HYPOTHESIS: Lucid dreaming and hypnosis

Quest for Lucidity General Lucidness
1

My hypothesis is that your ability to lucid dream is related to the difficulty in hypnotising you. In other words, somebody who can lucid dream naturally would be hard to hypnotise, while somebody who fails to notice their RCs are working in a dream is easy to hypnotise.

This was inspired by the close reading of 395’s topic in Lucidity Intro and a small paragraph or so from The Origin of Dreams: How and why we evolved to dream by Joseph Griffin. I quote:

Somebody hypnotized will always have a rational explanation of what they’re doing, while actually they are under the influence of hypnosis. A hypnotist once told somebody to fill one of their shoes with an alcoholic drink at a very formal party… they had an explanation!

As far as I can tell, only three methods are used by the brain to rationalise something after or during being hypnotised: proper logic (which I haven’t heard of after being hypnotised - if it can be logically shown as a good option, why would they need being hypnotised?), hallucination and logical fallacies. Of course, hallucination doesn’t really occur in dreams…

Now I’ll omit the example he gave as it is too long, and take one from the forums instead, a logical fallacy:

395 said, “why is it so difficult?” The immediate answer in my head was, “because we are under the influence of dream logic”, and then the link was made :smile:.

According to the hypothesis, people who have high lucid dreams naturally cannot be hypnotised, people who have low lucid dreams naturally are hard to hypnotise, then people who have small troubles doing RCs in dreams (like having to double-check), people who accept their RCs immediately, people who ask their DCs for explanation of their extra finger and accept the stupid answer, then people who miss flashing signs saying “You Are Dreaming!!!”…

…something along those lines, anyway.

I would love to collect information to support or not support this hypothesis. If anybody here has information about how much they lucid dream naturally (or how much trouble they have accepting RCs and how much trouble they have recognising dreamsigns) as well as information about the success of any hypnotist trying themselves on them… please post!

2

I have trouble recognicing my dreamsigns. But my RC’s have never failed :cool: , so far. Lately I haven’t even bothered to do a RC in my LD’s, I just seem to know that I’m dreaming. I haven’t been hypnotised so I don’t know if I can be or not. Sometimes I get lucid if something strange happens in my dreams but not often.

I would tend to agree with you about hypnosis affecting ones ability to LD. I would have thought that it was the other way around. Someone who is easy to hypnotise would also be more likely to LD since they can alter their brainwave patterns much faster. But I might be wrong.
Hope I was helpful.

3

You could prove that theory by aking those who rarely have LD’s to try self hipnosys, and then ask the results…

4

Hmmm…i would be the exception then.Im not really good in lucid dreaming but at the same time i find impossibile to make autohipnosis work.Actually thats the thing i blame my lack of lds on-not enough concentration.Im yet to try proper hypnosis but i have attended to few public ones and it never seem working on me either.
hmm,dont know.

5

I am not so sure about your theory. I am a lucid dreamer and also use self hypnosis. In fact I use self-hypnosis as part of my induction technique. You will also find many people on this forum who are skilled in LD ‘ing and also hypnosis or deep meditation. I think it is just the opposite. Being skilled in hypnosis or meditation actually aids in LD ing. I believe that Stephen Laberge did a study with people who never had a LD before and used hypnosis with positive results. It is in EWLD. I have not read that section in a while but, I will read it and post what it said later.

6

…well, I’m glad I could help!
Although I fear being hypnotized and therefore have never submitted to it.
Self-hypnosis is something I have been reading about, though…

7

I very rarely have LDs and I have never, ever, ever succeeded with hypnosis. Hard head here.

8

I didn’t mean using hypnosis to induce lucid dreams. I meant once you have some inkling you might be dreaming within the dream, what happens?

9

That’s a really interesting hypothesis, actually. I’m afraid that I, like 395, have a seemingly irrational fear of hypnosis and so I wouldn’t want to try it. And I have about 1 LD a month - although I’m sure I could have a lot more if I tried.

