EP51: How To Practice Skills While Lucid

Do you ever wonder what Lebron James dreams about? I wonder if he uses his dreams to improve his performance in the game. I am willing to bet money that he does.  In this episode, Eric Spirko and I talk about practicing skills in your dreams and enhancing athletic performance in waking life using lucid dream training (LDT). There is now an understanding of how visualization impacts performance and confidence, and there is research that lucid dreaming can be even more impactful for this reason. It is not only a visualization but a fully immersive practice environment. Lucid dreaming is also an exercise of patience and persistence. Lucid dreaming, like sports, is a skill and you need consistent practice to become good at it. Eric and I also talk about how to use dreams for physical and emotional healing.

Research studies mentioned in the episode:
Schadilch & Erlacher 2018 Practicing sports in lucid dreams – characteristics, effects, and practical implications

Stumbrys Et al 2015 Effectiveness of motor practice in lucid dreams: a comparison with physical and mental practice

Erlacher 2018 Complicated movements should be practiced in dreams” Paul Tholey about sports, lucid dreams and consciousness

Paul Tholey 1990 Applications of Lucid Dreaming in Sports

Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep  by Andrew Holecek


Highlights:
1:10 Eric Intro
7:13 Dropping into the earth while lucid
12:00 Practicing skills and sports while lucid dreaming
20:30 How to use lucid dreaming to heal physical ailments
24:40 Lucid dreaming techniques
28:02 Parenthood and dreaming
31:41 How to use dream work for shadow work

Eric Spirko's Links
Erics instagram @EricSpirko
Eric's Linktree 

Chapters

• 1:10 Eric Intro
• 7:13 Dropping into the earth while lucid
• 12:00 Practicing skills and sports while lucid dreaming
• 20:30 how to use lucid dreaming to heal physical ailments
• 24:40 lucid dreaming techniques
• 28:02 Parenthood and dreaming
• 31:41 How to use dream work for shadow work

Transcript

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:19:17
Eric
LeBron James says there's nothing more important than optimal REM sleep. It's the best way to be physically and emotionally back to 100% as possible. And so he's not he's not just talking about safety. He's talking about REM sleep when dreaming is happening. And I've heard him say also that you have great dreams. I'm so curious. I want to know what LeBron James is dreaming about.

00:00:19:18 - 00:00:23:07
Eric
Maybe he has people that have taught him how to lucid dream and that's why he is so good. I don't know.

00:00:23:17 - 00:00:55:18
Amina
Yeah, that's so funny. I'm sure that athletes who play a lot of sports definitely dream about it and dream about being on the field. I mean, it only makes sense. So, LeBron James, if you hear this, please come on the podcast and tell us about your dreams. In all seriousness, this episode, I love this topic. This is about how you can actually use lucid dreaming to practice sports and real life skills and your brain actually like registers the neural pathways and remembers like the muscle memory of doing the skill or the sport, and you can actually improve your performance.

00:00:55:23 - 00:01:08:00
Amina
And yes, there is scientific research on this. I included some studies below in the description if anybody is interested in the literature. But other than that, let's get to it and welcome my guest, Eric Amin.

00:01:08:19 - 00:01:09:19
Eric
How are you doing?

00:01:10:08 - 00:01:10:19
Amina
Good. How are.

00:01:10:19 - 00:01:28:01
Eric
You? Long time no see. Really Well. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of my dream life is related to athletics, too. And that's kind of like the population that I'm looking to to teach. I'm also expecting a baby in the beginning of next year, so that'll be interesting how that impacts my sleep at the beginning in January.

00:01:28:12 - 00:01:32:12
Amina
Wow. Congrats on the new baby and welcome to the Dream World podcast.

00:01:32:19 - 00:01:33:06
Eric
Thank you.

00:01:33:16 - 00:01:37:03
Amina
So, Eric, who are you? How did you get into dream work? Tell me about it.

