Scientists have repeatedly expressed the opinion that the practice of meditation has a positive effect on the frequency of lucid dreaming. Indeed, training mindfulness while awake increases the degree of awareness during sleep. This hypothesis has been proven by previous research.
In a recently published research on this topic, scientists led by Benjamin Baird of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, investigated the differences in experience between veteran meditators and newcomers. The study also included a group of volunteers who did not practice meditation, but had completed an eight-week course on developing mindfulness.
The experiment showed that those who had been meditating regularly for a long time had more lucid dreams. The mindfulness course, on the other hand, did not affect the frequency of these experiences in any way. Seasoned meditation practitioners develop not only mindfulness but also self-reflection, that is, awareness of their current state of consciousness, which contributes to success in the practice of lucid dreaming.
Indeed, meditation can help better focus one’s attention and monitor one’s stream of consciousness – a skill that has positive effects on lucid dreaming. It is not for nothing that in the Tibetan Dream Yoga, lucid dreams are considered an ideal state of meditative awareness, and during deep meditations, many practitioners reported out-of-body experiences.
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The study was published in 2019 in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
