I've been on this Lucid Dreaming Adventure for over a month now, and, although I have not yet had even one lucid dream, I've learned some noteworthy things that I'd like to share. Before I do that, I'd like to place a disclaimer that the hypotheses stated in this essay are based on anecdotal evidence and speculative. I am not trying to revolutionize dream science. Rather, I am constructing my experiences into a narrative hypothesis that I hope to one day explore further and in more depth.
The other day, I looked through my dream journal and read through a bunch of the dreams I've had over the past couple of weeks. I noticed two key characteristics of these dreams. First, they consistently contained tinges of things I had been thinking a lot in the days prior to having those dreams. There was a period of time where I thought a lot about food and philosophies of food consumption. My dreams during this period were set in restaurants or other food-centric venues and involved some sort of conflict centered around food. During a period of thinking about group dynamics, I had multiple dreams revolving around either sports or other forms of large groups. This realization fits in well with our current understanding of how dreams and sleep work. If we take the current common wisdom that sleep plays a large role in memory consolidation and organization, it makes sense that dream topics mimic the thoughts we think and events that occur in our daily lives. Dreams are a way of taking those chunks of memory and manipulating them. This also fits in well with our current understanding of how our memory shapes the past and constructs narratives. Humans do not remember things like they happened. Rather, we remember things in a way that fits into our own personal biases and narratives of our lives. Dreams play a large role in constructing this narrative. By parsing through our memories, replaying shadows of them, and manipulating chunks of them, dreams assist in memory consolidation, which is really just a fancy way of saying narrative composition.
This conclusion informs my more out-there hypothesis that part of the reason we don't remember our dreams is that pieces of our dreams are actually being reinserted back into our memories somehow. Thus, it is not necessary for us to remember our dreams as the important parts of our dreams are somehow connected and consolidated in the personal narrative of our memories.
I hope to investigate this phenomenon further in the future, as I think achieving lucid dreams will inform this hypothesis further. In order to make any real claim, however, I need some way of falsifying this hypothesis, which will be the topic of a later post or perhaps a particularly curious commented.
In terms of the experiment, I'll be continuing on with my attempt to habitualize my reality chekcs and increase dream recall, in order to hopefully induce lucidity. My next post will either continue in this vein or go back to the more practical aspects of this adventure.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Adventures in Lucid Dreaming 3: Week 5 Update and Changes
This is, unfortunately, going to be a short post.
At this point, I've stagnated a bit. My dream recall is at or above the level I wanted it to be at. However, I have not yet achieved lucidity although I firmly believe I am getting closer. A big reason for this, I suspect, is that I have not been able to do the reality checks as regularly as I would like. As a result, I intend to up the ante by adding some sort of reminder system to force me to do reality checks more often. I am considering two options, one digital, one analog. I will either set reminders on my phone throughout the day or simply carry an index card in my pocket that says "real?" on it, to remind me.
Hopefully, I will be able to put up a long post this upcoming Sunday with more details about my progress, observations, and other, unrelated but also interesting, things.
At this point, I've stagnated a bit. My dream recall is at or above the level I wanted it to be at. However, I have not yet achieved lucidity although I firmly believe I am getting closer. A big reason for this, I suspect, is that I have not been able to do the reality checks as regularly as I would like. As a result, I intend to up the ante by adding some sort of reminder system to force me to do reality checks more often. I am considering two options, one digital, one analog. I will either set reminders on my phone throughout the day or simply carry an index card in my pocket that says "real?" on it, to remind me.
Hopefully, I will be able to put up a long post this upcoming Sunday with more details about my progress, observations, and other, unrelated but also interesting, things.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Adventures in Lucid Dreaming: 2 Week Update and Milestones
It's been a little more than 2 weeks since I started my Lucid Dreaming experiment and it's gone pretty well so far. I've been remembering at least one dream most nights with increasing consistency as time goes on. I estimate that one week from now, I will have reached my goal of remembering at least two dreams per night on a fairly regular basis.
My reality checks have been coming along a bit more slowly, however. I have been trying to do them quasi-regularly, but have struggled so far to perform them habitually. Unfortunately, I am at a bit of a loss to think of good ways to improve compliance for this part of the experiment. I will simply try to focus more on the reality checks (using the walking through doors as a signal to perform the breath check and entry into the bathroom for the breath and gravity checks).
I'll try to put out an update next Sunday or Monday discussing this week's success and next steps.
My reality checks have been coming along a bit more slowly, however. I have been trying to do them quasi-regularly, but have struggled so far to perform them habitually. Unfortunately, I am at a bit of a loss to think of good ways to improve compliance for this part of the experiment. I will simply try to focus more on the reality checks (using the walking through doors as a signal to perform the breath check and entry into the bathroom for the breath and gravity checks).
I'll try to put out an update next Sunday or Monday discussing this week's success and next steps.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Adventures in Lucid Dreaming: Experiment Introduction and Plan
Lucid dreaming seems to be an elusive but extremely tempting target for many people in the quantified self and self-improvement community. And it's not hard to see why. Lucid dreaming presents the possibility for a potentially large amount of leisure time spent in a virtual world under your control. Perhaps even more exciting, it presents the possibility for further learning and skill acquisition accelerated by the increased control of the dream-space and memory consolidation that occurs while dreaming. For more information on Lucid Dreaming feel free to check out the sources listed at the bottom of the page.
As may be obvious by now, the goal of this experiment is going to be the induction of lucid dreams. The approach I'm going to be taking towards this experiment is two-phased.
The first phase will last 2-3 weeks (depending on how it goes and how busy I am) and involves two key behaviours which I will implement. The first behaviour is daily dream journalling in order to increase dream retention. While I currently remember dreams occasionally (around one on most days), I hope that by the end of these next couple of weeks, I will at the minimum be remembering one or two dreams a day. That being said, I am hopeful that I will be remembering more like 3 or 4 dreams today, but one or two is the minimum number for success.
The second behaviour I will implement in the first phase of the experiment is reality checks. Reality checks are small behaviours performed throughout the day to create the habit of checking whether one is dreaming. For my reality checks, I will be holding my nose while breathing and jumping into the air every time I go to the bathroom, and holding my nose every time I go through a door. This way, even if I forget occasionally, I will still be able to maintain a high frequency of checks throughout the day.
Assuming the first phase of the experiment is relatively successful. The second phase of the experiment will involve me attempting to induce lucid dreams using the MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) technique (described in much more detail at the two links at the bottom of the page). The MILD technique involves intensely focusing on remembering your dreams as you fall asleep combined with the now-habitual reality checks I will hopefully perform while dreaming.
My success in this phase will be measured by the number of instances in which I succeed in inducing lucid dreams. I consider 5 instances of lucid dreams in a months span to be the minimum for success. A truly exciting result would be if I could consistently induce lucidity multiple times a week. I am frankly unsure how long this phase of the experiment will last, because I would like to at least attain some level of success before I move on to my next experiment. However, I am going to set a hard time limit of one month on this aspect of the experiment, because at that point it will most likely be difficult to continue writing novel posts about my adventure.
Thanks for reading and look forward to my next post, to be posted by the end of next weekend.
Links
Tim Ferriss' Beginner Guide
Lucid Dreaming Wikibook
Lengthy, More Technical Article on Lucid Dreaming
As may be obvious by now, the goal of this experiment is going to be the induction of lucid dreams. The approach I'm going to be taking towards this experiment is two-phased.
The first phase will last 2-3 weeks (depending on how it goes and how busy I am) and involves two key behaviours which I will implement. The first behaviour is daily dream journalling in order to increase dream retention. While I currently remember dreams occasionally (around one on most days), I hope that by the end of these next couple of weeks, I will at the minimum be remembering one or two dreams a day. That being said, I am hopeful that I will be remembering more like 3 or 4 dreams today, but one or two is the minimum number for success.
The second behaviour I will implement in the first phase of the experiment is reality checks. Reality checks are small behaviours performed throughout the day to create the habit of checking whether one is dreaming. For my reality checks, I will be holding my nose while breathing and jumping into the air every time I go to the bathroom, and holding my nose every time I go through a door. This way, even if I forget occasionally, I will still be able to maintain a high frequency of checks throughout the day.
Assuming the first phase of the experiment is relatively successful. The second phase of the experiment will involve me attempting to induce lucid dreams using the MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) technique (described in much more detail at the two links at the bottom of the page). The MILD technique involves intensely focusing on remembering your dreams as you fall asleep combined with the now-habitual reality checks I will hopefully perform while dreaming.
My success in this phase will be measured by the number of instances in which I succeed in inducing lucid dreams. I consider 5 instances of lucid dreams in a months span to be the minimum for success. A truly exciting result would be if I could consistently induce lucidity multiple times a week. I am frankly unsure how long this phase of the experiment will last, because I would like to at least attain some level of success before I move on to my next experiment. However, I am going to set a hard time limit of one month on this aspect of the experiment, because at that point it will most likely be difficult to continue writing novel posts about my adventure.
Thanks for reading and look forward to my next post, to be posted by the end of next weekend.