00:01:37:20 - 00:02:01:03
Eric
Sure. Yeah. My name is Eric Sparco. I am a long time dreamer. Dreams have always been a really exciting part of my life. I've always had a rich dream life. I remember as early as being an early teenager, and my parents gave me, like, a dream dictionary. One year for Christmas and then high school. Me and some of my friends would get together in first period and talk about our dreams from the night before.

00:02:01:03 - 00:02:18:09
Eric
And that was always really enjoyable and I think built a lot of empathy and understanding that there's this bizarre experience that we all have on a nightly basis. And in college, I had a dream where I knew I was dreaming while I was dreaming, and I didn't know you could even do that. And it's like I had to look it up.

00:02:18:11 - 00:02:36:02
Eric
This is years back, and I was like, What was that experience? And I looked it up and learned that there was this thing called lucid dreaming. Read a book by Stephen Labuschagne and learn to be able to work with the environment and induce them a little bit more reliably. And from there it's just been like a constant exploration.

00:02:36:02 - 00:02:59:10
Eric
I've gone, I think my early twenties. I kind of got away from it a little bit, but in that period it was just kind of like fun. It was like a fun environment to work with. And then as I progressed, as I got a little bit more mature, I saw that it was just this profound opportunity to work with myself and exploration of of who am I and some of the deepest, deepest things that we can really contemplate.

00:02:59:10 - 00:03:22:19
Eric
And so that's been that's been how I got to where I am. And as I've grown and my experience and understanding, I've been doing some trainings on teaching and working with some some really great teachers and looking to share this with with others more, more regularly because I just see such incredible healing opportunities in it and really just believe that this is this is an amazing modality that is accessible to so many different people.

00:03:23:04 - 00:03:31:23
Amina
Yeah, that's awesome. We're on similar journeys. I love it. Do you remember the feeling of like your first ever lucid dream? Like, what was your aha moment like?

00:03:32:12 - 00:04:01:12
Eric
I don't remember the content of my first lucid dream. I remember the impact that it had that I was just. I woke up was like, What was that? And I remember some early lucid dreams and just how vivid and real they were. There was one early on that I remember. I was riding a motorcycle down this highway and just like lifted off off the motorcycle and soared into the air and was like just this beautiful tropical scenery with like these palm trees that were also kind of like flamingos and this like pink orange sky.

00:04:01:12 - 00:04:05:10
Eric
And I was just like, I woke up, I was like, Man, that is so cool. Like, how did I even create that?

00:04:05:21 - 00:04:12:24
Amina
What do you mostly use lucid dreaming for? I know you mentioned that you kind of each people how to use it for athletics. Is that what you use it for as well?

00:04:13:07 - 00:04:33:07
Eric
Occasionally. So a lot of my dream content is because I spent so much time playing sports in really formative years of my life, a lot of my dreams tend to be about sports, where I'm playing. Sometimes it's sports that I played regularly, sometimes it's like random sports that I've barely even played. Sometimes they are good experiences where I'm performing well.

00:04:33:07 - 00:04:49:22
Eric
Sometimes they're like really anxiety and frustrating and I wake up like, especially like I play a lot of golf now, and some of the golf dreams are like trying to play golf in my apartment and there's no room to do anything. And so for me, my own personal dream life, that tends to be a lot of the content of my dreams.

00:04:50:01 - 00:05:09:15
Eric
I use that to become lucid. And then when I if I'm in an environment where I'm playing a sport and I become lucid, I'm right there and I can practice and I can do something with the dream environment that already exists. And so in those scenarios, it's sometimes it's I try to kind of just figure out what is most appropriate in the particular dream scenario.

00:05:09:15 - 00:05:32:19
Eric
And so, yeah, if I'm on a soccer field and I become lucid, then I'm going to kick a soccer ball and I'm going to test out some things. If I become lucid in some place that's not a sports environment, then I will use the dream to do other things. I like to explore emptiness and I like to, like I mentioned this to you before, but I like to just kind of drop into the earth and rest in this like, formless space.

00:05:33:00 - 00:05:56:01
Eric
And I find it to be very beneficial to my meditation practice. And so that is a nice area of exploration for me. Shadow work is also something that I've done a lot like I mentioned, not all of our dreams are our pleasant ones. I dealt with nightmares growing up and lucid Dreaming has been amazing and working with with those nightmares and some of the lucid dreams as well.

