Sports practice in a lucid dream (LD) is the deliberate training of physical skills in LD. It can be used to practice any sport from skiing to gymnastics. One springboard diver practiced complex twists and somersaults in her lucid dreams by slowing down the whole sequence and focusing on the minute details of the dive. This is just one of the example described in a new article by an international group of scientists, including such well–known researchers as Erlacher (Switzerland), Stumbrys (Lithuania), and Schredl (Germany), as well as authors from Japan – Fujii, Tazuke, Sugiyama, and Ganzert.
The scientists recruited 1,323 volunteers among student athletes from Japanese colleges who were all engaged in various sports, both team and individual. Earlier, the authors conducted a similar study in Germany, and, compared with the previous results, it turned out that Japanese athletes experience LD less often (41% of participants got into LD at least once in their lives and 18% can be considered frequent lucid dreamers, by contrast to 57% and 24% of German athletes). The authors point to cultural differences as a possible explanation for this disparity.
However, if we analyze only the lucid dreamers among athletes, then both in Germany and Japan about the same number of people (9%) use LD for training, and most of them indicate that their abilities have improved as a result of this “dream practice.” Gender, age, sport group, and duration of sport career, on the other hand, were not found to be significant in this respect.
As the researchers add, training in LD is like performing a mental rehearsal. The same movements are performed with an imaginary body on a cognitive level. However, in order to bring this practice into the field of sports, it is necessary to solve the problem of LD induction, since lucid dreaming is not widespread enough among the general population and specifically among professional athletes.
Do you practice sports in your lucid dreams?
The article was published in May 2022 in the International Journal of Sport and Health Science.
