From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Wow! So that's what it was... "My 1st lucid dream"
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 23:44:49 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.132446.1053@nntp.hut.fi> f39423v@taltta.hut.fi (Samu Karanko) writes:
>...having read my Castaneda's while younger, that you were supposed to
>look at you hands while dreaming. (I do not remember what you were
>supposed to with them...) So I raised my left hand, (I kept hold of the
>wind shield with the other) and there it was, ring and all! It seemed
>somehow significant that I was able to do all that, just as if I were
>in the waking world....

Cool dream!  I have questions relating to this for lucid dreamers.

I have been able to look at one hand with some effort, but have
found that bringing up the *other* hand was massively harder, like
trying to lift the heaviest weight I could.

Have others experienced this?  Is there a bilateral assymmetry to it?
(E.g., one hand is systematically easier or harder than the other?)
At one point, I had the impression that I was left-handed in my dreams
(I'm right-handed in reality.)  Have others experienced this reversal?
I've not had enough cases, personally, for statistical significance.

I've had several theories about all this.  Here are the ones I've
thought about the most (besides the obvious one of one's waking
handedness):

1. VISUALIZATION LOAD

   One is that seeing two hands, regardless of which one comes up into your
   dreaming field of vision first, simply strains the human visualization
   system dramatically more compared to just one.  I've had one hand up
   that looked normal, but brought up the other only to have everything --
   the hands and the visual field behind -- go completely strange: e.g.,
   turn skeletal, seem to be made of colored beads instead of flesh and
   bone, etc.

2. PHYSICAL FEEDBACK

   Another theory: that the hand that you raise is the hand that would be
   easiest to raise if you were lying awake.  E.g., if you're lying on
   your left side, your right hand is freer, so that's the one that you
   first look at it in your dream.  This implies some slight amount of
   contact with your real body while dreaming -- that you have some sense
   of your body's latent mobility.  This would also predispose your dream-
   handedness, since most people tend to sleep on one side or the other.
   Also, REM correlates somewhat with sleeping on a particular side, though
   I forget which. [Ref. Laberge Nightlight article.]

3. LOBE DOMINANCE

   Yet another, relating to hemispheric dominance: that the harder hand
   to raise was the one that was controlled by the lobe that was, of the
   two, the one that was less well-connected to visualization centers in
   the brain (assuming that's an assymmetric function itself).

And I had an idea for an experiment, regardless of what causes the difficulty: 
can one make one's "weaker" side "stronger" in your dream by "exercising"?
And what would the other effects of this be, if so?

If Theory 2 (PHYSICAL FEEDBACK) explains everything, the chances of
improvement might be poor.  But if it's some combination (1&2, 1&3, 2&3,
or 1&2&3), then improvement might be more likely, and might also have some
interesting consequences, such as improved ability to visualize, and/or
better hemispheric balance, in dreams and/or in waking.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: alt.dreams