourlimits.com , is just to bring that awareness (I guess you could say conscious awareness) into other areas of my life, into all areas of personal development, growth, and just trying to make the world a better place in general. I think it has a huge potential, not only for people to use as escapism or to experience their fantasies, or whatever, but also to gain more control over their lives and what they’re doing, and be more mindful. I think if the world was more mindful, it would be a much better place. If people were just aware of what they were doing on a day to day basis, there’d be much less conflict in the world.
In terms of where people can find me, across the board, my tag is HowToLucid or howtolucid.com, that’s on YouTube, Instagram, et cetera. I have a step-by-step course actually, called the Lucid Dream Bootcamp, which you can find at howtolucid.com/bootcamp which is basically for people who are new to lucid dreaming and just want to get started. It basically tells you, step by step, what to do, what to practice on every day, for 30 days. And that’s had some great results. You can read people’s stories on the page. Most people, if not all people, who go through that and actually follow the steps, they have their first lucid dream and go on to have their second, third lucid dreams within the first couple of weeks. So that’s a really interesting course. But, in general, just HowToLucid on my social platforms.
Steven: [0:49:44] Stef, thanks so much for joining us.
Stefan Z: [0:49:46] Yeah, thank you so much for having me, and have a good day.
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