Alright, so I’ve a question about the usefulness of practicing things such as instruments with our dreams. I’ve heard several people say it’s a good idea, in fact come to think of it, I’ve heard it in nearly every book or tutorial I’ve read. I want to know if it works.
For instance, I play the violin. Will practicing it within a lucid dream effect the way I play? I’ve been involved in martial arts for the past four years, and the exercises I’ve been taught as natural as breathing to me, and would be easily repeatable within a lucid dream. Will this effect how i perform?
What do you think? Is it possible to increase our skill at something within a Lucid dream? Have you tried it? If so, what, and did it work?
I think it is definitely possible to practice somthing in a dream (however i have to admit that a good chunk of this secureness comes from reading about it, not personal experience ^^’), but i think the drawback of it is that you have to be rather good at lucid dreaming to exercise it well enough, you won’t be able to do much in 5 minutes
I remember playing the piano in some of my dreams and it felt real enough to exercise on it (it was a ND though, so i just played random stuff)
Well, I think the answer probably depends on the sort of skill in question. Certainly, there’s lots of data showing that visualization can improve performance. LD rehearsals, I think, would be about as effective as visualization rehearsals.
I haven’t tried to practice a skill in LDs. I have, however, benefited IRL from what I have done in LDs. For instance, I have had LDs, or even NLDs, that have given me confidence in doing something. Specifically, I once had a normal dream in which a DC taught me a meditation technique. Awake, I used it, and it worked really well for me. Also, NLDs and LDs have urged me to be more at ease around other people. Because I had the dream, I found it easier to be myself around someone.
I think you should try practicing martial arts in an LD and get back to us.
Its been happening a more often than usual where I would be training for track. I usually wake up motivated to hit the gym do whatever I trained sometimes somewhat sore or numb (physically). I’ll pay more attention now that this has come up.
Thanks to everyone who replied to me, the feedback is much appreciated
alright, so i got as lucid as i could last night. it really wasn’t my night, and it wasn’t going to last long, but it was as lucid as i had been in a long time, so i went ahead and tried martial arts. Our brains know the human body instinctively. When threatened, we protect our vitals without even realizing it. My body knows how to fight in a fluid and swift manner; i was surprised to find that practicing my martial arts exercises to be not only therapeutic within my dream, but beneficial outside of it as well. i awoke with an urge to work my body as hard as i could. it was quite an interesting experience.
I don’t know if this will work with every skill or trait, but if there’s something you want to get better at, i highly suggest practicing it within your dreams
Practising in lucid dreams I think has several advantages, such as the ability to overcome physical limitations. I’m no martial artists, but I imagine someone who is could do a move that they physically have not the flexibility for yet and see how it is supposed to be done, which would help them work towards it in reality. For things such as musical instruments, it can similarly help you to perfect you interpretation of the piece without feeling hampered by your technique. But I would be interested to know if it is of any use to tasks that need muscle memory, for instance mere note learning. Does the fact that you are not actually using your muscles mean that they are not learning, or is it completely in the mind?
Even if so, you would need to have quite long lucid dreams, say at least an hour, for the practice to really to amount to anything. Needless to say, it would only really be useful for things you knew by heart anyway, and you would also need to be very familiar with your instrument, to know precisely the weight of the keys or the quality of the strings, so that the subtle movements your muscles learn would be applicable to the real instrument. Otherwise it would be of limited use, like practising on an instrument with a totally different feel to the one you are going to perform on. It sounds as if the martial artists are going to get more out of it than the musicians!
