Ed Kellogg is a guest for the live, interactive video course,
“Awakening Within the Dream: Lucid Dreaming as a Path to Healing,
Wholeness, and Spiritual Realization.” Robert Waggoner hosts this 5-part Evolver webinar, which covers the
full range of this ancient art. Each session will feature a discussion
on a central aspect of lucid dreaming with one or two leading experts.
In addition to Ed, the other guests will be Michael Katz and Ryan Hurd.
Healing of Self
In 1989 I reported on the dramatic improvement of a severely infected tonsil following my own lucid dream healing experience (1). Although others had reported using lucid dreaming as an effective psychotherapeutic tool (2), to my knowledge at that time no one had previously reported using it as a possible means of inducing physical healing directly.
Since then I have used lucid dream healing successfully on pain, infections, inflammation, and even to promote the reduction of scar tissue. Others have also experienced positive outcomes following LDHEs as applied to a variety of conditions, ranging from the overnight disappearance of painful inflammation due to chronic bursitis, to the overnight elimination of a herpes sore, to the elimination of a chronic (over twenty years) case of bronchitis (3,4).
Although anecdotal evidence has only limited value within a scientific paradigm, it can point the way towards more rigorous investigations by bringing to light factors of potential importance. In order to augment the usefulness of such data and to reveal variables of possible significance, the author designed a questionnaire aimed at detecting and isolating the factors involved (5).
Some conditions seem to respond promptly and completely to lucid dream healing; others do not. A successful healing may depend upon such variables as the targeted condition, the technique used, the apparent success of the healing during the dream, or upon some personal idiosyncrasy of the individual involved.
Healing of Others
Far more astonishing than the healing of a lucid dreamer’s own physical body, which one can plausibly explain through a psychosomatic model, on a few occasions lucid dreamers have observed physical improvements in other individuals following the healing of that person’s counterpart in a lucid dream. Such reports lend credence to the idea that dream reality can have a consensual and intersubjective basis, an idea that the phenomenon of mutual dreaming (where two or more individuals have similar dreams about each other at the same time) also supports (6,7).
Double-blind controlled studies demonstrating effects of other kinds of distant healing, such as prayer, also provide support for the possibility of a distant healing effect (8).
Potential for Healing
The limits of lucid dream healing remain undetermined, but the remarkable body changes documented in multiple personality cases and in deep hypnosis may apply, as in each instance mental changes can apparently lead to substantial physiological changes in a matter of minutes. Although sharing the same body, different personalities often have different allergies, accelerated healing rates, and eyeglass prescriptions. Dr. Bennett Braun reported on the case of one woman who has diabetes in one personality but not in another (9).
Dramatic changes can take place within minutes, and point to the amazing and accelerated healing effects potentially available to all of us, through mental changes-of-state leading to physiological changes-of-state in other modalities (10).
In the future, controlled studies may eventually confirm the effects seen in these anecdotal reports, and lucid dream healing may become one of the more accepted and practical applications of lucid dream research. But for the present, we will just have to let the dreams speak for themselves.
EXAMPLES OF LUCID DREAM HEALING EXPERIENCES
Healing of Self
(12/10/94) … realizing I dream, I decide to try healing my big toe after trying unsuccessfully to use dream computers. I try a healing chant with no effect. My toe looks bluish-purple, some red. I chant again while massaging my toe, seems to help.”
(12/20/94) In a sort of college dormitory, I realize that I dream. It looks a bit like Duke University at night. I decide to go flying but remember I wanted to heal my toe. I use the energy beam chant, which works really well, blue and gold sparks emanate from my hand onto my toe – terrific visual effect – my toe absorbs them. I go downstairs to go flying …”
COMMENT: On September 23, 1994 I had severely injured my big toe in an accident, dislocating it and splitting the upper skin of the toe from side to side in the process. After relocating the toe myself, I received 4 stitches but no other medical treatment. In December the joint began to ache, and I would feel twinges of pain 10 – 20 times per day. After the first lucid dream healing on 12/10 aching in the toe decreased 99%. I only felt one slight twinge from that time until Jan 1, 1995. I felt another twinge on Jan 11 after running for twenty minutes, but since then the toe has remained healthy and pain free.
AH: “( 4/14/96) I walk through what appears to be a museum, it seems dark, like the lights are very low. (I see) small lamps attached to the walls, illuminating alcoves where religious objects sit on display. I weave in and out of the chamber in the flickering light. I realize that while I have visited museums like this, it appears more like a movie set. Something about the light seems strange. I think of my feet because they are hurting me as I walk. So I sit down on a cube, like a wooden cube. Then I remember I can heal my feet (in a lucid dream). At that moment, all of the surrounding room drops away to a black void where I sit. I recall using a ball of white light as I had been visualizing (before going to sleep). Sure enough it appears around my hands. I put my hands on my feet – first, the right one. The light enters the foot and glows golden from within. I hold it there for several seconds and then move to the left foot. Same process. I put both feet down and realize I had done what I had incubated. It seems amazing and terrifying. That feeling is so intense I woke up. The feeling makes my heart pound.”
