What do you do when you sleep?
I mean, obviously we lie there still
or so it appears our bodies are,
but where exactly is our mind?
I've been obsessed with this question.
What if sleep is a doorway to another world?
And what I'm talking about is a strange,
still not yet quite understood phenomenon
called lucid dreaming.
And while lucid dreaming 20 years ago might be
something that was more on the fringes of spirituality,
today it's becoming more and more talked about.
We've learned that many prominent artists,
inventors, creative people have been obsessed
with lucid dreaming
and if you attend massive Silicon Valley conferences
lucid dreaming
is often one of the hottest topics on the agenda.
I got into lucid dreaming because in 2019
I was in New York city and I attended a talk
by a guy called Charlie Morley.
It was a talk show hosted by Mia Lux
and there was Charlie on stage talking about
this weird phenomenon of lucid dreaming
and it puzzled me, it intrigued me.
He spoke about how he had trained himself
to wake up in his dreams, using a simple technique
involving his hands.
- But if you can spend your whole day,
every time something weird or strange or unexpected happens,
don't ignore it.
Just stop and go,
"Well, could this be a dream right now?"
Now I'm not nuts.
I know I'm not dreaming right now, but I'm creating a habit.
A habit of mine that whenever something weird happens,
I stop and I go, "Could I be dreaming right now?"
And then I look at my hand,
I might do a hand check, check my fingers and thumbs.
"Okay, I'm awake,"
because in the dream if you check your hands twice in a row,
often something changes.
You might get an extra finger.
Your hand might melt.
It's a long, it's a thing to do with a brain network
that doesn't get much blood flow
in the pre-lucid dream state
so you try and use that brain network, it kind of glitches.
It can't work detail patterns.
- So Charlie began waking up in his dreams
and going on incredible adventures.
Now these adventures were not just fantasy.
He did mention in this talk
how when he developed this ability as a teenager,
all he wanted to do in his dreams is skateboard
and hang out with women in bikinis.
But since then, Charlie has studied
with many prominent Buddhist monks
and he's taken lucid dreaming to the next level.
So I got intrigued by this.
I put Charlie on stage at Mindvalley University.
He blew the audience away
and so I decided to record a masterclass
with him on lucid dreaming.
Now here's the crazy thing.
The night I recorded the masterclass,
just from my hour to two hour conversation with Charlie
as we were recording something flipped in my head
and that night I had a powerful lucid dream.
In this dream, I had gained the abilities of Parkour.
I had this incredible flexible body
and I was just running across rooftops.
I woke up that day exhilarated
and at that point I'd having a bit of a lower back pain.
So I thought, you know Vishen let's do something about this.
I decided to go see my regular chiropractic
to see if he could do anything for my lower back.
So the day I had that lucid dream,
I went to see my chiro.
Problem was he wasn't in
and that's when something strange happened.
The receptionist said,
"Look, your regular chiro isn't in
but we have this Russian energy healer.
I'd love to have you do a session with him."
So I go meet this Russian energy healer
whom I've never worked with before
and he does all sorts of like weird things to my body.
End result is my back pain disappears.
I end up discovering and exploring this new modality
of healing and I become a little bit more flexible
and limber in my life.
But if it wasn't for that lucid dream,
I wouldn't have had that spark, that push to go see my chiro
on a specific day where he wasn't in
and coincidentally, I would end up being introduced
to an energy healer I needed to see.
All of that from a lucid dream
which begs a question are lucid dreams random
or are lucid dreams away for a subconscious
or a higher intelligence to communicate with us
and make us take better decisions in life?
To point us towards events
which are designed to enhance our experience of the world.
These are questions we're going to explore
and so I'm inviting you to join me on this masterclass
with Charlie Morley on the 4Ds of lucid dreaming.
I can't wait to see you there.