Introduction and Background

Charlie, my friend, it's so fantastic to see you again. We had the most amazing discussion the last time, and I know that this interview that you and I are going to have now is going to help so many people.

You. Phenomenal. You have a fantastic autistic background, but transitioned over to become one of the leading meditation teachers and the probably the foremost leader in when it comes to teaching and understanding and doing workshops on lucid dreaming. You've helped me.

You've helped millions. You're an absolute inspiration. So welcome to Doctor Talks and thank you for joining me today. Thank you. What an intro. Thank you so much I hope I live up to it.

Oh, you definitely do. Charlie, do you mind if I just sharing the audience, you know, a little bit more detail about your brief background that I gave from where you began and where you've landed up and what you do now?

Yeah, sure. I mean, essentially, now I write books about sleep and lucid dreaming, and then I travel around. I give seminars, workshops and immersive retreats on lucid dreaming and sleep related subjects.

My main things, my kind of the passion project lies within. What I do is working with veterans and military veterans and people who are living with trauma, because lucid dreaming is a very powerful way to help integrate, not only nightmares, but trauma.

And then also another big part of my work is looking at the more spiritual aspects of lucid dreaming. I lived in a Buddhist temple for seven years, and was taught by the, within the Tibetan Buddhist lineage.

And so I have kind of that going on to Macy. And before all of this, tell them what you used to do. Oh, yeah, I used to put on breakdance events. So I used to be in a moderately successful hip hop group of, like, Breakdancers and graffiti artists and rappers and stuff like that.

I trained as an actor in my 20s, did a degree in script writing. So yeah, I came from completely different creative background. But funny you said that because just recently someone was asking me, out of all the training I've done in the past, what has prepared me best for workshops and teaching.

And I said, the acting, definitely, you know, the stagecraft because stuff's in books, stuff's on YouTube now with I stuff is everywhere. You know, you can you can, you know, gain information any way you but the communication of information, which is the real crux, is where you really get the people's hearts.

That's the communication skill. And I think kind of acting and improv and that sort of training is the best, for learning how to communicate deeply. I love that, in fact, I was seeking that very thing as well.

And then also, it also struck me that the acting and creative part of you is really enables you to get in touch with a deep, holistic part of the, you know, the unconscious mind and really, you know, because you're the creative side.

So it's been quite, quite an interesting to I don't see it as radically different. I see it as a beautiful transition. Very good point. I mean, if you look at the earliest actors were actually shamans.

You know, if you look at early morning ritual, it was pretending to be pretending it was embodying or acting like the animal spirits. So you would take on the form of the animal spirit.

And this is how you. Oh, they were channeling the animal. Yeah, they were channeling. But what is channeling if you look at is they are really top actors.

They're essentially channeling the experience of the person of the role that they're playing. And the really great actors, I believe, are literally channeling, the character of the story.

So, yeah, the only a shamans were actors, essentially. So I think, just as you say, I don't think there's a divide here. I think the kind of creative arts, the creative arts and the spiritual arts are very, very close.

And if you look at how much creativity there is in spiritual practice, I mean, both were Catholic Mass. It's a wonderful theatrical performance, just like the Buddhist idea.

And, you know, so you have this thing about embodiment, which I think is, is, yeah, much closer than we might think. I love that. I'm so glad you brought that up.

The trolley to explain food to the audience, what lucid dreaming is and how you have made it so practical. And then I'd love to make sure you got you paid for your recent research, because you actually have done some incredible researches.

Did you reference it? I'd love to then transition over to talking about your work with PTSD and how that works.

What Lucid Dreaming Is

But let's start with what is lucid dreaming and how can maybe how can people start doing it? So a lucid dream is a dream where you know that you're dreaming as the dream is happening.

So if you ever had an experience where you're sound asleep, you're dreaming away. But in the dream you thought, oh wow, I'm in a dream right now and I can choose what to do.

