I once met an ME sufferer who told me that she used lucid dreaming for healing.

I instantly launched into an excited rant about how discoveries around neuropeptides¹ suggested that, at a cellular level, the mind did directly affect the body and how this opened up a huge vista of possibility for psychophysical healing in the lucid dream state, infusing our very cells with healing energy...

‘No, no, none of that!’ she said.

She went on to describe how she used her lucid dreams to enjoy all the activities she couldn’t do any more in the waking state.

In her lucid dreams she went horse-riding, running and dancing, waltzing with her dreaming mind without the need for her wheelchair. This is but one example of the potential for psychological healing through lucid dreaming.

Often the healing is not just psychological. Many people believe in the potential for physical healing through visualization, such as the method in which patients imagine their body’s immune system healing diseased cells in the form of coloured light.²

Studies have shown that this kind of visualized healing can help to reduce stress, enhance the immune system and lessen pain in many patients. These techniques are dependent upon our ability to visualize, something not all of us find so easy.

In a lucid dream, however, the playing field is levelled, because a lucid dream is the most vivid and complete visualization we can experience. Applying those healing techniques within a lucid dream may prove far more effective than any visualization done in the waking state.

I’ve heard of lucid dreamers healing everything from warts on their feet to period pains and there is an overwhelming body of evidence in Robert Waggoner’s book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self to corroborate this.

I myself have healed ear infections and torn ligaments through visualized healing in lucid dreams.

This will come as no surprise to dream yoga expert Dr Michael Katz, who says that while lucid, ‘the power of the mind is heightened’, making visualised healing ‘far more powerful than simply visualizing in the waking state’.

There is also the potential to heal phobias within the lucid dream state using methods of gradual integration not dissimilar to those found in cognitive behavioural therapy.

Phobias can be addressed by visualizing the source of the fear and then engaging with it in the knowledge that it is not real, just a mental projection. This new fearless engagement with the object of the phobia will leave a neurological pathway in the brain that may activate in the waking state, too, thus paving the way to curing the phobia for good.

As for addictions, these can be worked with in exactly the same way as you would in hypnotherapy. Just as a hypnotherapist might use the state of hypnosis as a way to contact the unconscious mind and offer it a beneficial suggestion pertaining to altering an addictive behaviour pattern, a lucid dreamer might use a lucid dream in a similar way.

When we become lucid we are contacting the unconscious mind, as we are in hypnosis, but then moving even deeper still into its depths, meaning that if we call out, for example, ‘I live a healthy lifestyle, I am a healthy, satisfied non-smoker now and forever more,’ in a lucid dream, this suggestion might work even more powerfully.

Editor’s Note: Discover more of the possibilities opened up by Lucid Dreaming in Charlie Morley’s Hay House Basics book on the topic, which you can download a free eBook copy of from the link below – get your copy today:

¹ * Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton proposes in The Biology of Belief that neuropeptides (neuronal communicators located on cell membranes) directly affect the DNA within our cells, and that these neuropeptides are strongly influenced by our thoughts and feelings.

² * On his website, Dr David Hamilton cites a 2008 study published in the Journal for the Society of Integrative Oncology demonstrating how visualized healing can reduce the risk of recurrence of breast cancer.