I remembered the other night I had heard an SGU episode that mentioned lucid dreaming. http://www.theskeptic...
About 44 minutes in.

There isn't a huge amount of stuff on lucid dreaming on pubmed but this is one of the most recent papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.n...

Enjoy!

I think I missed the point which was - we do we do it because it’s fun. - Ok cool. It’s the extended claims and benefits for it that I am currently sceptical about. Maybe this topic should be extended to the next meetup? It is a good topic!

Yes, that is the point, Clive. I'm happy to have a follow up session at the next meetup. Someone may want to conduct a poll though as there may be members uninterested in the subject and I'd hate to bore anybody. I'd be interested to hear which "extended claims" you are skeptical about. If you are referring to the use of lucid dreaming to practise skills, then I join you in your skepticism. Although there are reports of this, I believe lucid dreams are generally too short and too unstable to envisage people carrying out effective skill practise during them. Furthermore, it is the dreamer's brain simulating the laws of physics and while this is often achieved with impressive accuracy, it certainly won't be flawless, which in my opinion is a prerequisite for effective skill practise.

It might be a good idea for anyone skeptical that lucid dreaming is possible to read up about the scientific research on the subject before the meetup and perhaps try having a lucid dream themselves. I feel it would be more fun for members to be able to discuss their experiences with lucid dreaming (successes and failures) and to have an opportunity to ask questions and improve their ability to achieve lucid dreams. Debating whether it exists is fairly futile and a little mundane for those in the room who have experienced a lucid dream - which according to my quick head count was around 35%. I don't particularly care to spend a lot of time convincing people it's real; People are better to do that in their own time and manner. My desire is simply to let people know it exists, and provide assistance and advice to those who are wanting either to learn to lucid dream or to improve their current lucid dreaming abilities.

I generally find most people are able to grasp the logic behind the concept of lucid dreaming; If a person forms the habit of regularly questioning and testing which reality one is in during waking hours then eventually this questioning and testing behaviour will occur during a dream and usually this will give rise to the realization that one is dreaming at that particular moment. It's not a particularly far-fetched concept. As I've said, the interesting part of lucid dreaming is centered around what goes on inside Dreamland and techniques for alerting oneself to the fact one is dreaming.

There isn't a huge amount of stuff on lucid dreaming on pubmed but this is one of the most recent papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.n...

Enjoy!

The recent 12 June edition of New Scientist has a three-page article on lucid dreaming. The link to it is here:
http://www.newscienti...

Thanks so much for sharing that, Stephen. I really enjoyed the article.

There is quite a good article on Lucid Dreaming in latest issue of New Scientist

Thought you might like "The Dream" at:

http://www.savagechic...

Thanks Robin. That's cool!