Do You Want to Lucid Dream? Might You Want to Try Meditating on It? How Lucid Dreaming Relates to MAAS, and Hours of Practice in Long-Term Meditators

Abstract

Dreams have fascinated humanity since the time of the Greeks. With the development of EEG, we now know that they tend to occur during REM sleep and lucid dreams are characterized by a meta-awareness during the sleeping state (Laberge, 1990). Historically, meditation has cultivated this state (Holzinger, 2009) and meditators have unique dream experiences, which suggests that they are suitable to test dreaming hypotheses (Albert et al., 1974). Additionally, lucid dreaming and mindfulness share neural correlates (Dresler et al., 2012; Ivanovski and Malhi, 2007). Based on pilot data indicating self-reported lucid dreams distinguishes more mindful from less mindful meditators (Day, unpublished), a second study of meditators correlated a log of their total meditation hours and the MAAS, with their lucid dream experience. The fact that the two mindfulness measures did not correlate, suggests they measure different constructs. Meditation hours, however, positively correlated to lucid dreaming, supporting the theory that meta-awareness in wake relates to meta-awareness in sleep. It appears that the MAAS is not a good measure of mindfulness, and future research should work to improve the measures.