Lucid Dreaming as a Senior Project?

December 6, 2008 4:02 PM

I am a high school senior right now, contemplating various senior projects for last semester. I'd like to consider learning to dream lucidly as a project.

I've found in the past that I can't become lucid unless I have immense concentration, something school deteriorates. So, any ideas for structuring a senior project around learning to dream lucidly? I know I could have an electronics component (building a face mounted lucid dreaming machine), a psychology component (reading books on sleep, dreaming, lucid dreaming, etc.), a philosophy component (i.e. reality), and a biology component (various herbal supplements?). Also, how can I convince high school bureaucracy, my teachers and peers to let me try what they'll perceive as a hokey, new-agey concept? What happens if I can't learn to dream lucidly?

posted by zenja72 to education (8 comments total)

You may have better success with a project aimed at teaching others to dream lucidly/showing the benefits that come from it.

Teaching yourself is a great idea, but I think your administrators will be iffy about letting you do something to yourself (i.e. lucid dream) that cannot be validated in any way other than personal testimony.

Of course, building a machine, etc. is different and may be better accepted.
posted by bradly at 4:11 PM on December 6, 2008

It's a neat idea, but the main problem is that they have no way of assessing the results other than taking your word for what you experienced. If there are any sleep research labs around where you live, getting them involved may add some legitimacy to your project (as well as a nice line for your resume).

You might consider reframing your project as developing a systematic method to induce lucid dreams - maybe have a group that you try your machine/other methods on, and a control group you leave alone, and record how often they report having lucid dreams. Of course, the problem still remains that you have to rely on your subjects to report their experiences truthfully. And the control group may be influenced by the knowledge that they are participating in a lucid dreaming project.
posted by pravit at 4:17 PM on December 6, 2008

Furthermore, what if you can't teach yourself to lucidly dream and the deadline's zooming up? Do you fudge it?

Yet again, at my high school, one kid did his senior project on brewing beer.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:20 PM on December 6, 2008

On re-read I would say to go with your original ideas (electronics, philosophy, supplementation), but teach someone/a group rather than yourself.
posted by bradly at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2008

Can't you kind of make it an experiment on yourself, and at the onset declare that you're not sure if it will work or not? I think if, at the start, you make a list of objectives (have a lucid dream, fly in a lucid dream, etc) and different possible ways to achieve those objectives (through the different techniques you mentioned, either herbal supplements, training, a machine, etc) and then make a detailed account of each attempt, recording your results. If it works, great - explain which methods did or didn't work, and maybe try to figure out why. If none of them works, then just say that and try to explain why.
posted by god particle at 4:49 PM on December 6, 2008

I'd skip proposing supplementation. Herbal supplements aren't really regulated in any way, and schools are nervous enough about drugs as it is. The mention of taking herbs as a "school project" would probably freak out the people reviewing your project so much that it would torpedo your proposal right then and there. There are plenty of biological aspects to sleep and dreaming that you could read/write about instead.
posted by Herkimer at 7:18 PM on December 6, 2008

If this is meant to be a science project, you'll have to do a lot of work to get objective results. I'm not even sure if it's practical to obtain the necessary resources to do it. You'd definitely want to speak to someone who studies dreaming professionally.

If this is the sort of project where more personal writings are permitted, then it could be a great subject. Make sure you write everything you can about the experience of trying to learn to lucid dream. The last thing you want is to get to the end of the year having failed to dream lucidly and having nothing to show for the attempt.

If you're the only subject, do not try and turn this into a study of what methods are most effective for inducing lucid dreaming. That would be really, really bad science.

To keep from sounding new-agey, either avoid all the mystical trappings that are often associated with lucid dreaming (e.g., communicating with other lucid dreamers, predicting the future, etc.) or treat them either as a skeptic or as an ethnographer. A journalist can get an article about UFO fanatics published in a respected journal, but one that tries to convince the reader that UFOs are alien spacecraft probably won't get as great a reception.

As far as advice for going lucid is concerned, I've found that the classic simple advice works very well. Keep a notebook and pencil next to your bed. Every time you wake up, scribble down everything you can remember about your dreams, even if all you can remember is "a vague feeling of detachment and something purple". The more you think about lucid dreaming while awake, the more likely it'll pop up when you're dreaming.
posted by ErWenn at 8:06 PM on December 6, 2008

Not sure if this answer's your question but here's an anecdote:

I am not new-agey in the least. I took a certain 100-level philosophy in college class in college that featured readings of Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan. We talked a lot about Lucid Dreaming during discussion of existentialism, etc. After reading, talking and thinking enough about it, I accidentally worked up a lucid dream during an afternoon nap. I drove a car, flew, and investigated my mind's map of my hometown. It didn't last long but it was one of the few dreams I remember vividly to this day. It was great. Never managed to do it in such full effect again.

Not sure how you would go about detaching the stigma or building up its credibility as a senior project but I do believe that such immersion in research as doing a senior project will in fact remind you to actually attain a lucid dream while sleeping. The trick is to stay asleep once you're conscious.

Or, if you go the other route, you can just believe in magic and say hell with your school, and walk off into another dimension.
posted by metajc at 10:05 PM on December 7, 2008