What Is Lucid Dreaming?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel • 2022-12-06

Watch on YouTube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. You're listening to Halo by Black Light Animals. Black Light Animals are a psychedelic soul band out of Kansas City, featuring lush pop vocals, spaghetti western guitar riffs, psychedelic keyboards and hip hop drums. Their debut album, Playboys of the Western World, is out now on Fire Orange Vinyl and available at bandcamp.com/blacklightanimals Band. And their new cinematic single Persephone is available now on all streaming platforms. The question for this episode is, what is lucid dreaming? You will learn in this episode what you can do in lucid dreams, the benefits of lucid dreaming and methods you can use to lucid dream. Our guest has been interviewed on national TV and radio, has been mentioned in over 45 academic papers and is the co-author of A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming. I introduce to you Jared Chiang-Zeizel. I brush my teeth, I undress, I get in the shower, then I notice I can't feel the water. It's odd, so I immediately, for whatever reason, instinctually try to run my hands through my hair. When I do that, my fingertips go like right through my forehead, and I realize I'm dreaming. I suddenly, like Joel, I wake up, I'm disappointed because my teeth aren't brushed and I didn't take a shower, and I woke up a little bit later than I intended to. After doing some research, I realized that that experience was a lucid dream. That was my introduction to lucid dreaming, but we have our expert here, we have Jared. How were you introduced to lucid dreaming? It seems like it had something to do with your cousin.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, so for better or worse, I never just got that natural lucid dream and then was able to discover it on my own. It was actually told to me and introduced to me by my cousin. He's that one cousin where the same age, we grow up, go through all sorts of experiences together. We lived in different states, but we talked on the phone a lot. We were teenagers at that time, probably 15 or 16. We talked about video games a lot and he came across Lucid Dreaming. I forget where, but he basically says, have you heard of this thing, Lucid Dreaming? I'm like, no. He's like, it's this thing where you can go into a dream and it's like a video game. That was his original pitch to me, which I was like, all right, I'm down for that. Then he planted that seed and I was getting a little bit more curious, and looking it up, and then found out that like, oh, like a lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware of the surroundings, and you can direct the dream or your character of yourself, almost like a character in a video game. That was my first taste and introduction to Lucid Dreaming.

Dylan Carnahan:How did you progress from there from just getting that amazing sales pitch right there of just, hey, it's a video game, but when you're asleep and you can interact with it, how did you progress from there?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:At that age, and I guess it's probably around 2002, maybe, we had gotten that family computer, and I think I would just look up your blogs or people's, it's probably time of MySpace and Live Journal, and just try to Google and ask G's and remember what is lucid dreaming, and just see what comes up, and we just read about it. There was material out there, it just wasn't that readily available, so it took a little bit more digging, you had to go through forums and stuff. But ultimately, you started trying to implement the techniques that I was learning, and just use it pretty much just for fantasy fulfillment and fun. But then I get to college, and I learned a little bit more about it, actually read some books on it, and learned that this is this interaction with your dream world, which I look at as an interaction with your subconscious and subconscious and some stuff just floating around in your brain, and started using it more for creativity. I went to film school, and we'd write out a script for the short we're making, and then I would go into the dream, have a lucid dream, and then try to create the short film that I was shooting. So it's like, oh, I want to see what this is like. And you know, it's never like this sort of perfect image, like, you know, we'll see, like, I guess, you know, behind the scenes, like 3D renderings of the Marvel action scene. It wasn't quite like to that scale. But you would get like the emotions and you kind of the feel, and then I'd wake up right when I remembered and, you know, apply that to the project I was working on.

Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that's that's interesting. I know one of the things that once I kind of revisited Lucid Dreaming that attracted to me attracted me to it was the concept of like how that could increase productivity and, you know, like, oh, I know as a former college athlete, baseball player, visualization was a big part. So I thought kind of this visual rehearsal aspect of performing. And you've you know, you incorporated that when you were in college with your film. You know, so you learn about it, you start implementing it in your personal life. But ultimately, what made you decide to write a book or co-author a book about it?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:So when I graduated college, I was living with four friends who I went to, especially three friends I went to school with. And then one, the fifth guy was, you know, a friend, buddy. But we all lived together, we all worked together. And two of the guys also lucid dream, and we would sort of just chat about it. And like, you know, there was probably some point like we had lived together for a couple months and be like, oh, you lucid dream, I lucid dream. And, you know, and then we would just like share our dreams in the mornings, you know, talk about different techniques, what's working, what's helpful. And it wasn't actually until like a year after that where we're like, oh, like, we all want to film school, we all like lucid dreaming. Wouldn't it be cool to do some sort of like web series about it? So it actually didn't start as a book. But then we were talking more and more and sort of came up with this idea that like, wouldn't it be really cool to have like a guidebook to the dream world? And so originally, the book is actually probably a little bit drier, you know, in its first iteration when we're like figuring it out. Because we were modeling off of actual like guidebooks, like, you know, like a field guide to the Amazon or a field guide to Birds of North America or something. And we realized a lot of the times the books are pretty like just a very standard prose, not really, you know, inspiring the engagement levels, not as high. So, you know, we went slightly off the path that way, but we still felt like this is a guidebook to the dream world and, you know, and treated it as such, so, you know, which hence the name, A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming. And it was right around the time Kickstarter was getting popular. And so we're like, oh, maybe we can raise a little bit of money for this or use it as sort of like a presale option. And, you know, we ended up getting hitting our goal and then some and we're able to sort of quit our jobs for about like three months. And just hunker down, try out all the sort of experiments, you know, like it was it's probably the only time in my life where I'll be able to say like sleeping was like part of the job and I could like justify, you know, taking a nap in the middle of the day or going to bed like, you know, a lot of times it involved us like waking up in the middle of the night trying to see what would work. So some of the experimentation didn't always lead to the to the best sleep. But we wanted to figure out like what, you know, what's the, you know, the best way, like the Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming isn't sort of this catalog of every way to lucid dream. It's sort of what we experienced and went through and, you know, and researched about what's the sort of the most efficient way. And like, if you do it this way, you know, what are your expectations? And if you want to try something slightly more advanced, like, what can you expect from that? But it was really trying to reach, not that similar to that 15 year old kid like myself or maybe yourself, who doesn't necessarily have access to academic journals, which there's a lot of material there, or may or may not be interested in the slightly more spiritual side of it, in that kind of new age world. We wanted something that like anyone, no matter their belief, their education level, to pick up and essentially learn how to have a lucid dream.

Dylan Carnahan:That's fascinating. You know, the beginning of that, I mean, what are the odds you have three film students who are all under lucid dreaming, right? Under the same roof. Like, what?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, there's moment, there's lots of moments on this journey that feel very serendipitous. Because like, you know, none of us had set out to write a book. And, you know, the fact that, like, we were able to raise the money and, you know, ultimately what had happened is we, I think we pre-sold through the Kickstarter, like 800 copies. You know, we wrote the book, printed the book, shipped it out. And a literary agent, you know, who I think came across us through Kickstarter, was like, oh, this sounds like an interesting book. When you guys are done, please send me a copy. And she read it and was like, oh, like, if you guys are willing to stop, like, selling the book on your own, we could possibly bring this to, you know, an actual publisher and kind of get out of the sort of self-publishing space. And we're like, oh, like, we never thought we were going to be, like, pitching stuff to actual, like, publishers. But that's what ended up happening. And we worked with them to, you know, kind of fine tune the book and, you know, their art team, like, redesigned the whole thing into, like, a much better version. I think I still have some of the old copies laying around. I'll, like, compare the two and be like, yeah, it was a good idea. We went with them. But yeah, you know, just like and the people we've met, the interaction, even stuff like this, like, you know, being able to, you know, to chat with you is something that, like, had we never probably, like, when people would make some sort of web series that became a book, like, you and I probably would have never met.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's inspiring to hear how you brought that to fruition. It's also, you know, incredibly, there's an incredible amount of value in what you created. And I know that we've been alluding to it, but for the uninitiated, they may have some questions here. So what is the average person's experience when they dream? You know, I brought up kind of my experience where I just had this event occur and I find out that that's a lucid experience. But what do you think the average person's experience is when they dream?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:I think, well, one thing I hear sometimes is people say, oh, I don't dream at all. And what actually is happening is like they're not remembering their dreams. You know, we all dream. There are a whole lot of theories about why we dream. But to my knowledge, the science community has not said like this is why we dream. Some people think it's sort of a brain working out stuff. Some people just think it's just random firings of, you know, brain synapses or something. But we don't actually know 100 percent why we dream. And so one thing I always try to and I'll steer back to your question. One thing that I would say is like when someone's trying to lucid dream, often they don't even remember their dreams. And so first start with like, you know, spreading the dream journal, getting a better kind of relationship with that dream and that dream world. And to realize that like, oh, like tonight when you go to sleep, you're going to dream. If you don't remember it, you know, it's not necessarily bad or good one way or the other, but that we all dream. And I would say that dreams are, you know, kind of what people dream about is really just, obviously, a lot of fears, anxieties, the form of nightmares and stuff. I think it's just also a lot of random stuff of our brains that are picked up throughout the day and it's working through. But what I sort of think is maybe not, you know, I don't want to say what's going on, but like what dreams are pulling from is the subconscious. And we spend, obviously, most of our, you know, mental focus on our kind of conscious brain and working through the stuff and kind of, you know, processing everything. But then there's all this other stuff that's maybe not getting processed. So I think dreams are, you know, are a way of just figuring out and, you know, addressing either the stuff that our brain isn't looking at or some of the stuff that our brain is looking at very deeply. You know, and that might be like you watch a horror movie and you're going to bed and you're thinking of like the, you know, the killer coming in your room as you're drifting off to sleep. And then you have a dream about that, you know, that, you know, slasher. You know, so I think, you know, to kind of answer you, but it's a whole lot of stuff, but it's the stuff we're trying to work through or at least our brain feels like we should.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, a couple of things there. Firstly, you're absolutely correct. The amount of people that have said, I don't dream is astronomical. And from my personal experiences, you know, I have a dream and I maybe have 30 to 90 seconds to capture that. So it's fairly easy to lose those. And then I think the second thing is you're saying, you know, most people's experiences when they dream is this kind of weird, you know, abstract reflection of all these themes and things that have occurred, you know, emotionally or, you know, physically throughout the day. And I think that, you know, if you do take the time to reflect on your day in the waking world, those themes tend to show up in your dreaming world. At least that's something that I've noticed.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, I think that, you know, I think there is this bridge, this connection between, you know, the waking world and the dream world. And, you know, we see that, you know, again, I feel like nightmares, scary stuff, fears, insecurities, like, you know, because it's so emotionally potent, we kind of, you know, tag those a little bit easier. But I do think there's this connection. This is sort of jumping way ahead into sort of more kind of advanced lucid dreaming. But one thing that we talk about and kind of get to a little bit later in the book is how to utilize lucid dreams and then take what you learn there into the waking world, whether it's like, you know, in college where it was like, oh, let me like rehearse a movie scene and then like, you know, write about it or, you know, produce it or something. But a lot of things, it's like, you know, sometimes maybe you have a big presentation the next day. You can maybe rehearse the presentation or maybe like you just need that extra boost of self-confidence. And so instead you fly around the world in your dreams and you wake up and you feel elated and confident. And maybe, you know, you head into the office and you're just, you know, you're just that much more jazzed and secure in yourself. Because, you know, just hours ago you were flying, doing the impossible and feeling actually what it would be like, you know, at least your brain's interpretation of flying. And so, like, I feel like a lot of stuff that happened in the dream world will overflow into the waking world, but very similar to how stuff in the waking world will overflow into the dream world.

Dylan Carnahan:Interesting point there, especially, you know, kind of that emotional aspect. You can maybe do something in your dream that emboldens you, draws some kind of emotion out that you could leverage, you know, once you're awake. For, you know, we're talking about lucid dreaming, we're talking about flying, we're talking about all these things, but how was, you know, a lucid dream different than, say, a normal dream where I remember flying?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:So a lucid dream is primarily just about awareness. So we say like the definition of a lucid dream is a dream and what you are aware of the dream itself. So the same awareness that you and I have in this moment, like I know that I'm looking at a computer screen with your face, we got the headphones, like, you know, I'm pretty aware of everything that's going on right now. And a lucid dream is just having that same awareness in the dream world. So it's like you're not on this sort of, you know, this this track of like just sort of absorbing and experiencing stuff. You're also aware of the experiences as they're happening. And you can identify that this is the dream, sort of like when you, you know, in your example, when you're washing your hair and, you know, your hands go through your forehead. Like you're like, oh, this isn't real. This is the dream. Like that is sort of the moment of lucidity, which, you know, we talk about in the book of like really, you know, and in all honesty, like all the techniques, all the things that you can do to increase the chances of having a lucid dream are really just about that one moment where you're like, OK, this is the dream. Because there's this inherent paradox to lucid dreaming where you're trying to find your own awareness while you're unaware of it. And so it's like you need that trigger or there's also examples of lucid dreams called wild where you actually never let go of that awareness. And like as you're going into, you know, from waking into the dream world, your awareness of the fact that you're kind of leaving the wake or going into the dream world never, you know, never leaves your mind. But a lot of lucid dreams, and I think the majority of them happen where you're actually unaware something happens in the dream world. It triggers, you know, basically, you to ask this question, am I dreaming? And, you know, and then you basically say, wait a second, like, yes, I'm dreaming. And then the moment you're like, yes, I'm dreaming, you've had a lucid dream. You don't have to worry about controlling the dream, flying, like, you know, you might just say, yes, I'm in a lucid dream. And then often what happens is, you know, it's such an intense experience, you wake right up. But even if you haven't even spent like two seconds there, that's still you still had a lucid dream.

Dylan Carnahan:How would you describe that consciousness that, you know, when you become lucid to someone who has never had a lucid dream before?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:I would say that most of us have had the experience of like being in kind of a regular kind of unaware dream in the waking world. And I find that it, for whatever reason, you know, it happened, you know, and this is probably not good, but it happens when we're driving and driving somewhere we drive every day, so driving to work. And you're sort of on autopilot. And, you know, I feel like a lot of us have had this moment where, like, we leave, you know, we go home, we leave the office, wherever we go, and we get to where we're going. And we're like, oh, like, I don't remember anything about that trip. Like, I didn't hit anyone. I like followed all the traffic laws, but somehow, like, I just was unaware of it. And I think that is sort of a similar experience because, like, you know, if someone, I don't know, cut you off and you felt that emotion, you know, that stuff happens. You know, we feel stuff in the, you know, in a dream that's not lucid. But also, you know, you can take it, you can drive from wherever you're going and be very aware. You can be like, all right, I want to listen to that one song that's going to put me in a good mood. And then you, you know, make the decision to put that on, you know, like pull it up on Spotify or turn to your favorite radio station. You know, or maybe it's like, you know, you and I slightly more, you know, intense example would be like you recently were in a car crash and you have these sort of, you know, nerves about driving or being in a car. And so when you finally get back in the car, you know, you're probably not going to like tune out the world. You're probably going to be very, very focused on, you know, on your surroundings and what you're doing. And so looking kind of at this sort of driving a car, but being unaware of an example like that kind of to me is what a regular dream can often feel like while a lucid dream is like you're actively aware of what's happening while you're doing it.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's a great example that you're driving to your destination, you're on autopilot, right? And then say someone cuts you off and that pattern break makes you present throughout that commute. I think that's a good example of what it's like to lucid dream. There are kind of these sequences and events that you're experiencing. And then you kind of have a pivotal moment that makes you do, say, a reality check. And then you kind of gain some level of consciousness. Yeah.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:No, I think that's a great, like, it's those, you know, either weird, like often weird things in the room, like, you know, fingers going through your forehead, or something very emotional. You know, you run into someone who has passed, you know, or in the car, you know, someone cuts you off, and you got to slam on the brakes, and, you know, and you're all, like, you know, amped up now and aware. But, you know, when sort of helping people learn how to lucid dream, we are almost trying to find those moments and, you know, and identify them, because sometimes it's a little challenging to identify, which, you know, is why, like, you know, a reality check can be the sort of, you know, or the trigger can be the fingers going through the head, or it can be the thing where, like, you've trained yourself that every time I take a shower, I'm going to ask the question, am I dreaming? And this would be, you know, suggested if a lot of your dreams were you taking a shower. But, you know, you would rehearse that in the waking world when you get in at the end of the day, or if you're a morning shower in the morning, asking that question. And then ultimately, you've trained your mind to ask that question and associate showering with, you know, questioning, you know, your reality, which then you follow up with, like you mentioned, some sort of reality check to, you know, confirm whether you are actually in the dream world or in the waking world. You know, I think there was that line in Ascension is that, you know, the tricky thing about dreams is like, we don't, when we're in them, we just assume everything is real. That's why all this fantastical stuff can happen. And we don't actually question it that often, because we just, it's what we just assume, you know, we're just like all, you know, on the path, just like, oh, okay, like there's a flying elephant in the sky, just a normal day.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, no, that that definitely is something that you're basically creating a habit, you know, in your conscious world, that way that habit carries over into your dream state. And that can cause that realization, right. And I think one of the things that you recommend in the book is writing down your dreams, seeing what you know, again, much of saying like the shower thematically, what comes up a lot or, you know, I keep seeing a dog or whatever, and then kind of forming a habit around, you know, asking yourself a question or maybe performing an action, like, you know, making the timeout sign with your hands, see if your fingers go through your palm, things of that nature. Yeah, just really creating that habit and having it carry over.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, yeah. And it's like, you know, it's not unlike creating the habit and, you know, to exercise more, like if you just sort of like rely on like, yeah, probably exercise more now that I want to. Maybe it happens, you know, but often it doesn't. It's taking that, you know, that sort of, you know, focused intention and like, okay, I'm going to exercise more. I'm going to set the routine and I'm going to do these things to make sure that, you know, I get to the gym. It's, you know, almost exactly the same as I'm going to set the intention to have a lucid dream. I'm going to take the time, you know, before going to sleep to kind of calm my mind and focus and kind of, you know, really zero in on that, like, I want to have a lucid dream tonight. I'm going to take the time in the morning, even though it's, you know, I'm half asleep to write down that dream that you had the previous night. So yeah, I think it's a really, you know, the, you know, really about building, like you said, building a habit.

Dylan Carnahan:Now once you've gained that consciousness, right, and let's say you're able to, you know, simply not immediately wake back up after the experiencing that. What are things that people who lucid dream like to do once they do experience that consciousness?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:So the, the two most common things that, you know, first time early lucid dreamers have is flying and having sex. And that's sort of like, you know, if you probably since like, you know, the, you know, the dawn of humans, we've wanted to like fly through the sky. It's a very inherent, you know, desire and, you know, and sex, you know, sleeping with the celebrities, sleeping with your crush, you know, that is a very, you know, strong desire in most of us. And so when we have that opportunity to explore it, we'll often take it. But usually after a while flying and sex is like, you know, there's so much more you can do. And you don't want to just like kind of stop there. It's almost just like this, we call it like fantasy fulfillment, you have a fantasy and, you know, you fulfill it. But then you can do things like, you know, we were talking a little earlier about like rehearsing stuff, getting, you know, working through stuff. A lot of times, first time lucid dreamers, if they're not kind of entering it through just a curiosity, they're entering it because they suffer from like chronic nightmares. And they have a very sort of almost like a toxic relationship with their dream world, which, you know, the way I do it is that sort of a toxic relationship with their subconscious, they're trying to push something where there's something that's bothering them. And so a lot of times when someone who's suffering from nightmares, they will come across, you know, either literature or, you know, even more so now than earlier years, that therapists are kind of introducing lucid dreaming into their practice. And, you know, having people that when they are ready to sort of confront the nightmare, so if it's sort of a classic monster chasing you instead of running, you become lucid, you turn around and you ask the monster, like, why are you chasing me? Sometimes the monster just disappears then and it never shows up again. Sometimes the monster says something cryptic that you will sort of interpret later that, you know, maybe there's something in your life that you're running away from that you don't that you shouldn't be. And for almost, you know, every single example and person I've spoken with who has, you know, had a repeating nightmare over and over and over, and then they lucid dream and then they confront it. But I can't think of an example where the nightmares continued after that, you know, maybe they have other nightmares, but that one nightmare doesn't come back again once you're able to confront it. And so kind of going back to your first question or your original question is the first lucid dreams are usually just, you know, fun, fantasy, film and stuff, or actually, you know, deep work with like the mind and the subconscious of confronting nightmares and security spheres. And so I think those are usually the two main kind of types of dreams someone has when they first learn how to lucid dream.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you kind of have those cotton candy experiences, right? Like, I'm going to go reenact an action movie, I'm going to be a part of the Avengers or something like that. And then you kind of have that more like, I don't know how to articulate other than like personal experiences, right? Like I'm trying to embolden myself for this boardroom meeting tomorrow, or maybe, you know, I have a lost loved one, and I'm, you know, talking through something with them, right? That's a lot more, you know, emotional than say, kind of that fantasy fulfillment you're discussing earlier.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:And I think, you know, for a lot of folks who like including myself, who start in that fantasy fulfillment space, you know, you eventually have one of these sort of like the personal or maybe maybe interpersonal, or, you know, introspective maybe dream is a good way to phrase it. And you're like, wait a second, like, this is actually beneficial, like this is like a little bit more fascinating than flying around, you know, my town for the 50th time. And then what I found is that people sort of graduate more towards that introspective direction, because ultimately, we're getting lucid dreams of this, are these, you know, special opportunities to engage directly with your subconscious, and almost by definition, our subconscious is like, apart from us, or, you know, to, you know, it's this stuff that we are unaware of. And so being able to kind of bring it up and make ourselves aware of it can be very intense, a very profound, a very enlightening, you know, experience.

Dylan Carnahan:I'm just curious, you know, what are some, you've been on this journey of lucid dream for quite some time, what are some kind of crazy or interesting experiences that you've had while lucid dreaming?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:I think it was, I've done it, it now it's become a little bit more normal because I've done it a couple of times, but the first time was very wild, but I'll do this thing where I'll basically make a call to the lucid dream, you know, lucid for Dark Jared to appear. And so this is almost like this cliched, like shadow version of myself, a little bit more gaunt, you know, someone's, I can't really see, you know, his eyes. I probably should say my eyes, because it's just this sort of mirrored, you know, projection of this sort of darker or the negative emotions I'm, you know, dealing with at the time. And you know, basically have a conversation with him. And the first time I was like, it felt, you know, there was something so, you know, it was like electrifying in a way that like, you know, very weird also, like just to be facing yourself and like, all right, we're going to talk about things. But like, you know, I felt it and, you know, and I continue to do it, especially if I'm going through something, you know, challenging in life. And it's been very beneficial. But and, you know, and I should say it's something that is, while it is wild to see yourself, it is also kind of, it's not that out there. It's not like kind of completely pulling stuff out of fantasy, you know, and you have done something going to alien worlds, trying out all these different things. There's a lot of exploration of the dream world. Like I love trying out different foods in the dream world, because sometimes it just tastes like nothing you've ever had in the waking world. And so all that stuff is like really unique and exciting. But then going into something like this, where you're talking directly with like your shadow self really is this just amazing experience and every time it happens, like it's become an honor. It's not as shocking when I see Dark Chair Appear, but I always walk away like kind of, you know, like that almost like out of breath, just out of the impact that it's had on me.

Dylan Carnahan:That's an incredible experience to talk to yourself and kind of those other subconscious aspects and elements, like quantified in this other person that looks just like you like that. That is a crazy experience, like and I'm sure that that is beneficial as well. And segueing off of that, what are the benefits that you've seen of lucid dreaming? You know, we talked earlier about, you know, maybe the emotional emotions you can draw out and how that can impact you in the waking world, or maybe scenarios that you can work through and rehearse in order to gain proficiency.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, I think, you know, the things in lucid dreams that really, I think you can walk away with, like, I know we talked a little bit at, you know, I like that already, but like confronting nightmares. That's something that is, you know, has been proven time and time again, you know, it's almost like so not easy, but just like clear that when someone confronts that nightmare, they you know, the nightmares end up ceasing, you know, the nightmares change, or they feel more empowered to confront those nightmares. So that comes up probably the most as far as, like, you know, elements of healing oneself or working sort of in a more therapeutic kind of way. But I also know that, you know, there's been more and more studies about sort of the relationship between dreams and PTSD, which, you know, often PTSD includes a lot of nightmares. And, you know, therapists and psychologists using lucid dream to help patients, you know, work on, you know, the PTSD, you know, and there's some, you know, one thing, you know, I usually say is that, like, you know, I help people learn how to lucid dream and confront stuff. But then there are, you know, people dealing with really intense, you know, heavy, you know, emotions, trauma, mental disorders. Anyway, that's when, like, it kind of leaves my sort of wheelhouse, like, you know, I just want to help people wake up in their dreams. But when, you know, what I would say is that, like, if someone's listening to this, and they find themselves, you know, struggling with these different things, or like, oh, maybe lucid dreaming, you know, can help me get through, you know, depression, PTSD, trauma, whatever it might be, to, you know, seek out like a, you know, a mental health professional, but ask them, like, in that sort of interviewing process that you might do with a therapist, like, oh, what are your thoughts on lucid dreaming? Have you ever, you know, implemented this in your in your work? Because I think, you know, there's just more and more information and studies coming out where, you know, lucid dreaming and using these techniques can really, you know, help individuals. There's even some sort of study, and maybe we can look it up for for show notes, because I'll probably not remember every last thing, but that with patients who are schizophrenic, which, you know, have challenges, sort of identifying sort of what is in this reality and what is perhaps a, you know, hallucination or like, you know, an inaccurate sort of memory to utilize different reality checking techniques to sort of like, you know, if you see something, you know, very much like in the dream, we don't know, is this real, is this not real, what's going on? And so we need to take a moment to find sort of this present awareness and maybe do like a little check, like, you know, does your fingers go through your palm? But to take that moment, and actually, it's probably something we all could do a little bit more and just like sitting like, all right, what's going on? What's going on around me? How am I feeling internally? You know, is this, am I just coasting through this day unaware or do I need to maybe be a little bit more alert of what's going on? Am I missing information? And so, you know, I sort of started with Schizophrenia and just brought it back to the rest of us. But the thing that the point would be is like, people who are struggling with these, you know, intense conditions can utilize Lucid Dreaming, often with the help of a trained professional, but also the rest of us can use the same things and just be a little bit more engaged with the world around us as well as like the world inside of us.

