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Have you awoken to realise you were still dreaming?
Lucid dreams are when we become aware that we are dreaming while we are still asleep. For some people this comes naturally, by accident; for others, it can be a goal they strive towards for many years; and yet for others, it can be something we have never really thought about.
If lucid dreaming is something that we want to achieve, it can be possible to imporve our chances with effort and concentration.
Some of the ways to work on achieving awareness in our dreams are:
- to try and focus on our hands (see: Dream Symbols: Body Parts: Hands)
- to try and recognise that we are dreaming in a false awakening (see: False Awakenings: A dream within a Dream)
- to try and become aware of the edge of sleep and wakefullness that occurs during sleep paralysis (see: Sleep Paralysis: A Special Kind of Nightmare)
- to confront something frightenning in our dreams on the pretext that it is “just a dream” (see: Nightmares: Part 1)
There are other methods to achieving lucidity in dreams, but these are some of the most common ways to start. The challenge within lucid dreaming is always to try and maintain the balance of staying conscious enough to know that you are dreaming, but never to get too excited or over aware so that you wake your self up. But with practice and patience it is entirley possible to become aware in your dreams, and to enhance your overall dreaming experience.
This painting by John Henry Fuseli is believed to depict a woman experiencing "Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis"
Imagine the feeling: You have gone to sleep normally enough, but for some reason that you aren’t quite sure of, you have woken up. It is dark, but somehow you can sense a shadowy presence, right there in the room with you. You want to move but you realise you are paralysed. The frightening creature seems to be sitting right on your chest. You are terrified, it has a strange sense of threat and foreboding, even evil. You want to shout and scream for help but no sound escapes your lips. In sheer panic you struggle to move, to get away, but it is useless. Finally, in terror, you manage to move and the creature vanishes. Sitting up in the dark, heart pounding, breath coming fast, you feel confused and disorientated, a strange vibrating in your ears fading away. You wonder, was that just a dream?
This experience is known as “Hallucinatory (or Hypnagogic/Hypnopompic) Sleep Paralysis,” (or HSP) and is considered a “sleep disorder.” Technically, it is not a nightmare at all. The theory is that the paralysis is caused by waking while in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, which is when we most commonly dream. In order to stop our bodies from acting out our dreams, our brain paralyses our bodies (except for our eyes) while in this stage. So the theory goes, when we for some as yet unknown reason, wake before our brains or bodies are ready to, we may find ourselves paralysed and this induces a sense of panic. Fair enough. But I have yet to find a convincing explanation as to why this paralysis is accompanied by hallucinations. (There is a theory being developed regarding the amyglada of the brain and predatory fear response here: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/intruder.html)
But this is where it gets confusing, and why it can be so disturbing to experience. Because it is not a dream. The person experiencing the Hypnagogic Sleep Paralysis has actually woken up. They are actually paralysed. And when they sense a presence in the room, or on the bed, or sitting on their chest, this is a hallucination and not a dream. Yet even if you know it is a hallucination, it doesn’t make the experience feel any less real. Which is kind of like a dream. Confusing, right? Terrifying to most as well.
Speaking as one who has experienced Hypnagogic Sleep Paralysis, I can attest to the extreme malevolence of the presence in the room. This was no mere scary creature. This was evil intent manifest. This was not something that intended to kill me, but something that would obliterate my very soul. And to experience this and know it was not a dream! Manifest evil is not something I am given to commonly contemplating, nor have I grown up with religious fear of hell. So this image and theme came as a disturbing revelation.
I have attempted to research this experience, and am somewhat reassured by how common it is. HSP is described in various cultures through-out the world, appearing in myths, legends and stories variously as a hag or witch who jumps on your chest or back, an evil imp or demonic creature, ogre or spirit. Invariably, they are described as one who “crushes,” “leaps upon,” “presses,” “chokes,” or “steals breath.” (For more details this site has lots of examples: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/night_mare.html) The theory today is that we use a cultural reference to try and make sense of whatever the scary presence is. So if we live in the Caribbean and have a culture of witches, we will think of the presence as an evil witch hag, if we have a strong religious background we may interpret the visit as a demon, a fallen angel or even the devil himself, traditonal Europeans oftne thought of the presence as a ghost and Africans as a demon. There is even the belief now that the experience of alien abductions is in fact an experience of HSP, and that people exposed to information about aliens and space travel will use this cultural reference to make sense of their experience. This is not something people do consciously, or on purpose, but happens at a very subliminal level, where our perceptions of reality, and the foundations of our beliefs are formed.
