 All right, welcome back guys. I'm really excited to bring you in this episode, Ryan Hurd, the creator of Dream Studies and the Lucid Talisman, which is the coin that I've been promoting on my YouTube channel a few times, which is really cool, and a number of other things. So yeah, without further delay, welcome to you, Ryan Hurd. Hey, it's good to be here with you. Yeah, thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. So yeah, let's just get right into it. Tell us about yourself, introduce yourself. How did you get into lucid dreaming? Give us the introduction. Yeah, sure. So I consider myself an educator, first and foremost, I'm a lucid dreamer, lifelong lucid dreamer. I'm a dream researcher. I've written a few books, academic and more self-help guides, as well as ebooks. And I run dreamstudies.org. And I have, you know, that's been since 2007, that I've been dishing up dream research, consciousness studies, sort of whatever strikes my fancy in the moment, you know, over the years, the content has shifted and changed. And so that's been a really fun project over that last period of time. And yeah, that's really my dream, how I am involved in the dream community. I'm a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. I love that organization. And I, you know, I definitely, I cite it every time I get a chance because it's one of these places where I get to meet other dream colleagues, dream enthusiasts, researchers, you know, dream shaman, and the like. We all get together because it can be really isolating, you know, being a dreamer. And it's nice to get together and have colleagues and dream together. So that's a little bit about me. But yeah, as a dreamer, you know, we're all dream researchers. It's one thing that I really believe. We're all captains of our own ship, and we're all kind of exploring, you know, the frontier in that kind of sense, because each of us has our own inner worlds. And that's, that's really what I'd love to impress on people is that it hasn't all been done. And we really, there's so much more to discover about ourselves and about just the human condition as dreamers. Yeah. You know, and for myself, it started when I was very young. I had lots of intense hypnagogic experiences when I was six and seven years old. Well, it was wonderful. I would spiral into vortices of, you know, kaleidoscope colors as I fell asleep as a six year old. And that was my gateway into sleep. And then later, 13, 14 years old, I began having strong lucid dreams, as well as sleep paralysis, nightmares and out of body experiences, it all kind of came together, you know, it's sort of like that, maybe that part of the brain just sort of like booted up. And that vigilance, that self-awareness, and it all came together, the sort of the ecstasy and the terror. And it was very, it was sort of my inner light. And I thought I was, well, I thought it was the only one for a while until really for a couple of years until I met some adults who started talking about their dreams. I remember quite clearly being 14 years old and someone giving a talk to my class about, about having a dream diary, right? Keeping a dream journal and looking at, looking at your dreams over time and looking and finding your sort of personal mythology. And it was just so exciting to me that other people were doing this and doing this in a systematic fashion that I started my dream journal that night. And so I had been dream journaling ever since, since I was 14. Every morning. Wow. No, God, no. You've had some gaps. No, not every morning. You know, listen, there's times who has the time. There's so many dreams and I have to let so many of them go. And that's fine. But there's been periods of my life that it has been every day. And I was able to record as much as I could. And I, and I value those times for that information. But, you know, the dream recording has got to fit right holistically in with the life. And if we spend too much time recording our dreams, we get soggy. That's how I kind of experience it anyway. And I don't spend enough time living life. So there's always a balance. Yeah, it's quite funny. You know, when people just get started, they try everything they can to remember their dreams. And I just want to remember one dream. And then as you get better at it, you start remembering, you know, one to two pages of dreams, and then five pages. And you get to the point eventually where it's just so much that you, you know, you have to just leave some of it just to disappear. Or, you know, only remembering the best bits. Yes, it's a point of diminishing returns for sure. And I think that as we become more accustomed to our own individual dream lives, we can get an inner sense of the dreams that need to be, you know, honored, remembered, recorded, and replayed, you know, worked with. And, and whether they're, whether they're nightmares, or they just have some, some potency behind them, or they're just really strange or weird. And, and the ones that might have some kind of, you know, some kind of clue to our inner life. And so you get a sense for that over time. And then you can say, oh, you know, like I've had, for instance, the, you know, opening my locker dream 100 million times, I don't need to record it every time I'm in having a high school dream where I'm trying to do the combination for my locker. Been there, done that. You know, I'm sure that we could analyze it to, you know, to the sun comes up. But I also it's sort of, it's, you know, it vibrates at a certain level. And it's not necessarily how I'm going to spend my time in my waking life writing down these writing down that