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Language learning while lucid dreaming | ||
Tags: Dreams | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| bobok Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4915 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian | Message 1 of 21 24 December 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello all,
Lately I've been interested in the art of lucid dreaming and I read somewhere that it is possible to learn something while lucid dreaming. I wondered if this is also possible with language learning. If this would be the case, you can imagine how beneficial it would be. Therefore, my question is: Does anybody have experience with this? Favourably with language learning ofcourse, but on another subject is also fine by me. I'm not expecting a lot of replies since there are not a lot of people who do this, but I thought I could give it a shot. I mean, if you could learn for hours every night with the benefit of a good connection with your subconsious, you would be a polyglot in at least 2 years! Or am I being optimistic? I'm afraid the latter... Waiting for reactions... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4843 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 21 24 December 2011 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds like it would work best if you sleep in a pyramid shaped tent with aromatherapy candles and homeopathic LSD.
... By which I mean, it sounds like 60's style mumbo jumbo to me. But then it's 1am and everything sounds weird right now. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yaboycon Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4669 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 3 of 21 24 December 2011 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
^ Which part sounds like mumbo jumbo to you? The lucid dreaming part or the learning whilst lucid dreaming part? I'm pretty sure lucid dreaming isn't.
I would be interested in how you would learn while lucid dreaming. How would go about actually learning something. When I do this, I realise Im dreaming and do all sorts of magical things. I would have no idea how to learn something during this time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4863 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 4 of 21 24 December 2011 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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From what I know of lucid dreaming I'm not so sure that learning is possible while
doing it. You're not absorbing new information while you're dreaming, only possibly reviewing old information. I suppose you could use it to practice speaking within the dream, or review words or grammar concepts, but this doesn't really gain you any time since lucid dreaming isn't as restful as normal sleep anyway. If you were going to try this, I suppose you'd want to lucid dream while listening to language learning tracks or at least audio of the language you're learning (since that's the only way you'll be able to absorb new information, if that's even possible), but I'm not so sure what a good connection to your subconscious will do you in accelerating learning. If you care to keep us posted on your progress, though, I'll be following you closely! I never quite got the hang of lucid dreaming myself, though I give it a shot off and on. Now that you've reminded me I may have to try it again... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5630 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 21 24 December 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find it hard enough to stay lucid when it does happen, e.g. alright I'm aware, let's
do something fun, ooh a flying wristwatch, gotta catch the silt strider or I'll be late for my hoverboard lessons—and poof the lucid dream has become a regular old dream. Also I have more than once come up with some complicated and brilliantly put together sentence only to realize upon awakening, that it was at best not what I meant and at worse complete gibberish. Your results may vary, but I think trying to learn languages this way is a pipe dream in the end. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5490 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 21 24 December 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was a regular lucid dreamer throughout most of my childhood and early twenties, largely because I was a very light sleeper and my mind was always on the go. It's fascinating how we record features of the real waking world in such great detail and can then replicate and move around this creation consciously in our dreams. My experiences were relatively short, but I can tell you it was always great fun being able to fly or float around my matrix-like landscape (although initially scary), and then later on being able to even mentally alter that landscape at will; I can't imagine I'd ever want to learn a language at the same time. I've heard people say similar things about experimenting with hallucinogens too, i.e. they ignore the set tasks of the experiment and become fasscinated for hours with some minute detail in the grain of a chair leg or perhaps the chaotic texture of a wall (Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" offers an interesting account of this). Therefore, I don't think lucid dreaming would be a particularly useful brain state for learning a language, but everyone's different, and I could be wrong here.
I also think that we integrate and consolidate most of our memories during our sleep cycles, and that the better the quality of our sleep, the better we can function cognitively the next day (just look at any sleep deprivation experiments, if in doubt). I personally find that the memories I focus on most in my dreams occur just prior to falling asleep, which probably explains why I tend to wake up with a solution to a problem I consider whilst drifting off to sleep, and why it's not always the best thing to watch a horror film last thing at night. ;) Therefore, it's probably much more worthwhile to just have fun with lucid dreaming when it does happen, and if you really want to maximise your ability to learn a language, you can always try studying your target language for long enough to trigger long-term potentiation before going to sleep each night (maybe 30 minutes reading/listening to a book for instance), and consider the more positive overall impact of getting regular quality sleep instead. Edited by Teango on 24 December 2011 at 1:20pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5499 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 21 24 December 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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According to the experiments mentioned here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning - the brain cannot learn whilst it is in a dream state. I agree with Jeffers, dream learning is a load of new age mumbo jumbo.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4799 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 21 24 December 2011 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had maybe a few dozen lucid dreams in my 67 years. They are interesting, but hardly a serious tool for learning. First off, lucid dreams tend to lapse into normal dreaming very easily. Books on lucid dreaming are full of hints for how to stay lucid (like spinning in place, for example, which in my experience does work).
But if you are in a lucid dream, preoccupied with trying to stay lucid, and if you are successful at staying lucid you might remain in that state for 5 minutes, if you're really lucky. Typically lucid dreams last far less than that. Maybe 30 seconds to a minute. But even if you get that generous 5 minutes now and then, how much learning can you do in five minutes of lucid dreaming that is devoted mostly to trying to stay lucid? Also, even to devoted students of lucid dreaming such events are few and far between. Why would you want to rely on something so capricious and sporadic for language learning? To me it would be like trying to learn a language while walking a tightrope across a river. Exciting, but a really poor environment for language learning. Stick to learning while fully conscious. Lucid dreams are interesting experiences, but don't ever think of them as anything more than curious nocturnal entertainment. Use lucid dreaming for flying, or walking through walls, or other fun stuff. Edited by fiziwig on 24 December 2011 at 6:59pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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