If you have experienced Sleep Paralysis coupled with the extreme hallucination as I have, you find the scientific attempts to “explain away” the experience somewhat dissatisfying. As one who believes in the value of dreams, the rich rewards from knowing ourselves deeply and exploring our inner worlds, to have such a significant experience be explained as “simply a hallucination” feels disappointingly hollow. It is the same as someone saying to me when I have an exhilarating lucid dream of flying that it is “just a dream.” Well yes, on one level it is. But it is also something much more. I am looking for more insight. Why does the hallucination accompany the Sleep Paralysis? Why is the hallucination the same for hundreds of thousands of people around the world over countless generations, regardless of culture, religion or belief system? What does it mean? How can we learn from it? What does it have to do with my psychology and physiology? Science and psychology is still really in such early stages of undersatnding sleep and dreams, that these and many other questions seem to remain as yet unanswered.
We do know that certain triggers seem to bring on HSP experience, so there a few things you can do to prevent them from returning:
- Don’t go to sleep on your back
- Try and reduce stress, a major trigger for HSP
- Try and keep a regular sleep pattern. Overtiredness, late nights and irregular sleeping hours may be a contributing cause
- If you are having an attack and can’t move, try moving small muscles like fingers, toes, tongue or even your eyes instead of entire limbs. This can be enough to break the episode.
- Speak to your doctor. Some medication has helped some people, so this may be an opiton worth exploring if your sleep is being disrupted frequently and causing you to function ineffectively during the day
- Find places to talk to people about it, or write to me here! The terror usually dimishes in the light of day, but knowing how common and widespread this experience is can be very reassuring!
As well as the sites listed through-out this article, the following links may prove useful:
http://www.nightterrors.org/dis.htm
http://www.camresearch.net/showabstract.php?pmid=10487786
http://sleepparalysis.researchtoday.net/about-sleepparalysis.htm
It is quite distressing that often when we have a nightmare, it doesn’t occur in isolation, but recurrs with a frightening persistence. As if having one nightmare wasn’t bad enough, but to have them frequently! It just doesn’t seem fair! But it makes more sense when you realise why you are having these bad dreams. When something is not quite right in our life, or in our mind, there is some level of us that wants to put things right. This is our subconscious. While consciously we may not want to admit that something is not right, because that would mean facing up to it, and that might mean getting hurt, humiliated, risking shame or a sense of failure, our subconscious refuses to let us forget, and will keep trying to send a message to our conscious mind to do something about it. It will keep shouting and shouting until it is heard. One of the strongest ways for our subconscious to make us pay attention to it is by giving us nightmares. These images are so intense and so startling that we can’t ignore them.
The sad thing for us Westerners is that we live in a society that does not in general place a great deal of value on dreaming, so we are not encouraged to value them, to discuss them, or to learn how to work with them. When this means we miss out on the opportunities for growth and delight dreams can give us, this is a shame, but when it means we can’t manage our own nightmares, it is a far more serious affair. As we grow into adults our dreams should mature with us. As we become more skillful, balanced and wise with years, so too should we dream in a more balanced and rewarding manner. But studies show that in Western society the dreams of anxious adults do not differ much from those of children. We still feel anxious and afraid, we are still pursued – maybe not by a big hairy monster as child would be, but perhaps by a vicious knife wielding bandit, and we all still dream of being attacked by wild animals. As adults we differ hardly at all from children in our response to these threats as well – we flee, we run, we get stuck, we are eaten, hurt, trapped. In short, we remain victims.
To stop having adult nightmares or bad dreams, we need to face up to what we are afraid of, we need to honestly admit to ourselves what is not working in our lives, we need to really grow up. It is hard. Our society does not encourage talking about our fears, it judges perceptions of failure, and we don’t teach our children the skills they need to work on their own inner selves so they can mature into self-aware adults. So the only thing we can do is start learning now.