00:05:56:01 - 00:06:18:09
Eric
I've been being chased by a monster and like, the feeling of like peace and love and compassion that you can feel when you like, confront this monster with love and like it just it just indescribable, really what what you can feel and what you can experience if you if you face those fears and if you embrace it instead of running away, instead of waking yourself up.

00:06:18:09 - 00:06:34:08
Eric
I just believe I mean, frankly, those have been some of the most transformative experiences I've had in a lucid dream. And that's like so beautiful that people of people who suffer from nightmares and suffer from this sort of experience can can learn to work with it. It can really change people's lives.

00:06:34:19 - 00:06:40:23
Amina
Yeah, it's incredible how much science there is behind using lucid dreaming as a treatment for nightmares and PTSD.

00:06:41:14 - 00:07:09:02
Eric
Yeah, one of the teachers that I work with and was doing some teacher training with Charlie Morley, he's got a bunch of studies that are coming out with you worked a lot with veterans who have PTSD and like it's incredible the results that are coming. And so it's a cool it's a really interesting time. It feels like a good time to be really investing in this in this space, because like you said, the science is coming out that there's so much potential in so many different directions.

00:07:09:02 - 00:07:09:17
Eric
We can take it.

00:07:10:03 - 00:07:23:11
Amina
Yeah, now's the time to start teaching people and spreading the awareness. I want to hear a little bit about what you were saying with dropping into the earth and taking on this formless space. How do you do that? Can you walk me through the process of that dream?

00:07:24:01 - 00:07:48:07
Eric
Yeah. So it's it's a technique that I learned from a book called Dream Yoga by Andrew Hall, a check it to just dive into the earth. So basically, like you're diving into a pool, basically, you know, it takes it's similar to like if you're trying to walk through a wall. We have so many habits of like this wall, this solid or this earth is solid, but in a dream, it's just a dream wall.

00:07:48:07 - 00:08:07:23
Eric
It's just the dream earth. And so I think the first couple of times that I tried, I just hit my face on the ground because there's just so much, you know, we're just so accustomed to seeing the earth this way. And then as I practiced, I could dive into the earth and you kind of have a start to have some sense of like ego dissolution.

00:08:07:23 - 00:08:26:08
Eric
And then the first time that happened, I panicked and freaked out and woke up and I woke up and I was just like, All right, well, that was that was something. And little by little began to learn to just accept that this is the experience and to just kind of I could extend it a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer each time.

00:08:26:08 - 00:08:43:01
Eric
And sometimes there's some visuals and some blacks. No sort of kind of like a fuzzy TV, but it's also like an energetic space. It's not like an empty form. It's not like an empty space. You have this feeling of energy that just like it's almost like you're charging yourself. It's pretty, pretty interesting.

00:08:43:14 - 00:09:01:17
Amina
That's really cool. That's awesome. I'm definitely going to try that out and I understand that it takes like a lot of times trying a dream sometimes before you fully understand what's going on. I'm just curious to how much of like what you read in the Dream yoga book influence like your expectations of like what was going to happen?

00:09:02:03 - 00:09:31:00
Eric
Yeah, that's a great question because obviously, like, expectations are very important. You know, if you if you expect something to happen, it's likely to happen in the dream with some caveats that obviously you have your dreaming mind that's co-creating this environment with you. I think what that book did for me was really make a connection between lucid dreaming and mindfulness and I think made it very accessible to understand how lucid dreaming can be Just an extension of your daily mindfulness into the nighttime.

00:09:31:04 - 00:09:55:14
Eric
Andrea Havlicek says that a lucid dream is a mindful dream, and that made a lot of sense to me. I thought the way that he writes is just really accessible, very clear. And that was another thing for me when I was learning about the deeper aspects of lucid dreaming. It was like these practices have been around for like over a thousand years, 1500 years in a lot of different cultures and Tibetan Buddhism and indigenous cultures, they have dream work.