I can fly or I can change the narrative, or I can choose to wake myself up, whatever it might be. That's a lucid dream. The moment you're in a dream and know that you're dreaming and then can direct the dream at will, that's lucid dreaming.

Now, many people listening might have thought I've had that experience already, but for those who haven't, I would say, have you ever had a nightmare?

Where in the nightmare you've gone, I go to wake up. I've got to wake up if you have. That was also a lucid dream, because the moment you acknowledge there was a place to wake up to, you had indirectly acknowledge that you were asleep, that you were in a dream.

So maybe the first little takeaway I'd give people is if you are ever lucky enough. And I say that not flippantly, I say that with from my heart. If you're ever lucky enough to become lucid and aware within a nightmare, don't wait to self-harm.

Because every time you wake up from a nightmare, it's like a therapy session cut short unnecessarily. That nightmare has to replay not because you're being punished, but because that internal therapy session has been cut short.

It needs to be completed. And this is why we have recurring nightmares for the people who might be experiencing nightmares. If you are ever lucid within one, try and stay in it.

But essentially, a lucid dream is any dream where you know that you're dreaming as you're dreaming and then can choose to direct the dream, it will. That's incredible.

I was actually thinking about that because I had one patient of mine and I was still practicing, and that patient used to constantly have dreams and nightmares, and they were so bad that they would they would put the alarm on to wake them up and that would at all end.

And yes, I was going all night long. So besides that disrupting sleeping, you know, and everyone who knows how important sleep is, you can imagine how that disrupted.

But not me. It's just never went away until the issue was actually faced. So that's such a good point that you raise. Yeah. And of course, the nightmares will end either when the nightmare is resolved through the dream state or the issue that has led to the nightmares resolved in the waking state.

So it doesn't have to be resolved through through dreaming, through lucid dreaming. But until it is resolved, those nightmares will keep coming back. So yeah, I can totally see why that patient thought that was the best thing to wake them from a nightmare.

But no wonder the nightmare kept recurring. Exactly was not until it was faced and dealt with that it actually started making the time, sort of making the transition to Charlie to to help someone understand it is another.

It is a point that you made when I very first heard you, and I thought that was fantastic to help me understand experience, and you said, you can always know as well.

You said already sorry took. You said one thing already. If you feel, oh, I've got to wake myself up. It's really indication of a lucid dream. The second thing is if you dream of someone who's alive in your dream, but you know that they've actually passed.

Out of this bedroom sign. Yeah. So if you're in this and you see a dead relative, then that can be a great indication that you're definitely dreaming.

And in fact, a lot of people that first lucid dreams will be that I'll say, how did you know that you were dreaming that say, well, I was in the dream. My dead grandmother appeared.

I thought, wow, well, she died many years ago, so I must be dreaming. And of course, that actually gives you a very interesting experience. Not only are you now conscious in the unconscious mind, but you also have an opportunity to dialog with that dead relative.

And here comes a, belief system thing. Some people believe they're actually connected with their dead relative. In the dream, I tend to say, well, even if it's not actually that you're connecting with that spirit in a dream, you're connecting with the memory association you have with them.

And actually you can still do some very powerful grief integration work through working with dead relatives and lucid dreams, regardless of whether they're a projection of your own mind or actually the spirit.

Who knows. Who we. Yeah, we don't know. So. So can you. Good. Could you give an example of that? I know that's quite a challenging question and a big question to ask, and I don't expect you to answer fully, but I know this has triggered something for people.

How would you do something like that? How would you do grief integration work? If you think of someone in a nightmare or in a dream, it could be a dream or a nightmare.

Could be one of the two. Very cool questions. In fact, in. I've got a second edition of my first book coming out soon. It's like a ten year anniversary.

Second edition, and one of the chapters in oh section that's new is working with grief through lucid dreaming. So yes, let's absolutely look at that. Let's say that you have lost somebody and before they went, you were unable to have a conversation needs you had you know, there's things that need to be said which weren't said or there was some sort of letting go process that you haven't been able to do in the same way as you might work with a waking state therapist who might do something like chair therapy, where they get you to imagine that you're dead.

