On Health and Healing in Lucid Dreams

Dear Dreamers,

My recent radio show on Iowa Public Radio (Talk of Iowa, April 27, 2010) focused on health and healing in dreams and lucid dreams. For millennia, dreams have forewarned of impending illness, prescribed possible cures, and in some cases, healed the ailing person while they dreamt. To a large degree, the people who phoned in reported that this ageless tradition continues.

Some callers pointed to dreams that gave them assurance about a difficult pregnancy or suggested the best option (out of many) to a complicated surgery. Others called with profound emotional dream healings. A diabetic woman reported realizing that when she dreamt of being in the kitchen and looking for food, she needed to wake and get something to eat! On those occasions where she ignored the dream symbol and continued to sleep, she often came dangerously close to a diabetic coma.

Another very earnest listener phoned in and asked could we really realize that we were dreaming, and then alter the course of the dream? I responded to his first point that yes we can become consciously aware of dreaming, while in the dream state. Moreover, besides altering the dream, we lucid dreamers could do something profound: we could direct healing energy or healing intent onto our disease, while consciously aware in the dream state, and sometimes wake with extraordinary improvements in health.

Lucid dreaming takes healing in the dream state from a rare and random event to a conscious act which potentially can be scientifically studied.

As I cover extensively in my book, when lucid or consciously aware in the dream state, experienced lucid dreamers have repeatedly shown that they can focus healing intent on areas of illness or disease while lucidly aware. This healing intent may appear as a beam of light from the lucid dreamer’s hand or simply be a deeply felt suggestion within the lucid dream. Frequently upon waking, these lucid dreamers sense a radical change in their illness or condition, e.g., the signs of infection have disappeared, the plantar warts have turned black overnight, the bleeding has stopped. Upon personal inspection or by X-ray in their doctor’s office, they verify that a radical change has occurred.

Though largely unrecognized by science, lucid dreaming provides a new approach to investigate the connection between lucid awareness and the healing of the physical body. While neuroscientists like Ursula Voss and Allan Hobson are beginning to map out the physiological correlates of lucid dreaming as a unique “hybrid state of consciousness,” experienced lucid dreamers are investigating its practical applications for the health and wholeness of the body, brain, and mind.

Lucid wishes,
Robert Waggoner