A common topic that often comes up in conversations throughout my life is sleep. Especially among university students, finding time to rest when you’re stressed out about assignments (and a global pandemic that has turned your world upside down) can make it hard to fall asleep at night or have a truly restful sleep.
Like many of you, I was suffering from this. I never felt truly rested – I slept a full 8 hours every night, yet during the day, (usually around 1:00) I found my energy fading and the familiar feeling of needing to take a nap would seep into my bones. Unfortunately, this would cut into the time that I would spend either doing my readings for the week or catching up on my assignments.
Then one night when I was tossing and turning, I discovered the large world of lucid dreaming podcasts on Spotify. To my surprise, there was a large collection of playlists on Spotify specifically curated to assist you with lucid dreaming. Curious, I decided to try one.
Conveniently, Spotify also features a sleep timer, so your chosen playlist will stop after a certain time period (when going to bed, I usually choose the one-hour time restriction just to be safe)!
The next morning, I woke up surprised that I hadn’t felt myself fall asleep. I was completely out, and I had accidentally slept in. It was 9:00 am, and I was usually up for 7. Whoops.
Thinking back over my sleep, I realized that my dreams had been far more vivid than usual. Additionally, I could actually remember them.
Over the course of the next week, I listened to the same playlist every night when falling asleep. I continued to have the same results; remembering what I had dreamt about the previous night.
Currently, I switch up the playlist I use every night to see if it has an effect on what I can remember the following day and see if the content of my dreams changes dramatically.
As someone who tends to suffer from anxiety dreams, I have noticed that by using these playlists, I do not have as many anxiety dreams as I would normally have. Furthermore, my dreams are far more colourful and vibrant overall.
However, even though they claim to give you lucid dreams, I do not think that I have fully experienced lucid dreaming yet. I assume this is something that I will build up to, and that these playlists simply act as a sleep aid.
Overall, using these playlists has helped my sleep dramatically improve. If you are someone who struggles to get to sleep (or stay asleep), I highly encourage you to give them a try! Who knows, you may experience lucid dreaming yourself and tap into the many layers of dreaming.