We can learn how to overcome our fears, even in our dreams
Facing a scary threat in a dream can be a very difficult thing to initiate. This is especially so if we aren’t practised and confident with working with our dreams! That is why confronting the thing in waking life is often an easier way to start. Try imagining your dream when you are awake. Sit somewhere comfortable where you won’t be disturbed, and play the dream through your mind like a movie. Remember, you are the director of your dream, so tell yourself you don’t like the ending, and imagine a new one for yourself.
Another useful method you can adopt while awake that may have a carry over effect to helping deal with nightmares, is to actually do in waking life what you can’t do, or what you need to do, in your bad dreams. This often means learning a new skill, which can be confronting, difficult, frustrating or embarrassing at first, but the commensurate feelings of ease, satisfaction, confidence and pride that you should feel upon mastery will make it well worth the effort. Nightmares of sharks? Try swimming with them in a safe tank. Have a nightmare you are lost and can’t read a map? Try learning orienteering, how to read a map and use a compass. Have a nightmare someone is hurt and bleeding, and you can’t help? Go on a First Aid course and learn how to treat wounds. It may sound simple, and even silly, but actions such as these send a clear message back to our subconscious – it lets our deeper self know we have heard the message, we are listening and we care enough to do something about it. That is a very strong message indeed. It can even be enough to stop our subconscious from shouting so insistently at us, and go back to a normal tone, breaking the repetitive cycle of bad dreams. At the very least, actions such as these give our mind an alternative to work with. Instead of thinking of sharks as something that always eat us, when you have been with them safely your mind now has a clear, conscious (and no doubt very emotion charged!) image of you being with sharks and them not eating you. In fact the more emotion charged these images are, the deeper they are likely to penetrate our mind, and the stronger and more effective they can be in helping us imagine a new and happier outcome. The greater the fear, the greater our exultation can be on overcoming it.
Tomorrow, looking at a special kind of nightmare…
The first step in making nightmares go away is to face up to our fears
Firstly, let me apologise to my regular readers for my absence! I have been travelling and have not had regular access to the Internet, but I am back now so stay tuned for many more interesting installments on dreams and how we can work with them! If there is a particular kind of dream, dream symbol, or process for working with dreams you would like to know more about, please leave a comment and I will do my best to address them.
So now I think it is about time we started looking at some of the more disturbing aspects of dreaming. Until we are able to understand and work with nightmares, there will always be a major obstacle for us to access the real value and opportunities that dreaming can provide. Fear of dreaming can paralyse us in our internal explorations, but it is these very nightmares we must learn to deal with to move onto the next stage in our dreaming life, and indeed our personal development.
The main thing to remember about nightmares is the same as most other dreams. All the things you are afraid of in your dreams are really only parts of your self. If you are being chased by a monster or wild animal, it is only are part of yourself you are running from. If something or someone is attacking you, it is only a part of you attacking yourself.
Knowing this does not necesarilly make the nightmares go away, but it does give us clues as to how we can make that happen. The simple answer is, we must learn to face our what we are afraid of. We must confront our demons. As you get ready to go to sleep, prepare yourself mentally to face your attacker. Remember it can’t really hurt you, the fear comes from not wanting to recognise what is really going on. In the first nights it may be hard to do, but persist. With time you should be able to stand up to what it is that scares you. In the early days you may also find that even though you face up to whatever it is that scares you, when you do it still catches you, or eats you, or whatever. That is okay. This is still progress. The important thing is not to stop now – you have just proved that you can change something in your dream by facing up to the scary thing instead of running. This is a major achievement.
As you keep exerting your conscious control to make your dreams change for the better, eventually you will find yourself winning in these situations. You may kill the creature, you may transform it into something harmless or laughable, you may put it to sleep or feed it so much food it can’t move. All these things are sure signs the nightmare is turning. Ultimately, you should be able transform your enemy into your friend. The creature may change shape or age, it will go from something threatening to a kind and helpful guide. This is a sure sign you are integrating the different aspects of yourself into a more unified, less conflicted person.
The outcome of this will not be simply less nightmares and a better night’s sleep, but a new sense of confidence and creativity and wholeness in your waking life. Address the deeper conflict that causes your nightmares, and chances are your whole life will feel brighter. I will write more about how to prepare for nightmare conforntations tomorrow.