10

You’re missing the point! I never have LDs and I cannot be hypnotized so I don’t fit the description…

11

I heard that people easy to hypnotize have ability to concentrate very hard on something and they don’t easily get distracted. I’m not sure how it is related to questioning reality in dreams…

12

After reading all above i guess theory goes opposite.People who have the ease with lds usually are good in concentration and are easy targets to hipnotise,either by someone or by themselves.Thats what i thought avtually.hmmm…

13

Two problems:

  1. Not a large enough sample.
  2. This doesn’t have a justification.
14

Hehe you right R3mot.I was rather pointing direction than suggesting any theory at all:)
take care:)

15

Oh come on are you gonna take that from a 14 year old (supposedly virgin) when you’re the sex god? Well I guess the only way to end this battle is to take a big fat survey of the site… right? But let’s add another sample:
DM7>Can easily go into hypnosis at will>Can easily lucid dream at will

16

I was reading about hypnosis yesterday and found out that people do selfhypnosis many times every day. I you are driving a car and suddenly realise that you can’t really remember the past minutes. That’s a form of hypnosis that’s called highway hypnosis. Basically you go into a form of selfhypnosis everytime you do something repetitive where you don’t have to think. It’s just not a deep hypnosis. So it seems like everyone can be hypnotised. So r3m0t might be right to some extent. Atleast about dream logic. We are in a form of hypnosis when we sleep and our brain is giving the suggestions.

17

You know, reading these posts have given me an idea. For those of you who are good at self hypnosis perhaps you may wish to try this idea. By using a small cassette tape recorder to self hypnotize yourself to go to sleep , try to not fall asleep but concentrate on the hypnogogic images you see with your eyes closed.

Experienced self hypnotists will generally fall asleep rather quickly with a small recorder, but try to stay awake. What will happen is that the hypnosis will make you extremely tired but try not to lose consciousness. no matter how tired the hypnosis makes you, you may find yourself in a dream fully aware of it. An LD.

Incidentally there is nothing dangerous about hypnosis and nothing to be afraid of. It is only strong suggestion.

Also some brain wave meditatipn sleep or relaxation tapes may do the same thing. Most importantly , make sure that you’re at least a little tired when you try this. I have an idea that this method might work. I use self hypnosis everyday to take my naps . I fall asleep very quickly and always wake up feeling refreshed.

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One more thing I would like to add. For those of you who are not experienced with self hypnosis, you may not fall asleep because you may be too nervous. Therefore you will remain awake during the entire tape. This is normal. Don’t let it bother you.

When you do self hypnosis every day, within a very short time you will be so used to it that you’ll fall asleep with it rather quickly. I predict no more than three sessions.

Most important is to use a small tape recorder. For this method it is mandatory.

19

Why a small tape recorder?

20

First of all, I use self hypnosis, and am pretty good with LD’s too.
However, I believe the glint of truth in the theory might be that if you are good at LDing, it would be easier for you to thwart a hypnotic suggestion if you wish to. Just a thought.

Remember that self hypnosis is completely voluntary, as is hypnosis… however a hypnotist can push you to your limits. If you are trained to be aware of yourself, you may find that you can cut that limit shorter.

About the idea of the casette tape, and going into an LD… I don’t use casettes, but I have often induced a wake-induced LD with self hypnosis.
Naturally, this can only happen with WB2B or something similar.

Normally my routine involves practicing DILD (my preference), then if I wake up early morning I will do a WB2B and self hypnosis. Under the self hypnosis I will tell myself how easy I find LDing, etc… as well as that dream characters will tell me that I’m dreaming

Thereafter I allow myself to imagine floating on a raft on the ocean. After a while of the sensation, I open my dream eyes, and find myself in an LD.
Unfortunately, the sensation of my physical body tends to distract me with these sorts of LD’s, but its better than none at all for the night.