- [Matt] Dreams. You know, the place where your punches are only half as effective,
(air whooshing) all your teeth fall out, you can only run away from
bad guys in slow motion, and the source of the biggest
fights in my relationship. - Who is she? - What are you talking about? - You cheated on me in my dream. - It was your dream. - Ugh. - Out of all the things that can be said about dreams, one of the wildest claims
that's ever been made is that you can control them. And I should know, I've done it. All right, I get it, I
know what you're thinking. Matt has officially
lost his goddamned mind, but really I think there
is something to this. Just stick with me for a second. So this whole dream experiment got started when I received a message from someone asking me to look into lucid dreaming. And the very next thought that I had was I'm pretty sure I've done that before. Lucid dreaming is what happens when the dreamer becomes
aware that they're dreaming. That awareness is all it
takes to become lucid. It's a pretty trippy phenomenon that's been documented
since ancient Greek times, but it's also been formally
researched since the 1960s. And that research has proven that people can have some level
of awareness while sleeping. Dream researchers were
able to determine this by agreeing upon
pre-arranged eye movements with dream subjects, and then measuring eye movement while these subjects were fast asleep. Most people get interested
in lucid dreaming to fulfill their fantasies, but some say that it's a
gateway into your subconscious. So you know, the further that
I went down this rabbit hole the more research that I did, the more I realized that I really should be
speaking with an expert. So Jared, when did you first start getting interested in dreams? - So I've been thinking about dreams ever since I was a kid. - Do you wanna do this
interview somewhere else? - Okay. (playful music) - [Matt] That guy is Jared, the co-author of "A Field
Guide to Lucid Dreaming". - Usually when we're dreaming, we're very much on autopilot, we just sort of accept it. It's a roller coaster at times, but we are locked in on that track. And a lucid dream, you could still be locked in on the track but you're like, "Oh, I'm enjoying this" or maybe if it's a nightmare, "I'm not enjoying this", but you are aware that you
are not in the waking world but in the dream state. - So it starts with that awareness, and then from there, though, we could also start to begin to figure out ways to
control our dreams, right? - Yeah, so the awareness is
kinda like the base camp, and if someone just becomes aware, they can be fully engaged and
just ride along with the dream or they can actually decide
to interact with the dream, talk with dream characters,
kinda direct the dream, or just change it completely. - This is silly (laughs), it
seems really weird, right? Okay, so just as I was
about to get started with this whole thing, I decided that I wanted to
set the stakes really high. I didn't wanna just become aware that I was dreaming in my dreams, I didn't wanna just control my dreams, I wanted to manifest
something in the real world and bring it into my dream. So (laughs) this is silly, it came spontaneously, but I was like, "I wanna smash a cake", like a chocolate cake, a carrot cake, I don't care what kinda cake. I just wanna smash a cake in my dream, throw my fist through it, smash it with a hammer, whatever. If I can do that in my dream, I will prove that anything is possible when it comes to lucid dreaming. And so equipped with
advice from my new BFF, I got started. The first tactic he suggested I use, set an intention to remember my dreams. - You know, same way if, like, you're always forgetting to take out the trash on trash day, but you say to yourself, "All right, every day I'm just gonna say, "'Don't forget to take out the trash, "'don't forget to take out the trash.'" And most likely, when trash day comes, if you've been saying that
over and over and over, you're not gonna forget. - I spent my days and
nights repeating the phrase, "I'm going to remember my dreams." "I'm going to remember my dreams." I wrote it down in my journal
over and over and over again. So another night, another night without a lucid dream. One night, Nat and I started
dancing around the kitchen like a couple lunatics
chanting it out loud. - [Both] I'm gonna remember
my dreams, two, three, four. - And then I began to make progress. I woke up remembering my
dreams for the first time. I quickly pulled out my journal and wrote down everything I could recall. I would probably say a month ago, I didn't remember any dreams. I feel like I haven't
remembered my dreams for years. It's very easy for the details of your
dreams to slip away. By keeping a dream
journal close to your bed and writing them down
immediately upon waking up, you're starting to tell your brain that dreams are important and that you wanna remember them. Another thing Jared says you can do is give yourself a reality check. Just like the spinning top in "Inception", if you continue to check in with yourself throughout the day, asking the question, "Am I in a dream?" and combine that with a physical action like poking your finger into your hand, it can help you to ask that same question while you're dreaming. - You just try to see if your
finger goes through your palm. And it's not, so I'm gonna
go with the assumption that we are not in a dream right now. - This is freaking me out, man. I'm sorry, dude, I should
not have taken edibles before this interview. So I went throughout my day checking to see if I was dreaming. I wasn't.
(car horn honks) Each night for the next two nights, I remembered more and more of my dreams. Their contents weren't that interesting, but I was excited to be making progress. And then finally, I did it. I remember tossing and
turning in bed a bit in the early morning, probably just before sunrise. When I sunk into my next REM stage, I woke up (water crashing) in my dream. It was only just for a moment, but I was aware that I was dreaming while I was dreaming. - Hey Matt, it's Jared, the guy from the interview. I'm an elephant eating purple peanuts. You know, it's delicious, and I wanna stay in the dream with you, don't let me leave. You know, keep your lucidity. - And then I lost it. I'd had this feeling
before, this wasn't new. Like I said, I've had
lucid dreams in the past, but it was really exciting to know that I could actually
intentionally create a lucid dream just by thinking about it,
just by talking about it, I realize that I could potentially
have more lucid dreams. That said, I still felt like I was a really long ways
off from smashing a cake. (sheets rustling)
Hey guys, by the way, this video is brought
to you by Squarespace, because dreams are cool, but bringing your dreams
to life is even cooler. - Can you not right now? - Oh, sorry. (playful music) Sorry about that. Back when I was in high school, I had this dream to become
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an email sign up form. Go to squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/mattdavella to save 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, I'm gonna go back to bed now. (sheets rustling)
(Matt exhaling) (Matt sighing) - Who the (beep) is Squarespace? - Most people when they enter
their first lucid dream, they're not gonna have
sort of an omnipotence, kinda God-like power. And so in the same way we need to learn skills
in the waking world, sometimes we also need
to learn dream skills. - And so I got back to work, this time repeating the mantra, "I'm going to control my dreams, "I'm going to control my dreams." I continued to remember
dreams on most nights and wrote them down in my
dream journal each morning. I kinda had a lucid dream. I had like something where I was in this black void of fogginess of sleep, and I thought to myself,
I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming. And then I didn't, like,
have a dream, it's weird. It was like purgatory for dreaming. So that feels like something. And then I had another lucid dream, this one about 10 times more intense and way more vivid than the first. I walked into my parents' bedroom back home in New Jersey and felt like something was off. It was exactly as I'd
remembered it as a kid. I asked my mom what year it was, and she said, "It's 1999."
