Charlie Morley is an internationally recognized teacher of lucid dreaming, trauma-informed sleep, and mindfulness, with over 25 years of experience in lucid dreaming practice. A bestselling Hay House author, two-time TED speaker, and Mindvalley coach, Charlie has taught workshops and retreats in more than 20 countries and has worked with organizations including the NHS, the British Army, Reuters, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He is also the author of five books, including Wake Up to Sleep. Charlie's work bridges ancient Buddhist practices with modern science. His lucid dreaming methods have been featured in groundbreaking PTSD research, with peer-reviewed studies showing significant reductions in PTSD symptoms and nightmare distress among participants. Based in London, Charlie continues to teach, write, and train therapists while helping people use lucid dreaming to improve sleep, process trauma, and enhance emotional well-being.
Charlie Morley is an internationally recognized teacher of lucid dreaming, trauma-informed sleep, and mindfulness, with over 25 years of experience in lucid dreaming practice. A bestselling Hay House author, two-time TED speaker, and Mindvalley coach, Charlie has taught workshops and retreats in more than 20 countries and has worked with organizations including the NHS, the British Army, Reuters, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He is also the author of five books, including Wake Up to Sleep.
Charlie's work bridges ancient Buddhist practices with modern science. His lucid dreaming methods have been featured in groundbreaking PTSD research, with peer-reviewed studies showing significant reductions in PTSD symptoms and nightmare distress among participants. Based in London, Charlie continues to teach, write, and train therapists while helping people use lucid dreaming to improve sleep, process trauma, and enhance emotional well-being.
|SHOWNOTES:
😴 What if nightmares are asking to be witnessed?
😴 Why should you keep a dream journal every morning?
😴 How can lucid dreaming help reduce recurring nightmares?
😴 What happens when you face fear instead of running?
😴 Why do dreams become more vivid when recorded?
😴 Could your dreams reveal hidden emotions and stress?
😴 How does dream recall improve with simple intentions?
😴 What makes REM sleep important for emotional healing?
😴 Why might slow breathing improve your sleep quality?
😴 How can rest before bed support deeper sleep?
😴 What if your morning routine shaped tonight's sleep?
😴 Which bedtime habits help your mind truly unwind?
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Welcome to the Sleep Is a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep Is a Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex-sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about sleep.
Each week, I'll be interviewing world-class experts ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian-aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health and, by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before Welcome back to the Sleep is a Skill podcast.
Most of us spend years trying to understand our waking mind while completely overlooking the one that's active every single night. Today, I'm joined by Charlie Morley, an internationally recognized lucid dreaming teacher, best-selling author, TED speaker, and pioneer in the intersection of dreams, mindfulness, and trauma recovery.
We explore how lucid dreaming can become a tool for emotional healing, trauma recovery, creativity, and better sleep. Plus, why learning to work with your dreams may change far more than what happens after you fall asleep. If you're curious about the hidden potential of your dreaming mind, you're going to love this conversation, so be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a fellow sleep enthusiast.
Remember, keep dreaming, keep learning. And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast. Now, our guest today is such a rock star with a recent TED Talk that is now available for you to listen to, so you definitely want to check that on out after you hear this conversation. And lucky me, we had him on a while back and had technical issues on my side, so we are diving in deeply again because this was such a fascinating conversation.
So I'm really eager for all of you to get to hear his wisdom. So Charlie, thank you so much for taking the time to be here again. Thank you. Glad to be back again. Again, again, again. Right? Exactly. So maybe starting at the beginning, how you have found yourself to be such an expert in this area, and then how it relates to sleep.
Yeah. So I was into, like, dreams from really young. In fact, for my 12th birthday, I asked for this thing called a Nova Dreamer, which is this, like, electronic sleep mask that you strap to your face, and it recognizes the rapid eye movement of REM and then flashes red lights through your eyelids, um, which are supposedly bright enough to penetrate your dreaming, your dreamscape, but not bright enough to wake you up.
Hmm. So I remember seeing this. I'm 11 years old, and I see it in the gadget section. We have, like, the Sunday newspapers in the UK, where it's kind of this, like, the... you know, back in the '80s, right? Parents would sit on a Sunday reading the Sunday papers. The kids would be bored. You'd check out the gadget section, and I see this thing, and it's this mask that claims to give you lucid dreams.
Now, I don't know what a lucid dream is, but it has a description of it, a dream where you know that you're dreaming as the dream is happening- Hmm ... and then giving you the possibility of directing the dream, or they would say controlling the dream at will. And I remember reading this and being like, "Oh, Dad, Dad, I want this mask for my birthday.
It gives me those dreams that I have." So I definitely kind of knew what lucid dreaming was, although I didn't know the term. I knew I was having them. Um, anyway, I mean, it didn't actually end the way you think. I didn't get that for my birthday. It was, like, $300 or something, so my dad did not buy it for me.
I think, but that's the first time I know that I was into lucid dreaming and kind of asking about it. Um, and then when I'm, like, 15, I start to get interested in the mind and Buddhism, but it seemed like too much hard work. Um, like psychedelics, um, although they seem a bit scary. And then lucid dreaming again- Hmm
which seems, like, pretty cool. Like, maybe it'd be a little, little bit Buddhist-y, a little bit psychedelic-y, and not so scary, 'cause I used to have- Hmm ... those dreams. So I buy some... I get some books from the school library, and then teach myself how to do it. Now, there's a difference between, like, having spontaneous lucid dreams, as I did as a kid, and intentionally training yourself to do it.
Because with that kind of volition to do- Uh, y- and getting kind of concrete evidence of results, that if you do these practices, it manifests in lucid dreams, then it became like a practice. So I did have a lucid dreaming practice from quite young, from like 16, 17. Wow. Um, so I bought these books that taught me how to, uh, be able to wake up in my dreams.
So in- a lucid dream is a dream where you know you're dreaming as the dream is happening. Mm. Uh, but you don't wake up physically, so you're still sound asleep. But in the dream, you're like, "Oh, wow, I'm in a lucid dream right now. Wow, this is so cool. I can choose what to do, fly through the sky," whatever you wanna do.
So then as a teenager, um, I had like two years of being really into lucid dreaming, just using it for like sex and skateboarding, 'cause you know, you're 16 years old- Of course, yeah ... and you realize it is virtual reality simulation. You can do whatever you like. So I did lots of skateboarding and had lots of sex.
Um- And interestingly, now actually there's... I've been part of a few studies that have shown that, uh, practicing sports in your lucid dreams actually allows you to get better at your athletic discipline in the waking state. Hmm. So you can actually train in your lucid dreams and get markedly better in the waking state.
So I did get- Wow ... pretty good at skateboarding, actually. Hmm. Um, not, not so much the other thing, but skateboarding I got pretty good at. So I'm into lucid dreaming just for fun. I'm a teenager. And then the Buddhist thing that I did see when I was like 15, but it seemed like too much hard work, that comes back online.