particular dream. Yeah. So you would look for something that's different to what you normally dream about if what you normally dream about is the same thing all the time. Well, it's a double-edged sword, right? Because especially as lucid dreamers, we like to look for repetitive dream imagery. Dream signs, yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah, dream signs. So that could be very, very helpful. But once you kind of have that baseline, yeah, you can kind of find those. But yeah, you know, there's a there's big dreams and there's little dreams. And we each of us sort of have an intuitive sense for what that is, I think. Yeah, I guess we sort of figure it out as we go along, don't we? Yeah, I mean, I don't I think when people say dreams are this or dreams are that, it misses the point because we we don't try to make a similar theory about about, you know, waking consciousness and the the dialogue, the monologues that we have or the images that we have in daydreams. We don't try to make a monolithic theory about what this is. So when we do that about dreams, it seems to me to be just sort of missing the point because dreams are, you know, it's dreaming mentation. It's like it's the creative mind going through sleep. And there's all kinds of phenomena and things that intersect. So dreams are not one thing. You know, that's why I really encourage people to just to have a playful attitude about it and explore. Yeah, and I think, yeah, specifically with lucid dreams, there's a lot we don't know. And even, you know, if we've been lucid dreaming for years or even decades, I feel like there's still things that our subconscious can do that will surprise us, you know, unexpected things or completely random tangents the dream can just go on. And yeah, I guess that's one of the things I really love about lucid dreaming, actually. Yeah, me too. Absolutely. I would agree. I, you know, in contrast to to sort of that that 101 culture of lucid dreaming that focuses on dream control and manipulation, for me, the power of lucid dreaming is the ability to create a sanctuary or a meeting space for the other elements of our psychic life. And that's spontaneous, you know, where spontaneous elements come to greet us. And that's what I love about lucidity is using my self-awareness to create these, yeah, to create like a clearing in the woods where then the creatures of the forest can come and meet me. Yeah, I think so I always like to teach a mixture, you know, half of the time control the dream manipulate it do really, I guess you could say exciting like things and, you know, fly around and I teach a lot of dream manipulation in that sense. But then the other half of the time, I would say to take a step back, like you say, and sort of observe, you know, what's already there and just interact with it or not interact with it, you know, just let it happen and see what actually it is. Yeah, great. Yeah. And to be sure, the practice of dream manipulation and focus and all of that, it's like you sort of have to learn it to be able to turn the mirror to, to let it go, right? Yeah. And so it's sort of like it's a mastery. And so once one discovers the limits of consciousness and self-awareness in the dream and it looks different for different people, we have sort of different centers of gravity. And once we understand our style where we tend to sort of gravitate towards and then to use that power for other purposes as well or to know when is that fulcrum, when is that the right time to flip the switch to make that active choice that cracks open to a new domain that's, you know, in sync with the dreaming mind. That's where these potent, you know, extraordinary experiences occur. And because, you know, lucid dreaming can be very banal. It can be wandering around a space and looking at objects and, you know, you're right, you know, it's not always like it can't always be extraordinary. But for someone who wants those extraordinary experiences, there's almost like a secret language to, you know, when and where and how to use those powers in a way that works with those unconscious elements and together creates these new possibilities. And it looks different for everyone what that kind of combination is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But just going back to your point, you said that sometimes you're just walking around, you know, looking at objects and but I would actually say that's quite it can be exciting just doing that for some people just to be able to be aware of this new world. And you know, in this new world, you can explore as if it were real. But I think I think you over time, you start craving something more, whether that's more spiritual, more practical, you know, or more profound. But this leads me to my next point, which is, can you tell us your most one of your most interesting or unusual dream experiences? Oh, man. Well, this is a dream that came up, came up recently, because I, I walked a labyrinth recently, an outdoor, you know, the outdoor elaborate based on the Shartian model. And I caught wind of and heard about his re-remembering the midst of the of the Minotaur and the monster in the middle of the labyrinth. And it provoked this memory of a dream that I had probably about 15 years ago or so. And it was a lucid dream. And in the lucid dream, I realized I was dreaming and I found a spiral staircase, which is a always in my dream is that's that when the spiral staircase emerges spontaneously, that's an invitation, right? That's one of my personal images for ascent, right? We all have kind of our own. And it's an image for it's it's an opportunity to ascend in some way, but also it's often confrontational. And so and so I don't take it lightly when I go up the spiral staircase. And so I did I went up the spiral staircase and it became a tower, you know, sort of a stone tower classic where this the staircase was filling the void, right? And and as I went further up the tower, the tower became more constricted, more tighter. And this has happened so many different times. There's so many different metaphors that could be used here. But in this particular time, the staircase emerged into a single room on top of the tower. And the room was at that point empty. But it had some objects around it. And so, yeah, like I was looking around at the objects with absolute fascination, lucid, knowing I was in a dream, knowing that this was sort of an archetypal space for me. And I realized that it was a bit of a classroom. There was a chalkboard on one of the walls. And there was some there was a desk and some chairs scattered about. And then at that point, I realized I wasn't alone. And out of the sort of the the shadows of the room came this towering figure and it was the Minotaur. Wow, gigantic, you know, head of a bull and body of a human. And he he or it rushes at me with it with ferocity. And I'm absolutely think I have to fight it. This is my lucid awareness, like, Oh, God, I, you know, this is I have to battle, right? And at the same time, I'm trying to reel back from that wondering, is that an assumption on my part? Maybe I don't have to battle like what are some other ways of interacting, what can be done? You know, and so we meet in the middle of the room. And surprisingly, it doesn't try to attack me, but reaches out its hand. And I reach out my hand and it drops something into my hand. And I take a look at it. And it's a tiny piece of chalk, a tiny piece of chalk. And then I woke up. Oh, oh, no, I have to ask what you think that means. Yeah, right. I wrote it. You know, I was very confused. I wrote the dream down. And as I wrote the dream down, the answer came to me that the minotaur was giving me instruction to teach interesting handy me the chalk. It was the missing piece. It was the missing piece of that room. I was the teacher in that room. And at that time, 15 years ago, I was in grad school, I was fighting my own destiny of being a teacher, of using my of using my voice of being an educator. I wanted to hide behind my words. I wanted to be solely a writer and a researcher. And what I was finding is that's not actually what was going on with my development. And so that dream helped me realize that, yeah, whoa, this is something, this is something that's interesting. And the minotaur, why the minotaur? And I've been reflecting on that. Some of the things, if you look at the mythology, the minotaur is that it's just ferocious monster in the center of the labyrinth. But the labyrinth isn't actually, the minotaur is not trapped, right? Because in a labyrinth, there's just one path. It's not actually a maze. The minotaur is there because the minotaur wants to be there. Why is the minotaur just wanting to be in the center of the labyrinth and not leaving? Protecting the spaciousness, that sort of inner sanctum. How are we using our minotaur powers, our sort of animal consciousness, almost like our intuitive ways of being rather than our rational ways of being or our body consciousness? I know there's that you can go a lot of different ways with like, what does this mean? What could this be about? But for me, in that particular moment, I see that as a dream that I was lucid but not in control. I was lucid enough to be able to meet something authentically. And I was given a gift for that effort. Do you know what I think actually being lucid in those sorts of dreams is really interesting? Because in those situations, you don't really need to be in control to get something really valuable out of it. So just being able to decide what to do on, you know, maybe what to ask or how to act. I think that's really valuable actually. Yeah, right, right, right. So to use the self-awareness to ask the question and then use that self-awareness to be able to hold the space and wait for an answer. Yeah, that's hard work. That's super tricky. And for every awesome kind of minotaur dream I've had, I've got a hundred lucid dreams where it didn't go so well. You mean where you fought the minotaur or something like that? Right, where it sort of descends in different kinds of ways. Yeah. You know, out of lucidity, into terror, just into where the dream characters themselves transform into lifeless clay dolls because they've been sort of sapped of vitality. There's lots of ways. I think every lucid dreamer has, again, their own inner language of this. But there's some archetypal images that come along with it of, say, like the lifeless doll or the puppet that show up when maybe we've overstepped that in our dance. But I think this is definitely one of the types of dreams people should write down. If there's something like this where it's really symbolic, really unusual and abstract, that's definitely what people should write down. Would you agree? Absolutely, yeah. So I totally wrote that one down. And for me, it started with the spiral staircase, which is a dream sign for me. So I will be in a dream, say in a library in the dream, and I'll see a staircase and a spiral, and that is the lucid instigating feature of the dream. Of course, I miss it sometimes, but other times I don't. But I don't take these things too seriously. There's always more opportunities to go lucid and we always get to dream another night. Yeah, just a quick tip I'd like to