February 2025
The research team at the Institute of Noetic Sciences has found that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms, including nightmare distress, can be reduced significantly by learning lucid dreaming and implementing a healing plan in the dream.
Lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness in which the dreamer is explicitly aware that they are dreaming. This lucidity enables the dreamer to undertake deliberate actions in the dream.
About half the population have had at least one lucid dream, and one in four people experience them regularly, according to the study that’s featured in next month’s edition of European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. This paper takes further previous research that lucid dreaming may have health benefits
This could add lucid dreaming to the protocol for treating PTSD, which is managed most often with anti-depressant medications, psychotherapeutic approaches like cognitive-behavioral therapy, CBT. This therapy has high dropout rates, however, and half do not respond to it. Research on psychedelic drugs and psilocybin are promising.
In the new study, 49 participants with PTSD were assigned to a lucid dreaming workshop and 50 participants with the same condition were put on a waitlist for the workshop. The latter constituted the control group.
Those participating in the workshop learned induction techniques to enter a lucid dreaming state, and also how to implement a healing plan in the dream. Both the active group and those on the waitlist took surveys about their dream experiences and surveys measuring their wellbeing.
About half of the participants in both groups experienced at least one lucid dream during the trial period. Among those lucid dreamers, 63% in the workshop group and 38% in the control group achieved a healing dream.
“The workshop group exhibited significant reductions in PTSD symptoms and nightmare distress compared to the control group”, the study says.
The improvement was sustained through the follow-up one month later.
Anders Bolling