I'm like- Mm ... "Buddhism seems cool, man." Like, the... I saw the Shaolin Monks. They did this show in London where they're doing all the kung fu and stuff like that. Mm. And I was like, "Whoa, that's a Buddhist monk. That seems super cool." Then I was listening to lots of Wu Tang Clan, the hip hop group. Sure. And they had all these samples at the beginning which aren't actually Buddhist, they're Taoist, but I didn't know that.
Mm. I thought they were Buddhist samples. So suddenly, like, the Shaolin Monks, Wu Tang Clan, Buddhism seemed really cool. Then I started reading about Buddhism, and quite soon in, I discover this term called dream yoga. And 'cause I'm into dreams, I'm like- Mm ... "What's that? What's dream yoga?" And it turns out it's this spiritual practice of lucid dreaming that goes back like 1,000 years in Tibetan Buddhism.
Hmm. And even way before that, back to the time of Buddha. Hmm. And it says you can use your lucid dream practice for, uh, spiritual ends. So then I got really into that and ended up living in a Buddhist temple for seven years and training with some Tibetan masters. Um, and then, yeah, after like a kind of like apprenticeship, I guess you'd call it, then they asked me to start giving talks, uh, 17 years ago.
Wow. And that's the story. That is some story. Amazing. Did psychedelics end up making a resurgence at any point, or...? Well, actually, the psychedelics, I kinda skipped over that. The, the big m- moment I had with lucid dreaming was when I was 17 I did get really into psychedelics, and I had, like, an overdose, um, of, like, way too much acid, and had this, like- Mm
crazy, terrible, uh, I basically had a near-death experience. Wow. And I had these really bad nightmares after it. Mm. Like classic PTSD nightmares, and that's the first time I used lucid dreaming to treat the nightmares. Mm. Basically, like, the nightmares stopped the first time I got lucid in the nightmare and turned to face my fear- Mm
and actually kind of actively respond towards it rather than running away. Mm-hmm. The nightmares stopped. Um, so that was the first time I really saw the potential of lucid dreaming. Yeah. Oh, that's incredible. Okay. So what a very, very cool journey you took there. And with that, when you think about sleep, and if someone, you know, is listening and they're tuning in 'cause they're having issues with their sleep or, like, they wanna improve it, and potentially with dreams, you know, they're being plagued by these dreams that are waking them up or reoccurring, how do you think about an area like that that what you have learned and your knowledge base, how that could be supportive for someone like that?
Yeah, so nightmares, lucid dreaming is really good. Okay. So loads of science supporting this. Um, essentially, if you can train someone to wake up in their nightmare and know, you know, "I'm not really in, uh, this war zone," for example, with the veterans I work with, "I'm just dreaming about it. This is simply a nightmare," the nightmare's still scary, but at least the person knows they're not actually in, in, you know, mortal danger.
They're just dreaming. They can see that this is a replay of a trauma that occurred for them in the past. It can lead to a really powerful deconditioning process- Mm ... uh, in the mind. And of course, once someone becomes lucid, they can change the ending of the dream to a non-traumatic- Wow ... dream where they can fly to safety.
Or actually, we found in our research even better is when people become lucid is if they don't change the ending, but actually let the nightmare play out. Oh. Because the nightmare wants to be witnessed. Mm. Just like us, right? It wants to be seen and heard. Yeah. And every time we wake ourselves from a nightmare, the nightmare comes back again.
Mm. This is why we have recurring nightmares. Yeah. Because it's like a therapy session cut short. You know, so the therapist, the internal therapist, which, which kind of, um, uh, comes to play through our nightmares- Gives us that nightmare again. It wants to finish the therapy session. Whereas if you can become lucid and allow the nightmare to play out and just witness it, it'd be scary- Mm
but just to kind of know, okay, this is just a nightmare, I'm okay here, then actually the nightmare won't need to play again because you witnessed it just once. So we found, you know, for lucid, for our nightmares, lucid dreaming is really, really powerful for that. Um, but for people who haven't got nightmares, who just, like, wanna work with their dreams- Sure
recurring dreams or insightful dreams, or just wanna get a hold of what their dreams are telling them, just things like keeping a dream diary. Mm. I mean, as simple as that. It i- it is the first stage towards lucid dreaming. It's the first technique we teach. But even if that was the only technique you taught, I mean, there's really interesting, um, studies that I talk about in my book Wake Up to Sleep, which is like the kind of trauma-affected sleep book- Mm
where they found that just the act of writing down your dreams, and specifically writing down your anxiety dreams and nightmares, which for most people makes up over 60% of their recalled dream experience, like the majority of dreams people remember are maybe not full nightmares, but anxiety dreams, you know.
Mm. They- they've lost their keys, they can't find their way out of a car, out of a house, something like that. Yeah. And the studies found that when you wake up from a dream like that, even if you don't fully remember it, your body does. Mm. So you carry around the cortisol and adrenaline created- Mm ... by the dream you experience up until lunchtime, which is why we sometimes feel a bit like we got out the wrong side of bed.
Yeah. We feel a bit angsty in the morning. So what they found is when you train someone to not only remember their dreams, but then to write down their dreams, the act of journaling the dream in the morning helps to download and discharge the emotional energy associated with that dream, in this case, anxiety- Mm
adrenaline, cortisol, download it through the act of writing. Uh, and that leads to higher levels of mental wellbeing. So just writing down- Mm ... your dream is good for you. Oh. Like, that's super cool, right? Even before you get to lucid dreaming. That is super cool. What about for the person that says, "I never remember my dreams.
It's always been this way." Are there things that they can do? Yeah. I mean, I like the way you said, "I never remember my dreams," there. Yes. Yes. As you know- You- ... a lot of people don't say that. They say, "I never dream." Mm. And then I'm sure me and you- Good call ... perk up like, oh, you definitely dream. There's no way to stop the human brain- Yeah
from dreaming. It's part of every sleep cycle, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the first thing to know, everybody is dreaming. Mm-hmm. If you're sleeping, you're dreaming. Um, it's a, it's a vital part of sleep architecture. Mm-hmm. Very hard to stop the human brain from dreaming other than a heavy head injury or a stroke.
Mm. Um, but even then actually within a couple of weeks people start dreaming again. Mm. Um, so first thing to know is you are dreaming, and second thing is try and remember. You know, when did you last try and remember your dreams? And most people, they call a blank on that. They're like, "Oh, I kind of thought because I just don't usually remember my dreams, why would I try?"
I'm like, "Yeah, so try. Put effort in tonight." Mm. Before you go to bed, tell yourself, "Tonight I remember my dreams." Hmm. And even better, as you're falling asleep tonight through the hypnagogic state, that naturally hyper suggestive state of mind, hypnagogic, hypnosis- Mm ... natural state of hypnosis, be reciting over and over again an affirmation, something like, "Tonight I remember my dreams.
I have excellent dream recall." Mm. In the Buddhist tradition, we do that 21 times as you're falling asleep. Uh, you can count- Wow ... on one of these Buddhist-y beads I've got around my neck. Or if not- Yeah ... just use your fingers. Um, and then that sets up this really powerful, um, aspirational, heartfelt desire to remember your dreams.
