Tired of feeling as if you don’t have enough hours in the day to practice your guitar?

If only you just had more time, you could finally get Cliffs of Dover down perfectly!

Well, here is a crazy idea:

Became a better guitar player by practicing in your sleep.   Keep reading to find out how….

Get Better at Guitar by Lucid Dreaming

It’s a crazy idea that I have begun experimenting with after reading this bizarre post on Tim Ferriss’s Productivity and Creativity Blog.

For those who are unfamiliar with Lucid Dreaming, it is pretty much having a dream in which you are aware that  are dreaming.  When you are lucid and aware of this, you are able to actively participate in and control the imaginary experiences you are having in the dream environment. These lucid dreams can seem surprisingly real and vivid depending on your level of self-awareness.

It sounds pretty crazy, but there actually has been a lot of research on lucid dreaming.

From Ferriss’ blog:

Dr. Stephen LaBerge of Stanford was considered the world’s foremost researchers in the science and practice of lucid dreaming, and he had pioneered proving its existence. How? It turns out that eye movement, unlike the rest of the skeletal muscular system, is not inhibited by REM sleep. Subjects could memorize horizontal eye patterns (e.g. left-left-right-right-left-right-left) and repeat the patterns upon becoming lucid, which researchers could observe, all while recording brain activity with an EEG to confirm that the subjects where, in fact, in a dream state. Tibetan monks have been practicing lucid dreaming for thousands of years, but it was considered fringe speculation until it was captured in a controlled environment.

There are now dozens of studies that explore the incredibly cool world of lucid dreaming and hint at applications (search “lucid dreaming” here on PubMed).

Why Get Into Lucid Dreaming?

One of the main applications is mental rehearsal. Activity of the brain during a dreamed activity is the same as during a real event.  The neuronal patterns of activation required for a skill, such as performing Eruption in front of a cheering crowd at the amphitheater, can be established in the dream state in preparation for performance in the waking world.

Lucid dreaming is a vivid form of mental imagery, which has been scientifically proven to greatly enhance real life performance. (Read this article for more information on visualization and mental imagery and how it enhances performance.)

So if you discipline yourself enough to get good at lucid dreaming, you can actually mentally rehearse difficult guitar passages, experiment with writings new songs, and practice arpeggios without wearing out your hands.  The possibilities are endless!

Training Yourself to Have Lucid Dreams

Step 1: Develop Dream Recall -

Good dream recall is often described as the first step towards lucid dreaming. Better recall increases awareness of dreams in general.  If your dream recall is limited, your lucid dreams that you do have can be easily forgotten, thus losing their positive effects. To improve dream recall,  keep a dream journal. Write down any dreams remembered the moment you wake up.  You could also go to radio shack, buy an audio/voice recorder, and use that instead.  It is important to record the dreams as quickly as possible as there is a strong tendency to forget what one has dreamt. For best recall, keep yours eyes closed while trying to remember the dream, and record your dream journal in present tense.

When first starting, you most likely will only be able to recall a few lines worth.  But within a couple weeks, it is common to be able to recall multiple pages worth of dreams.  Pretty cool stuff!  I can’t wait until I am able to recall every scene of my elaborate guitar- playing/ninja-being dreams where I hook up with Victoria Secret Models!

Step 2: Identify Dream Cues and/or Do Reality Checks -

From Wikipedia:

Reality testing (or reality checking) is a common method used by people to determine whether or not they are dreaming. It involves performing an action with results that will be different if the tester is dreaming. By practicing these tests during waking life, one may eventually decide to perform such a test while dreaming, which may fail and let the dreamer realize that they are dreaming. (The more foolproof the reality test, the better, as assuming one is dreaming can be dangerous)

• The nose reality check: The dreamer pinches their nose shut and if they are not able to breathe without using their nose, it is a dream.^[35]
• Sticking one’s finger through the palm of one’s hand.^[35]
• Looking at one’s digital watch (remembering the time), looking away, and looking back. As with text, the time will probably have changed randomly and radically at the second glance or contain strange letters and characters. (Analog watches do not usually change in dreams, while digital watches and clocks have a great tendency to do so.)^[36] An analog watch or clock may feature strange characters or the numbers all out of order.
• Flipping a light switch. Light levels rarely change as a result of the switch flipping in dreams.^[37]
• Looking into a mirror; in dreams, reflections from a mirror often appear to be blurred, distorted, incorrect, or frightening.^[37]
• Looking at the ground beneath one’s feet or at one’s hands. If one does this within a dream the difference in appearance of the ground or one’s hands from the normal waking state is often enough to alert the conscious to the dream state.^[38]

A more precise form of reality testing involves examining the properties of dream objects to judge their apparent reality. Some lucid dreamers report that dream objects when examined closely have all the sensory properties, stability, and detail of objects in the physical world. Such detailed observation relates to whether mental objects and environments could effectively act as substitutes for the physical environments with the dreamer unable to see significant differences between the two. This has implications for those who claim there is a spiritual or supernatural world that might be accessible through out of body experience or after death.

Step 3: Induce Lucidity –

MILD

There are a number of techniques that help induce lucidity. One such technique, referred to as Mnemonic-Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD), involves  waking up in the middle of the night, setting the intention to lucid dream for 10-15 minutes, then going back to bed.

Duration of sleep to be an important variable. It will often be easiest for novices to achieve lucidity if they sleep to excess — more than 9 hours  — and then use the snooze button to wake every 10-15 minutes for another hour. This juxtaposition of waking and sleep blurs the lines and seems to make the lucid state easier to achieve.

Step 4: Keep the Lucidity Going Longer

The first few times you achieve lucidity, you will likely be so excited that you will wake yourself up. Two effective techniques for extending lucidity are spinning (a la a piroutte in place) and looking at your hands. Both techniques, I believe, originated with Carlos Castaneda, but LaBerge was the first to test them and quantify the effectiveness of spinning vs. hand rubbing:

…the odds in favor of continuing the lucid dream were about 22 to 1 after spinning, 13 to 1 after hand rubbing (another technique designed to prevent awakening), and 1 to 2 after “going with the flow” (a “control” task). That makes the relative odds favoring spinning over going with the flow 48 to 1, and for rubbing over going with the flow, 27 to 1.

Source: Lucidity Institute

Step 5:  After You Have Had Sex With Every Model and Lovely Lady While Flying and Shooting Lasers Out of Your Eyes……

Try to explore memory and performance, specifically musically related memory and performance. Try working on songs and guitar practices in your sleep.  Record your progress and your experiments and take note on how it is helping your guitar playing improve.  Be patient and be persistent.  And Have some fun!

Let us know your thoughts and experiences by leaving comments on this post.

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