Lucid Dreams - What Is A Lucid Dream and What Does It Means?

This is what lucid dreams mean and some details about this.

LUCID DREAMS – Dreaming of being conscious during a dream is lucid dreaming and here are some things to know about lucid dreams.

Many people have surely experienced being conscious in a dream and, isn’t this mind-blowing? This happens when a person is asleep but is aware at the same time that he is in a dream – a form of metacognition.

Metacognition is defined as the “awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes”. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first ever to record lucid dreaming in his work On Dreams.

Here are some characteristics of this:

being aware that you’re sleeping and dreaming at the same time
it is very vivid
you have control of the events at some point
there are intense emotions

Aristotle wrote:

“[If] the sleeper perceives that he is asleep, and is conscious of the sleeping state during which the perception comes before his mind, it presents itself still, but something within him speaks to this effect: ‘The image of Koriskos presents itself, but the real Koriskos is not present.’”

Most lucid dreams happen during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This type of dream is generally not harmful. According to an article from Healthline, it has benefits like overcoming recurring nightmares, relieving anxiety, and improving motor skills.

There are certain downsides to this most especially for people with mental health disorders. For one, it disrupts sleep leading to a lesser quality of sleep. And for people with mental disorders, this can cause confusion, delirium, and hallucinations.

For people with schizophrenia, they might find it difficult to determine whether the situation is just a hallucination or a real-life event.