00:09:55:14 - 00:10:16:17
Eric
So that was like an eye opening moment for me. That was like, Oh wow, There's actually like people who have explored the space and come up with a lot of these practices and some of these techniques that you can use to, to work with it for self-exploration and development. And I'm sure that it must have influenced my expectations of what to what to find.

00:10:16:17 - 00:10:37:00
Eric
But it does it continues. The dream space continues to surprise me. I think I actually have like I think my subconscious dreaming mind likes to kind of fuck around with me a little bit. Like when I ask questions to the dream space, I often don't get an answer that I feel like I want or feel like I am satisfied with where the answer for.

00:10:37:07 - 00:10:55:19
Eric
So as an example, I have a group that these people that we're studying with Charli over there over the summer we were doing this chair dream task of meeting our dream Ambassador. And literally just last night I became lucid and I found this. I was around a bunch of people, the dream characters in the dream, and I was like, Hey, who's my dream?

00:10:55:22 - 00:11:26:19
Eric
Who's my dream, Ambassador? And have you my dream ambassador? And people just looked at me like I was stupid. Like, what's what are you talking about? And somebody was nice enough to be like, I'm not your dream and ambassador, but I'll sit down and answer your questions if you want. And so I think my dreaming mind is like a little bit sarcastic and a little bit like, you know, doesn't want to give me anything easy and so that's always been interesting for me is to kind of have to deal with this kind of like character that is that and find a way to work with it productively.

00:11:27:03 - 00:11:44:16
Amina
Yeah, I love that about dreams, honestly, because you never know what you're going to get. Even with expectations, sometimes it goes a totally different direction. And the question is, I love asking my dream catchers questions because they always tell me something so interesting and like, usually it's not what I wanted to hear. And that's always funny to sit with.

00:11:44:16 - 00:11:46:24
Amina
And, you know, I'm like, okay, well, that's what I got.

00:11:47:19 - 00:12:01:09
Eric
Yeah, yeah. And the more you more you do that, the more you're like, Wow, there's just like this, you know, there's this dreaming power that exists that like, is just so much more profound than than our own waking conscious mind.

00:12:01:20 - 00:12:16:05
Amina
Yeah. Our dreaming self has an actual impact on our waking self. Like you were talking about practicing skills and sports in your dreams and it actually having an impact on your performance and you improve at that skill. That's incredible. How does that even work? What's the science behind that?

00:12:16:16 - 00:12:46:17
Eric
Yeah, so there's been several studies that have come out that basically has people becoming lucid in a dream and performing a particular task that require some sort of skill, whether it's tossing quarters into a cup or like tapping your fingers in a particular order. And basically what they found was that the population who were able to induce the lucid dream and practice this task performed the best the next day or the next time that they measured the test.

00:12:46:17 - 00:13:11:04
Eric
So it makes sense because in sports for a long time it's been widely accepted that visualization is a really powerful mental practice, and it's essentially the same thing as visualization. But you have this like hyper real environment that you're working with. And so and basically the power of a visualization is dependent upon your ability to visualize the how real can you make the environment in your mind and in a dreaming mind.

00:13:11:04 - 00:13:38:02
Eric
It's super real. And so I think it has that great potential because of just how real it seems. And so these studies have come out and, you know, there are some challenges with this. Obviously, it's not super easy always to induce a lucid dream. And like I said, like if you're not in an environment where you're around sports, it can be sometimes hard to like, produce that environment that will have the like the team or, you know, whatever it is that you need to produce.

00:13:38:04 - 00:13:58:20
Eric
You have this like, unpredictable dream in mind that you're working with. And so it might be a little challenging to get yourself to a place where you need to practice sport. And so that's, you know, there's a couple of the drawbacks, but in the end, like people who are playing, committing a lot of their time to playing sports like myself, I'm 38 years old now and I still dream about sports.

00:13:58:20 - 00:14:06:04
Eric
And so any time that you're having a dream about sports, you have this opportunity to become lucid and then you're right, they're able to practice in that environment.