Loved one is sitting on a chair and you would say everything you need to say. Then you might step into that chair. Embody it. Allowed dead loved one. Imagine that you are them and then respond back and go back and forth until there's nothing left to be said.

In the lucid dream. You can do a very similar thing. Now let's say that the lucid dream, just for the sake of argument, is all just a projection of your mind.

Let's say that if I dream of my dad, mum, it's not really my dad, mom. It's just my projection of my dad. Mum.

Dream Signs and Learning to Lucid Dream

So much of our waking state relationships are based on projection that if we meet simply a projection of a dead loved one in lucid dream, there's still a lot of powerful integration.

What we can do. Because of course, so much of our experience of how they made us feel and anything that needs to be said or any letting go is based on projection anyway.

So I'd say let's not get tied up on whether they're real or not. It doesn't matter. You can still do really powerful work. Let's say there was a conversation that needed to be had and you become lucid in a space with a dead relative.

You can have that conversation and it will feel so real. This is a big thing about lucid dreaming. It's, for many people, an experience of hyperreality.

You expect it to be like really dreamlike, like they show in a Hollywood movies when they show a dream sequence and it goes like soft focus and kind of, you know, the dry ice and stuff like that.

Oh, dream, lucid dream is not like a lucid dream is like, bam, full HD high definition. So it's very, very realistic. So if you can meet a dead loved one in a lucid dream or feel very, very real, in fact, it doesn't only feel real neurologically, it is experienced as real.

And this is the real crux of all lucid dream healing and integration. Once you become lucid, the prefrontal cortex, which is on and as far as the brain is concerned, prefrontal cortex activation is associated with wakefulness. Being awake.

So once you become lucid, although your mind knows you're dreaming, of course, that's that totally. Your brain thinks you're awake and the brain will start laying down neural pathways in a lucid dream in exactly the same way it does when you are awake.

So if you're in the lucid dream and you have a powerful conversation with the dead loved one where you say what needs to be said or you finally let them go, you have a hug or you experience, you know, the love that you never felt from them.

As far as the brain is concerned, you didn't dream about that. You actually did that. As far as the brain concerned, you actually connected with that person and you had that experience. You said what needed to be said.

They responded to you. You had that embrace you. You let them go. And the next day, the hippocampus, the part of the brain that takes short term, the long term memory will replace that will take the memory from the lucid dream and file it in the brain in a waking state.

Memory. It won't say like this is a dream memory. Say this is a waking state memory. And we believe this is one of the biological underpinnings of how lucid dreaming can be such a powerful trauma integration tool.

Because if you integrate a trauma in the lucid dream, the brain doesn't think you dreamt about, the brain thinks you actually did it, and will restore or replace that memory in favor of the old traumatic memory.

So the same with a grieving loved one, you know? And I had this with my mom and with my Buddhist teacher, who both died within a few months of each other last year.

And for both of them after lucid dreams. And I remember involved with Rob, Robin and I became lucid and he was there teaching and I was I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming.

And he was not like he was like on a chair. How he used to teach, like looking down. And there were loads of people sitting at his feet, literally kind of at the feet.

And I became lucid. And the first thing I said is, Rob, Rob one more teach and give me one more teaching. What's the final teaching? And he looked at me and he said, the end is strange because this word doesn't exist.

But this is what he said. He said the afraid essence of kindness. And I went, the essence of kindness and yes, kindness and kindness. Kindness is the final teaching.

He meant kindness, charming kindness. Wow. And I don't know if it was really him or just just my projection of him, but I know that I had an experience where my teacher, whether it was my inner teacher or the actual external teacher in spirit form, I don't know if I believe that myself gave me this final teaching that kindness is the most important thing.

