In a lucid dream, that you are conscious that you're dreaming1 and may perhaps even have the ability to control diverse aspects of your dream. Lucid dreaming happens throughout rapid eye movement (REM) sleep2, the stage of sleep in which significantly of your dreaming occurs. Around 20% of people experience lucid dreaming when a month, in addition to a little number of people handle to possess lucid dreams a number of occasions a week. As much as half of people never ever experience a lucid dream. Get extra data about lucid dreaming
Some researchers propose lucid dreaming as a tool which can improve your well-being, increase self-confidence and creativity, and help you achieve goals and solve problems within your waking life - while the proof for these benefits is debatable3. Early research suggests lucid dreaming may well also have therapeutic potential4 for people who experience nightmares as a result of post-traumatic pressure disorder.
For many people, lucid dreaming is a pleasant experience they would prefer to have far more usually. Nevertheless, given that dreams take place when you will be asleep, it requires practice and effort to complete so. Enter lucid dream masks, a brand new tool that may well make the process less difficult.
What Are Lucid Dream Masks?
Most lucid dream masks look comparable to a standard sleep mask. They're produced from soft materials that should really feel comfy in your face when you sleep. Exactly where they differ is their technologies. Lucid dream masks incorporate built-in sensors that monitor your sleep stages and capabilities that gently alert you if you reach REM sleep, assisting you come to be conscious of the chance to start lucid dreaming without the need of totally waking you up5.
How Do Lucid Dream Masks Work?
Lucid dream masks use timers or movement sensors to estimate when the dreamer is in REM sleep. Then, depending on their specific feature set, lucid dream masks alert the dreamer using audio, visual, or tactile cues:
Audio Cues: Audio cues might include sounds, or voice messages recorded by the dreamer themselves.
Tactile Cues: This kind of cue might include a pattern of vibrations.
Visual Cues: These cues frequently include a series of flashing lights, delivered by way of LED lights built in to the mask.
These signals are meant to be stimulating enough to alert the dreamer, without being so disruptive as to rouse them from sleep. Because the particular person is dreaming, the cue could come to be a part with the dream environment. For example, the visual cues might show up as lights inside the dream, or the audio signals may possibly sound like a phone ringing.
Most lucid dream masks let you to adjust the intensity of the dream cues, either straight on the device with an adjustable switch or digitally by way of an app or website. Whether the mask emits light, audio, or tactile cues, it really is up to the dreamer to recognize the signals and understand that they're experiencing a dream.
How Do Lucid Dream Masks Know You are in REM Sleep?
The simplest lucid dream masks use a timer to estimate if you have entered REM sleep. Having said that, the timing of REM sleep can differ from individual to person, according to their age and if they drink alcohol6, take medications, or have a sleep disorder7, which generally overlaps using a neurological or psychiatric disorder. A lucid dream mask that relies solely on a timer could deliver light cues in the course of a non-REM stage of sleep, disturbing the person’s sleep quality as an alternative to helping them lucid dream.
Other lucid dream masks use infrared sensors to determine REM by monitoring alterations inside your eye movement. Through REM sleep, your eyes move swiftly from side to side, a key function of REM that differentiates it from other stages of sleep.
Other lucid dream masks contain EEG electrodes to monitor adjustments in brainwave activity and an accelerometer to monitor body movements. These kinds of masks use brainwave and physique movement activity to recognize REM. Your brain waves speed up for the duration of REM, and your brain temporarily paralyzes your body to stop you from acting out your dreams.
Do Lucid Dream Masks Essentially Trigger Lucid Dreams?
Wearing a lucid dream mask does not guarantee you'll experience a lucid dream, particularly in case you are new to lucid dreaming. Even with typical practice, lucid dreams are rare8. As soon as an individual has mastered conventional lucid dreaming approaches, a lucid dream mask may possibly enhance their likelihood of experiencing one. Lucid dreaming techniques9 incorporate:
Reality Checks: Throughout the day, an individual repeatedly asks themselves if they may be awake. This assists them get inside the habit of having the ability to distinguish no matter if they may be awake or asleep.
Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD): Along the same lines, a person also learns to distinguish amongst dreams and reality once they are sleeping. They may sleep for five hours, then wake up and say something like, “Next time I’m dreaming, I'll remember I am dreaming,” to encourage lucid dreams through their subsequent stage of REM sleep.
Wake-up-Back-to-Bed (WBTB): WBTB functions hand in hand with MILD. It refers to purposeful sleep interruption in which the person wakes up and goes back to sleep inside 30 minutes to two hours.
The last two techniques in certain, WBTB and MILD, happen to be shown to enhance the frequency of lucid dreams, even amongst newbies. A person’s likelihood of experiencing a lucid dream triples just after WBTB. Immediately after practicing these approaches for 5 weeks, 50% of novices were able to experience a minimum of one lucid dream.
When used in tandem with these methods, a lucid dream mask may perhaps make someone more probably to experience a lucid dream. One early study had participants put on a lucid dream mask during sleep, which sent light cues once they entered REM sleep. To test against a prospective placebo impact, the participants knew the mask was a lucid dream mask, however they didn't realize that it had been programmed to only send the light cues every single other night.
Whilst participants reported lucid dreams on nights the dream mask sent light cues as well as on nights it did not, they had been a lot more than twice as probably to have a lucid dream on nights the mask sent cues. They have been also drastically extra most likely to say they noticed the lucid dreaming cues on nights the mask was on, major researchers to conclude that the light cues had been efficient in escalating the person’s likelihood of lucid dreaming.