COMMENT: The night before AH could hardly walk because of the pain from 6 plantar warts, 3 on each foot, each about one centimeter across. Before retiring she had checked their appearance, and did a visualization for healing (as on previous nights), but this time also a lucid dream incubation. In the morning she felt surprised when she felt absolutely no pain on walking. She checked on the warts – they had all uniformly turned black overnight. All of them fell off within ten days.
TLP: “(12/5/96) I found myself in the “green room.” I was in a standing position, leaning up against something that felt warm, buzzing, electric. It felt very good and I completely relaxed. I then felt the presence of three guides. . . . (One guide) told me that I was not caring for my physical body the way I should of late, and that combined with my emotional state, had left me vulnerable to sickness. I remembered then that I had gone to bed with a terrible sore throat and a fever (101F). They began working on my energy field, or aura. I could see crystalline energy emanating from the mid section of their bodies. This was happening simultaneously. I felt the energy hit me and I felt as if I was caught in an electrical storm. . . . I then felt something pop in my head, and it was as if very warm liquid oozed down my body and I felt as if I were going to melt into the ground. . . . Then I felt energy being directed into the throat area, into my third eye area, and into the solar plexus area. I completely “let go” at this time and merged with the sensations that I was feeling. The next thing I knew was (the guide) saying to me, “sleep now, rest in your comfortable darkness. You will awaken well.”
COMMENT: Indeed TLP did not remember a thing until she awoke next morning. She immediately got up and looked at her throat in the mirror. All of the dark streaks of red were gone – her throat felt completely normal. Her fever had gone and her temperature now measured almost 3 degrees below normal, a drop of 5 degrees from her temperature the night before. Although she has not had a major illness, TLP reports having had a number of dramatic results from lucid dream healings on illnesses such as colds, flu, back problems, and intense muscle stiffness.
Healing of Another
EWK: “(3/4/92) “I try to fly to D, end up in a cloud, visualize their house and boom, end up on their front porch. They look much younger in Dream Reality; G looks in her thirties, D in his forties. . . . Inside I try a healing of D [who had severe emphysema, probably complicated by an infection]. D keeps interrupting, asking me what I do. I tell him I’ll explain later in Waking Physical Reality. I use a healing chant (Now let the healing energy shine / To cure the lungs with power divine). A green energy-liquid, like dark chlorophyll comes out of my fingers into D’s chest, where it seeps out again. I leave him to recover, but when I return I find him pale and frail in a wheeelchair. I create a white light chi energy ball with rotating hand motions and try to charge him up. This technique really impresses the guests, but D, desperate for energy, keeps touching me, and grounding the energy into himself before I can build up a good charge.”
COMMENT: Within a day or so following this lucid dream healing, D. showed a remarkable improvement. For the previous six months he had needed oxygen therapy twenty-four hours a day. Afterwards, he required oxygen supplementation only while sleeping at night, and his supplemental oxygen intake decreased from 3 liters per day to 2 liters per day. He continued in this improved state for over 5 years. In July of 1997 he had to return to using oxygen therapy 24 hours a day.
References
1. Kellogg III, E. W. (1989). “A Personal Experience in Lucid Dream Healing”. The Lucidity Letter, 8(1), 6-7
2. Tholey, P., (1988). “A Model for Lucidity Training as a Means of Self-healing and Psychological Growth”. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, J. Gackenback and S. LaBerge (Eds.), New York, Plenum Press
3. Kellogg III, E. W. (1989). “Mapping Territories: A Phenomenology of Lucid Dream Reality”. The Lucidity Letter, 8(2), 81-97
4. Kellogg III, E. W. (1997). “Lucid Dream Healing”. Unpublished manuscript available from author.
5. Kellogg III, E. W. (1992). “Lucid Dream Healing”, presented as a Research Brief at the ASD conference in Santa Cruz in 1992. Copies of the Lucid Dream Healing Questionnaire available from the author by request.
6. Kellogg III, E. W. (1997). A mutual lucid dream event. Dream Time, 14(2), 32-34
7. Magallón, L. L, (1997) Mutual dreaming: When Two or More people Share the Same Dream, New York, Simon and Schuster, Inc.
8. Targ, E, (1997) Evaluating distant healing: a research review. Altern Ther Health Med, 3(6):74-8
9. See the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 26(2), October, 1983 for a whole issue devoted to psychosomatic effects seen in multiple personality disorder.
10. Murphy, M.,(1992) The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature, Los Angeles, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
For more information on dream healing, please check out Mind-Body Healing through Dreamwork by Ed Kellogg, Ph.D. ©2007. Presented at IASD’s Sixth PsiberDreaming Conference, September 23 – October 7, 2007.
Image by munzz, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
