Lucid dreaming teacher Charlie Morley joins me to talk about the roughly two hours a night, around a twelfth of our lives, that we spend dreaming.
Charlie has spent close to 20 years teaching people how to lucid dream, lived in a Buddhist temple for seven years, and received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to research PTSD treatment in military veterans. The turning point came at 17, when an overdose and a near-death experience left him with four months of nightmares that ended in a single lucid dream.
What we explore together:
•Why nightmares keep coming back, and why waking yourself up from one is "like a therapy session cut short"
•How to remember your dreams, even if you think you never dream
•What actually changes in the brain the moment you realise you're dreaming
•Charlie's own pilot study, where over 85% of people with PTSD no longer met the diagnostic threshold after a six-day lucid dreaming workshop.
•Is lucid dreaming safe, who shouldn't try it, and why you shouldn't face severe trauma alone
•The four foundations to start tonight: dream planning, dream recall, the dream diary and dream signs
Love, Sarah Ann 💛
References:
Dreaming about the exam the night before (Arnulf et al., Consciousness and Cognition, 2014): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25108280/
Lucid dreaming in children (Voss et al., Journal of Sleep Research, 2012): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22639960/
Charlie’s PTSD lucid dream healing workshop pilot study (Yount et al., Traumatology, 2023): https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000456
My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5
Let's be friends!
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Charlie Morley:
🌐 Website and books: https://charliemorley.com
Chapters
00:00 Trailer
01:18 Introduction: we spend a twelfth of our lives dreaming
02:13 REM sleep isn't rest: you burn calories when you dream
03:53 What is lucid dreaming?
04:28 Why nightmares keep coming back: a therapy session cut short
05:40 "I never remember my dreams": how to start remembering
08:01 Vivid dreams, waking up anxious and why you should write nightmares down
10:19 What is a nightmare? Threat simulation and dreams as fire drills
13:05 The Sorbonne study: anxiety dreams before exams
14:37 Interpreting a dream from inside it: the black dog and the inner child
16:41 Inside the dreaming brain: what switches on when you become lucid
19:50 Practising skills in a lucid dream
20:54 Is lucid dreaming safe? Why you don't actually control the dream
23:16 The iceberg of the mind: how deep a lucid dream can go
27:22 Asking your dreams the big questions
28:21 "Is this woo woo?": spiritual traditions and the science
31:03 100K on YouTube and the APA special issue on lucid dreaming
32:03 Charlie's books and meeting your shadow
33:32 How it started: a dream mask advert before his 12th birthday
36:47 The overdose and near-death experience at 17
38:56 Agoraphobia, panic attacks and recurring nightmares
40:40 The lucid dream that ended four months of nightmares
43:17 Does it work for everyone? The PTSD study
49:30 85% below the PTSD threshold in the pilot, and the four-week follow-up
50:38 What the study can't prove
51:22 Why you shouldn't face severe trauma alone
53:21 Nightmares, sleep paralysis and jet lag can help you get lucid
54:41 Don't force it: be like a kid before Christmas
56:07 Technique 1: dream planning
57:05 Technique 2: dream recall
58:29 Why you forget your dream the moment you wake up
59:40 Technique 3: the dream diary
1:02:41 Technique 4: dream signs
1:04:45 Breathing and sleep: why slow breathing matters
1:07:12 Yoga nidra and charging your parasympathetic battery
1:09:15 Your dreams as a daily check-in on your mind
1:10:59 Lucid dreaming as a psychedelic experience you have in bed
