by Jonathan Bartholomew
Lucid dreaming has been an interest of mine for the past twenty-five years, give or take. When I was around twenty, a long-affected sleep paralysis experiencer, I was willing to try a lot of different things to try to get rid of that recurring experience. There’s nothing quite so terrifying as being awake and unable to move. At some point, a friend told me that they had heard lucid dreaming could stop sleep paralysis (in the years since, I’ve not heard that repeated – I think they just wanted to be helpful and made it up) and at that point, I was desperate enough to try anything. My first question was, ‘What is lucid dreaming?’ Once I found out it was dreams where you know you’re asleep, and have some amount of control, I was on to ‘How do I do this?’ Even without the concern of sleep paralysis, I was very interested in this.
The information on how to lucid dream that was available to me was limited (Google was around, but no search engines were PARTICULARLY great in 2003-ish (just my opinion, I’m sure there are those who would argue with me)) as a worse-than-broke college student, but I was able to dig up a few instructions online for turning yourself into someone who lucid dreams. The first method involved keeping a meticulous dream diary, recording sleep times, and paying attention to when and what you eat. Well, that was right out. The runner-up suggested taking six weeks, and asking yourself, at random times throughout the day ‘Is this real, or am I dreaming?’ So, there I went. Sitting in class, bored, looking around? Not dreaming. The sky’s an ocean? Yes. Likely a dream. And so it went. And, interestingly, it did take most of that six weeks to really become evident, and to start exerting that control.
In this time, I started to realize some things about my dreams, or at least some of them. There was a running thread through a lot of my dreams. The air felt different in them, and there were recurring themes and even characters – though for some of the ‘characters,’ entities may be a better word. These characters, places and people are still with me in some of those dreams today. Especially the places. I have always wondered, because of this, whether there might be more to our dreams than we want to acknowledge. If this sounds vague, that’s because it is. Future blog posts will be tackling these items in more detail.
Unfortunately for me, this had no effect at all on the sleep paralysis. I was still waking up most mornings to an active brain in a body that took a lot longer than I was comfortable with to start moving. In case someone clicked into this blog post in hopes of a way to thwart sleep paralysis, here’s what worked for me:
My left foot’s smallest toe. I realized that if I could get SOME part of my body moving, it would break the paralysis, and so that’s what I chose. I focused everything I had on moving that toe. The first few times, it was very difficult – honestly, it felt impossible. After that, though, it just became… something I could always do. Within a few months, the sleep paralysis stopped, and I’ve been very fortunate not to have to deal with it again.
I will note, as well, that I was fortunate enough to never feel any weight on my chest during these episodes. My eyes never opened during them, so I couldn’t attest to whether I saw anything (such as the ‘night hags’ that many report with that affliction) in my room that shouldn’t have been there, and I can’t say that I’m sorry about that.
Lucid dreaming has, since that time, been a part of my life. Sleep in general has always been difficult for me. I’m a lifelong insomniac, and from the age of nine on, getting more than four hours a night of sleep has been basically impossible. It really has only been over the past three years that I’ve begun to get a handle on my sleep and am now averaging 6 hours a night – which, for me, is pretty amazing.