5 Myths About Lucid Dreaming 1

All too often, movies and books turn lucid dreaming into hellish personal nightmares. This is not at all representative of my adventures in lucidity.

Let's face it, there are some pretty crazy myths about lucid dreaming.

That's partly because it's a strange concept to grasp if you have never had a lucid dream before. I've seen plenty of people spread misinformation and half-truths around the internet without even realizing what they're really saying.

And it's partly because famous books and movies about lucid dreaming tend to twist the truth to make their plot more dramatic. Sure, I appreciate poetic licence. But it's a devil of a job to set the record straight when thousands of newcomers to the world of lucid dreaming have all these myths in mind.

Lucid Dreaming Myths in Movies

All too often, fictional movie story lines turn the notion of waking up in dreamland into hellish personal nightmares.

The dreamer becomes crippled, trapped in their own unconscious, and plagued by sinister figures out to harm them.

This is not at all representative of my adventures in lucidity. Most of my lucid dreams are surreal, euphoric, awe-inspiring works of inner creativity. When I realize I'm dreaming, it's the best. No bogeymen here, thanks.

MYTH #1. You can get stuck in lucid dream limbo.

Of course I love the movie Inception, but its unfortunate legacy is the myth of dream limbo: the idea that you can become stuck in a deserted lucid dream land for what literally feels like decades.

I've been doing this gig for 17 years, and I've never become stuck in a lucid dream limbo land of any sort.

If I want to wake up, I simply squeeze my eyes tightly shut then open them again while shouting "WAKE UP!" When I first started lucid dreaming, this worked like a charm to help me escape from nightmares. I rarely use it nowadays, even during nightmares, because I prefer to confront the nightmare figure if at all possible and reconcile the underlying issue.

I have been stuck in non-lucid nightmares. I'm sure everyone can relate to this. But let me explain the difference: in a non-lucid (non-conscious) dream or nightmare, you don't know you're dreaming.Therefore, you have no capacity of knowledge to wake yourself up. In short, if dream limbo didexist, lucid dreaming would be the only way to escape!

By contrast, in lucid dreams, you have every awareness that you are dreaming, you have control of your dream body and, to some degree, control of your sleeping body in bed. You can cause your real eyes to open and your real breathing to speed up just by elaborating these actions in your dream.

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