add for that one is if people were having something, well, it keeps happening in their dreams, like they always see a spiral staircase or something like that, then that would be a good thing to look out for in waking life. I mean, I don't know how often you walk up a spiral staircase in waking life, but that would obviously be a good time to do a reality check if you wanted more lucid dreams. Not everybody does, but if you did. Right, exactly. Yeah, you can absolutely anchor extraordinary experiences and create lucid dreams in that manner. And so that leads me on to my next question, which is can you maybe give a few of your best tips or ideas for lucid dreaming that maybe have helped you or your students the most? Do you mean in terms of induction or of ways of being navigating the dream itself? I mean both. Maybe one of each or two of each or something like that. Yeah, so when it comes to induction, so and here's my caveat, right? So I have been a natural dream, lucid dreamer since I was 14, but I don't have that many lucid dreams naturally. They come spontaneously maybe once a month. Maybe I'll have one once a month if I'm not trying to, right? And sort of living my life and falling asleep, etc. Not doing any particular tactics. And then sometimes I'll have maybe two or three in a week, just spontaneously, naturally. And then it might be another six weeks or two months before I have another lucid dream. So that's what happens to me when I'm not really doing anything. When I decide to focus and do what I call a lucid immersion or a time where I want to induce lucid dreams for a specific purpose, I can essentially have lucid dreams on call, not necessarily always the same night that I want to, but within a night or two, if I make the space for it. And so that's because of the tactics themselves. And so what I've always found, what I teach in my classes and in my e-book, Lucid Immersion Guidebook, is to use the scientifically validated techniques that we know work that pick two or three of them and use them in combination. And this has been borne out by recent lucid dream research as well. Tata Stumbres and Daniel Erlacher have also discovered that there's certain combinations of tactics that work better than trying them alone. Say, doing reality checks all by yourself will not be as effective as doing reality checks during the day and practicing Stephen LaBerge's mild technique. Together they create a more robust system. You add galanzamine, the supplement to the mix, and you're going to find that you're going to have a greater chance of lucid dreaming. And so I think of it holistically. I think of it as you want to do mental practices, one or two of them. You want to also think about the physical domain in terms of supplements or your lucid diet or getting some exercise, being out of nature, certain things that stir lucidity and stir vigilance in waking life because that transfers over. And then the emotional layer, have some sort of emotional support system in place when doing lucid tactics, whether that means someone to talk to or you're doing specific practices for shadow work or just simply a way of or maybe spiritual practices, say meditation or something that can help stabilize emotions because lucidity and that particular kind of healthy vigilance that you have to promote, it does stir up the muck of the unconscious. And so it's nice to have some emotional safeguards in place. And so that's what I call a holistic system. And I found when people do this for a limited amount of time, like they do practices, say for a week and then rest on the practices and then see what comes. I find that if people just keep hammering on specific practices day in and day out, that they lose motivation and the practices themselves lose their potency. And so I almost see it as like going on lucid retreat in a sense, but finding a way to make it work for your waking life. How do you make it work for your job? Is this a good time to go to do lucid dreaming? Do you have time to sleep in? Do you have time to disrupt your sleep in the middle of the night? Is your partner, your sleep partner, going to be irritated with you if you turn on the light and start scribbling down dreams in the middle of the night? Because that can have a suppressive effect. So anyway, so really just look at the whole picture. And so that's my approach to lucid dream induction. And I find that it's very effective. I love it. I love it. So the next one is, what do you think people should use lucid dreaming for? And I say should. I mean, obviously, people can use it for whatever they want. But in your opinion, what do you think people should let's say if you have someone who can lucid dream one to three times a month, what would you advise them to use that time for? So I take a very wide approach. I'm a big believer in cognitive liberty. I try not to use shoulds. We're all culture bound. We're all individuals. We're all going through our own process. And so if you look cross-culturally at how lucid dreams have been used throughout history and in different cultures, it's used for different purposes. Of course, we know about the spiritual practices. And I know that you've spoken about that a lot on this podcast about Buddhism and some of the mysticism that comes out of Ayurveda. There's a lot of different ways of approaching lucid dreaming from a mindfulness or meditative path. But there's also sort of a shamanic side to lucid dreaming. Historically, cross-culturally, lucid dreams were used for sorcery, for lack of a better term, for augmenting power, for looking for knowledge, for discovering plants. And this is the