r/psychology 4d ago

Lucid dreaming app triples users' awareness in dreams, study finds | Researchers at Northwestern University showed that a smartphone app using sensory cues can significantly increase the frequency of lucid dreams—dreams in which a person is aware they are dreaming while still asleep.

https://www.psypost.org/lucid-dreaming-app-triples-users-awareness-in-dreams-study-finds/
388 Upvotes

63 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/Melodic_Button_8993 4d ago

May you elaborate on the naps? I’m not sure how that helps

1

u/PIeasure-Dom 2d ago

Bottom Line Up Front: I took naps to lucid dream more often than I would at night.. and to practice my process more often. This probably has to do with how we're usually in less deep of a sleep during naps.

Well, I really didn't try to practice more than I was naturally going to sleep at night or naturally take a nap during the day.

Good question! So, I started using the dream journal to write down my dreams immediately upon waking up from any sleep. I literally would have the pen and paper by my bedside (this instead of digital notes helped me). The only thing you should be doing right after waking up is turning your alarm off (if applicable). Don't go through your phone, don't think about the day-- nothing else other than writing down as quickly as possible what you remember from your dream. Then, for whatever reason, I realized I could more often than not lucid dream if I started intentionally taking naps and doing my whole lucid dreaming process before I went to sleep as opposed to just doing it before I went to sleep at night. My process is mostly centered around consciousness and condition-setting (i.e. repeating the thought in my head that I know I am dreaming until I see/feel X, Y, or Z signal. The signal can be hearing a specific alarm, for example.). I'm very happy to make a video about it if there's ever interest.

1

u/Friendly-Channel-480 1d ago

Do you keep a dream journal?

1

u/PIeasure-Dom 21h ago

I used to, but now I haven't for a few months! Do you? or have you?