People spend approximately one-third of their lives asleep, yet sleep is often underused as an opportunity to support psychological well-being. Contemplative traditions, including Tibetan Dream Yoga, have developed practices that use waking imagination and lucid dreaming to explore perception, awareness, and habitual patterns of thinking. Recent advances in sleep monitoring, dream communication, and lucid dream induction now make it possible to study these practices using scientific methods. This study is a randomized controlled trial designed to examine the feasibility and effects of a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention compared with an active control condition. The intervention combines waking and dreaming practices that are adapted for individuals without prior experience and delivered using virtual reality-based training and home sleep technology. The program is designed to be scalable and culturally neutral, without requiring prior knowledge of contemplative or religious traditions. The primary goals of the study are to characterize sleep and waking neurophysiology associated with Dream-Yoga-inspired practices and to evaluate whether participation is associated with changes in sleep-related brain activity and cognitive processes. Outcomes include measures of lucid dreaming, sleep physiology, and waking cognitive and perceptual processes. Anxiety will be assessed as an exploratory outcome to examine whether participation may be associated with changes in emotional experience. This study is not designed to provide treatment for anxiety or other clinical conditions. Results from this study will help inform the development of scalable sleep-based mental training approaches and guide future research on the use of dreaming and sleep practices to support psychological health and well-being.
Age range
18 Years
Sex
ALL
See this in plain English?
AI-rewrites the medical criteria so a patient or caregiver can understand them. Always confirm with the trial site.
Bring these to your next appointment. They're a starting point for a shared conversation — not a sign you qualify or a recommendation to enrol.
Generated to help you prepare — always confirm anything about your own eligibility and care with the study team and your doctor.
The trial coordinator is the person who runs the study day to day. These cover the practical side — logistics, costs, and what taking part would actually mean for your life. The study team confirms whether you meet the criteria; these are questions to ask, not a sign you qualify.
A starting point for the conversation — always confirm anything about your own eligibility, costs, and care with the study team and your doctor.
Changes in frontal midline theta
Timeframe: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Sleep Architecture
Timeframe: Baseline and 8 weeks
S. Gabriela Torres Platas, Ph.D.