Article: What lucid dreamers do in their lucid dreams

Hi, I would like to share an article about an online survey that was conducted some years ago. Participants were recruited here and on two other forums!

You can find the article here in the free online journal International Journal of Dream Research (IJoDR):

https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/9505/pdf_31

This is the summary: In a lucid dream the dreamer is aware of the dream state and can influence the dream content and events. The goal of this study was to investigate some applications of lucid dreaming. Our survey included 301 lucid dreamers who filled out an online questionnaire. The most frequent application (81.4%) was having fun, followed by changing a bad dream or nightmare into a pleasant one (63.8%), solving problems (29.9%), getting creative ideas or insights (27.6%) and practicing skills (21.3%). Women used lucid dreams significantly more often than men for both work on nightmares and problem solving. Our results show that lucid dreams have a great potential for improving one’s life in different ways. More research is needed to illuminate the possibilities of lucid dreaming, specially in the fields of nightmare treatment and practicing motor skills.

That’s really interesting to read! I didn’t expect that so many people were using it for creativity and sports etc…

9% of the german athletes is quite a huge amount. This makes me wonder if their trainers teach them lucid dreaming or if it’s just some lonely lucid dreamers.

9% of german athletes? That is pretty damn high! It can’t be a coincidence right?

Dear Melanie,

Thank you for your post and the link to the journal article. I’m quite new to lucid dreaming, and was encouraged to discover this field is receiving academic research. It was completely surprising that the most frequent application/use of lucid dreaming is “for fun”!

I’ve used the few lucid dreams I have had to seek information, “fun” didn’t even come to my mind! In my latest lucid dream I looked to the sky and shouted with all my might, “I want to see the teacher of my higher self!” I should have chosen my words more carefully. After the dreamscene disappeared and all turned black, I saw my teacher! I grew too excited, and the dream collapsed as I consciously shifted my consciousness back into my body in bed. (Strange I could do that!) I’m ready for my next lucid dream, when I’ll ask to converse with my teacher! :write:

Indeed,women use the LD 's for problem solving and nightnare solving. Agreed, men use it for “magic” stuffs, and cough cough “other things”… :lol: … anyway, an very interesting article, thanks for sharing it with us

i would like to appreciate you for sharing such a great info with us

The statistics about what people mostly did in their dream was actually suprising. Also i noticed that the oldest group of people had used their dreams to solve nightmares more than the others, does this mean they have more nightmares? If that’s the case i never want to grow old :meh: