Does conscious mind need any rest ?

Quest for Lucidity General Lucidness
1

I lucid dreamt naturally 1-2x/year, I did not know that it was possible to provoke lucid dream with practice until recently.

I’m training, so for now, most of the time I loose my conscious mind at one point, but I am keeping it awake longer and longer without impacting my sleep.

And, what seems disturbing, is that, it does not seems to matter how much I am tired. Tiredness does not impact my capacity to stay conscious when my body falls asleep.

So my question is : If you can trigger these lucid dreams.
Have you tried to do this every night ?
If you can do that every night, does it means that conscious mind does not need any rest at all ?
Or does the conscious mind rest during our waking life, thanks to our own life habits and routines ?

2

The one who need rest is the body. I guess mind (Subconscious or concious) have it’s own way of resting. How it rest is not the same as the body does :content:

I trigger LD everyday but with no luck of having them frequently.

3

The brain is actually very active much of the time. The funny thing is, we don’t entirely know why we need sleep. The body could rest without sleep, but we do so anyways. The brain they think doesn’t need rest.

4

There’s always a phase of dreamless, motionless sleep in which everything rests as much as it can, so I wouldn’t worry about things needing rest.

5

This.
If anything I would expect that NREM sleep is the chance for your consciousness to rest, which kind of makes sense.

Also I must say that it’s a fascinating experience to run around and be hyper-active in a vivid lucid dream, and yet wake up totally refreshed.

6

I am therefor asking a question applicable to a specific type of for what is now theoretical consciousness. :help:

7

I feel I must point out that nREM sleep is not dreamless sleep, but less vivid dream sleep.

The “conscious” mind can be defined many ways. Depending on how you do define it, you will find that it may or may not be resting.

If by conscious mind you refer to the brain as a whole, then the brain never really sleeps. It remains active to some extent. During nREM sleep, the brain is less active than during waking life, but it is still active. The brainwave patterns are slow, controlled, and very cyclic. Thus, the brain at this point is kind of taking a rest, but it is not really resting. During REM sleep, the brain is as active and alive as if you were really awake, but sleep paralysis prevents you from moving about.

This whole pattern can be likened to a marathon runner: the runner can be very active and running quite quickly (awake like during REM sleep) or he can be taking it easy and moving at a controlled smooth pace (nREM sleep). The runner (or conscious mind) alternates between these two states on his run (sleep) to make the most efficient method of travel (runner only :tongue:).

If when you refer to the conscious mind as the part of the brain that involves self-awareness and self-reflection (the right dor­so­lat­er­al pre­fron­tal cor­tex) than during non-lucid dreams, that part of the brain is largely inactive the entire time (nREM and REM sleep), and can said to be “sleeping”. Thus, if this is your definition, the conscious mind does sleep when you go to sleep.

However… it doesn’t necessarily have to as during lucid dreams this part of the brain “comes slightly alive”. Thus, when you have an LD, that part of the brain activates during sleep, and, to continue with the previous metaphor, gets in on the action.

Many, MANY studies have been done on the purposes of dreams, and one conclusion in particular that I recall made the most sense to me. (Here’s the link to the video in case you wish to view it for yourself.)

Basically (summing up from the link above) the brain during nREM sleep is re-enacting known information to determine what is important and what is not. During REM sleep, the brain is attempting to take the known information and apply it to randomly generated new concepts to determine future usefulness. This can easily be explained by likening the brain to a training simulator in which it attempts to prepare us for the future ahead.

During this time, though, that particular part of the brain involved in self-awareness and reflection is basically not involved in the action. It is theorized that this is because that part of the brain inhibits the intuitive approach that the mind takes during our sleep.

Hope this has been helpful and / or useful. And do note that this is all my opinion influenced by the opinions below. :tongue:

SOURCES:

[spoiler]NOVA - What Are Dreams? (Video)
Sci Show: Dreams (Video) [this one eludes me for the moment… sorry… :razz:]
Seat of Self Awareness (Web Page)[/spoiler]

8

I feel like the conscious needs rest, but I feel it doesn’t try to recieve it via sleeping. After a particularly philicophical/thought provoking/difficult discussion, most people find the need to distract their minds with something easy to process (the internet, television, simple small talk, etc.) We feel intellectually drained if we don’t pause sometimes to do these things. Well, at least I do :tongue:

9

i have wondered about this before, and it’s actually in my list of questions that i haven’t yet gotten around to asking on this forum…
interesting that your brain doesn’t really need rest though, that answers part of my question. but what if you WILD directly into a lucid dream? do you skip the first (i think it’s three) dream phases? and especially if you wake from your lucid dreams straight into consciousness(not sure if that’s typical or not, but that seems to be what happens to me. in my limited experience.) you’d only get rem sleep. is it bad to miss non-rem sleep? i guess probably not, if your brain doesn’t actually need rest.

not everybody sleeps… some people just meditate to get their rest :smile: