Ever tried swimming through honey? Or slowing time down so you can practise a kick with great precision and focus? Or doing ‘impossible’ yoga poses?

These are just a few of the amazing things athletes have done in their lucid dreams.

And the best thing about it? When they woke up they found they had actually improved their waking life sports skills.

This isn’t just another lucid dreaming ‘boast’. The improvement of motor skills in lucid dreams is a scientifically researched phenomenon. A study by Daniel Erlacher and Tadas Stumbrys got people to practise throwing a coin into a pot while awake, and then in a lucid dream. Those who practised in the lucid dream state had a statistically significant improvement of their subsequent waking performance. The group who showed the greatest improvement were those who practised while awake, but the study shows that it’s well worth practising in our sleep: lucid dream practice is definitely better than no practice!

More strong proof of the usefulness of lucid dreaming in improving sports skills comes from Melanie Schädlich’s doctoral research into practising motor skills in lucid dreams. Her case studies of athletes showed definite improvement of waking life sports skills following lucid dreaming practice of those skills. It’s her study that has the inspiring example of athletics trainer and swimmer Mark Hettmanczyk, who swam through sweets, honey and bubbles in his lucid dreams to hone his swim strokes by trying out different resistances. His waking life swim skills improved so much that he got the highest possible mark.

Melanie Schädlich interviewed me for her doctoral study as I have practised yoga in my lucid dreams for decades. I told her about the similarity between the feel of yoga energy flowing through the physical body, and the tingling warm energy of the lucid dream body. I shared examples of doing yoga in lucid dreams, and how these dreams helped to harmonise my waking life practice.

In lucid dreaming, you can experience physical sensations of movement and coordination in a fully realistic, multi-sensory world. The body remembers this when you wake up. This is thought to be due to the strengthening of the neural pathways in the brain. It means that when you next practise those movements in the waking state, you instinctively know what to do – your physical body remembers what the dream body did. It can be a fun and effective way of honing skills.

Solving problems in lucid dreams

Lucid dreaming can also help with solving problems. One of my favourite lucid dream examples comes from Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold’s 1990 book, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. There’s a computer programmer who meets Einstein in his lucid dreams and works on computer code with him:

I’m sitting with Einstein, white bushy hair… he and I are good friends. We do some flowcharts on a blackboard. Once we think we’ve come up with a good one, we laugh… I look at the code and say to myself, ‘I want to remember this when I wake up’. I concentrate very hard on the blackboard and wake up… I take the code to work and usually it is 99% accurate.

During my PhD research into lucid dreaming and creativity, lucid dreams helped me to solve many different problems as I wrote my novel, Breathing in Colour. Problems of plot development, character development, idea generation, and that elusive yet essential element: voice. A lucid dream helped me to realise that my main character, Mia, had synaesthesia, where sound, taste, smell and touch are mingled in fascinating combinations. I practised experiencing synaesthesia in my lucid dreams by simply asking the dream for help with this. These dreams helped me to write in multi-sensory language I’d never used before. I’d found Mia’s voice and the novel flowed.