Hmm. You get people doing that, within a couple of nights most people will remember their dreams. So if we start playing this game of starting to create an environment where we are mining for these dreams- Mm ... and recalling these dreams, is a big part of that that time before we fall asleep for that practice, and then the time right after we wake up to kind of be mindful and reflecting- Absolutely
and writing down? Okay. Yeah, so the hypnagogic state is the falling asleep process. Yep. Then there's a term the hypnopompic, which is the waking up process. Mm. And in the hypnopompic, this is where you can kind of catch that dream. Um- I know how difficult it is to remember dr- uh, to, uh, to recall your dreams if you don't have a good hypnopompic transition because right now I have a 10-month-old baby.
So I have no hypnopompic transition right now. I don't even wake up with an alarm clo- my alarm clock is screaming. And I go, "Baby crying, right. Gotta go and like- Right ... you know, comfort her." Yes. So the dream recall is, is terrible at the moment. Mm. Because it's being kind of snatched from me. Sure. If, on the rare days I wake up before the baby or with an alarm clock or even better, naturally, you'll notice that this space where, like, you've stopped sleeping and dreaming but you wouldn't say you're fully awake yet- Mm-hmm
you can kind of hear the sounds in the room, you can feel your body in the bed, that's the hypnopompic. And in that state if you can ask yourself first thing in the morning not even, "What was I dreaming?" but, "Where was I?" Mm. "What was I doing? How am I feeling in my body?" You know, those questions. If that can be your first thought rather than reaching for, for Instagram or in my case reaching for a screaming baby-
most people will find that's a really good place to recall your dreams. Wow, how cool. I mean, even just that in and of itself could be so supportive for people that have had this narrative, this identity, this label. "I just don't dream. I'm not a dreamer," et cetera. And so just to revive that possibility and give these steps I think could be really empowering for people.
And then just a little bit more about why there would be that value there. Like, what can we do w- now once we're starting to maybe get more and more sprinkles of these dreams, we're logging them. What are the next... Do we put them into ChatGPT? What do we not do? You know, what are the, what are the- Yeah
steps? So I don't think all dreams are laden with mystical meaning. Mm. Just like not all my thoughts are laden with mystical meaning. Sometimes I'm just thinking crazy, I'm just thinking bullshit. Totally. Yep. Or I'm just kind of going through what I did in the day. And sometimes our dreams are the same, they're just downloading stuff we did in the day.
Yeah. Um, however, not all dreams. Mm-hmm. Just like not all thoughts. So we can't discount all of our thoughts because some of them are g- some of them seem crazy. Mm-hmm. Same with our dreams, right? So not every dream is laden with mystical meaning, but a, a majority of our dreams are trying to tell us something.
They are either replays of the day, kind of reprocessing memories or integrating trauma or predicting future possibilities, future threats, future desires. And if you look at your dreams, you get to see who you are. Mm. You know, if you wanna know who you are, like, a lot of people spend a lot of money every week going to a psychotherapist and saying, "Hey, doc, you know, what's happening in here?"
pointing to their head or to their heart. You wanna know what's going on in your heart? Look to your dreams. Mm. You know, who are you secretly in love with? Mm. What traumas from childhood are still getting you down? How, what anxieties in the day are still affecting you? What are your future desires and your future fears?
All of that is revealed in the dreams, but if you don't pay attention, if you don't care to listen, you won't see it. And also, uh, more s- in more interesting research has shown- Perceived dream vividness and perceived dream meaning increase once you start writing down your dreams. Hmm. So people often say like, "Oh, I don't write down my dreams, man.
They're so boring." I always say the same thing, "Your dreams are so boring because you don't write them down." Ooh. You know, if you take a moment to write down your dreams, to pay homage to the dreamer, to tell that part of your mind what Carl Jung called the, uh, conscious unconscious, what I call the dreamer with a capital D, if you let the dreamer know you're listening, it'll start giving you, uh, dreams of, of higher perceived meaning.
Hmm. I think it's like an internal scriptwriter. Yeah. If your internal scriptwriter knows there's no one in the audience, there are no reviewers, there's no one coming to watch the show, why would they bother doing a good show? They'll just go through the motions. They'll be reading from a script, blah, blah, blah.
But if they know, wow, after all these years, you're finally in the audience, not only in the audience, but you're in the audience- Hmm ... with a notepad ready, you know, you're ready with your dream journal- Yes ... you're there to review the play, all the actors are gonna put on such a performance. Hmm. The scriptwriter's gonna give, uh...
gonna, you know, write such a brilliant play that night because it knows you're listening. So within a few days of writing down your dreams, people find the perceived vividness and perceived level of meaning in the dreams increases, which makes total sense. Wow, that is fascinating. I love that. So we can get, like, Broadway-level plays going on routinely for ourselves.
Precisely. Yes. I think that's also really cool, that dreams- Yes ... reveal how incredibly creative you are. Hmm. People who say they aren't creative, I'm like, "Tell me a dream, any dream, even the most boring dream where you're in the office or something at work." Yes. Okay. Well, you designed that office. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. You designed all the costumes. You played every part. Hmm. You were, like, doing improv between the characters. You wrote the script. You did the lighting. You're telling me you're not creative? Hmm. Like, wow. Dreaming reveals the infinite creativity of the human mind. Wow. And lucid dreaming- Wow, lucid dreaming is like being in there in the moment.
You know? It's like you've been, you're stepping up on stage. It's now kind of a, you know, audience interaction. You're now creating the play as it goes. So yeah, it gets even more intense with lucid dreaming. Fascinating. Okay. So potentially, steps to this could be just even beginning bare minimum with this intention to be listening with the pen and paper, proverbial, at attention to start capturing more of these dreams, and then we're writing them down and kinda taking note, and then once we've been doing that for a little bit of time, there could be this possibility if we are interested in graduating maybe or exploring lucid dreaming.
Is that a possible path for people? Yeah, so actually those first two things you've mentioned are the first, uh, well, make up two of what I call the four Ds, which are like the four kind of foundation stones to lucid dreaming. The first one is actually dream planning. It's deciding what you wanna do in your first or next lucid dream.
Ooh. So the, because the why is more important than the how. So we'll, we'll cover the how in a minute, but why? Like, why do you wanna have a lucid dream? So for that you need to know, well, what's, what can happen in a lucid dream? Well, a lucid dream you are conscious in the unconscious. So if that sounds a bit like hypnosis, it should, and the same way a hypnotherapist will take a, a, you know, a thread of your conscious mind, bring it down to the subconscious where they can then plant, uh, suggestions of healing intent or suggestions of changed lifestyle behaviors, such as I live a lifestyle free of the addiction of smoking, or whatever it might be.
Um, and we know that can be highly effective in many people In a lucid dream, you're doing a similar thing, but you're taking a thread of your unconscious- of your conscious mind, not just down into the shallows of the subconscious, as we would in hypnotherapy, but down into the depths of the unconscious, simply because you can't get more unconscious than asleep.