00:14:06:21 - 00:14:26:09
Amina
It makes sense, you know, because it's like, not only are you visualizing it, you're feeling it. Your muscles are like doing it. Like everything just so real. Like you feel the pressure of the ball or whatever, you know, like it feels so realistic. And even if you don't start off in an ideal environment, it can take some practice, but you can shift to create the setup of whatever you want to do.

00:14:27:02 - 00:14:48:11
Eric
Yeah, absolutely. And you said it really well. It's not just visualization. That's the practice. It's it's actually feeling innovation because if you're sitting there, not away from the dream environment, but if I'm practicing doing a dive, I'm hearing the crowd, I'm smelling the pool, I'm feeling my feet. So there's all these different senses that you're bringing into the to the visualization.

00:14:48:11 - 00:14:53:14
Eric
And so in the dream, obviously, those things are already there for you, making it more real.

00:14:53:19 - 00:15:12:10
Amina
Yeah, true. And the other thing too, is like, you know, I know there was a study with like gymnasts and maybe like a ski team or something and they're able to practice. It's like these crazy jumps and moves that maybe they're scared of practice or something, but there's no, like physical waking life consequences of like breaking your arm or something like that.

00:15:12:10 - 00:15:32:07
Eric
Yeah, absolutely. That's huge. Because, yeah, you think of like an Olympic snowboarder and like the half pipe, but you can do some crazy, crazy stunts in that environment and you're right, like no risk of injury. And you have it's like a test environment where you can do things that you might not want to attempt. You know, in the waking environment, there's a lot of potential for that.

00:15:32:16 - 00:15:48:00
Amina
Yeah, it's kind of funny too, because sometimes, like in my dreams, I'll just do like some acrobatic park or just for fun and it's things that I know I'll never be able to do. Like I'll be like holding myself up with like a pinky and stuff and it's just funny. And people always tell me like, Oh, so does that mean you can do that in waking life?

00:15:48:00 - 00:15:51:14
Amina
And I'm like, Not necessarily, but I definitely have more confidence that.

00:15:52:02 - 00:16:10:01
Eric
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, of course there's a limit to it because, because in waking life we're constrained by the laws of physics and everything. But I do think there's actually one of the pioneers of lucid dreaming. Paul told me he was exploring the lucid dreaming space in the seventies and eighties and was a good athlete himself.

00:16:10:01 - 00:16:36:11
Eric
I understand and there's a story that he taught himself how to ride a snowboard with no bindings by practicing in a lucid dream and taught himself how to like skateboard and like a handstand in a lucid dreaming. Like, that's pretty impressive. Like it. So it's exactly like those are those are very difficult things to do, but also possible things that you can do in waking life that he was able to like, learn how to do and then bring it and bring it into the into the waking experience.

00:16:36:19 - 00:16:40:05
Amina
Okay. So you're primarily a lucid dreaming coach for athletes.

00:16:40:14 - 00:17:00:14
Eric
Yeah, I primarily focus on athletes. Most athletes are aware of the importance of sleep at this point. Athletes are also looking for just even, just like a 1% competitive edge. Anything that will give them just the slight edge they're open to. And so you look at like in the nineties where mindfulness meditation was not something that was super well-known or super mainstream.

00:17:00:24 - 00:17:20:05
Eric
Phil Jackson, who was the coach of like one of the best basketball teams of all time, the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. He was teaching his team how to meditate together and they all bought into it. It took some time, I think, to accept it, but once they did, they saw the impact that it had on their mental game and their ability to bond as a team.

00:17:20:09 - 00:17:39:24
Eric
And so that was, you know, they were early adopters of meditation. And the same thing with visualization. Phil Jackson, that coach was practicing visualization as a player in the seventies and now it's, you know, everybody, every athlete I think would at least know whether they're practicing it or not. They would understand that this is a powerful tool that they that they can use.

00:17:40:05 - 00:17:59:01
Eric
And so I see this as like the next extension of that. You have a population of people who are already trying to improve upon their sleep. They're sleeping like 8 hours or even like LeBron James, who's one of the best basketball players in the world of all time. He apparently sleeps like at least 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours.

