Lucid Dreaming, yay or nay?

I had meant to get into lucid dreaming a couple of weeks back, and now that I am sleeping better it reminded me of it again.




For anyone who actually may be out there reading this, someday, maybe in the next decade or something, who might be wondering what the heck that is, lucid dreaming is the ability to maintain some semblence of consciousness while you dream, so that you can control the dream. You can learn to do this through meditation, making suggestions to yourself before you fall asleep, cuing yourself with a light or sound in the room (though this is tricky because you have to time it for when you will be in REM stages of sleep and it cannot be so obtrusive that it will fully wake you), some people even write scripts and meditate them to dream them. I fell into it accidentally as a teen... I was watching taped reruns of 21 Jumpstreet and fell asleep to them. I dreamed myself into the show (as well as into Penhall's arms, but that's another story).



Basically, if you learn how to lucid dream, it can turn it into a very realistic fantasy. You can go where you want to go, do what you want to do.



I was watching a tv show many years ago (maybe 20/20?) on the topic, and one woman talked about how she lost weight by lucid dreaming. She would abstain from the foods she loved all day and then indulge in them all night in her dreams. It satisfied her cravings enough so she didn't cheat in the day time.



I found that fascinating.



Of course, I have sleep issues, so lucid dreaming has always been hit or miss for me. For a while when I went through college, it became almost forgotten. When I got more involved in learning the craft, meditation made it easier to do at will, but then as I got more involved in motherhood and working and a busy life,  it's not something I have attempted very often over the last few years now... but I was wondering, would this be a good thing, or a bad thing?



A good thing, of course, is to eat and indulge in dreams where they leave no trace of calories.



On the bad side, however, isn't it just perpetuating that addiction to the foods that I really shouldn't be eating anyway? I mean, isn't it just fanning the flame?



I wish there was a way to track down that woman and find out if in the long run lucid dreaming helped her keep her weight off, or if it was just feeding a temporary satisfaction with bad habits that eventually found their way back into her waking life?



I know one thing for sure though... if I do any lucid dreaming tonight, it will be at Disney World (sigh I miss my happy place).