Mm. So if you can bring the conscious mind down into the sleep states, you are right at the bottom of the iceberg. And when you're there, you can plant suggestions of healing intent, just like a hypnotherapist would, which will have big impacts- Mm ... on your waking state. Just like we found if you can get someone lucid in a nightmare, and then in that nightmare, rather than running from what they fear, they transform it or they turn to face it, or even better, they simply wis- witness it with compassionate awareness, that's like an incredibly powerful hypnotherapy session where the person- Wow
has gone to that nightmarish place, witnessed and compassionately accepted, uh, what the nightmare w- was showing them, um, which just like you would expect in a hypnotherapy session will lead to big changes in their waking state behavior. Mm. Wow. So the lucid dream can be used for pretty much anything you can treat with hypnosis, right?
So confidence issues, uh, PTSD and trauma- Mm ... working with childhood, uh, uh, especially w- with, uh, childhood adverse, uh, experiences or childhood trauma, as well as sports training- Mm ... uh, as well as confidence boosting, as well as just fun. Yeah. You know? Sometimes... I don't know if we have it in- you have it in the States, but in the UK, it's still quite, um, popular is, uh, on pubs on a Saturday night, they'll have like a, a comedy hypnotist who will hypnotize people in thinking they're a chicken, and make them run around the stage and stuff like that.
And of course, sometimes people are faking, but actually some of them are, are for real. And I met a stage hypnotist, uh, because he was actually doing a training in hypnotherapy that I did in my 20s. Mm. And he said the hypnotherapy, the... He said the hypnotic trance that I put people under in a pub on a Saturday night is exactly the same as I use with my hypnotherapy clients on a Monday morning working with PTSD- Mm
and trauma. Wow. The only difference is the attitude towards it. So in the same way, lucid dreaming can just be used for like I did as a teenager, sex and skateboarding, right? Sure. And of course, in the, in the Buddhist, uh, tradition, it's used for spiritual practice. Mm. You become lucid, and then in the lucid dream, you do your meditation practice, or in the lucid dream- Wow
you, um, you explore the empty nature of the dream state. Mm. You, you break the rules of the dream, which is said to break the shackles of egoic expectation in the waking state, so you become more flexible, less kind of blocked in by what you think is possible. So there you go. First D is decide what you wanna do.
Maybe working with childhood trauma, maybe training for sports, maybe doing a spiritual practice, maybe doing shadow integration, maybe just having fun, but decide what to do. The second and third Ds we've already mentioned, dream recall and dream diaries. Mm. So fall asleep setting that strong intention to remember your dreams, and then the third D, uh, dream diaries, wake up and write them down in some way.
And then the fourth D- And this kind of brings it all together, called dream signs. Now this i- was an offshoot of dream diaries. Like let's say you spend a week writing down your dreams. At the end of the week, read through your dreams and look for a, look for dream signs. So dream signs is a term created by this guy, Stephen LaBerge, who was one of the first scientists in the early '80s to prove lucid dreaming, and he used the term dream sign to describe any aspect of the dream that can reliably indicate that you're dreaming.
So a dream sign is any weird thing like dead relatives or being in a country where you don't usually live or seeing a kid from school you haven't seen for 20 years or being friends with Beyonce, you know? If it's a dream-like weird thing, that's a dream sign, and by keeping a dream diary, you start to recognize your dream signs in the waking state.
You go, "Oh, wait. Dead grandma, that's a dream sign. Oh, being in that, uh, uh, that beach we used to go to as a kid. That's a dream sign. Oh, being back at school, that's a dream sign. Being naked in public, that's a dream sign." And then before bed you look through again and you remind yourself of your dream signs.
Okay, being naked in public, um, being friends with Beyonce, being back at school, whatever they are, and then you set a reminder. You, you, you program yourself, "Okay, if between now and breakfast I'm back at school, I must be dreaming." Mm. "If between now and breakfast I see Beyonce, I must be dreaming." Mm. So you set what are called prospective memory cues.
These, like, lucidity triggers, and then if you can, you try and incubate a dream about one of your dream signs. So I might fall asleep going, "Tonight I dream of Beyonce. When I dream of Beyonce, I know that I'm dreaming. Tonight I dream of Beyonce. When I dream of Beyonce, I know that I'm dreaming." And then that night if all goes well, maybe Beyonce pops up into your dream, but this time you created a trigger.
Mm. You created a mnemonic trigger that Beyonce equals dreaming. That trigger goes off, bam, and you become lucid. Wow. It's so cool once it works. Yeah. You're like, "Whoa. I actually followed the steps and it freaking worked." Like how often does that actually happen- Yeah ... with kind of mind training and spiritual stuff where you actually follow the steps and it works?
And with lucid dreaming it does work. It is a learnable skill and a teachable skill. Mm. Mm. I spent the best part of 20 years d- doing that, teaching people, and anyone can do it. Anyone can do it, you just, you follow the steps, but the main thing is the why. The why. Most important of those four Ds is the first one.
Mm. You want a really good reason to lucid dream. You can get lucid tonight just by listening to this podcast. Mm. But if you've got a feeling of, "Oh, that sounded kind of cool. Like, oh, maybe I'll meet Beyonce. That sounds cool," that's probably not enough. Mm-hmm. But if it's like, "Oh, wow, imagine if I can treat my PTSD trauma with this.
Imagine if I can work my childhood trauma with this. Imagine if I can train for this sports event that I've got coming up," a really good reason, then actually that will bring lucidity to you. Wow, so fascinating. And with that, so maybe more for people for, that really respond well to a bit more of that why, 'cause I know you've shared that there's appears to be some research that supports, uh, the effectiveness of this.
Is that right? Yeah. I mean, there's, there's been more research in lucid dreaming in the last 50 years... Uh, sorry, in the last 20 years than the last 100 years put together. Wow. There is so much stuff now, and it's really... Uh, there are some, there are still some naysayers out there for lucid dreaming, but when I meet one now, it's just laziness.
I'm like, "Just Google." Like, it's there, man. Yeah. Like, to... People go, "Oh, I'm not sure that's real, lucid dreaming." Like, dude, it's been, like, a scientifically verified fact since 1975. Sure. Like, it's there. Now it's not whether lucid dreaming's real, it's, it's how far can we push this. You know? Yeah. What can, what can it do?
And actually, I think before we came on, we mentioned, um, the TED Talk that just got re-released- Mm-hmm ... this week. Yay. So I did a TED Talk in 2024, uh, talking about these two scientific studies that we, that I was part of. I was teaching the lucid dreaming on the study, where we had a group of people with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mm. And we wanted to see if lucid dreaming could be used not only to s- uh, help treat their nightmares, which we know it can. Loads of dozens of studies showing that lucid dreaming is an effective treatment for nightmares. This study was could it be an effective treatment for PTSD- Mm ... as in the waking state symptoms of trauma- Mm
like flashbacks, panic attacks, anxiety, hypervigilance- Wow ... as well as nightmares. Um, so I had a week with 55 people, all of whom had chronic PTSD. Uh, we did it online, the first study, and my aim was to teach them not only how to lucid dream, but how to use their lucid dreams to, uh, integrate their trauma.