00:17:59:01 - 00:18:18:24
Eric
And he's even said himself. LeBron James says there's nothing more important than optimal REM sleep. It's the best way to be physically and emotionally back to 100% as possible. And so he's not he's not just talking about sleep. He's talking about REM sleep when dreaming is happening. And I've heard him say also that you have great dreams. I'm so curious.

00:18:18:24 - 00:18:35:04
Eric
I want to know what LeBron James was dreaming about. Maybe he has people that have taught him how to lose a dream and that's why he's so good. I don't know. But yeah, it's people are aware of sleep as a foundation for performance and well-being. And as you get people who are just sleeping more, you're actually going to have more dreams.

00:18:35:04 - 00:18:36:22
Eric
And as you're paying attention to the night more.

00:18:37:09 - 00:18:55:04
Amina
Yeah, that's so funny. I'm sure that athletes who play a lot of sports definitely dream about it and dream about being on the field. I mean, it only makes sense. And yeah, I love what you said about meditation. I say that all the time. That's the next ten years of like dream work. It's just now starting and we're in a perfect position to help guide people.

00:18:55:16 - 00:19:15:07
Eric
Yeah, I think when I would talk about lucid dreaming like 15 years ago, it was like kind of rejected as weird and woo woo. And I still actually carry a little bit of that stigma with me. But more often these days, the reaction I get is one of curiosity and interest. And I think because of some of the studies that have come out and just it's become more and more mainstream.

00:19:15:20 - 00:19:25:09
Amina
Yeah, it's very reassuring that people are more interested in it. Now, students that come to you, are they beginner, lucid dreamers or are they somewhat experienced already?

00:19:25:17 - 00:19:51:12
Eric
Yeah, I think most are coming from like the beginner, the beginner stage. There are some natural lucid dreamers, you know, That's one of the interesting, interesting pieces is that especially a younger athletes tend to have their primes in younger at younger ages, which is also ages when lucid dreaming is maybe a little bit more of a natural phenomenon, something that just kind of occurs naturally.

00:19:51:12 - 00:20:11:12
Eric
So that's another reason that athletes are such a such an interesting population to work with because they have that ability a little bit more naturally because of that, because of the age that they, they are. One of the other things that I see is it's really incredible for athletes who are recovering from injuries because you have a situation where an athlete can't, you can't practice, you can't.

00:20:11:17 - 00:20:40:20
Eric
The only thing you can do is work on your mind, really. And maybe, you know, depending on the injury, you can do certain other things, but it's a really great opportunity for athletes to invest in their mind and invest in their sleep, take advantage of an opportunity. You know, I always talk about turning obstacles into opportunities, and it's a perfect chance to utilize whatever time you have while you're injured to to to look into this as a as a practice that will then stick with you once you're back and ready to go and can have for the rest of your life, the rest of your career.

00:20:41:07 - 00:20:47:16
Amina
Do you believe that we can use lucid dreaming for healing things like healing, physical injuries and things like that?

00:20:47:22 - 00:21:11:03
Eric
That's a great question. I tend to believe that. Yeah, I've heard anecdotal stories from people and it's it's a concept that I think people, you know, when we're talking about like lucid dreaming as being something that's kind of new and people are still accepting that this might that might be something for people hard to accept. But like the power of the placebo is incredible.

00:21:11:08 - 00:21:30:08
Eric
And whether it's placebo or whether it's something more than placebo, there's something to it. And I certainly wouldn't advocate anybody, you know, like that's not the only treatment that someone should get for something. But if you have the ability to become lucid and to to try to give yourself some healing energy, then absolutely. That certainly can't.

00:21:30:08 - 00:21:37:22
Amina
Hurt. That's true. And I've always thought that, like if a placebo works, it still works regardless. If your mind did it, that's even cooler than who care.

00:21:37:23 - 00:21:40:18
Eric
Yeah, it says better, right? Exactly. Yeah.

00:21:41:06 - 00:21:48:01
Amina
So if you become lucid and let's say you have like a sprained ankle or something, what are some ideas of what you could do inside the dream?

