Flying Dreams and Lucidity: An Empirical Study of Their Relationship

Abstract

A common observation in the lucidity literature is an association between lucid dreams and flying dreams. In Van Eeden's paper in which he introduced the term "lucid dream", he wrote, "Flying or floating in all forms of dreams... is generally an indication that lucid dreams are coming" (Van Eeden, 1913, p. 449). Patricia Garfield also noticed that flying dreams tended to occur in close proximity to lucid dreams and suggested that one can make use of this relationship to cultivate lucidity: "Induce dreams of flying and you are on your way to lucid dreams," she wrote (Garfield, 1974, p. 133). Celia Green (1968) reported that all her lucid dreamers refer to flying dreams, several of them describing that the flying prompted lucidity, while one intentionally used the occurrence of lucidity to initiate flight. Lucid dreams accounts in LaBerge's (1985) and Sparrow's (1976) books also seem to have a high rate of flying. The purpose of the present study was to determine in a general college population of dreamers: 1) what was the rate of lucid and flying dreams, 2) whether they occurred in some relationship to each other, 3) if they were related, whether the two elements occurred to the same dreamers, on the same nights, and/or within the same dreams, and 4) when they occurred in the same dream, which element preceded the other.