Mm-hmm. So they would become lucid in a night- in a nightmare, and rather than trying to wake up, they would stay in the nightmare and either witness it- Mm ... if they could or change the ending of the nightmare or, uh, move towards their fear, essentially doing what they had never done before in the nightmare.
Other people who were working with childhood, uh, sexual abuse trauma, they would become lucid, and we found for them the best dream plan to give them was to call to meet their inner child. Not to actually try and go directly to this trauma that occurred to them- Sure ... but see if they could meet the internal archetype that was wounded by that trauma.
Mm-hmm. That created a buffer zone- Mm-hmm ... between the trauma and the healing. Uh, so in that case, and there were dozens of people who used that dream plan in this particular study, they became lucid, called out for their inner child, "Come to me. Inner child, come to me." And in the lucid dream, um, psychological concepts manifest, like, as personified beings.
This is the- Hmm ... unique thing about lucid dreaming. So you can meet fear. You can meet- Wow ... trauma. You can meet your inner child. You can meet the goddess. You can meet, you know, whatever the archetype is. Hmm. They'll appear. Um, and it'll be completely different for each person, right? So, uh, in this case, they would call for their inner child, and then a child would appear, often crying, 'cause they were, they were wounded by what happened to them, and they would hug them in the lucid dream.
Hmm. Give them words of affection or words of love, and have these really powerful breakthroughs in the dream. Um, one lady, her PTSD manifested as chronic pain. Uh, so she had, uh, unsymptomatic chronic pain, so basically the, the doctors couldn't find out what was wrong with her. There was some sort of nerve damage or nerve pain, but they couldn't kind of locate it.
Hmm. They were saying it's psychosomatic. I mean, everything is psychosomatic, right? To call- Yeah, totally ... to, to, to discount something as psychosomatic is, ugh, so disempowering. Mm-hmm. Anyway, she became lucid, and in the lucid dream she called out, "Chronic pain, I release you. Chronic pain, I release you." Real classic kind of hypnosis style, you know?
Yeah. She was kind of staying s- stating out this affirmation within the, in the lucid dream. And when she did that, this huge golden lozenge appeared, like a throat sweet. A lozenge, right? Hmm. Like, I need one right now. And that appeared gold, and then was radiating this golden light towards her. Ooh. And then she woke up kind of feeling like she was bathed in light.
And for her, she interpreted the lozenge was some symbol of healing, right? Hmm. Um, so people had these big experiences. Um, and I was kind of witnessing them, running the study. But I had no idea whether this would actually lead to a decrease in their PTSD score. And this is how the scientists were measuring it.
So at the beginning of the week, um, they took something called the DSM-5 PTSD score checklist, which is very arbitrary, but it's a l- list of dozens of questions used by the medical establishment to essentially, um, work out how traumatized a person is at a certain time. Hmm. And at the start of the week, the average PTSD score in the group of 55 was, like, way over the threshold, because of course, like, everyone was seriously traumatized.
At the end of the week, they then had the PTSD score taken again to see if this lucid dream training, uh, you know, increased their trauma, decreased it, or kept it the same. By the end of the week, the average PTSD score in the group was so low it was actually beneath the medical threshold. Um- So the scientists thought there was like a problem with data collection 'cause they were like, "These, these results are nuts."
Mm. So they double-check, they triple-check, and they're like, "Okay, we think these results are for real, but we need to do a follow-up in like a month. So give them one month with no access to lucid dre- or no lucid dream training, no access to, to me or the group, and then we'll see if there was lasting change 'cause maybe it was just some weird flash in the pan."
So a month later they, they had PTSD scores again, and the average score had actually dropped one point below. So then we knew we could publish. We're like, "Whoa, this has actually lasted- Wow ... for a, for a, for a month at least." Mm. So I gave, back to the TED Talks, so I gave a TED Talk basically talking about this.
Um, and the TED Talk got published, but TED put a, uh, blacklisting on it because- Mm ... um, they were saying that this was not mainstream science. Mm-hmm. My point was, no, it's not mainstream science, it's cutting edge science. Yes. This is why you won't- We don't know- ... find it in anywhere other than- Exactly ... our two studies.
We're the only ones who've done it yet. So it was up online, but you couldn't find it. You couldn't Google it, you couldn't search it, you couldn't find it- Mm ... on YouTube. So I spent the last year in, let's say, friendly debate with TED- ... about the scientific validity of this talk and e- removing the blacklisting.
And then just last week, so literally a matter of days ago, um, and we're recording- Yay ... this in mid-February, uh, they removed the blacklisting, so it's now up. So you can just Google Charlie Morley TED Talk or Charlie Morley TED Talk trauma or whatever it is. Yeah. Um, yeah, you'll find it. So that's... it's really cool it's up then.
Huge. Um- Ugh, congratulations. That's so exciting. We'll make sure to have that in the show notes too so that- Oh, yeah, please do ... people can, yeah, can check that out. I wanna check that out too. I'll definitely be watching that in the near future. So, and congratulations, that just must feel s- like, at long last, it's available.
Okay. Yeah. I was kinda pushing hard on that. Yeah. And just can make such a difference for people to know about this, right? Yeah. I think I wanted to do it for the people in the study, 'cause I was like- Yeah ... oh, sorry, not only... That was the 55 person study that I mentioned then. Mm-hmm. But we then did a randomized control, which is like the gold standard, with 100 people.
Okay. And we replicated results again. So I knew there were, like, over 100 people who'd given up their time to be part of this study, who'd g- had these amazing breakthroughs, and yeah, who weren't getting their results shared, who weren't, you know, their, their effort was not being publicized as it should in a way to help others.
So yeah, I'm really glad it's up online now. Oh, that's amazing, and just, and exciting, because that's exactly what we're looking to support people with, is things beyond just the standard top 10 things you can do for sleep. Yeah. Really getting in the weeds, because these topics are a big deal, and not to just be stepped over or medicated away or what have you.
So now, I love too that you pointed to, if I heard you correctly, it sounds like often the primary approach is to kind of learn to be with that scary experience or turn towards it. Yeah. Which actually, again, I'm studying a lot around psychedelics, and I'm actually about to be going to this psychedelic retreat in like 10 days.
Oh. Yeah, I'm excited, with another, um, podcasting friend. And so we're gonna experience the whole thing. But in prep for it, I've been doing all kinds of research around psychedelics and its impact on nervous system health and sleep. And a lot of what they're often saying is to turn towards the scary thing and to learn to experience whatever is there to be shown.
So I love that you're speaking to that because I've also heard some people in the sleep community talk about, like, rewriting the ending or- Yeah, nightmare rescripting's pretty big, yeah ... is that something that you f- feel like has a time and a, or a place, or is it often just experience what there is to experience?