And that's such an important teaching and so true. And I go in to try and embody it. I don't know if it was really him or not, but I know that I woke up and I felt that I had received that final teaching, that I could let him go, that there was no more kind of grasping at the teacher who's left me.

There was a sense of, no, the teachers moved on, and he's given me the final teaching. And now maybe my job is to embody that. That's beautiful. Well, I love what you're saying. And obviously the neuroscientists.

I totally agree with that. The the loves, the fact that, well, it's just amazing how it's with our mind. We change the brain, so why not? When we sleeping it makes so much sense.

And it's so it you explained so beautifully. And I want to reiterate that people get what you said ha in your brain because your frontal cortex does not switch on when you're asleep.

So when you go into a lucid dream or you're having a vision or something like that, your frontal cortex does, and you, because your mind is telling it to do that.

And then during the day, as you said, the hippocampus transitions and maybe from short to long term, and then it builds it into the networks, that is then experience.

But because the brain just does what the mind tells it to do, so the mind is telling it to do that. It doesn't distinguish. So then that becomes the pathway the mind brain body network pathway that drives us.

I'm just have I summarized correctly what. You so much better than I could I know no. You you did such a great job there. So I love that. And then I mean, it just makes me think of something that you and I will explore.

I know in another discussion, but I'm just going to throw it out there. And that is kind of like near-death experiences, because what you describe with a lucid dream is so similar to what people experience.

So that's that is going to be another conversation I'd love to dive into with you at some point, for sure. At that very, very interesting. But for now, let's talk about you.

What are the things you do? So what is help people to understand the signs of lucid dreaming? And you've mentioned two already. So we could maybe talk about those.

And then let's talk a bit more about PTSD and this research that you did, which is phenomenal. Yeah. So let's look a bit at the that, you know, how maybe how people can start having lucid dreams.

Yes. Lovely. The first thing they need to do is to be remember and recalling their dreams. And the first thing I'll say about that is that everybody dreams, everybody dreams.

Every night if you. Sleep late. You dream. But there's a large sector of society. You think I don't dream? I mean, every month I'll meet some people, but I don't dream.

And what they mean is, I don't remember my dreams.

Lucid Dreaming for Grief and Trauma Integration

But everybody's dreaming. But first of all, we need to set our intention to remember and by setting that intention before we go to sleep, actually, most people find that if they fall asleep over and over and hypnagogic because they fall asleep saying something like, tonight, I remember my dreams.

I had excellent dream recall over and over again as they fall asleep. It acts like a self hypnotic suggestion, and most people find they can remember their dreams within 1 or 2 nights.

Why do we need to remember our dreams? Because unless you know what you're dreaming about, it's going to be hard to find those signs that indicate that you're dreaming.

Let's say after about a week of remembering your dreams and writing them down, you look back over your dream diary and you think, are are there any patterns that are emerging?

Oh yeah, I often dream about being back at school. I often dream about my dead relatives, or I often dream about the beach we used to go to as as a child or something like that.

Once you recognize these things that only happen in your dreams, you create a subconscious trigger or the lucidity trigger, which then associate those things with dreaming.

So now suddenly the beach from childhood equals dreaming. Dead relatives, equal dreaming. Being back at school equals dreaming. The next week, if you're lucky, you might have a similar dream where you dream you're back at school.

But this time, when you're back at school, something's triggered in the brain. And it's a very strange experience. When you first have it, you'll be back in a dream that you're back at school with your dead relative, and you have this feeling of deja vu, a sense of like, times I'm supposed to remember something, and then you remember in wait.

This is one of my dream signs. An indicator that I could be dreaming that lucid, if you trigger, is becoming triggered within the unconscious mind. As you're dreaming. And then you have the realization.

Oh, wait, my dead grandmother, that must mean I'm dreaming. And this process of recognizing the dream signs, setting the trigger and the trigger being activated is one of the fundamental steps towards lucid dreaming.

And actually, most people, if they've had a spontaneous, lucid dream, if you ask them, how did you know you were dreaming? They will take you through that, that process.

