Tim Ferris: Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming | Hacker News Reader

Tim Ferris: Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming

fourhourworkweek.com

55 pointsDarrenMills37 comments

Sure, if you're only working 4 hours a week you have plenty of time to Lucid Dream in your Polyphasic zombie sleeps induced by weeks of raw food diet, kegel exercises and cold calling the A-F entries of the phone book to practice the elevator pitch for your personal-growth startup.

I think you are mixing him up with Steve Pavlina. While I find some of recent entries of Pavlina borderline crazy, his old entries on personal development are really good stuff.

With Steve, for the first time I learned that I can think of him as crazy and admire some of his (early) writing at the same time.

I have my doubts about Tim Ferris though. He seems to run of hype.

I'm not a TF fan but he does have the occasional piece of "unhype-y" brilliance, such as this video on how to build a high traffic blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/06/29/how-to-build...

I've heard about this before but I do have one question. Isn't it possible that there is some disadvantage to doing this frequently instead of having regular dreams, even if one isn't immediately apparent?

I also worry somewhat about that. I did learn to do some lucid dreaming in the past, but did stop it again after some weeks.

First I found it already harder after the first few successes to get into the lucid state. Like my mind finding more and more clever excuses telling me in dreams why I'm not dreaming despite obvious dream-like things happening. So some sub-conscious part of me obviously wasn't really wanting the lucid dreaming. Also dreams started to get more intense - which isn't always a good thing as a waking up from a cruel dream can mess up your thinking seriously for the rest of the day.

Then there is also the part that to get into lucid dreams you have to think a lot about dreams.That simply costs time, especially if your job is already about thinking (like programming).

And certainly we still don't know enough what dreams are actually for. We know it has to do with learning - but there are also theories that it has to do with forgetting unimportant things. Messing that process up might certainly have disadvantages.

Still... if I ever have enough time again to really train it I will probably give it another try. It seems like one of the very few ways we have to inspect our own mind and I'm just too curious to not want to do that.

As far as I know there are no disadvantages, even when you are really trained only a fraction of your dreams will be lucid dreams.

By the way, if you are really interested in this subject take a look at the open book here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming (I have submitted this before to HN but it never hit the front page)

A friend of mine trained himself to be able of lucid dreaming, but stopped with it when he began to have "nested" dreams - he thought that he woke up, but found himself in another dream (and that multiple times). That made him frightening.

That's extremely common and I never found that particularly frightening. After my very first lucid dream (that I can remember) I woke up and started writing it up in my dream journal, but the ink kept dissolving as I wrote, as if I was writing on fresh tippex. Took me a while to figure out that I was still dreaming. Then I woke up properly.

The dreams aren't so much nested as in sequence. You have a dream, you become lucid, you get excited, you think you're going to wake up, and so you dream about waking up and become un-lucid again.

Took me a while to figure out that I was still dreaming. Then I woke up properly. Or not.

EDIT: Having read through a lot of the book now, it's very interesting to consider what's going on and the metaphysical implications are intriguing. I digress, what I'd like to know is how do you know that you have not simply dreamt that your dream was lucid. How can you really know you have control as opposed to having dreamt you have control; this question finds an analogue in the question of freewill in [wakeful] life.

Pretty easy:

1) I was dreaming

2) I had the conscious thought "hey, this stuff doesn't make sense. I am dreaming. Wow, I am aware that I'm dreaming, even though I'm dreaming."

3) I then took conscious steps to alter my dream, for instance, stepping out of the car within which I was and flying away.

Of course, you could try arguing that I just dreamt that I was making conscious decisions, but that's just splitting hairs.

Of course, you could try arguing that I just dreamt that I was making conscious decisions, but that's just splitting hairs.

That's exactly what I was intimating. Some believe that freewill is a similar illusion. There is no clear way to know, except that within the restricted arena of your dreams, assuming you're an honest person, then we can ask you to dream a certain thing in advance and see if you can.

That doesn't rule out the dream being a created memory that doesn't occur until you come to "remember" it however.

The only freightning thing I experienced is sleep paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia#Sleep_paralysis). But this too presents no dangers, it is just a weird and uncommon feeling =)

It's a weird feeling when you recognize what it is, and horribly frightening when you don't know about it and think you've been visited by aliens, ghosts, or demons. This is made even worse by thinking you're going nuts and being afraid to tell anyone about it; people spend a lifetime with their secret trauma, when they could have just told someone and found out that it was nothing more than a fairly common effect of waking up at the wrong part of the sleep cycle.

But it helps if you're visited by aliens, ghosts, or demons, because you can mistake that for sleep paralysis, making it not very frightening.

The trick is to ask them to read something twice; if it comes out the same each time, they're really there. Otherwise you're experiencing sleep paralysis. Or they're just messing with you.

A friend of mine trained himself to be able of lucid dreaming, but stopped with it when he began to have "nested" dreams...

I experience that with normal dreams. I suspect it happens to anyone who has a vivid dreamlife. I wouldn't let this scare off any would-be lucid dreamers.