W- how do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, nightmare rescripting is great and can work for some people. I don't think, or the data doesn't seem to show that it, that it has quite the same impact as lucid dreaming. Okay. Um, but it's way more accessible. Mm. Way more accessible. Like, people could do nightmare rescripting within a couple of days.
Uh, it might take weeks and maybe even months of training for someone to, to become lucid. I mean, that study was, was slightly different because it was a week intensive with me teaching them, so they were able to- Of course ... kind of fast-track to lucidity. But for some people, it might take weeks to become lucid, so it's...
Lucid dreaming is way less accessible than a lot of the other treatments for PTSD. Mm. But once you do access it, it is very, very powerful. Yeah. And there are so many parallels between psychedelics. A bit like psychedelics, in many countries, is way less accessible. It's illegal- Mm ... in many countries. People have to access it through the dark web and stuff like that.
Sure. But once they access it, and in a, a safely held space, it can be- Mm ... an incredibly powerful- Mm ... uh, journey. So I think there are loads of parallels there, and in fact, I've had quite a few, um, psychedelic guides, people doing kind of the psychedelic, uh, psychotherapy course, come and learn lucid dreaming.
And their reason for learning was really interesting. They, uh, well, several of them pointed out the same thing, that one of the main reasons that people have what might be classed in, inverted commas as a bad trip- Mm ... is that they start to, um, objectify or identify with the projections of their mind that the psychedelics is creating- Mm
and put it as an outside thing. That's, that's a real demon or a monster is there or something like... Rather than this is a projection of my own trauma, which is manifesting- Mm ... in a monstrous form or manifesting as this, uh, this being or, or whatever it might be. So their theory was if you can train someone to lucid dream- You're training them to tell the difference between internally generated hallucination, a dream, and reality.
Hmm. So the biggest tool in the lucid dreamer's toolbox is being able to tell the difference. No one knows the difference between hallucination and reality better than a lucid dreamer. So the theory is if you can train in lucid dreaming before a psychedelic experience, you are far less likely to go off into a bad trip of like, "Oh, I think the hallucination's real" and- Hmm
much more likely to go, "Oh, wow, this is my mind projecting this, this scary, traumatic, uh, image as a way of- Mm-hmm ... downloading and discharging the trauma that lies within me. How great. I should turn towards it- Hmm ... rather than running away and freaking out." Um, so there are so many parallels, so many parallels.
Wow. Well, I did not realize that I was getting prepared for this- Yeah ... psychedelic retreat. Perfect. What's this? This is... See, again, once again, it was really meant to be, this second time recording. There you go. Good timing. Love it. No, that's incredible. Okay, how about for... So some of the things that I had heard over the years around lucid dreaming, that previously people would kind of be training to wake themselves up throughout the night in order to kind of remember these dreams or get more facile at this ability, and so we would hear some people in the sleep community say, "Oh, don't even go there.
It's gonna disrupt your sleep quality." What do you say about that? What are your thoughts there? Yeah, just don't use those techniques. Like- Don't do that, yeah. It's like there are like dozens of lucid dreaming techniques- Yeah ... and people focus in on... There's one called wake back to bed and one called multiple wake-ups.
Mm-hmm. Which is exactly that. You basically wake people several times in the night, so you wake them from their REM periods, and they're more likely to remember their dreams, drop back into lucid dreams and stuff. It's a way of increasing the frequency of lucidity. So when I do these lucid dreaming retreats or lucid dreaming boot camp- Mm-hmm
there is the option on three nights, or at least two, or two or three nights to do that- Yeah ... where I will wake people multiple times in the night. We only do it for a couple of nights, and it's optional. Mm. About half the group are like, "No way." Yes. Half the group are like, "Yes, because I maximize my chances."
Um, but when I work with veterans groups and traumatized populations, we just don't teach those techniques- Hmm ... because they've already got such disrupted sleep, we don't want to disrupt it anymore. You can absolutely have a solid lucid dreaming practice using no sleep disruption at all, and in fact, the opposite.
One of the best ways to lucid dream is just spend more time asleep. Oh, you know, if you spend- Yes ... if you get six hours sleep, sorry, if you get eight hours sleep, you have 50% more REM, more dream time than someone who has six hours sleep. Mm. Like 50% more. That's so- 'cause all the REM is back-loaded, right?
Back-loaded. On the back end of the sleep, uh, back end of sleep. Mm-hmm. So, um, we're encouraging people, yeah, sleep like nine hours. Sleep nine and a half hours if you can. Stay in bed a l- for a lot. Sleep a- sleep more, and you have more of a playing field for lucidity. So quite the opposite. Okay. Uh, lucid dreamers are often very, very well rested because- I love that
they know that it's, uh, you know, long sleeps mean long dreams. Yeah, and what better way to sleep well than to heal some of these traumas- Absolutely ... if that's part of the piece of it, and our nervous system- Yeah ... support, or feeling fulfilled in life, or improving our confidence, or just all of these things that could have systemic impacts on our sleep.
And then just double tapping on that sleep quality piece, could- Yeah ... some people argue, well, are you, like, more awake in a particular way if you are being kinda conscious in this dream? Is that not allowing you to fully rest? What do we think about that? Yeah, good question. So lucid dreaming happens in REM dreaming sleep.
Yeah. And we know that REM dreaming sleep is a non-restful sleep state. Sure. You're not resting. In fact, the French word for, for REM i- and still i- is a, a, a paradoxical sleep. Mm. Uh, and it used to be called paradoxical sleep before in Chicago they found the rapid eye movement thing in the 1950s and they called it REM.
Um- The paradox being that when you look at someone's brain in dream, it looks like they're awake. Yes. Like, the brain frequency of someone dreaming is so active. You use so much energy when you dream, you burn calories. Mm. Like, that's how unrestful dreaming is. Yes. So we think of sleep being about rest, but actually it's not.
Like, a large percent- well, not a large percentage, but a, the, the, the two and a half hours a night you spend dreaming are not restful. Mm-hmm. You know, they're incredibly active. So it's in that state that you become lucid. So what we found is actually becoming lucid in this previously non-restful sleep state can actually lead to increased levels of rest and relaxation, not decreased.
Wow. Not only bec- you know sometimes you've had really hectic dreams, you wake up, you almost feel tired. You're like, "Whoa, God, that dream- Sure ... man, I was being chased. Then I couldn't find my way out of that thing, and I couldn't find my keys. It was so frustrating." And you wake up with all those, those, that cortisol and adrenaline in your system.
If you can become lucid and be, "Oh, oh, there are no keys to find. Oh my God, I'm dreaming right now. Okay, I'm just gonna fly off and do something fun or kind of do my spiritual practice," not only do you wake up feeling more refreshed- Mm ... um, but actually the brain gets bathed in gamma. So gamma is the brainwave associated with recognition.
So, like, if I've forgotten your name, I'm like, "Oh, what's she called? What's she called? Oh, Mollie, that's her name." Yes. Yeah. The moment I remember your name, I get a gamma burst. Mm. It's the, it's the brainwave of recognition, and it's also a brainwave associated- Hmm ... with people who've done long periods of meditation, like over 10,000 hours.