Dylan Carnahan:That's a lot. That's a lot. But yeah, a couple of things there that are interesting, you know, kind of the learned reality checks, that's something that's beneficial to people. You have the confronting of nightmares or recurring nightmares that you could utilize use Lucid Dreaming to potentially change that whether that has some relation to PTSD or not, and you know, as well as the benefits we've listed previously. So there's a lot of different benefits that Lucid Dreaming has. Now this is something that the answer has been alluded to throughout our discussion, but I want to kind of explicitly address it, which is this, can Lucid Dreaming be learned or is it something that some people naturally do?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, well, we usually say is like, if you can dream, you can Lucid Dream, which is sort of a little tongue in cheek, because we also say that everyone dreams. So you know, the clear answer is that yes, you can lucid dream. You know, I imagine out there in the world that there's someone who just the way the brain chemistry prevents them from lucid dreaming. But I've never met a person like that. And for everything I know, and they have experienced, everyone has the ability to lucid dream. Now, it's going to be a lot easier for some people than if someone hasn't remembered a dream in 10 years, they have this very disconnected relationship with their dream world. And before they even try to find like awareness in the dream, they need to start like reconnecting and actually start in the form of like remembering dreams, don't worry about waking up in them, you know, flying or having sex with a celebrity, just focus on whatever the dreams are giving you to kind of reconnect with that. That said, there are some people who just naturally lucid dream like, you know, it seems like, I'm rather jealous that your first lucid dream, it just happened, like I had to do all these techniques and it took a while and lucid dream for a second, you know, wake up. But we know one of the reasons we wanted to write the book in the first place is because we, you know, we realized like this is something that we think more people should, you know, partake in and that and that the, you know, the introduction to it is sometimes a little challenging to find because, like we've said before, a lot of stuff fell into the sort of academic world or sort of the new age spiritual world. And unless you were in either one of those worlds, you might not take the time to sort of go through all the material. And so the book was sort of, you know, our version of an answer to that, that like, wherever you're at, if you want to lucid dream, this book can help you have your first lucid dream.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. And firstly, to address kind of the flattery there, honestly, like when I had that lucid dreaming experience, it really stuck with me. But it's something I didn't revisit for years. It was just kind of this odd event that really stuck with me. And I want to go back to that scenario you talked about with, you know, Rick, you know, I haven't had a dream in 10 years, I haven't dreamed in years, you know. And I want to ask you, how can you learn to lucid dream? From what I'm hearing, one of the steps is to just simply recall your dreams to begin with. And I know then we kind of talked about reality checks and other things, but, you know, to the uninitiated, how can you learn to lucid dream?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:One thing to learn to lucid dream is, like, if they're listening to this podcast, they've already done the work, because one of the steps is just knowing that it's possible. I've given a handful of, like, sort of talks and workshops and stuff, and I found there's always someone who's, like, who kind of called BS on me, and they're like, oh, like, I don't know if this is real, like, are you just making this up? Are these just really vivid dreams that you're remembering really well? And it's amazing how often that person, if, you know, if it's some sort of event or convention, and I'm able to, you know, see them the next day, it's amazing how often they come up to me to be like, I had my, I had a lucid dream last night, they didn't do any techniques, they didn't practice, they just knew, even though they tried to deny it the previous day, but they knew that it was, that it was possible. And that kind of just allowed their mind to, you know, open up to allowing, you know, themselves to find that awareness. That said, that's, that's probably not the most common example of someone learning how to lucid dream, especially if they've been disconnected. But if someone's like, like, I haven't dreamed in 10 years, what I would try to say is like, oh, you actually probably have been dreaming. Or, you know, I'm going to say probably, you have been dreaming, you just haven't, you've just sort of disconnected, you've just been unaware. And depending on what the dreams are, your lifestyle, like, maybe you just, you just work a whole ton and you just don't have the time in the morning to focus in. And when you go to sleep, it's all just about like passing out and not, you know, you just want to like turn off everything. And so that person wants to sort of make changes and to learn how to lucid dream and say, awesome, don't worry about lucid dreaming right now. We're just going to try to like recall your dreams and say like there's work you can do as you're going to sleep, you know, set the intention like, you know, tonight I will remember my dreams. And then really the dream journal is such like a key thing. Like my, there is a direct correlation between the amount of lucid dreams I have and how often I'm keeping a dream journal. If I fall, like, you know, kind of get lazy for a bit, my lucid dreams will go down. If I am like on that, it will be that much easier for me to do some lucid dreams. So I would say like, you do some work the night before, setting that intention, but also do that work to record the dream the more you can even, you know, use your phone and just like record a voice memo. And just, you know, and then I would say if you record the voice memo, which I sometimes do is then, you know, write it down in the dream drop, even taking the time to, to look through different journals, you know, whether it's at Barnes & Noble or online and buying a journal that, you know, speaks to you because it's one more thing where you're saying like a relationship with my dreams is important to me. And so I'm going to spend the extra three bucks to get that slightly more ornate journal because, you know, these journeys I go on are things that are important to me. And I want to put them in something that is like it's not just sort of like a yellow legal pad. You know, you don't have photo albums taped to the pages of a yellow legal, like you buy a nice leather bound thing because that's what's, you know, those memories are important to us. And I think the same way you are trying to get to this point where the memories and the experiences of the dream are also important, important. And so really, you know, I think that we have this sort of relationship with our subconscious, with the dream world. And that, you know, like all relationships, whether they be romantic, platonic, you know, co-worker relationship, they take, you know, steps and energy to foster. And, you know, if we get lazy with our relationships, often those relationships, you know, kind of fall apart or we drift away.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that, that it's again, it's another habit you have to form that, you know, around dreaming, specifically, you know, knowing you have to keep a record, really, that's what you're doing your record keeping. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, for me, it's about 30 to 90, maybe 15 to 90 seconds and that dream is gone. I couldn't, you know, 90 seconds after I couldn't tell you what I've even had. I maybe have a theme, something about, you know, whatever, or maybe an emotion, like I'm kind of upset, or a song, something kind of just still kind of lingers outside of that. But you're absolutely correct as far as how do you form that habit. I know for me, I'm extremely odd. I have an Excel spreadsheet, I turn on my computer, I write in there, or, you know, go to my phone, type out some things, you know, whatever that record keeping mechanic of storing that dream journal, it doesn't have to be a journal. It could be a voice memo, as you said, it's very, whatever works best for you to develop that habit, that's what you have to follow. And then, you know, I know in your book, you talk about other and you've talked about experimenting with these various ways, you know, the wake back to bed and wild technique, which is more advanced, like, what are outside of you say, hey, Jared, I've been writing down my dreams, maybe even just talking about this, maybe I had a lucid dream, I want to, you know, increase the volume of that, what are some other techniques that you can take outside of just a dream journal?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:That's a great question, because like, there are, you know, a lot of times you do get to keep that dream journal and you built that back that relationship, but still you're not becoming lucid. And so then there are techniques you can bring in that are basically working with how, you know, sleep, sleep cycles work and how your brain chemistry works. And you mentioned sort of a way back to bed. And so one thing to know about just dreams in general is they occur during REM. And REM stage is like the last stage of the sleep that we kind of start, you know, up here conscious and awake, and then we slowly drift into deep sleep and then, you know, we go through different stages. And then as we're coming towards the end of the sleep cycle, we're getting actually very, very close to consciousness again, but we don't, you know, I shouldn't say consciousness, we're getting very close to just waking up. So we're close to that sort of what we look at as like the barrier of consciousness. But we don't go kind of, we don't surface, we just stay beneath it. And that's where, you know, REM occurs, and that's where our dreams occur. One interesting thing is that as the night goes on, as you go through the sleep cycles of your, you know, throughout the night, your period of REM gets longer and longer. You know, the body's main focus during sleep is like to re-heal, replenish, re-heal, all the physical elements of our body, so we're able to drift down. But as the body has healed, and so now it can give a little bit more time to REM, and that's why our longest dreams are usually closer to when we wake up. So wake back to then is trying to take advantage of the fact that, you know, after about maybe four to six hours, and again, this depends on like the individual, we all are slightly have slightly different sleep schedules, but finding that time of the night that we, right before we have this long chunk of REM. And so the idea behind it is, you know, we're not lucid dreaming for the first like six hours out, an eight hour sleep, but then we set an alarm, we wake up, you know, we don't wake up and like get coffee and like do jumping jacks, we, you know, we try to basically wake up the mind more than we wake up the body. So that, you know, after, you know, again, it depends on the person, but usually about 20 to 30 minutes of being awake, doing a very kind of calm activity or just focusing on the intention of having a lucid dream. We then go back into to sleep, our body goes, you know, physically goes to sleep. But our mind is just a little bit more active. And so that when we get to the dream world, it becomes easier to spot those triggers and kind of reignite that awareness that we had, you know, maybe just minutes before when we were awake. So wake back to bed really is trying to catch that last chunk of REM.

Dylan Carnahan:That's interesting. One of the things that I've seen that helps with that, because some people go, Jared, you're telling me they're going to set an alarm like, dude, I got six hours I need to get in. I don't even know if I'm going to get them all in. But one thing I've noticed is it's a little funny, if you properly hydrate, if you were getting in those glasses of water as recommended on WikiHow or whatever, I mean, you're naturally going to wake up to go to the restroom. That's something I've experienced. And just by simply waking up to have to do that, and then just quickly going back to bed, getting in your bed, you can kind of recalibrate or incubate kind of that expectation that you're going to dream. And that's something that you may not have to set an explicit alarm for. So I think if you do, if you are someone that has to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom, like that's something that that's just or you do wake up because you say you hear something wakes you up, that's a good opportunity to just try that out without having to manually set or induce that yourself.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, that's a great idea. And also, we probably like none of us get our hot, you know, drink enough water. So you're probably killing two birds with one stone. But that's an optimum when we wake up, we are, you know, we're not waking up to go to the bathroom in those like deep sleep moments. We are waking up when we are closer to that rim staying. So, you know, a little bit of experimentation and timing, like that could actually be far better than like the sort of jolting sound of an alarm going off. There is this, you know, this method of lucid dreaming, which I've never done. And I don't necessarily recommend. It's called a pile, a pea-induced lucid dream. So wild is a wake-induced lucid dream, we also talk about a dial, a dream-induced lucid dream, but a pile is, I guess, sort of a form of a dream-induced lucid dream, but a pea-induced lucid dream, which basically the trigger of a lucid dream is that you have to go to the bathroom. So you drink a ton of water. And then, in theory, the way it works is like you're in the dream world, you know, going about your business unaware, and all of a sudden you have the urge to go to the bathroom, but you're not waking up. And so in the dream, you're like, Oh, I have to go to the bathroom, I must be dreaming. And that's sort of supposed to be the trigger to, you know, find that awareness. Now, if you have to go to the bathroom, you might be uncomfortable to have a lucid dream, you know, and have, you know, I don't think I want to talk with Dr. Jared while I got to like, Hey, let's wrap this up real quick.

Dylan Carnahan:I gotta wake up in a couple minutes.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:And of course, there is this inherent, you know, danger to it that you are in the relieve yourself in the dream and also relieve yourself in your bed and wake up to, you probably won't be writing in your dream journal that morning because you got like some sheets.

Dylan Carnahan:You may be drying it off. You may be doing your dream journal in the dryer there. What you brought up wild. I want to go through and talk about that because that's an interesting concept of that's an interesting technique for inducing lucid dreams.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah. A wild, it's such a great name because in itself, it feels very wild. So the majority of lucid dreams are, before we get to wild, I'll just explain dial, D-I-L-D, which is just dream induced lucid dream. And that's sort of like, going back to your first lucid dream, your sort of the lucid dream was induced while you were already in the dream state, you're triggered by your finger going to the forehead. And that's the more common version. But there's also a thing called wild, which is awake induced lucid dream, which relies probably a little bit more heavily on catching that REM because we're going to lose that awareness if we go into deep sleep no matter what. But if we're close to that period of REM and we hang on to that awareness, you will basically follow yourself into the dream world. And if you talk to different people, they all talk about different visuals. So for me, I fall into, it's often like this purplish kind of almost warp tunnel. And I feel myself getting pulled through something. And then it's sort of like, I'm in the dream and have never lost the awareness that I had moments ago while I was awake in the waking world. And this, someone wants, they've been lucid dreaming, they want to try a while. One of the best ways to practice it is with naps. Because a lot of times, we have the urge to take a nap because we didn't get enough sleep. And if we didn't get enough sleep, we also definitely didn't get enough REM sleep because, as we were talking before, that chunk of REM, the longest chunk of REM, is at the end of the sleep. So naps often go right into the REM stage, it's like we need to have those dreams. And so naps can be a great way to know that like, oh, I'm going to, like, let me fall asleep. Often, the nap is just pulling, you can't even keep your eyes open. But if you just let yourself get taken by the nap, but hang on to that awareness and don't let it go, that can often be, you know, that was how I had my first, my first wild.