What can't Tim Ferris do, and subsequently blog, film, and self-promote about?

The one lucid dream I've had was awesome. I've thought about writing dream-notes upon waking up, but now I think I'll actually try it.

I've had two. One was really really short and the other was a bit longer. Both were awesome. I've considered dream-notes, but its effort. Maybe one day.

On the topic, see this thread about an individual with total control over his dreams, including time dilation. His longest dream lasted for what felt like four years, which he spent "creating planets and landscapes, and then I just sat back and watched the life/universe I'd created play out in super-fast motion." It's IAmA so he could be a troll, but it seems believable to me.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9ebol/i_am_in_full_con...

As far as techniques, I would recommend giving wake-induced lucid dreaming (WILD) a try, as practiced by Richard Feynman. You basically just stay conscious as you fall asleep, watching your body fall asleep and staying aware. A very small amount of caffeine or chocolate an hour before bed can help with this.

Technical question: He states that you should look at a pattern, look away, and then check to see if it changes. Supposedly it will change because your memory can only hold 7 +- 2 bits. Now if your memory is too small to keep this supposed pattern consistent, how the hell are you supposed to memorize this pattern for a consistency check? I.e. you need your memory to assert that your memory failed. Is there a separate memory he is talking about here? Even if that technique worked, couldn't the pattern stay the same just based off the chance that you get horizontal/vertical stripes twice in a row?

Sorry if I'm nitpicking, maybe my cs theory courses just ruin these things.

You notice the inconsistency, even if you can't quite recall what the pattern was before. I've only had a few lucid dreams and I don't have great dream recall, but when I wake up at the right moment I can remember my dreams vividly, and think through the dream events with my fully conscious mind. I don't notice patterns changing that much, but I do know that text changes. For example, I've had dreams where I fell asleep while reading, then continued to read in my dream making up the story as I went. But then it gets confusing so I back up to reread a page, and the story changes.

Another common event is that people and things in my dreams can be indistinct until I pay close attention to them. Just recently I was with a woman in my dream who appeared as just a silhouette in a shadow until I really wanted to know who she was and focused on her, at which point she became perfectly clear and vibrant. That can happen to the entire setting of my dream too, and people and settings can also change as I pay attention to different parts of them.

Is there anything useful you can do while lucid dreaming?

I've done it once in a fever, and it was admittedly a fantastic experience (I was a multiverse god and made lots of multiverses full of happy people in awesome landscapes having really great sex), but it would be nice to be able to get something out of it that could be shared with other people.

I'm wondering if one could use the immense processing power of the human brain in a consciously directed way; for problem-solving, or simulating a complex system, for instance. That would prove that you're not just watching pretty lights while the "this thing that's going on right now is really cool" part of your brain is stimulated.

I don't think system simulation is possible. The dreaming tests essentially work by prooving that you can't keep much "state".

Learning by repetition is something i heared repeatedly. I have no personal experience, but it seems to be a Matrix-style "I know Kung Fu". So you seem to have access to your memories and can reinforce them. Maybe some self-psychoanalysis is possible, since you may access your subconsciousness.

Great, as Tim usually is. I pretty much know all there is to Lucid dreaming, but I didn't know much about huperzine prior to that post.

Also, if you're really interested in lucid dreaming, there's a wonderful community filled with dream-veterans @ http://www.dreamviews.com/

Hands down, the best suggestion of what to do during a dream was, "your finger is an orgasm gun."

Personal experience: I have tried lucid dreaming, and had some moderate success at it (got two lucid dreams that I can remember). It's a lot of fun, and not all that hard. I warmly recommend it to anyone who can be bothered to keep a dream journal by their bedside.

I've had many lucid dreams, though I've never been able to hang on for very long. I'll try the spinning technique next time for sure.

If this interests you, you might also be interested in "binaural beats".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats

The most famous use of "bb" is probably the audio series produced by The Monroe Institute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monroe_Institute

If you can get past the "new age" stigma of TMI, they seem to be surprisingly scientific in their endeavors. They have audio series for LD and other consciousness exercises. The idea is that binaural beats can be used to alter your brainwave frequency and help you enter altered states of consciousness (hack your brain).

The first objective is "mind awake, body asleep", which is exactly what it sounds like. It involves relaxation techniques, "resonant tuning" (which is basically chanting like a monk), an affirmation of your goal (to expand your consciousness etc...) and then deeper relaxation.

I have achieved this state a few times, but never had the discipline to keep up with the exercises. The few times it happened, the initial feeling was that my body parts had all melded together and I couldn't feel where one part stopped and the other started. Then, I felt a peculiar detachment and a very intense feeling of "energizing" which I can only describe as something similar to holding a 9volt to your tongue, but all over your body. At that point I would always become too excited and "wake up".

The main reason I didn't persist with the exercises is because chanting and wearing headphones when you go to bed isn't very pleasant for the person laying next to you. The other roadblock is discipline. If you want to have LDs on purpose, you really do have to stick with the dream journal and make a conscious effort to make it happen and keep up with it.

