Nightmares are closely related to stress and poor health. Buddhist mindfulness practices can reduce stress, improve sleep, and promote mental health. One of the techniques to improve mindfulness is meditation. Scientists from Germany (Tzioridou, Mueller), Denmark (Sandberg) and a well-known researcher from the Netherlands, Martin Dresler, decided to study this practice as a possible solution for chronic nightmares.
The authors distinguished two factors of mindfulness: presence and acceptance. Presence means the ability of being fully aware of your inner and outer experience. Acceptance is an open-minded, curious, and open attitude to the world around us. Acceptance is a component that seems to affect depression and anxiety. Presence has an indirect effect, helping to develop acceptance.
The participants’ degree of experience was found to be a factor: participants in the experiment who were experienced practitioners reported fewer nightmares. The specific type of meditation practiced was not found to have an effect, but it did matter how much time had passed since the participant’s last session (the more time passed, the more likely the person was to suffered from nightmares).
The researchers have also noted the positive effect of meditation and mindfulness in reality on mindfulness in a dream. Mindfulness practices can lead to lucidity in dreams, which gives the dreamer the ability to control the nightmare and reduce or eliminate its frightening elements. The attenuating effects of lucidity on nightmares has been corroborated by multiple studies. By training themselves to be mindful while dreaming, practitioners can get rid of a nightmare by simply realizing that it is a dream, or even changing the plot.
Have you tried Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practices? Did it affect your dream lucidity?
The article was published in February 2022 on the Research Square website.
