what is lucid dreaming? Benefits and disadvantages of lucid dream.

Deepak Borole

5 min readMar 29, 2020

What is lucid dreaming? Benefits and disadvantages of a lucid dream.

What is a general dream and lucid dream?

A Dream

Dream, in general, is thoughts, images, feelings and sensations come in series while the person is asleep.

A dream is an interesting thing.

There are many different types of dreams and one of those dreams which is a strange and full of curiosity is a lucid dream.

What is a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer becomes conscious in sleep to become aware of dreaming and can control characters, environment and flow of the dream.

The science behind the lucid dream

lucid dreaming happens in REM sleep stage like any other dream but there is one difference.
In the rapid eye movement sleep stage, the frontal part of the brain is idle but in lucid dream persons
the front brain becomes active by receiving a flow of blood which makes dreamer aware of self while dreaming.
Scientists have measured the flow of blood in a different part of the front brain while lucid dreaming with fMRI scanner.

Benefits and disadvantages of lucid dreaming

1 You can decide what to dream about.
You can decide any topic or scenario you want to dream about to create your own dream story.

2 You can decide who can be in the dream.
You can decide to see any person or people who you want to be seen or with whom you want to interact in your dream.

3 You can decide your experience of the dream. Feel of a dream.

You can make feeling of your dream the way you want it to be. If you want it adventurous or fun or romantic or pleasant you can create that experience.

4 Talk with non-existing.
You can dream of people who you love and miss but are not alive in the real world but still interact with them.

5 Getting rid of your real-life fears
Lucid dreams can be really helpful to identify your all hidden fears and get rid of them without getting affected in real by them as it is a dream.

6 Access subconscious mind for self-development
Can Get access to the subconscious mind and find out what area of life you want to improve and do self-development.
Example- confidence, social skill, getting rid of anxiety, motivation, focus etc.

7 Learn a real-life skill.
Get good at any real-life skill by practising it in real life and then practising in a lucid dream.

8 Get better sleep.
Practised right way with right technique and approach, lucid dreams help in better sleep quality.

9 Helps to get rid of emotional problems.
As you can dive into your mind you can find your deep emotional problems and trauma and get rid of them.

10 Increase creativity
A lucid dream can help you to think in a more dynamic way to increase creativity.

11 Ability to dream dimensions beyond imagination
Most of your dreams are just your memory but lucid dreams can show you dimensions beyond your memory.

12 Do everything without getting physically hurt and in the privacy of own world.
As a lucid dream is very realistic but it is just a dream so you can do what you want on the physical level and not get physically hurt and
as it is just your dream, you have deep privacy about your experience.

13 Solve real-life problems by making a decision with the help of the subconscious mind.
Many real-life problems and decisions are hard to make and we often do not find ways. But when you get access to the power of the subconscious mind,
you can get insight into a solution and able to take hard decisions.

14 Find the meaning of life.
You will find out unknown things about yourself and what your passion or purpose and can understand yourself way better than before and find the meaning of life.

15 Get to know real you.
Not many actually know who they are from deep inside a 90 percent of our identity and experiences are on the subconscious level.
Lucid dreams tap into that and help you to know real you.

Disadvantages

1 You can get false memory of thing if you really have done it or not
Lucid dreams feel so realistic that sometimes you won’t be able to differentiate your dream experience and real-life event.
2 Disturbed sleep
Having an intense and very exciting lucid dream can shake you up from a dream and disturb your sleep.
3 It is not real
Whatever experience you have with people or things can be distorted and different than actual reality in your lucid dream which can make you miss understand your dream and what you see can be different and distorted from reality.
4 You may start liking the dream world more than reality.
A pleasant experience in a dream might become like an addiction and you might not want to live in the real world and just be in a lucid dream as much as you can because it feels good than actual reality.
5 nightmares and sleep paralysis.
When being in lucid dream state if you wake up you can be conscious but your body can stay in sleep mode which will lead to an inability of moving body parts.
Just like the real world, your inner world is also not all rainbow and sunshine so you could get scary experiences and nightmares.
6 Lack of mental energy in a day.
Having a lucid dream is a lot of work for mind and if you practise it for a long time and frequently then you will feel mentally tired during the day.