- It's 1999. As I walked closer to my parents, I noticed that there were two of my dad, and that's when I realized I was dreaming. - Hi, Matt, it's me, your dad. - It was vivid, just
as vivid as real life. And then I remembered the cake. I turned around to try to bring it into
my dream and smash it, but it wasn't there. At that moment I began
to run into the kitchen to try to open the fridge to see if there was a cake inside but then my dream started
to get echoey and faint and I started to lose it. Once I woke up, the dream memory started to slip away from me as well, and I realized just how
easy it would've been to just forget about this
whole experience entirely. So I grabbed my phone,
ran to the bathroom, and wrote down everything
I could remember. It got oddly emotional for me. I think it was because I was, I really felt like I was there. I felt like I was at
my home back in Jersey at a time and a place
that will no longer exist. The only place it exists is in my memory, and now my dreams. And to be there, to really feel like I was
there, was super crazy (laughs). You know, I'm just kind of on the brink now of lucid dreaming and learning what's possible. This was a huge milestone in learning how to
actually control my dreams. One essential part of learning how to lucid dream is understanding when we dream. And through the various stages of sleep, the most likely time to have them is during rapid eye movement, or REM. - What's interesting
and what kinda pertains to lucid dreaming is that the period of REM
over the course of a night gets longer and longer
after multiple sleep cycles. You wanna focus on that long period of REM because you get lucid, you can actually explore the dream for a longer period of time. If it's earlier, you might become lucid, and then it ends before you can
actually do any exploration. (peaceful music) So to better help me track my sleep, I'm gonna be using one
of these Oura rings. It's actually got sensors on the inside that tracks your sleep. My hope is that by tracking my sleep I'll get a better idea of how much time I'm spending in REM. The time in REM, it varies from 15 minutes
to an hour and a half. So if I can improve my
sleep throughout the night and if I can get enough
restfulness throughout the night, hopefully I'll be able to
have more lucid dreams. By tracking my sleep, I was able to experiment with one of the more extreme
lucid dreaming techniques called wake back to sleep, the process of setting an alarm before you dip into the
longest period of REM. With this technique, the idea is to wake up for
20 to 40 minutes before REM, raising your awareness but
staying on the edge of sleep. Then when you dip into REM, you'll be more likely
to have a lucid dream. Hey, guess what time I'm
setting the alarm for tomorrow? - Don't. Don't.
- Like three a.m. - Are you joking?
(air whooshes) (alarm beeping) (Matt breathing) (switch clicks) (Matt groans) - I'm gonna head back to bed now, try to get a dream going. But this was a dumb idea. (air whooshes) (birds chirping)
It didn't work, I couldn't get back to sleep. Woke Natalie up, she
couldn't get back to sleep. So we were both just awake for, let's see how long. I had a total of six hours and 23 minutes
of sleep last night. I think I'm done with this little strategy, this technique. And as I continued on
with this experiment, I found that lucid dreaming was pretty much a roll of the dice. Most nights I didn't have them, but I broke through two more
times during this experiment. I'm not really sure if
there's any correlation between how hard I try and how often I have a lucid dream. I feel like so much of it
is just a luck of the draw. What are you doing, Nat? You're popping your head
(laughs) in the background. And while I can control various aspects of what I do in my dream, I'm often at the whim of my subconscious, floating from one location to another, one thought to the next, far from the mastery that
I've heard is possible. - Keep your lucidity,
I'm a maid of (laughs). - (laughing) I did not see that coming. All right, guys, I'm
gonna level with you here. I was not able to manifest a cake and smash it in my dream. I know, I think maybe
it was a bit ambitious to assume that I could master
that level of lucid dreaming in only three weeks, but it is what it is. At this point, I have other experiments and other videos and other
things that I wanna work on, so I've gotta kind of tie this one up. So unfortunately, I would say that this is
kinda the end of chapter one. I do wanna continue to try to do it, so who knows, maybe I
will be able to do it in the coming weeks. Maybe tonight's my night, I don't know. I just can't wait around for it to happen. But then I started to think, you know, I wasn't able to make it
happen in a lucid dream, but then there are other ways to make your dreams become a reality. (air swooshing)
(fist pounding) (air swooshing)
(fist pounding) (Matt laughs) So that did not at all work out like I thought it was going to. (crowd screaming)
(announcers shouting) - [Announcer] No! Oh no! - I in my head thought, hey,
I'm gonna smash this cake, my hand's gonna go right through it. I hit it once and it hurt. It's fine, it's fine. Thanks for watching guys. Really appreciate you sticking around to watch me eat this cake. If you yourself have had
a lucid dream before, let me know. This is a dense cake. Shoulda got the carrot cake.