They'll say, oh, well, I was in the dream. I saw something that was completely impossible, or I was back in a place where I no longer live and I feel I don't need there anymore. I'm dreaming.

So this process occurs. But it's all dependent on remembering your dreams. Because until you get to know what you're dreaming about, you're unlikely to know that you're dreaming from within the dream.

You are. So good. That's amazing. Okay, so let's talk about PTSD. And you did, because that's such a I mean, it's, you know, it's a description of behavior patterns.

It's not an illness per se, but it can disrupt people to the point. Yeah, it can disrupt people's life to the point where they are destroyed, but they're not mentally ill.

They just are in a bind, a very disordered mind state, because of an experience that has really disrupted the networks and my memory networks. So can you just and phenomenal research on that.

Can you just give us a little bit of background of what you've done, these published papers on your work and then a little bit of maybe what what could people how can people understand the simplistically and maybe start applying it in their life and till they get the hands on you on your work.

Go off as well? I'd like to thank you for that description of PTSD. I have a big problem with this word disorder. I really think I should mention display.

Exactly and. Display. I agree ordered about, you know, the body expressing itself. Oh yeah, it's completely normal. Like having nightmares. All of the event.

It's completely normal. Panic attacks, flashbacks. These things aren't necessarily something to be medicated away. Exactly. But going to to allow, you know, I mean, the.

Classic. Simplistic idea that we have. But, you know, this the classic one from Peter Levine, I think popularized it of the the antelope shaking after they've been chased by a lion.

And we see someone after a traffic accident or something like that sitting by the side of the car, and they're shaking and we're going, calm down, stop shaking, stop shaking, stop crying, stop crying.

And in fact, we kind of should be saying yes. Except get it out. Yeah. And yet allow those tears to flow, you know, allow it to release. We certainly.

What's the way we look at it. And I think even on technology that post-traumatic stress disorder is symbolic of that. What's approach. Exactly? Biomedical reductionistic, neuro reductionist approach.

Okay. That's that's a whole other talk. We could go into that. I'm so glad that I wrote about this. It's actually quite rare to find someone who really thinks like this.

Thank you. Okay, so that's. All my work, Charlie. That's my entire focus of my work is changing this whole philosophy. So we get to do this for everyone to know.

This is going to be a very in-depth podcast. After this, we will go into depth on the on these topics with, with Charlie. So just just so that people know how great Charlie.

Okay. So this research so about 7 or 8 years ago, I started eight years ago I started working with military veterans. It was not an intention of mine, but a military veteran called Keith McKenzie came into one of my lucid dreaming retreats.

Had he was suffering with nightmares and PTSD, he had a big break through his nightmares, stopped, and then he sent me this email saying that I. I healed more of my PTSD in that four day lucid dreaming or three years of therapy.

And I remember awesome straight after some, you know, back and for saying, homie, do you mind if I put that quote on my website because it's such a good, you know, quote? He said, yeah.

So it was on my website for a few years, but we kind of lost contact. And then a few years later he got back in contact and he said I'd become, a meditation teacher and a Buddhist chaplain within the armed forces, I don't know.

Oh, he said, a Buddhist chaplain. The armed forces sounds like a vegetarian butcher, doesn't it? And it's such a good description. Fine. But yeah, he said British armed forces have loads of Buddhist, especially because of the Gurkhas, you know, had a big Nepali regiment.

The Lees or the majority might be, might be Buddhist or Hindu. So actually there was a lot of Buddhism in the British Army. So he was running these retreats for other veterans who were working with nightmares and PTSD.

And what I commonly use, some of the lucid dreaming stuff that worked for him with them, I agreed, but I wasn't sure it worked for some people, not all.

We then refined it. We added in breathwork exercises, qigong body work combined with the lucid dreaming. We were on to something that seemed to work very well within a few years.

