Lucidity: An Acquired Skill

It has been a while now since my last post, which has given me plenty of time to learn how to Lucid Dream. In lieu of trying to get the most out of my 24 hour day by trying to "cheat the system" with polyphasic sleep, I am learning to willingly enter the night's embrace. Now I am beginning to manipulate my relationship.
Lucid Dreaming involves altering your mental state before sleep, as well as the way that you sleep in order to control the way you dream. Stated most simply, lucid dreaming occurs when you are aware that you are dreaming. If you can teach yourself to recognize when you are dreaming, you can then realize that you are actually in control of what sensations your semi-conscious brain is producing.
In order to learn how to lucid dream, I relied heavily on a series of Youtube videos provided by a man named Tim Post. Here is his first video:

Along with the series of in-depth videos he created a website in association with The University of Twente in The Netherlands: Lucidepedia.com.
Tim's method follows the scientifically supported "Wake back to bed technique". This method which involves waking up reflecting on your dreams and then immediately returning back to sleep around two hours before your normal wake-up time is not the best for a college student. Setting my alarm earlier than usual would surely be annoying for my roommate. However, he has been travelling a lot lately for Baseball which has given me more than enough opportunities to learn to lucid dream.
I would provide some of my dreams, but to me it seems pointless because it is so easy to see huge archives of peoples dreams on Lucidipedia. Go on and try it yourself and create your own Dreamscape!

London Dreamscape Exhibit by Martin Pearce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sleep Efficiency: A Matter of Wishful Thinking...

A result of my bias...
After experimenting with polyphasic sleep the past two months, I feel confident declaring that it is not for me. The notion that you can save time by augmenting your sleeping habits, is merely a myth. The little evidence/lack of research I was able to find on the topic only reinforced what I wanted to believe. The truth is simple: due to evolution, our bodies are configured to work a certain way at certain times. When it is dark out, we are meant to sleep. When it is light we are meant to be on the search for food and mates. Our body temperature, hormone levels, and states of awareness change based on the time of day. Some people are less dependent on the structure of circadian rhythms, but I found it very difficult to change. Even though I don't get tired until 3am, I must force myself to go to bed between 12 and 1:30 each night. Otherwise, my body is out of sync with the world, and I cannot operate to my potential.

Changes...
For the first time all school year, I went to sleep each night between 12:00-12:30, getting at least 7.5 hours of sleep each night. I did this after a weekend which consisted of 26 hours of sleep. On top of that I took a couple of 1 hour naps towards the end of the week. I must say, I felt incredible. I have had a lingering cough since late December, accompanied with sinus pressure and nasal drainage. For the first time, these symptoms were gone. My head was clear, and I no longer found myself staring emptily into my textbooks, or gazing off through my computer screen. I felt like my body was at equilibrium with my chemical signals.

A matter of utility...
That said, I cannot keep up this cycle all year. Trying to follow this schedule forced me to spend most of my day preparing for my early sleep. Instead of socializing, I did my homework, I hardly spent any quality time with friends. The only way this could work is if my classes didn't start until ~11:30. Perhaps next year I will go out of my way to meet that. For the short term, I am going to attempt to record my sleepiness to figure out my ideal sleep schedule. This website uses a changed version of a sleep chart developed by psychologists at Stanford University.

Perspectives...
To me, the most important change that has taken place in me of yet, is the change in my thoughts about sleep. When I first started writing this blog, I viewed sleep as a liability, something that would keep me from being productive by using up many hours of my day. Now I look forward to it and embrace it as often as possible. Quite soon I plan on entering the dream world as I imagine it:

Natural History Museum by NeutrophilGranulocyte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.







For some reason this room, even though I have never been there, always serves as a sort of trainstation of my dreams-- a recurring motif.

It represents a world where my dreams change reality into something like this...



Next blog I will explore dreaming and its exploits: Lucid Dreaming