Healing Lucid Dreams

Dear Dreamers,

Almost twenty years ago in The Healing Power of Dreams, Patricia Garfield presciently observed, “The potential for healing in lucid dreams is enormous.” Researchers like Stephen LaBerge and Jayne Gackenbach had already gathered eight anecdotal reports of apparent lucid dream healing in an OMNI magazine survey in 1987.

Since that time, lucid dream healing has been adopted by some psychotherapists and others to deal with recurring nightmares in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) sufferers. By most accounts, the psychological tool of lucid dreaming has been a tremendous success. Normally after the PTSD sufferer becomes lucidly aware in the nightmarish scenario just once, the nightmares dissipate significantly or disappear altogether.

The latest special issue of The Lucid Dream Exchange (LDE) focuses on Healing Lucid Dreams. Co-editor, Lucy Gillis and I asked readers to send in examples of emotional, physical and spiritual healing lucid dreams that had touched them.

For the issue, I interviewed a young woman airline mechanic, Hope, whose leg was crushed by a Boeing 767 rolling over it. During her six months of recovery from the injury and amputation, she began to have recurring nightmares almost nightly. She told me that the nightmares felt so horrendous that she came to the point of “not wanting to sleep, almost.”

Fortunately, she read a book on lucid dreaming and saw its potential to help her end the recurring nightmares of being chased. Later in the night, she realized that she was again in the nightmare, running for her life, when it occurred to her, “Hey, I am running, but I only have one leg.” Now lucid, she decides to face the nightmarish monster, “As it approached me, I waved at it and smiled a huge smile and then jumped up and flew away.” She recalled that the monster looked confused, now that the usual scenario had changed, and Hope had achieved lucidity. Soon, the nightmares largely ended.

One fascinating thing that Hope decided to do (apparently after reading my book) was to try and return to the moment of the accident, and see it again in a lucid dream. Incredibly, she became lucid and began reenacting the event, when something curious happened. At the moment of the accident, a “black space” (like TV censors might use to cover nudity) appeared in her visual field, which shielded her from seeing the wheel crush her leg. Upon waking, she realized that some part of her “protected” her from re-viewing the traumatic event.

Besides this interview are many other articles and lucid dreams of emotional, physical and spiritual healings. I hope you will take a moment to look through this free quarterly magazine and discover the potential of healing lucid dreams.

Lucid wishes,
Robert