So I started writing these. These workshops online and in person with military veterans for the next few years. Then a couple of years ago, I got an email from a guy called Doctor Garrett Jones from the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California who'd heard about these workshops.

And he said, I've heard about these workshops, and I've had you got really good results with people's nightmares. I hear that most of them, they're nightmares, just stop after they do this training.

Think, yeah, maybe. Yeah, the majority, not the vast majority, but many do. He then said, do you think lucid dreaming could be used to treat PTSD? Not just nightmares, but actually the waking state symptoms of PTSD like panic attacks, flashbacks, depression, anxiety.

And I said I, I actually don't know. I haven't seen any research on it. Possibly. I know that nightmares are such a big part of PTSD that if you can heal them, that might have a big effect, but who knows?

And I really didn't know. A couple of years of applying for funding and creating this, this project we began and we did a one week scientific study with 55 people, some of whom were veterans.

But in the end, actually the majority were not veterans, the majority were civilians with PTSD. Actually, a lot of people with complex childhood sex abuse, trauma, as well as veterans as well as people had been in car crashes, you know, really wide range 55 people, all of whom had chronic PTSD.

So to get on to the study, you had to have whites, you had to have chronic PTSD or treatment resistant PTSD. So 100% of the people had chronic PTSD. At the beginning of the week, we took that PTSD score using the DSM five model.

I mean, it's quite arbitrary. It's a list of dozens, but you get this level of essentially how traumatized somebody is. We took that up beginning the week.

Then we had a one week, essentially lucid dreaming workshop where were with me two full days and then two hours a day for the next week, teaching them how to lucid dream because it is a learnable skill, and specifically how to use their lucid dreams to integrate their trauma.

So this could be becoming lucid either some of them became lucid in their recurring nightmares that they were back in Iraq, for example.

PTSD Research and Study Results

And they were able to get lucid and rather than trying to wake themselves up, they reminded themselves, oh, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. I'm not really back from Iraq.

So what have I never tried to do before? So some of them would change the ending of the dream. So suddenly they're in a firefight in Iraq, but they fly off to safety.

Or the woman who was in a car crash she made, she actually made the car that swerved so it didn't hit the wall. So they could kind of change the endings.

And we had quite good results with that. But even better results were the people who became lucid in their authoring nightmares, and then actually allowed the nightmare to play out, knowing that there was nothing that could hurt them.

So actually, the ones who just was the firefight got my bodies asleep in bed. This is just a hallucination. This is just a trauma replay. I'm fine. Nothing can hurt me here.

And when they did that, some people like the bullets turned to flowers and stuff. Like really amazing. Wow. Some woman. There was one woman who. The main symptom of her PTSD with chronic pain, physical pain.

And she became lucid. And in the dream she called that pain body. I release you, pain body, I release you. And when she did this, this big lozenge, like a throat lozenge, a golden throat lodged in the pit in the dream.

Very interesting symbol of healing. And this throat lozenge starts radiating golden light inside. She wakes up kind of, you know, shaking. So very different. Dreamer thoughts.

But it is a dream. And then in that lucid dream, they would engage some sort of healing related to their trauma. As, as I've just explained. And at the end of the week, we took that PTSD score again to see had their trauma level set, the same increase decreased when they first got the results.

They actually the scientists thought there was a problem with the data collection because the scores had dropped so low. So they double checked, they triple checked, and then they said, well, let's do let's do a one month follow up, because maybe it's just a strange flash in the pan, maybe something.

And maybe the day they, they stop seeing you every day, we'll stop working together. It'll fool us. So we did a one month follow up, and the vet school would actually continue to say that low and actually got one point lower on average. Wow.

So what were the results? We found that 85% of the 55 people in the group, by the end of the week, that PTSD score had dropped so low it was beneath the PTSD threshold, meaning they were no longer actually classed as having clinical PTSD.

Incredible. Yeah. It was it was really I mean, you know, 15 years I've been doing this and being aware of the research and I have been part of other scientific studies before, but we've never seen results like this.