Dylan Carnahan:That's interesting. Basically, you're trying to hold on, you know, even though you're resting and then you kind of, you're still conscious that whole time. It's kind of, I think dreaming generally is more like, or, you know, going to sleep, it's more like you're just shutting down, right? And then you just reboot in the morning, you know, and all this time transpired, right? You know, it's, it's interesting to hear that you can experience a dream without really losing that consciousness. And I think that brings up another question, which is, what are the levels to lucid dreaming? You kind of have mentioned earlier, we talked about someone that, hey, I can't even remember my dreams, right, to someone that, hey, I had a lucid dream, to all the way to people that are using this wild method and maybe even meditating in their dreams.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, you know, I say that, so with like the idea of kind of levels of lucid dreaming, and really, it's all I think it functions all more on like, sort of a scale, you know, the same way we can have a little bit of awareness, you know, and so let's have a lot of awareness, you know, for taking the task of doing something very challenging. You know, we're going to put a ton of awareness into that. And with lucid dreaming, sometimes it's actually, you know, early on, it can be challenging to put a ton of that awareness in there. It often makes us, you know, you know, spring awake, or we get aware and we kind of like our go for a fly. And it's we're having such a good time just cruising around, we just forget that we're in a dream and it continues without the lucidity. But I would say sort of the levels of a dream world or lucid dreaming will be different from person to person. And I think, you know, if we wanted to have some sort of like scaling method, I would say you can base it off of sort of maybe intensity or degree of introspection. You know, we start with fantasy fulfillment, very just sort of bodily desires. And then maybe it's like, oh, we have, you know, we need to confront the nightmare. That's a little bit more intense, a little bit more introspective. But then, like you said, like there are people who then, you know, they become lucid and then they go, they try to meditate. And you know, where does that take them? Even people, you know, very inception like is like you have a lucid dream, like I want to go into another dream and have another lucid dream within the lucid dream. And just the, you know, elements of exploration and exploring one's mind, I think I would sort of categorize as, you know, the different levels of the dream world and that it's going to be a little bit different for each one of us. You know, maybe there's like something like deep in your past that you've blocked out and you know, the deepest you can go is actually confronting that, while maybe someone's confronting something from the past right at the, you know, right from the get go and then they're going somewhere else. So to me, and one thing I think to remind, you know, for people to remind themselves, especially when lucid dreaming becomes maybe a little challenging or they're not having the dreams and you know, the lucid experiences that they want, that it needs this act of exploration, you know, you know, we know stories of explorers throughout the ages, both fictional and nonfiction, you know, and they're in there. None of them are about, oh, it was super easy to get to the, you know, to the jungle and then find the gold in the jungle and we just went home. There's always challenges, but going through those challenges and embracing the idea of exploration and then just the only difference is now we're just exploring the inner worlds of ourselves can be really helpful in sort of maybe pushing through those difficulties or when you wake up and you're the last thing you want to do is like write down, you know, a dream, you just want to go back to sleep to remind yourself, oh, this is part of this this journey, this exploration and that like I'm I'm going through all these things to find something or to experience something.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Well, well said. Well said. Now there are some people that are going to be listening to this and they're still skeptical. They're still skeptical. And there's something that I think is rather interesting. And I've experienced this with a lot of different things that I've read, such as there's a book Moonwalking with Einstein, where they talk about kind of this memory palace. Basically there are things out there that through that were common a long time ago, but have atrophied and they've kind of fallen out of the collective consciousness. And one of those is lucid dreaming. So can you talk about what is the cultural significance of lucid dreaming in the past or in different cultures?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Yeah, yeah. And I think that is how you sort of fallen away from it or become disconnected because if you look at a lot of ancient cultures, indigenous cultures, dreams play a heavy role in those societies and often part of the morning rituals is people listen around and they share their dreams. And they don't share them as, oh, I had this crazy dream last night, it was so wacky, but they share it as an actual experience they went through. And often when you're a little kid and you have a nightmare, the parents are always just a dream. And, you know, I don't think there's anything super inherently wrong with calming a child who's like terrified out of their mind. But what's important is maybe not to always kind of hang on to that, it's just a dream element, you know, because to, you know, in the past, in these different, you know, indigenous communities and ancient cultures, it was never just a dream, it was a profound message. You know, often they look at the profound messaging, look at a profound message from like the gods, which obviously puts a whole lot of a lot more weight on it. I don't necessarily think, you know, dreams, I think dreams are kind of encompassed in ourselves. But, you know, depending on one's belief, you know, maybe dreams are a message from the gods, and I'm just sort of too ignorant to know. But whatever sort of the belief system is, it's putting sort of this weight on that dreams are an experience that we go through. There are emotions of all, sometimes negative ones, sometimes positive ones, you know, and that if someone was to say like, oh, like, you know, why are dreams important and kind of disregarding everything, I would say like, I'm sure you've had a nightmare. That was scary. And the fear, the tenseness that you experienced in the dream was with you when you woke up and were in the waking world. Maybe your heart might be beating faster, you might be sweating. There are all these things that like, this is, you know, if you want to say dreams are nothing, this is actually happened to you in the waking world. And Ellie's audio is like, whatever you think dreams are, they created something in you to feel this emotion. And that I don't think should be kind of ignored. But I do, you know, I do think in our modern society, you know, we're not getting great sleep. We have a shorter attention span, we're just, you know, inundated with so much information. And also we're just super busy. There's just more things we can do, you know, we can always be looking at something else. There's less, you know, less time to just sit and be in the present moment. And often you'll find a lot of people who are lucid dreaming, you know, just look at the chatter on Twitter. It's a lot of teenagers and, you know, kids and young people because they do actually have that space to not worry about, you know, bills and, you know, trying, you know, what the office presentation they have to give. They have, there's a little bit more play in their world, which sort of opens up like, oh, I can, like, I don't have to worry about mortgage payments. I can just enjoy this dream I'm having and become lucid. And so I think kind of, you know, when we look towards the past, we can see that different communities, cultures, groups of people really value dreams for, you know, one way or another and that we kind of devalue the dream or like have been inundated with this sort of, oh, it's just a dream, don't worry about it. Or even when we talk about it, like, you know, it's great to share a dream. But I would say like, share it as it's like as an actual experience that you went through. Don't caveat it with like, oh, it's just something funny that occurred to me. It doesn't really matter because I think it actually does matter. And it's part of you that wants to share it because it actually had an impact on you.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, like, I think to pull out a couple of things there. There are tangible effects from having a dream. You mentioned your heart racing. You may wake up with a certain motion. You may be angry or sad. And those tangible experiences are part of the reason that, you know, other cultures in the past have devoted tangible resources to make, say, a dream temple, right? So it's not so foreign to see, you know, those tangible experiences. They do have impacts and other cultures, past societies have put quite a lot of weight. I think we're seeing that that's kind of something that's discounted within our current society. It's been absolute pleasure talking to you, Jared. I just want to ask, you know, where can people find A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming and learn more about you?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:To find a book, it's at most like major books where you can, you know, pop into a Barnes and Noble. It's on Amazon. I would say if you can see if it's at like a more indie bookstore or, you know, a small publisher, you know, support some local businesses and to find, I guess, more information about me and like other upcoming stuff. My website is just my last name, chaingzeizel.com, which actually, you know, maybe we could put in the show notes because I don't think anyone's gonna get the spelling right, right off the bat, but it's chingzeizel.com. So you know, you find more about what I'm working on and actually the two other writers, Dylan Tichillo and Thomas Peisel, we're currently working on another lucid dreaming project with the publisher, Workman, Working Publishing. So there's gonna be some stuff coming up, I think, and I don't know what I can and can't share. So I'm gonna err on the side of caution and be a little bit more vague.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, well, we look forward to seeing your future content as well as following your journey and looking at some of the content you already have out and, you know, looking at where we can pick up that book that you have. So wow, great conversation. A lot of good stuff said awesome to, you know, read your book and then be able to contact you and have this fascinating discussion. And so Jared, thank you for sharing your knowledge and time today. We greatly appreciate it.

Jared Chiang-Zeizel:Oh, it's my pleasure. And, you know, thank you for bringing me on and inviting me, you know, I think, you know, I think this was a really great conversation and, you know, just a lot of good questions, a lot of good topics and stuff. And I'm more than happy to share it with you and, you know, anyone else listening to this podcast.

Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Jared Chaing-Zeizel. We talked about the difference between a normal dream and a lucid dream, experiences you can have in a lucid dream, and ways you can increase the number of lucid dreams you have. Pick up a copy of Jared's book, A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, to further learn how to lucid dream. Do not forget to listen to Blacklight Animals on Spotify or Apple Music. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening and remember to keep asking questions.