My LDs were natural and not the result of practice, but were definitely very cool. I know what it's like to fly like Superman. :)

I second recommending the Monroe Institute audio guides. I nabbed them off BitTorrent years ago, and I play a few of them on an iPod shuffle while falling asleep. It's worth seeing past the New Age (rhymes with "sewage") stigma--the point isn't some non-sense about metaphysical "energy", rather the point is to get you used to putting your body into a quasi-hypnotic suggestive state where visualization can be much more active in your perception.

This is a great way to keep working even when your body forces you to sleep.

A decade ago I picked up a copy of the La Berge book that Ferris mentions. I highly recommend it as it seems to be the canonical book on the topic since La Berge was credited with being first to medically prove in a lab that lucid dreaming even exists. It takes like 3 months of daily dedicated practice to get the knack, but once you've trained your mind to do it, it gets easier to induce with repetition. Regular lucid dreaming is an incredible experience, and I can't even begin to explain the impact it has had on my own creativity and self of self. If you haven't done it--GO DO IT!!

And I agree with what others said about using LD'ing to aid in learning. For me it is hugely useful to get unconstrained "practice" time to quickly go through steps I need to remember when awake. I call it dream kata. I mean both mental steps, like learning math proofs in my case, and steps for physical things, like learning to rock climb(falling off cliffs and flying away is seriously fun). What's weird is after routinely LD'ing such practice scenarios, when I go back to regular dreaming, I will have non-lucid dreams of doing the same kinds of practices. We dream about what we regularly do each day, so it's a way of tricking the mind to watch and mimic itself. Somehow it engages a part of the subconscious to constantly practice and learn.

While LD'ing sounds trivial, the time can add up and I think it has huge potential to give those who employ it an edge. Let's say you lucid dream for 2 hours every night for just 3 years--then you've got 2k+ hours of practice time in whatever you do. Take Gladwell's book Outliers and his account that "geniuses" in any field excel simply because they have had so much more raw practice than others. While we don't know how common lucid dreaming is amongst these "geniuses", it might be another explantion of this "practice == genius" phenomenon. The way I see it, if you can get 20% of the way to 10,000 hours just in your sleep, there's no reason to not be doing it.

I always feel obligated to post a contrarian point, since I think only people who A: succeed at training and B: have a great experience actually post, whereas all those who don't succeed or have a "meh" experience don't actually post, and these people may be the majority.

I naturally LD with some frequency, especially if the room is a bit too cold. In that case, I'll LD for days in a row at a time, and, well, here's a hint: my reaction is to go turn up the heat.

I think what people are reporting is like riding a roller coaster. It's great fun the first time, and still fun occasionally, but reading about LD being a "life changing experience" is like reading about riding a roller coaster being a life changing experience. Maybe it feels like it the first time, but... no, it really isn't. Well, I will concede that there probably is a small set of people for whom it might be important for some psychological reasons, but in general I doubt it. (Same is true for roller coasters, someone who is afraid of them may see it as a big deal that they got over their fear, but in general, it's not a lifechanger.)

On the other hand, I have to admit that I am also fairly creative and do have a strong sense of self, so perhaps I'm just jaded.

I really doubt it's useful for training though. The brain naturally "practices" (some think that's what dreaming is), and I think all the LD experience is doing is observing stuff that happens anyhow; I doubt the observation actually adds that much.

(Oh, and if you do have problems with recurring nightmares, LD is definitely worth pursuing. In my experience, the best approach once you know you are dreaming is to just let the scary thing happen; if you're scared of heights, fall, if you're chased by the monster, let it eat you, etc. Nothing bad can happen, and eventually your brain will work it out. My dreams are routinely filled with imagery that could be scary in the "wrong context" now, but it's never a problem anymore.)

I can see your point, but training is very important at the mind level. Many athletes use it when they can't physically train.

Anyway, I don't have the data but I guess 80% of results are still from physical training, although adding that 20% for free wouldn't be bad. I'm going to try it.

Have you ever found yourself rock climbing for real and suddenly uncertain about whether or not you're dreaming and what might happen if you let go?

I would think that if you spend enough time lucid dreaming, you might start to confuse the two states because you're so used to both of them. With the rock climbing scenario, I think even a moment of uncertainty would make my heart skip a few beats.

2 hour lucid dreams? Really? The most I can hold onto LDs is probably 15-20 minutes. I've had 20-25 of them in the past 6 months, and I consciously wanted them to occur.

They are definitely not 2 continuous hours of LDing, and more like the same time length you experienced. I'm just guesstimating how much total time was spent in multiple 20-30 minute LDs over the course of sleeping one night. For me LDs are longer and more "solid" when they happen towards the end of sleeping than the beginning.

> The way I see it, if you can get 20% of the way to 10,000 hours just in your sleep, there's no reason to not be doing it.

If there is no downside to it.

What possible downside is there?

Forgot to add one thing--if you're curious what it's like to practice and learn in lucid dreams, then watch the scifi movie Dark City and look for the scenes where he's remembering being taught by the Doctor--the experience is almost exactly like that!

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