And this is the paper that was published in APA psych. Nate. The one with. Yeah. It's in Trauma and unlocked rheumatology. June 2023. Yes. And I headed up and then it disappeared.

Okay. If we inside decreased inside the workshop. I'll put that. I'll let people or people can find it. They can actually go to your website and they can find it and they can read it.

It's it's fascinating. And it was done. It was you went to you and I was looking for your name there. See, you weren't an author. But even so that that in that particular one in.

My name off because I have a vested interest in lucid dreaming because I write books about it. So now I said keep my name off it, because if my. If that's what I thought you'd done, I thought you'd done that.

I want people to know that you're associated with. Did the same on the control study. Because actually, since then we've done a 100 person randomized control using exactly the same protocol, and we read the results that hasn't actually been published yet, but we did it again since then.

Yeah. Maybe we can be sure that this seems to be replicable. That's fantastic. With 100 people to almost double and then did you also do the one month follow up?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Okay. So this is evidence based. What I want to stress with people that this is evidence base had been people have dreaming.

I think this is maybe something we read. This is not this is hardcore scientific stuff. The work that I do on an unconscious mind. This is what we're talking about here with this lucid dream.

It's very real. And this is very, very helpful. We don't have to constantly revert to the biomedical model for, you know, medicate to be medicating it.

Suppressing symptoms are not going to either help you with it right. Yes. Yeah I but I just just to get back up on that. We had when the pilot study came out we actually struggled to get it published.

People weren't saying the results are incorrect. They were saying, wow, great results, but not for us. Once we completed the 100 person randomized control and we replicated on the control condition, then suddenly everyone was much more, open to publishing.

So I think so. Do we think there's kind of a conspiracy within the, scientific, scientific literature? Well, I don't think it's that. I think it's just people don't want to risk their job or their livelihood on something that might not be replicable.

But once you do exactly, then people are more likely to publish it. But yeah, it is there. I mean, without doubt, both the pilot and the follow up 100 person randomized control show that Lucid Dream, without doubt, is one of the most powerful interventions.

Post-traumatic stress disorder currently available like that. And people have stopped having flashbacks, stopped having nightmares. We had the oldest one, the oldest person on the first study was a Vietnam veteran who had been working PTSD for decades now, since the end of the Vietnam War, and he was one of the people who had the big breakthrough as well.

It's not in it's non-medical, it's noninvasive, it's non-addictive, it's free, and you literally do it in your sleep. I mean, it's fun too. I get why people might be skeptical.

It sounds ridiculous, right? But the caveat this it does take some effort. You know, things like therapy, medication that would give much would be much easier, I'm sure.

Much easier. You know, the people had to give a whole week of their lives training ten hours a day for two days and then four hours a day, three hours a day for the next few days.

You know, they they gave a full week of their life, but they gave a week of their life, two decades of their life. And some of these people have been working with PTSD for many, many years.

So lucid dreaming, it does take some effort and it does need to be tool. And there there is stuff to do. But if you follow the process and you do it, it can have life changing results, really life changing results.

That is so key. Life changing results. It's evidence based. The studies are out there, it's replicable. And what you talking three three words that I tell people all the time in my work is embrace process and reconceptualize.

And, you know, I believe that really applies to what you're doing with lucid dreaming. And and it just makes so much sense. We as humans are not just this physical brain, which is what there has been so much emphasis in the last few years, and what I love about your work and the help that you give people with mental health is, you know, go beyond just the what you can see.

There is this whole realm that's available to us of dreaming. And as you say, we all dream and is something that we can use. This is something that we can use. And as you said, it's free.

You could do your sleep. I mean, I love how you pointed that out. The Charlie in wrapping up two things. What would you say to people where they are listening now that have been very, I think, excite not not I think I know excited about what you've just said and see potential because you described in your study that this wasn't just for Bates.