Their brain seems to be- Wow ... in constant gamma as if they're... Because of course, every moment they're recognizing, recognizing, right? I'm present, I'm present, I'm present. Wow. What we found is when people become lucid, the brain goes into gamma, not just for a burst, but, like, an extended period of gamma for pretty much- Hmm
the whole time you're lucid. So if you have, like, a five-minute lucid dream and then you wake up, you wake up in a brain that is still bathed in five minutes of gamma, which is very rare, associated with- Wow ... deep levels of meditation. So not only do people seem to be more rested after they become lucid, uh, but they feel really, really good.
However, disclaimer. Oh, okay. Learning to lucid dream, yes, it's tiring. Like, learning kickboxing is tiring or learning to play tennis is tiring. Yes. Or probably learn to play chess. I don't play, but I'm sure that's tiring when you've got to learn all the, the positions and stuff. Yeah. So yeah, learning a new skill is tiring.
Okay. There's, like, an adaptation phase, but then- Yeah ... yeah. On the other side- Yeah ... there's really- But there's a difference between tiring and sleep disrupting. Mm. Yeah, it's gonna be tiring 'cause you're, like, learning this new thing, and you're waking up, writing down your dreams in the morning, and then falling asleep doing these affirmations during the day.
You got to do all this awareness practice and meditation and, um- Yeah, that can be tiring. Okay. But it's not... But the, the kind of effects on your sleep, that depends on what techniques you use. Wow, very cool. Okay, well, I could definitely keep talking to you all day, so I'll try to rein it in. So every guest that comes on our podcast, we ask them four questions around how you're managing your own sleep, especially interesting with someone like yourself.
So currently, right now, and I know you got special situations at home, so, so maybe it might look a little different, you could let us know, but what is your evening routine looking like right now? My evening routine. That's what you're like, "Oh, God." My evening routine- About that ... is changing, changing nappies, changing diapers- So glamorous
warming up milk. Putting a baby into these weird sleeping bag things that babies go into. Reading a book to a baby, not myself. Yeah, so let's look at what my sleep routine may have been, like a year or so ago. Yes. Or maybe what my sleep routine is on the lucid dreaming retreats I run, where we're going for, like, optimal sleep.
Okay, there we go. Sure. So, you know, if possible- I think the thing, um, is really interesting, the, uh, the blue light thing, which has really been thrown out of the, blown out of the water in the last year or so- Mm ... when they reviewed the studies, uh, and found the blue light thing, you know, looking at your phone before bed or an iPad or stuff like that, um, you had to be staring into an, into an iPad screen for, like, two hours before sleep to reduce sleep onset time by 15 minutes.
Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. It was, uh, actually a tiny effect on sleep for this. Sure. So they were like, "Well, what is affecting people's sleep?" 'Cause people weren't f- weren't able to sleep, but it didn't seem to be their actual sleep architecture was being affected. Mm. Now, of course, in the studies, people weren't just staring in, at a, at a, a blank screen.
Correct. They were scrolling. Yeah. That's what keeps us awake. Yeah, yeah. It's, yes, blue light, like, right into your eyes before bed isn't great. Mm-hmm. Um, but far worse is doom scrolling or looking up porn- Mm ... or looking at the opposite politics that you're in so you, y- you know, you get really annoyed looking at these politicians.
Yeah. You know, that kind of stuff that really gees us up before bed, that's terrible for our nervous system. Mm. So yeah, try and regulate, try and down regulate your nervous system, like, two hours before bed. So that might mean switching off the phone, but not because of the blue light, but because you don't want to be scrolling before bed.
Yeah. Ugh. So if you can have some period of kind of, like, down regulation, if possible, 20 minutes before bed, you would do some sort of rest activity. Mm. Like, because we try and go straight from wakefulness to sleep. Yeah. And we forget there's a bridge between wakefulness and sleep called rest. Mm. And most of us don't rest before bed.
We just stay up for as long as we can. "Oh, I need to get, I need to go to sleep. I've gotta wake up in the morning," and we kind of rush to bed. Yeah. Rushing to bed is the craziest paradox, and yet we do it all the time, right? We rush to bed, and then we're like in bed, "Oh, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep."
It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. If you can, like, half an hour before bed engage in some sort of restful activity, it could be reading, uh, you know, a hard copy book. Apparently, Kindles, Kindles are okay, actually, but hard copy books are better. Mm-hmm. Could be doing some sort of meditation or spiritual practice.
Um, it could be, uh, you know, taking a bath, something like that. Some sort of wind down activity. Yeah. A bit like I do with my daughter right now. Sure. Like, if I don't do the bedtime routine with my daughter, she doesn't go to sleep. Yeah. But once I do do the warm milk- Yes ... uh, getting her into sleeping bag, reading her the book, she knows it's sleep time now.
And I'm like, we're basically just massive babies when we grow up. Totally. So I would go back- Yeah ... to this, like, baby routine, have sort of s- some sort of routine. Um, but- Perfect ... and also, I wouldn't get too caught up in it. I think sometimes we can get- Mm ... so into this kinda sleep hygiene thing that we create these props around going to sleep.
Mm-hmm. And then if, like, one day, oh, I forgot to read the book or I forgot to have the bath or I forgot to put my red block glasses on before sleep, we think we're not gonna sleep. Yeah. So I wouldn't pay so much attention to that, but if you can have a routine before bed, that seems to be good. I would say that the main thing is that good sleep begins in the daytime- Yes
not in the nighttime. Like, if you, if you can find periods of rest and relaxation throughout the day, like every time you do anything restful in the day, you charge up a part of the brain called the parasympathetic drive. Mm. Which is kind of like, imagine like a rechargeable battery, and any time you do anything relaxing in the daytime, you charge up this battery, right?
Your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep at night is in many ways dependent on how much charge is in your parasympathetic drive battery. Mm-hmm. This is why people tend to sleep slightly better on vacation, because they've done more relaxing stuff on vacation usually than spending a day at work or looking after your kids or whatever it might be, right?
So good sleep begins in the daytime, not in the nighttime. I'm sorry, you asked me about my nighttime ritual. Perfect. No, you... and you perfectly went into our next question- ... which is about your morning sleep routine- Okay ... with the idea that how we start our day can impact our sleep, which is exactly what you led us into.
So anything we might have missed in your mornings? Yeah, so again, my mornings right now do not look like they could, but ideally- Yes ... my mornings used to look like, um, th- this, this, the kind of well-known sleep hygiene stuff is, is pretty good for this. Mm-hmm. So the classic thing people know, like explosure, exposure to daylight- Yes
uh, as soon as you can in the morning. I think it's really important to know that, like, it doesn't have to be super bright sunlight. Mm-hmm. The amount of lumens coming into your eyes, coming through the retina on a cloudy day are way more than in a closed room with all the lights on. Mm. So you could be in a closed hotel room with all the lights on bright, thinking, "Oh, this is bright light.
