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People use intentional dreaming to gain fundamental insights in waking life

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

S. Gabriela Torres Platas¹ (), Daniel Morris², James Glazer³, Karen Konkoly⁴, Ema Demsar⁵, Michael Sheehy⁶, David Germano⁷, Ken Paller⁸; ¹Northwestern University, ²Monash University, ³University of Virginia

Dream investigations can shed new light on dreaming. Experimenters can interact with dreamers and receive information about a dreamer’s experience both during the dream and, in more detail, after awakening. Most dreaming is unintentional. Nevertheless, Contemplative Sleep Practices comprise advanced meditation skills that include completing specific cognitive tasks before and during sleep. Tibetan Dream Yoga is a suite of such practices described in detail in texts written over many centuries. Initial stages of these practices include exercises in imagery engaged while awake along with multiple strategies to induce lucid dreaming—awareness of the dream state while one is still dreaming. As the practitioner develops more expertise, dreams can function as a virtual laboratory for training with various scenarios (e.g., conjuring, personal transformation), purportedly resulting in profound insights into one’s waking life. To understand the potential value of these practices, we assessed overnight sleep using standard neurophysiological methods in six highly trained dream-yoga practitioners (20 sessions total). Individuals were first interviewed to characterize their personal history of contemplative training. Next, they visited a sleep laboratory and completed questionnaires and behavioral tasks. Participants displayed higher cognitive flexibility compared to normative data. Before sleep, participants trained to associate specific sounds with specific actions, and to use eye-movement and respiratory signals to indicate their experience while asleep. These signals provided timestamps for dream experiences. By combining neurophysiological monitoring, extensive first-person accounts, and humanistic methods, our approach provides a thorough account of these practices that may lead to new strategies for benefitting from sleep.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Other