How Meditation Can Help You Have Lucid Dreams

I have some exciting new findings from my latest lucid dreaming study!

My International Lucid Dream Induction Study (ILDIS) investigated six different combinations of lucid dream induction techniques with the help of nearly 2000 people from all over the world. Currently, it's the largest lucid dream induction study ever conducted.

This study is going to make a huge impact in the field of lucid dreaming research, but the findings won't be officially published for at least six to twelve months. In the meantime, I'm going to share some of the most interesting findings with you before they are published. 

This week, I had a look to see whether doing meditation within two hours before going to bed had any effect on lucid dreaming, and the findings were very exciting.

Several studies have shown that there’s a link between mindfulness and lucid dreaming, and there is also evidence that long-term meditators have more lucid dreams. However, as far as I know, scientists haven't yet investigated whether there’s a relationship between doing meditation and having lucid dreams on a night-by-night basis.

Until now!

Here's what I found:

In Week 1 of the ILDIS (a baseline week with no lucid dreaming techniques), people had lucid dreams on 5.9% of nights on average when they didn’t meditate before bed. However, when people did meditate before bed, they had lucid dreams about 50% more often!

But what about when meditation is combined with lucid dreaming techniques? Will meditation help with your lucid dreaming practice?

I had a look at this as well. In Week 2 of my study – the week when people practised various lucid dreaming techniques – lucid dreams occurred on 13.8% of nights when the study participants didn’t do any meditation before bed. But again, when people did do meditation before bed, they had nearly a 50% greater chance of having lucid dreams!

The conclusion?

These findings suggest that doing meditation before bed may substantially increase the chance of having lucid dreams, with or without other lucid dreaming techniques.

The median amount of time spent on meditation was just under 15 minutes in both Week 1 and Week 2, and the most common type of meditation was mindfulness meditation.

So, if you want to increase your chances of having lucid dreams, try doing 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation before you go to bed! The benefit will be even greater if you do meditation before bed and then do the MILD technique after five hours of sleep (I teach this in my Lucid Dreaming Video Course).

I’ll have more interesting new findings to share with you soon, so keep an eye out for my next post!

Warm regards,

Dr Denholm Aspy