This was all of us have got trauma to some extent. We all live with day to day struggles. We all live with a bad habits that we've developed, with coping strategies that have become bad habits.

We all have levels of trauma to trauma. It's what's happened to us. We there's been a lot of concept creep around. The word trauma, but you and I both know.

But the, you know, genuine traumas, the sexual abuse that the war vets and so on, all of us are living with a certain combination of those and these isn't a human that is exempt from not battling daily with stuff and the challenges of life and all that kind of stuff.

What would you say to to the audience about this and how lucid dreaming could how could you wrap it up and sort of give them a sort of nice summary pearls of wisdom to help them through life?

I think I would say learn to lucid dream. It is a learnable skill. So buy a book, go on to YouTube, you know, do an online course, come to a workshop.

Doesn't have to be mine. But you know, teach yourself how to lucid dream.

Practical Takeaways and Closing

Because if you do, you teach yourself a skill that can radically alter the way you perceive the world and the way your brain functions. And this is not we've look beautiful.

Lucid dreaming can be used to increase athletic performance. They found that if you go into the lucid dream and do squats, you can do more squats in the waking state.

I mean, it's just crazy. Wow. The body can change your brain. Anything you can treat through hypnotherapy, you can treat through lucid dreaming, but in a similar way as you gain, you know, conscious access to the subconscious and lucid dream, you're gaining conscious access to the depths of the unconscious.

And I think one of the reasons why the veterans community is, is, find lucid dreams are appealing is it's a solo activity. You know, you're in there by yourself.

There's no medication to rely on or therapists to rely on. You are doing it yourself. And I think it's a deeply empowering process, something. And I can't think of many, actually, apart from the meditative arts, where you are working in a solo way to really heal yourself of those deepest levels.

So learn to lucid dream and there's loads of free resources. I'd go, you know, there's no hard sell on my books, but there's loads of free stuff out there on YouTube.

There's loads of stuff you can find. It's more applicable now than it was, you know, 2000 years ago in ancient Tibet. It's like this is nowadays we all say we don't have time for our spiritual practice, we don't have time for self-development, but we sleep, right.

So if there was a really powerful self-development tool you could do while you were literally sleeping, I think that's even more applicable to 2020 more than it was in, you know, in the Middle Ages.

So really harness this. Anybody can do it. All children naturally lucid dream. We know that from several studies. So everybody listening to this probably has had multiple lucid dreams is a child.

They just don't remember. So it's not really even something you need to learn, something you need to remember how to do again. Oh, and it's really fun.

I should say that this is it's a really powerful spiritual practice. Integration of trauma. Amazing. Reprograming your brain. But also it's like the most fun you can have in your pajamas.

It makes going to bed exciting. People find that their sleep gets better because they going to bed earlier so they can get more dream time to do more lucid dreaming.

So there's a whole range of kind of indirect health benefits as well. And that's so beautiful. I think your next book should be called How to Have Fun in Your Pajamas.

You know, there's so many different little connotations around that. So that'll be a bestseller. Oh, that'll be a bestseller for sure. Oh, Charlie, where can people get Ahold of you to get all of your books and get on your website and so on.

So I'd make a very bad spy. You can find me everywhere. Just put my name Charlie, into Google and find my website, Charlie Moore, Charlie Molly on Instagram and Facebook and all of that.

Yeah, you'll find me. And your books are amazing and you have a course on mine as well, like mine. And I have to tell you a little secret that I've been using my neuro cycle system, which we've spoken a little bit about, but I need to tell you more, which is basically how the mind changes the brain.

It's neuroplasticity in action, and I've been using that to help me lucid dream more effectively, to try and keep myself ready for it, to save my attention.

So that was just another little thing I wanted to throw in there. I want to do take some. It's been amazing. That we need for the workshop. We intend to do. Exactly, exactly.

So it's it's so much fun. Charlie, thank you for your time, your wisdom, your inputs. It's been amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Charlie Morley

Harness The Power Of Dreams For Mental Well-Being