Dreaming about knowing you are dreaming
Lucid dreaming is one of the few things in this entire database that has been demonstrated in a laboratory rather than inferred from reports. Sleepers have signalled from inside a dream with prearranged eye movements, on cue, while verifiably asleep.
Also searched as: lucid dreaming, realising it is a dream, becoming lucid, aware in a dream
The experience is a recognition rather than a change: nothing in the dream alters, and the dreamer knows.
The trigger is nearly always an inconsistency. A light switch that does nothing, hands with too many fingers, text that changes, a sky with two moons, a building that cannot be laid out.
Degrees vary enormously. Some dreamers know and can do nothing; some can act; a smaller number can direct the dream substantially.
Losing it is as characteristic as gaining it. Excitement at becoming lucid frequently ends the dream, which is one of the first things people discover.
Common associations
- Recognition rather than change, which is what dreamers describe.
- An inconsistency noticed, which is nearly always the route.
- Degrees, from knowing to directing.
- Fragility, since excitement ends it.
Positive readings
This is the most positively reported experience in the database alongside flying, and the two go together: many people who become lucid try to fly.
It is also learnable. Several induction techniques have real evidence behind them, and the reality-check habit costs nothing and works for a substantial number of people.
Difficult readings
The evidence on sleep quality is mixed rather than reassuring, and the honest position is that deliberately inducing lucidity frequently means fragmenting sleep, which has a cost.
The site's lucid dreaming lessons set that out properly and are not paywalled.
Psychological perspectives
The eye-signalling experiments are the foundation of the field: a sleeper in verified REM, asked in advance to move their eyes in a specific pattern on becoming lucid, does so. That established lucid dreaming as a real state rather than a claim.
What appears to happen is a partial return of the evaluative capacity that is normally quiet during REM, which is why noticing an inconsistency is the route in: the inconsistency was always there and the objection was missing.
Induction techniques vary in how well supported they are, and the review the site cites finds none with strong evidence of reliable effectiveness, which is why the site refuses to sell a potential score.
Cultural and historical
Deliberate dream awareness is a developed practice in Tibetan dream yoga, with an extensive body of instruction behind it and purposes quite different from the modern recreational one.
The modern Western literature begins in earnest with van Eeden, who named it, and the laboratory work follows much later.
The practice traditions are not early versions of the science, and the database does not present them as such.
What the sleep science says
Demonstrated in a laboratory: lucid dreaming, verified by prearranged eye signals from a sleeper in confirmed REM.
Well documented: reality checks and their basis in the instability of dream environments.
Mixed evidence: induction technique effectiveness, and the effect of deliberate induction on sleep quality.
Your own context
- What made you realise?
- Could you do anything, or only know?
- How long did it last?
- What ended it?
If this recurs
If this happens to you spontaneously, log the trigger every time. Dreamers who do this find they have one or two reliable personal dream signs, and knowing yours is worth more than any general technique.
Emotions often reported
- exhilaration
- excitement
- wonder
- calm
- awe
- surprise
Specific knowing you are dreaming dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- What tipped me off?
- Could I act, or only watch?
- What ended it?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 2.A Study of DreamsHistorical dream record
Frederik van Eeden (1913) · Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
Cited for: The origin of the term "lucid dream" and one of the earliest systematic first-person records of the state.
- 3.Lucid Dreaming: A State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid DreamingPeer-reviewed research
Ursula Voss, Romain Holzmann, Inka Tuin and J. Allan Hobson (2009) · Sleep
Cited for: EEG evidence that lucid REM sleep is a distinct state, with frontal activity in higher frequency bands than non-lucid REM.
- 4.Induction of Lucid Dreams: A Systematic Review of EvidencePeer-reviewed research
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich and Michael Schredl (2012) · Consciousness and Cognition
Cited for: That no induction technique has strong evidence of reliable effectiveness, and that the better-supported ones are cognitive rather than external.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of knowing you are dreaming have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolHandsHands are the single most useful thing in a dream to look at, because they are the most unreliable thing dreams render. Extra fingers, missing fingers and hands that change on a second look are the classic reality check.
- AnimalButterflyThe butterfly carries the most important thing ever written about dreaming: Zhuangzi, waking from a dream of being a butterfly, unable to establish whether he is a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming he is a man.
- SymbolSkyThe sky is the single best reality check in a dream, because it is large, always present, and almost never right. Dreamers who learn to look up report noticing more inconsistencies there than anywhere else.
- ActionFlyingFlying is the most positively reported dream experience there is, and the most strongly associated with lucidity. Many people who realise they are dreaming try to fly, and many who fly realise they are dreaming.
- ActionCountingDreams do not count, and once you know that a great deal of otherwise strange dream content becomes ordinary. A total recounted comes out differently, because there was never a fixed number of things.
- ActionTime behaving wronglyThe belief that dreams happen in an instant is wrong, and it has been tested. Time in lucid dreams runs at roughly waking speed, measured by signalling from inside the dream, though the narrative can still skip enormous distances.
Records that mention knowing you are dreaming
These pages link to knowing you are dreaming, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.