Links
Tim Ferriss' Beginner Guide
Lucid Dreaming Wikibook
Lengthy, More Technical Article on Lucid Dreaming
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Food Experiment Conclusions
Conclusions
Today was the last day of my little food addiction experiment. While the experiment didn't go as well as I would've liked, I learned a lot about my emotional tendencies towards food and have definitely made steps in the right direction. Perhaps more importantly, I learned a lot about how to conduct a successful self-experiment. I'll discuss more about this aspect of my thinking when I introduce my next experiment in tomorrow's post. Without further ado, what I learned from this experiment, in bullet form:
Tomorrow I'm going to post about my next experiment, which will be going in a pretty different direction from this one, although I'll be applying what I've learned to the methodology I use.
Today was the last day of my little food addiction experiment. While the experiment didn't go as well as I would've liked, I learned a lot about my emotional tendencies towards food and have definitely made steps in the right direction. Perhaps more importantly, I learned a lot about how to conduct a successful self-experiment. I'll discuss more about this aspect of my thinking when I introduce my next experiment in tomorrow's post. Without further ado, what I learned from this experiment, in bullet form:
- Intermittent fasting is a very useful tool for breaking food addictions. By the end of the experiment, I was consistently eating two or three meals a day within an 8-hour feeding window. I noticed a significant decrease in hunger both psychological and physical, particularly outside of my feeding window. However, getting into the routine of not eating in the mornings was psychologically difficult at first. 16-18 hours is not nearly enough time to feel true physical hunger, but the psychological effects were noticeable.
- Eating processed, sugary foods is a self-perpetuating cycle that tends to make you want more processed, sugary food. I consistently felt much hungrier whenever I "cheated" and ate such foods.
- Extreme carb restriction produces somewhat increased food cravings independent of many other factors. This is obviously very personal and might've gone away if I had been more consistently low-carb. However, I learned I personally prefer to simply eat moderate amounts of carbs.
- I do better eating with pretty hard, set rules. I find moderation more difficult than simple, but arguably somewhat stringent restrictions. In fact, my healthiest period of eating happened last summer when I simply decided to cut out all bread.
- Finally, while I still possess significant attachments to food, I feel like I have increased my mindfulness of my eating habits and ability to fix my attachments to food. Now that this experiment is over, I plan to eat in a more free-form way for a bit. While I will stay pretty Paleo, I plan on not stressing too much about the specifics. Following a period of loose paleo eating, I want to wholeheartedly attempt a high-starch diet. I will most likely post a bit about this on the blog at least once or twice. So stay tuned for future food updates.
Tomorrow I'm going to post about my next experiment, which will be going in a pretty different direction from this one, although I'll be applying what I've learned to the methodology I use.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Food Experiment Update and Change in Format
Upto this point, I have been posting what I ate every day with very little explanation or discussion. I have decided, however, that this format, while providing some significant data, is not very useful for my readers or myself.
As a result of this, I am going to transition to a different self-experiment format. For each self-experiment, regardless of how long it is, I will post an introductory post, weekly progress posts, and a concluding post. This will allow me to make other posts from day-to-day and also provide more in-depth analysis on my experiments.
Since my food experiment will be ending soon, today's post will act as a progress post, both to update you on what's happening and give you an idea of how this new format will work.
For the past few days, I have been fairly succesful in following a two-meal-a-day intermittent fasting approach. Each day, I keep my two meals within an ~8 hour window. My diet consists of pretty good paleo food, with the occasional non-paleo dessert. I have been focusing more on enforcing the 8-hour window than the strict Paleo because I believe the intermittent fasting will yield more significant benefits in the long run.
The key benefits of intermittent fasting that I wish to gain are reduced appetite and reduced cravings. As the goal of this experiment is to decondition my addiction to food, with weight loss being a possible side effect, I am more focused on reducing the reward feedback loop that I seem to have created in regards to food. Intermittent fasting does a good job in this respect because not eating for longer periods of time allows this response to down-regulate more and more. In addition, the act of not eating for longer periods of time allows my stomach to shrink, thereby reducing my appetite.
For this last week (the experiment ends on September 12th), my goal is to work up to an even longer 36-40 hour fast. This would involve not eating from dinner one night until breakfast two days from then. I will discuss my success or failure at this in the conclusion post.
As I've said before, if you want a good, more in-depth discussion of intermittent fasting, check out Martin Berkhan's site LeanGains or Brad Pilon's site Eat Blog Eat.
As a result of this, I am going to transition to a different self-experiment format. For each self-experiment, regardless of how long it is, I will post an introductory post, weekly progress posts, and a concluding post. This will allow me to make other posts from day-to-day and also provide more in-depth analysis on my experiments.
Since my food experiment will be ending soon, today's post will act as a progress post, both to update you on what's happening and give you an idea of how this new format will work.