belief systems of those who are using it, using out-of-body experiences to get information and for healing, for healing others, for healing clients, as well as self-healing. And so in the Western approach, we always take sort of it comes down to this individual, because we have the sense that this is my dream and everything I see is reflecting myself, which I essentially agree with, because as a Western, that's how my consciousness works. I have every once in a while, there's a crack in the dam, and I realize I'm part of something larger, but mostly I'm a pretty dualistic dude, and that's just how my consciousness works. And so we look at lucid dreaming as a self-help. We look at lucid dreaming as how can we learn more about ourselves? How can we face those fears that show up and become stronger and kinder and use it away as sort of focusing that way? So I don't have a should. I think there's this initiatory aspect to lucid dreaming that's maybe not discussed as much as I wish it was, but there's a natural urge, I think, for young adults to lucid dream, and there's a natural urge to want to have better control over our psychic life, over our unconscious life, and to gain some mastery over our emotions, and the stuff that starts kind of emerging in young adulthood that can be overpowering. And I think it's absolutely essential to go with those urges, to go towards self-mastery, to learn how to manipulate dreams, to realize what it feels like when you hurt yourself versus you don't. And you can feel it when you wake up from a dream. There's a sort of sour feeling in the stomach if you've sort of done something against your own best interest. We get this sort of intuitive sense over time about what our own ethics is like and how do we treat our dream figures. And I think we all have to come to our own conclusions about that. But we learned it over time. And so I think we're all on a different journey. And at the same time, collectively, we tend to kind of go different ways. Some of us really are interested in the insight and interested in those abstract spaces, the sort of philosophical, sage-like spaces that Lucid Dreaming can offer. And so, you know, honor those inclinings and find a teacher or read up what you can on Tibetan Buddhism. Or the shamanic path, which is harder to notice because it's sort of in the shadows of our culture. But if you have a lot of lucid nightmares and dark dreams, that can be a cue for needing to do emotional work and shadow work and using lucid dreams to sort of either face old fears or maybe even deeper, like looking at ancestral patterns, like stuff that kind of lives in our bones or our culture, right? Because our culture comes through us as well. So yeah, so there's different ways of being and there's no right way to lose the dream. This is one of the things, that's a great response, by the way, really interesting. But yeah, this is one of the things I actually love about Lucid Dreaming is there's so many things you could do with it. Like there are some people that literally just want to fly around like Superman. And then there are people who want to explore the spirituality, you know, their consciousness and everything like that. So yeah, it makes it interesting, you know, it makes it far more interesting to have all these different things you could do in a lucid dream. Right, yeah. And basically, for beginners, it's, you know, that first, and I think Robert Wagner really gets this right. In his book, he talks about sort of the first beginner lucid dreamers have a need for primacy, for power. And part of that power is just simply the power to keep remembering you're in a dream and the power to take an active role in dreaming. Because I think we have to unlearn that dreaming is something that happens to us. But rather than it's an altered state of consciousness that we can have an active participatory role. And so we have to go through almost that painful process in the dream itself of not being victims and not sort of just slipping into where things are just happening to us and taking an active role. And sometimes that looks like violence and standing up for yourself, which is absolutely appropriate sometimes. I mean, for myself, I used to have lots of dreams about being bullied. Because I was working through a lot of my own childhood. And standing up to bullies was absolutely essential for me at those times. And having and reclaiming some power in that way. And then what happens is that we tend to, after that, there's like a clearing and there's different paths. And there's, and it doesn't mean that you have to like stay on that particular path, but you just sort of follow where your where your intuition leads you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm actually going to go on a bit of a tangent now. And so for those of you who don't know, I'm going to talk about sleep paralysis quickly. So sleep paralysis is where your body essentially paralyzes your muscles as you're in between waking and sleeping. And also when you're asleep, it's to stop you acting out your dreams so that you don't start, you know, kicking your partner or hitting your hand against the wall or in extreme cases sleepwalking, although there are sleep disorders associated with that. But you talk a lot about sleep paralysis on your website. So I'd love if you could explain a bit more about that, how it works and maybe some tips for avoiding it or, you know, even turning it into a lucid dream. Yeah. And you know, it's not as much of a tangent as you'd think because I think sleep paralysis is actually part of that almost shamanic aspect of lucid dreaming. One