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.
When people study dreams one of the areas of focus is lucid dreaming. When people know it’s a dream it’s a lucid dream. Sometimes it’s called conscious dreaming because the conscious mind remains in control. A lucid dreamer can change the dream. This might involve changing imagery or the entire dream environment. Depending on the level of self awareness, a lucid dream is almost real.
One type of lucid dream that has been categorized when people study dreams is the dream initiated lucid dream. This type of lucid dream begins as a regular dream. Something makes the sleeper aware that it’s a dream.
An awake initiated lucid dream is the other major category of lucid dream. The sleeper enters directly into a dream of which they are aware. The conscious mind never becomes inactive in this type. 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 liked to study dreams. In fact she studied lucid dreams in 1968. And she analyzed all the different aspects of these dreams. She determined that lucid dreaming was different from other dreaming. She believed that lucid dreams were associated with REM sleep. REM is a well known sleep phase associated with rapid eye movement.
To study dreams Green also examined false awakenings. This is a phase of a dream when someone thinks they have woken up. The person, however, is still dreaming. For example, one man reported a dream that he was a king in the Tower of Babel. An earthquake began. The tower crashed to the ground. He woke in a sweat. But then his apartment began to shake. The building fell to the ground. Then he really woke up. Celia thought there was some connection between lucid dreams and false awakening. Because the conscious mind is active in a lucid dream it moves the body to awaken and take action, often during a stressful period of the dream.
Norman Malcolm was prominent in the study of dreams. He wrote a book called Dreaming in 1959. He realized that eye movements connected to the eye moving in the dream had something to do with lucid dreaming. His theory wasn’t proven until the 1970s in which a study involved a subject sending signals to the waking world from within his dream. He did this by moving his eyes in predetermined patterns.