00:21:48:08 - 00:22:15:23
Eric
Yeah. If it were me, I would probably just try to send, like, healing energy into into my ankle, you know, I've heard other practices of, like, shouting to the dream. My ankle is healed, my ankle is healed. That's something that that someone, someone might do. But for me, I think like physical contact, physical in the dream space where, you know, maybe I'm using my hands to just like bring bring like restorative healing energy into the into the ankle and then see what happens when I wake up.

00:22:16:10 - 00:22:30:19
Amina
Yeah, that's a good idea because I've experimented with this a little bit and I like to get creative as well. And like you said earlier, depending on what you have in the dream, like you might end up, who knows, in a jungle, at the beach, at your house, like you don't really know. And I kind of work with whatever the dream gives me.

00:22:30:19 - 00:22:44:13
Amina
Like if there's water around, I'll use it as like a healing bath. If there's like a fruit around, I'll like, you know, rub it on my skin or whatever is around in the dream. As long as I think the intention and the energy behind it is really what it boils down to. And there's so many like ways to do that.

00:22:45:09 - 00:22:59:04
Eric
Yeah, for sure. Like we were talking about before, the dream might surprise you and give you something that you, you know, put you in an environment or give you a response that you weren't necessarily expecting. That is also something that you kind of need to adapt to and work with.

00:22:59:21 - 00:23:10:06
Amina
So do you have any good tips for like dream control? Once you're in the dream and you're trying to something things and you know you have a task that you want to practice or whatever, what are some good tips to like get a grip on the dream?

00:23:11:16 - 00:23:36:21
Eric
Yeah, for me, I think it's kind of like reminding myself that this is a dream, you know, because it's like you're walking on a tightrope where you get too excited. You could wake up or you could forget that you're dreaming. And if you get too passive, maybe the dream, maybe you'll just wake up. And so kind of like when I become lucid, grounding myself in my body, maybe rubbing my hands and feeling my self on the earth and just trying to not get too excited.

00:23:37:07 - 00:24:01:23
Eric
And every every so often just periodically saying to myself or even out loud, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming so I don't forget. And I think that can maybe boost my my level of lucidity because obviously, like you said, it is a spectrum. And the more that we can kind of push ourselves into into like the hyper lucid side of the spectrum, the more the more ability we'll have to do to sort of accomplish these sorts of tasks.

00:24:01:23 - 00:24:19:20
Eric
I've tried like lucidity, boost, just like shouting that to the dream, and that's worked on occasion. But yes, it's interesting. I just the dream I was mentioning last night, I was kind of like on an a high cliff and I became lucid and I jumped off the cliff to fly. And I did not fly. I fell down to like a lake.

00:24:19:20 - 00:24:35:12
Eric
And by the time I got to the lake, I was able to kind of stabilize myself a little bit and barefoot water ski on the lake a little bit. But it's interesting how I know I can fly. I know this is a dream and yet I'm not flying. So that's always interesting to work with.

00:24:35:23 - 00:24:51:24
Amina
Yeah, lucid awareness is so interesting. And like you said, it's a spectrum, just like our waking life spectrum of consciousness. So sometimes it can be hard to define if you're lucid or not because it can change so much in one dream. But I wanted to ask you as well, what are some of your favorite techniques for lucid dreaming.

00:24:52:19 - 00:25:27:12
Eric
For me, the most effective techniques that I've consistently used over the course of my my lucid dreaming experience with intention, falling asleep with with the intention to become lucid and repeating in my mind and then hitting the object as I'm falling asleep that tonight I become lucid. Tonight I will recognize that I'm dreaming. I don't do a lot of awake back to bed though when I do, it's effective, so I try to as I get older, I think I get a little bit more nervous about not being able to fall back asleep in the middle of the night.

00:25:27:12 - 00:25:44:14
Eric
So I don't intentionally wake myself up. But if I wake up to go to the bathroom or if I just happen to wake up in the middle of the night, then then I'll take a few minutes and reset my intention to become lucid. And that's really that's really the technique that's been my go to and has been effective and experimented with some others.