realizes, oh, this is sort of a dark, creepy path, but it's actually one of the ways into lucid dreaming. So yeah, sleep paralysis, you described it very well. It's this feeling of paralysis when we wake up or going to sleep. If I had the experience just a couple of nights ago, I get it, I get it, I would say relatively infrequently now, but there are times in my life where it's more frequent. Because for many of us, it happens as, you know, the sleep stages get a little mixed up. And so if you're not getting enough sleep or sometimes after an alcohol binge or too much exertion, physical exertion, there's just different things that affect our sleep. And so the staging becomes a little chaotic and that's where the when sleep paralysis becomes more common. That's when you see people who are like night shift workers or nurses and students who keep odd hours or drink a lot of caffeine at odd hours. They tend to suffer more from this. And it's not something that hurts you. It's really a sleep symptom. That said, there are some people who experience sleep paralysis as part of narcolepsy, sleep apnea. And it also can be for some people an indicator of larger health concerns, such as diabetes or a host of other sort of physical ailments that affect sleep and therefore you get sleep paralysis as a symptom. But most, for I'd say, you know, by the numbers, most people get it in a sense where it comes kind of spontaneously on its own and it's not harmful, it's not a warning sign of anything except maybe get some more sleep in general, make some more room for rest in your life. And it's terrifying and it feels like, and it's difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it, but it feels like you are awake and being held down by unseen entity. There's a sense that something or someone is in the room. Something that has ill intent is generally, you know, how it's experienced. And then something like 15% of the time, and I think some people have it more than others, this combines with actual projected dreams occurring along with the paralysis symptoms. And so they'll have actually seen an entity in the room, someone sitting on the edge of the bed, someone, you know, actually assaulting you. And the most profoundly disturbing cases is the supernatural assault, which is the experience of being raped by an unseen entity or seen sometimes while you can't move in victimization. And there's some people who have this because of histories with their own sexual histories, PTSD sufferers, also have this experience. It's fantastic in the sense that it's truly supernatural in that it seems like I'm having an encounter with another entity and it happens all over the world cross-culturally and the creatures look different, though, for different cultures. And so it's, for me, as someone who delights in nightmares, I think it's just fascinating. And I've spent quite a lot of time researching and looking into it. And I have a book that's titled Sleep Paralysis that's a self-help guide into using it. Yeah. Excuse me one second. Yeah. Sorry, go on. No, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say that another name for that is the Sleep Paralysis demon or, you know, the hat man, the old hat man. People might have heard that. There's a lot of cultural norms that sort of consolidate around sleep paralysis. And a lot of people take a paranormal edge to it. Like therefore, like the hat man is something that that is, you know, it's like somehow tied to the deep state or to alien consciousness or, you know, everyone's kind of got, there's all these different subcultures that look at the phenomena in different ways. But here's something that's often misunderstood about it is that one can have positive experiences in sleep paralysis as well. Their angel visitations can occur from these states, you know, ancestral encounters can occur, positive benevolent figures, religious people have religious figures come to them in the state and experience healing sensations, white light sensations. And then it can be also a portal to out of body experiences as well. And so there's it's sort of a it's a gateway to all these extraordinary states. And once one realizes that sleep paralysis isn't going to hurt you and you can find a way to get past your fear and become curious if your curiosity is greater than your fear. And you have a strong intention. You can really use that as which where do I want to go? Do I want to delve into a lucid dream? Do I want to try for the experience of an out of body experience? I really want to emphasize that for everyone listening that it can't harm you because a lot of people are put off by the idea of sleep paralysis, you know, especially hearing things like this, but other among other things. And they start thinking, Oh, well, I want to lose a dream, but I'm scared of sleep paralysis. But it really isn't anything to it shouldn't put you off. You know, if anything, it should encourage you to know that if you have if you're having sleep paralysis, you're actually one step closer to lucid dreams in many cases. But even if it's nothing to be worried about. Yes. And in fact, I would say to be brave because if you're prone to sleep paralysis, it's an indicator that essentially that you have an initiatory ordeal to go through, if you can make it through it, if you can go into sleep paralysis and and and conquer that fear, and you'll become a very powerful dreamer because it essentially is the shamanic path to lucid dreaming. It's it's because one has to essentially do tantric level work with your emotions. You have to really look fear in the face. And and once you get used to