For the past few days, I have been fairly succesful in following a two-meal-a-day intermittent fasting approach. Each day, I keep my two meals within an ~8 hour window. My diet consists of pretty good paleo food, with the occasional non-paleo dessert. I have been focusing more on enforcing the 8-hour window than the strict Paleo because I believe the intermittent fasting will yield more significant benefits in the long run.
The key benefits of intermittent fasting that I wish to gain are reduced appetite and reduced cravings. As the goal of this experiment is to decondition my addiction to food, with weight loss being a possible side effect, I am more focused on reducing the reward feedback loop that I seem to have created in regards to food. Intermittent fasting does a good job in this respect because not eating for longer periods of time allows this response to down-regulate more and more. In addition, the act of not eating for longer periods of time allows my stomach to shrink, thereby reducing my appetite.
For this last week (the experiment ends on September 12th), my goal is to work up to an even longer 36-40 hour fast. This would involve not eating from dinner one night until breakfast two days from then. I will discuss my success or failure at this in the conclusion post.
As I've said before, if you want a good, more in-depth discussion of intermittent fasting, check out Martin Berkhan's site LeanGains or Brad Pilon's site Eat Blog Eat.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Food Experiment: Intro and Day 1
I have decided that the path to constant self-improvement comes from strict focus and documentation. I will be using this blog as a place to enforce these criteria.
My first improvement project will be breaking my addiction to food. While I am fairly fit and not overweight, I often feel like I use food as a crutch or an emotional tool. I see this lack of control over diet as one of my biggest hurdles in my quest for self-reliance. It is for this reason I wish to eliminate this dependence first.
I will be attempting to do this by focusing on a high-starch and vegetable focused diet, with the addition of some intermittent fasting when my willpower feels especially strong. I will also focus on drinking large quantities of water, as I typically slack on this, and I have heard this can significantly reduce cravings. I am basing my food template on the loose recommendations made by Ray Cronise on his site Thermogenex. While the template may change somewhat, I will focus most strongly on avoiding eating processed sugar, fruit, and dairy.
One possible problem I foresee that may cause the template to change is if this dietary change affects my workout performance. I typically follow a paleo-ish diet, which includes high levels of protein and fat. This diet, with the addition of some starchy roots and tubers, provides me with enough fuel for my lifting. However, the elimination of the majority of my protein intake may hurt my lifting performance more than I am willing to accept. If this does occur, I will most likely revert back to a strict paleo diet based around meat and vegetables, which will allow me to continue the elimination of my addiction without negatively influencing my lifting performance.
Today is day one of that experiment.
Today's Food Intake:
11:20 AM - Veggie Stir Fry with White Rice and Gluten Free Thai Peanut Sauce
6:00 PM - Lentils with Broccoli and Sriracha sauce
9:45 PM - Avocado Roll
11:00 PM - Three ciders and Fried Rice
Today was not a particularly good start to this experiment. It seems that alcohol affects my willpower and ability to make good choices more negatively than I thought. I will keep this in mind in the future.
My first improvement project will be breaking my addiction to food. While I am fairly fit and not overweight, I often feel like I use food as a crutch or an emotional tool. I see this lack of control over diet as one of my biggest hurdles in my quest for self-reliance. It is for this reason I wish to eliminate this dependence first.
I will be attempting to do this by focusing on a high-starch and vegetable focused diet, with the addition of some intermittent fasting when my willpower feels especially strong. I will also focus on drinking large quantities of water, as I typically slack on this, and I have heard this can significantly reduce cravings. I am basing my food template on the loose recommendations made by Ray Cronise on his site Thermogenex. While the template may change somewhat, I will focus most strongly on avoiding eating processed sugar, fruit, and dairy.
One possible problem I foresee that may cause the template to change is if this dietary change affects my workout performance. I typically follow a paleo-ish diet, which includes high levels of protein and fat. This diet, with the addition of some starchy roots and tubers, provides me with enough fuel for my lifting. However, the elimination of the majority of my protein intake may hurt my lifting performance more than I am willing to accept. If this does occur, I will most likely revert back to a strict paleo diet based around meat and vegetables, which will allow me to continue the elimination of my addiction without negatively influencing my lifting performance.
Today is day one of that experiment.
Today's Food Intake:
11:20 AM - Veggie Stir Fry with White Rice and Gluten Free Thai Peanut Sauce
6:00 PM - Lentils with Broccoli and Sriracha sauce
9:45 PM - Avocado Roll
11:00 PM - Three ciders and Fried Rice
Today was not a particularly good start to this experiment. It seems that alcohol affects my willpower and ability to make good choices more negatively than I thought. I will keep this in mind in the future.
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