You may have heard that eating cheese before bedtime brings on lucid

dreams of a more fantastic nature, but now researchers believe there's

another factor that heavily influences the way we dream: the position we're
sleeping in. It turns out that the way you lie while sleeping might be having
an effect on the way your mind wanders.
Matt Berical over at Van Winkle looks at a couple of studies that suggest
the way we sleep influences the way we dream. The first was published in
the journal Sleep and Hypnosis back in 2004, and involved 63 volunteers
who were asked to sleep either on their left side or their right side. They
were then asked to fill out a sleep quality survey upon waking. The survey
covered dreams and nightmares, their vividness, and how the participants
felt in the morning.
The researchers found that the left side group were far more likely to have
nightmares. They report that 40.9 percent of the volunteers reported having
disturbing dreams, compared with just 14.6 percent of those who slept on
their right-hand side. The right side group were more likely to remember
dreams involving feelings of relief or safety, but they also reported lower
quality sleep overall.
While the study had its limitations - a small sample size and self-reported
results - it does indicate that there could be a difference in dreaming
depending on how we're lying in bed.
"Our preliminary observations indicate that dreaming and sleep quality are
associated with underlying brain functions and may be affected by body
posture," concluded the researchers. "Future research also needs to show
how individuals who are skilful in controlling their dreams by hypnotic
manipulations or lucid dreaming change their dream process by
intentionally changing their posture."
Then there's the 2012 study carried out by researchers from Hong Shue
Yan University in Hong Kong. They looked at the habits and sleeping
positions of 670 adults and found that those who slept face down had the
most vivid dreams: ones involving UFO sightings, love affairs, being locked
up, being unable to breathe, or having a sexual relationship with someone
famous.
"This effect cannot be fully explained by personality factors, which are
merely weakly associated with sleep position," concluded researcher Calvin
Kai-Ching Yu, suggesting that sleeping position does indeed influence
dreaming. There's also some evidence, albeit anecdotal, that sleeping at
an incline makes dreams more vivid - the thinking goes that we're closer to
wakefulness when we're closer to the standing position.
No conclusive proof at this stage then, but certainly something to think
about the next time you go to bed. If you're in the mood for a vivid dream
(or nightmare), try sleeping face down or on your left side - but don't say we
didn't warn you
hello