doing that, it's amazing how empowering it is for for, you know, every cell in your body becomes just aligned. And it has this huge effect on waking life in terms of of one's confidence to move about in waking life. It is a true power. Absolutely. I completely agree. Now, on that note, what do you think the future of lucid dreaming is going to look like? The futures, I think the future is bright. I have been in the space for quite a while and there's been a wonderful proliferation of dream teachers, lucid dream workers doing workshops, creating content, making videos. We're finally at the point that I think that lucid dreaming is a household word. Yeah, I think inception had a lot to do with that. The movie inception was a huge bump. I don't. And so I think it's it's it's entering this point where lucid dreaming is actually shifting the culture of what is possible with dreaming. And in a way, it's allowing Western culture to to reclaim their mythologies. Because, you know, we let people dream for us. That's what Hollywood is, right? Yeah, we pay people to dream for us. And when we what lucid dreaming is doing is is reminding people that we have our own power, our own myths, and our own journeys. And it's I just really, I think it's bright. And so, you know, I what's going on with some of the, you know, the herbal approaches to lucid dreaming is exciting. You know, I'm involved with the galantamine research. And Steven LaBerge has also published some peer review work on galantamine recently. It's it's a very helpful syndicated herb that helps with lucidity. And it might have some other beneficial effects as well. Emotionally for dream stabilization. Yeah. And so I think it's a healing herb. It's not just about lucidity. I think it's truly a healing herb. And then the technology, what's going on? Virtual reality is actually finally happening. So the virtual worlds, lucid worlds are beginning to merge. Virtual reality is an excellent way to learn how to lucid dream. And I think we're going to start seeing that these that these these worlds are emerging. So I'm very excited about it. Yeah, I'm super excited as well. Obviously, I'm always an optimist, but I think there's a huge potential in the lucid dreaming technology space. And yeah, I guess just sleep tracking in general. I mean, so I've recently got an Apple watch and it's quite an old one. It's a version three, I think. But the sleep tracking that it can do is actually quite good. And so I've been implementing, you know, trying to work out when the best time for lucid dream is, but not just that working out, you know, what things affect my sleep and how to get better quality sleep, like does it make a difference if I have the window open or little things like that, which without this sleep tracking, you know, technology, I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to see the effect that I had other than my subjective experience when I woke up. But yeah, I think there's a huge potential with the future of lucid dreaming. Absolutely huge. Yeah. Yeah. And finally, the dream masks are coming on the market that have been promised to us for so long. Yeah. Right. So many failed kick starters. Yeah. And so many scams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's some good tools out there now. Sorry? There's some good tools out there now. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I think that about wraps it up for today. But thank you very much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure. Before I go, is anything maybe you can give like a last message to people or tip where they can find you online, you know, where are they, where they should go to hear more from you? Yeah. So my website is dreamstudies.org. And you also mentioned the Lucid Towsman is lucidtowsman.com. And that's where we sell my partner Lee Adams and I from the Cosmic Echo. We sell these wonderful copper Towsman for creating lucid dream moments for basically using them as reality checked, you know, tokens to keep in your pocket. And that's been a really fun art project that I've been involved with for a few years. And they ship all over the world. I've mailed one today to Hungary in the UK. And it's just fantastic. Those lucid dreaming coins are going further than my books. And that's okay. So yeah, that would be two ways to find me online. And you can also find some of my work on Amazon. So one thing I'm excited about is that I'm involved in a lucid dreaming study. And we're still taking participants. Actually, we're going to be closing it fairly soon, probably in the middle of April of this year 2020. And so I'm looking for particularly for lucid dreamers who have taken a glancing in the past and are willing to take glancing mean again. And who reside in the United States. And if you meet those criterion, there's a third criterion that's optional is that we're looking for people who also suffer from nightmares. It doesn't have to be a lucid nightmare, but nightmares say if you suffer from nightmares like once or twice a week, that's those are people we're looking for too. But what we're studying this has to do with the University of Texas and with Scott Sparrow and I and a larger crew are looking into doing more glancing mean research, seeing how it affects dreams, how it affects consciousness and perhaps if it can be useful in reducing severity or impact of nightmares. So take a look at the link in the show notes and I'd love if you participated. Cool, great. Thanks for that. Yeah, go and subscribe to that and enter it if you're in time. Hopefully you'll be in time to enter that one. And yeah, cool. Thanks very much.