This is better than being outside because it's cloudy." No, cloudy day still wins- Mm ... 'cause the amount of lumens, which is like the kind of units of, of light that come from the sun. So even a cloudy day is good, but obviously sunny is, is, is, might work even better. Mm. Uh, so exposure to sunlight in the morning.
Um, I think looking at diet, like what's the first thing you put in your body? Yeah. What's the first fuel you put in your body is definitely gonna affect your sleep at night. And know that the time you wake in the morning affects the time you're gonna feel tired at night. So, like, there can be this thing of, like, sleeping in because, again, I've had a really rough night, so I sleep in.
I think there's a moder- you know, be moderate with that. Mm. Look at like the time I wake in the morning is gonna affect the, the time I feel sleepy at night. Uh, but I'd say exposure to sunlight, making sure you have good fuel in your system. And also there's, there is a Buddhist thing actually which I'd like to share.
Oh, great. They believe that when you wake up in the morning, your energy gathers, uh, around the heart. So if you wake up in the morning and you're in the hypnopompic and you can remember to do it, focus on your heart area, like your heart chakra- Mm ... and like say an affirmation. Mm. Like, because the power of words can affect that energy which is gathered there.
So if you could- In the morning when you wake up, the first thing, bring your attention to your heart center and then say an affirmation. Like, "I am my kindest, most compassionate version of myself today" or- Mm ... "Today is the best day of my life." Something like that, whatever, whatever you're into, and then wake up.
Um, that apparently, like, charges up that energy that gathers in the heart, and then that chi or prana or lung, the Tibetans would say, then- Mm ... flows to the rest of your body. Whether it works or not, who knows, but it's quite a nice ritual to do in the morning. If you can have, like, the first thought you have is a happy thought, today's gonna be a good day.
I love that, and however it shakes out, I mean, there can't be a negative from kinda creating and authoring your day s- right as you first wake up. Nothing bad will happen. That's beautiful. Maybe something really amazing will happen, but nothing bad will happen. There is. I like that very much. Then that's great.
I've never heard anyone say that, so that's perfect. Uh, we're gonna add that onto a very empowering morning list. That's great. And then visually, what might we see on your nightstand or in your sleep environment? Okay, so this I've managed to still maintain- Okay ... even through babyhood. So I actually don't have a bedside table, a nightstand.
I have my Buddhist shrine. So that is there. Ooh, that's cool. Um, so the, the last thing I do at night, and I still manage to, to do this, is still I do kind of, you know, five or 10 minutes at the shrine before bed, so I get a little bit of meditation. So yeah, that's... I don't have a nightstand. I have, like, my earplugs and stuff I just put on the, the cushion, which is by the shrine.
Oh. Uh, but yeah, my nightstand is a shrine. Well, that is very on brand for you, I feel. Yeah, I guess so. It's fantastic. It was actually just there was nowhere else to put it, but that's where it lives. Well, now it's like right, you know, near and dear. That's fantastic. Okay, and then the last question would be, so far today, I know you're, like, navigating new circumstances and life chapters right now, but what would you say has made the biggest change to how you're kinda thinking about your sleep, or maybe said another way, biggest aha moment in how you're relating to that sleep?
I would say the biggest aha moment is the relationship to breathing rate and sleep. Mm. Thanks. The relationship to breathing rate and sleep. Like, we breathe incredibly fast in the West today. Mm-hmm. 15 to 20 breaths a minute is, like, the American average. This was in '19... This was in, uh, uh, 2020, actually.
It's probably even faster right now. Mm. The average American breath rate when I was born in the '80s was, uh, 7.5 breaths a minute. Oh, geez. That is ha- more than half what the rate is now. What the hell has happened in the last 40 years to more than- Oof ... double our breath rate? We have never breathed as quick as we're breathing right now.
Mm. And I believe there is a direct link to fast breathing and shallow sleeping. Yes. If you go even further back, like 1939, the average American breath rates of people's grandparents, even grandparents', great-grandparents' listening to this, average American breath rate is 4.6 breaths a minute. What? 4.6 breaths a minute.
If you were breathing at 4.6 breaths a minute right now, pe- they'd call an ambulance. They'd be like, "What's wrong with you? Why are you- Mm ... breathing so slowly? Are you having a stroke or something?" You know, they, they would be worried- Yeah ... and yet that was completely normal. Wow. I'm not saying it's causal- Mm
but it's definitely cor- there's definite correlation there. Like- Sure ... so many of the biggest killers in the Western world are exacerbated by fast, shallow breathing, and so many of the biggest killers in the Western world can be maybe not treated, but they can be, uh, the symptoms can be reduced by breathing much, much slower than usual.
Mm. I'm aware that when I share this fact, I get so excited my breath, my breath rate increases. Sure. So the irony is not lost on me. So to wrap this up, what I would say- Yeah ... it, or my point here is- Yeah ... if you can do, like, 10 minutes- Mm ... of slow, deep breathing before bed, that's actually what I do in my shrine before the last 10 minutes- Oh, wow
um, of, like, coherent breathing. So that's breathing between, like, four and six breaths a minute. That's pretty slow. Mm, okay. That's, like, 75% slower than we usually breathe. Yeah. You do that for five or 10 minutes before sleep, um, that will have a profound impact upon the eight hours that follows. Wonderful.
So yeah, breathe slowly. Ooh, that's a great investment. I love that. Beautiful. So many great points, and I know after listening to you, even for just a little bit of time, people are gonna wanna know: how can they follow you, watch your TED Talk, check out these retreats, learn from you, et cetera. Sure. All my stuff's online.
Apparently if you just Google Charlie Lucid, all my stuff comes up, so- Whoa ... even if you forget my surname, but my surname is Morley. Good. Uh, so Charlie Morley, my website. I'm on Instagram. Um, yeah, you'll, you'll find all my stuff on YouTube, and there's retreats coming up, and courses, and- Mm ... scientific studies coming up as well.
Yeah, so you'll find me, and stay in touch. That's- Make friends. Yes, that is fantastic, and congratulations again on the TED Talk. Uh, like I said, we'll make sure to have all of those links, the Charlie Lucid and beyond, in the show notes below, so definitely if you're listening, check those out. I'm gonna be doing the same.
And just Charlie, thank you so much. I know you're juggling all kinds of things, and then to come on not only once but twice, it means so much. Well, I'm glad. Yeah. I think this was even better than the last time, right? I think it was too, personally. And I can't remember all what we talked about, but, like, this feels good.
There was the kind of- Yeah ... synchronicity of you about to do the psychedelic retreat- Uh ... and then the TED Talk being un-blacklisted a couple of days ago, and, like, I feel we're in the right time right now. I think we are. I feel like I'm gonna have you in my mind when I'm in, uh, this retreat, and like, okay, what did Charlie say?
Yes, we go towards the scary thing. You know? Love the monsters. Love the monsters. Love the monsters, exactly. So thank you so much, Charlie. I appreciate it. You've been listening to the Sleep Is a Skill podcast, the top podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet.
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