Are Lucid Dreams Tiring?
Can you lose energy in a dream, lucid or not? My sister says that I would wake up tired! Because when you sleep your mind and body relax and recharge themselves. I said true - but that would happen anyway. Waddo you think?
Rebecca says: This is a great myth in my opinion - or at least a very misunderstood part of lucid dreaming - and yet there are no scientific studies to back me up. That's partly because tiredness is a difficult thing to measure and our energy levels fluctuate daily depending on our lifestyle habits. And it's also because it's such a difficult task to get a big enough sample of lucid dreamers into a lab to conduct this type of research in a scientific setting...
So the next best way to find out is to survey lucid dreamers themselves: are lucid dreams tiring? My intuitive response is no - and that's based on my 14 years of personal experience. Lucid dreams aren't tiring for me at all. They make me feel invigorated and I often have more energy the next morning because I'm on a natural high, reveling in my latest lucid dream insights.
To explain this better, here is my logical explanation on whether or not lucid dreams can be physically or mentally tiring.
Types of Dreams
Digging a little deeper, I asked myself: when do I feel tired when I wake up? Obviously not having enough sleep is one problem. Another problem is when I have multiple, rapid-fire nightmares or just very busy non-lucid dreams which go on for ages. They are very emotional and, because of the intensity, activate a larger part of my conscious brain (but not always enough to trigger lucidity).
These sorts of dreams are more common in children, teenagers and young adults - probably because they are generally are undergoing the most life changes and psychological adjustments. So, these types of hectic, non-lucid dreams can be tiring and drain you of energy, particularly when they are mentally disturbing.
Ironically, becoming lucid during these highly emotional dreams is the solution for me. If I'm having a nightmare, I'm likely to become lucid, at which point I can instantly dispel the anxiety and face down my fears.
Equally, a very busy and intense string of non-lucid dreams can be like a noisy orchestra with no conductor - very tiring to listen to or observe as an unconscious dreamer. But when you become lucid, your consciousness brings harmony to the orchestra, and turns that thing of pandemonium into crystal clear beauty. So, far from being tiring, I believe lucidity can give way to mental clarity and peace in your dreams.
Physical Rest
Are lucid dreams tiring in the sense that your body doesn't get enough physical rest? Again, I am confident the answer is no. Healthy sleepers undergo a process called sleep paralysis every night, from the moment you fall asleep to the moment you wake up in the morning, and all the little disturbances in between. Your muscles are waxy and unresponsive whether you are in deep sleep, or a lighter REM sleep, or in a lucid dream.
After all, the primary goal of sleep is to heal and rest the body - so it would be a serious flaw in the mechanism if we had the ability to undermine that process. Examples of such flaws include sleep disorders like sleepwalking, REM behavior disorder and restless leg syndrome.
Two Exceptions
Now, I can think of two specific situations where lucid dreams can cause sleep deprivation - either directly or indirectly. Let's explore those.
1. Pushing Too Hard
Tiredness can be caused indirectly by your efforts to induce a lucid dream. There are lucid dreaming techniques which involve manipulating your sleep cycles to increase consciousness during REM sleep (such as Wake Back to Bed or the Cycle Adjustment Technique). These are to be used wisely.
For instance, if you have a hectic life and already have to get up at 6am to go to a stressful job, I wouldn't recommend waking yourself an hour earlier to practice lucid dreaming. If you suspect you aren't getting enough sleep (which is 7-9 hours for most people) then you are probably already sleep deprived and these lucid dreaming techniques will only exacerbate that problem.
Instead I would recommend using techniques which encourage relaxation such as Meditation, Self Hypnosis and Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams.
2. Perma-Lucid Dreamers
A very small fraction of the population are perma-lucid dreamers. They lucid dream every night, and have been doing so for as long as they can remember. Some of them don't even know that conscious dreaming is special - they assume everyone does it. They just started lucid dreaming naturally as children and it became the permanent way of dreaming - to retain a waking level of consciousness during their night-time hallucinations.
These people often complain of feeling engulfed by their lucid dreams, unable to shut their brains down at night. They say lucid dreams are tiring. So what's going on here?
Again, this is an under-researched area so we don't have any definitive answers. True perma-lucid dreamers are always conscious during their dreams - but why would 100 extra minutes of consciousness make them feel so frazzled? Is it the sheer larger-than-life lucid dream intensity? Possibly, but I can't say I've ever felt negatively overwhelmed by even the most intense lucid dreams. So perhaps there is something else going on.
I'd theorize that perma-lucid dreamers may even maintain more brainwave activity when they should be in deep sleep. I don't know if that's possible - and I don't want to cause any undue anxiety; I'm just theorizing out loud. But what is it that causes them to feel so tired when they wake up, that doesn't remotely affect the majority of casual lucid dreamers?
If the effect is purely "sleep lost to a conscious dream" then we're talking about a difference of 60-90 minutes of lost sleep compared to a casual lucid dreamer (or 100 minutes compared to a non-lucid dreamer). Remember, REM sleep is divided to a handful of phases totaling about 100 minutes every night. Your dreams are scattered, with the longest ones later in the morning. In no way do you dream for 8 hours every night!
If you can shed some light on this topic, please start a thread at our Lucid Dreaming Forum. I would love to hear more insight.
The Great Myth
Back to 99.9% of people: casual lucid dreamers vs non-lucid dreamers. Are they really subjecting themselves to sleep deprivation?
Personally, I just can't make the connection. Why, when the average lucid dreamer may only dream consciously for 10-40 minutes per night, and likely only one or twice a week, would they experience tiredness or sleep deprivation the next day? We know that lucid dreams are beautiful and joyful and inspiring affairs which give us positive, life-changing experiences - in contrast to the mental chaos of anxiety dreams or nightmares. So what gives?
In closing, it's not an actual complaint I receive from readers via this website, but always a projected worry from people who have never had a lucid dream before. As such it remains one of the great myths about lucid dreaming.