00:25:44:14 - 00:26:00:24
Eric
But some of the practices in the Dream yoga book, some like visualizations of like throat chakras and things like that have been effective actually. But for whatever reason I don't really stick with them. I kind of do them for a stretch of time and maybe it stops working a little bit. And then I go back to that to the intention piece.

00:26:01:05 - 00:26:04:02
Eric
That's what I've seen had the most staying power in my practice.

00:26:04:16 - 00:26:17:01
Amina
Intention is definitely key with anything in life, especially lucid dreaming. And yeah, I always just incorporate my practice into my life as well. Switch it up, try different things because you know, different things work for different people for sure.

00:26:17:17 - 00:26:38:10
Eric
Yeah. I would also say that that's definitely like my before I before bed technique, but like reality checks also. I mean that's like second nature for me at this point. The ones that I do the most are like reading texts and looking away and looking back and seeing if that changes. And then and then like a close second would be like kind of trying to extend my finger out.

00:26:38:20 - 00:27:01:12
Eric
Because sometimes in places where you don't have text and sometimes sometimes they don't work in the dream, which is frustrating, which is also my dreaming and maybe messing with me. That's always, you know, it can be frustrating. The whole practice itself is is an exercise in patience. It's an exercise in persistence because there's no shortage of opportunities to where you wake up and you're like, Man, how did I not realize I was dreaming?

00:27:01:12 - 00:27:10:11
Eric
How did that reality check not work? And you just kind of have to laugh at it and you can't can't let it get to you because still you got to be in it for the long to the long haul.

00:27:10:20 - 00:27:26:05
Amina
Yeah, that's so true. And that happens a lot too. Like the Fingers Stretch is one of my go to favorite ones and it's always like my finger gets like all big and rubbery like, and it's really interesting, but I always do too, as a backup, just as part of my habit. Because there are times when I'm like, Oh, that's normal.

00:27:26:05 - 00:27:27:13
Amina
Like nothing weird here.

00:27:27:23 - 00:27:56:24
Eric
Yeah. One that I've been doing that's also like kind of sports related is I wear a sleep tracker and like fitness tracker that I use as is group. It's kind of got like a subtly etched logo in it. And so it does require like a lot of like observation to like, do a reality check with that text. So I found that that to be effective and also tends to because it's kind of like an activity tracker and maybe also has the opportunity to put me in an environment where I'm like working out or playing sports or something like that.

00:27:57:12 - 00:28:04:19
Amina
That's a good one. Yeah, that makes sense to incorporate your reality checks around something like sports related. So you're already kind of thinking that way for sure.

00:28:05:10 - 00:28:27:03
Eric
My wife is 33 weeks pregnant and so I've been having some dreams about her pregnancy and dreams about baby. And so it's it's exciting and interesting to think about how that will be reflected in my in my dream life. I've had a few dreams. I haven't seen the baby itself, but I've seen parts of the baby and and dreams related to that experience.

00:28:27:03 - 00:28:54:09
Eric
So and also the sleep disruption that's going to be happening once the baby comes. I'm actually kind of excited about it. I think it'll be an interesting experiment and what an irregular cycle is like, and I'm committed to just kind of using it for working with the Goggia and, you know, see what like a 20 minute nap where you're just kind of on edge, like where the baby's going to be crying any minute and and just kind of surfing that first stage of sleep.

00:28:54:16 - 00:29:13:03
Eric
I say that now. We'll see what happens, like once the babies are actually here and how much I'm enjoying the experiment in sleep deprivation. But yeah, that's that's something that I'm excited about. And I have some dream plans actually related to the Healing Peace, like sending healing energy to the baby and to Pamela, my wife, as she gets ready for a life changing experience.

00:29:13:20 - 00:29:25:14
Amina
Yeah, that's amazing. I think you have a good intentions with it. And yeah, I mean, what better way than to use it as a tool? I'm sure it'll be difficult, but if you have, like, a fun little experiment you're doing with it, it'll just make it more enjoyable.