Physical improvements through lucid dreaming

I’ve only recently discovered that doing physical activities or practicing skills in your dreams (especially lucid ones) can improve your physical strength or improve those skills in RL. An example I read was for the skill of accuracy, practicing throwing something or shooting in an LD to improve the skill outside of dreams.

There have apparently been experiments to prove things like this but I didn’t read about any that have been done to prove this exact theory, but if I researched it a little more I may find some. The logic behind it all seems pretty solid in my 100% unprofessional opinion. So my question is: Does anybody know if this is true, noticed any physical improvements from it and, if so, to what extent does it work?

I can only give anecdotes here, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve been practicing martial arts in dreams and lucid dreams for a few years.

I like to think supplementing my practice with dream rehearsal could only have been for the best, but the only notable improvement I can point to dreams as a strong source of came from dream practice started after I moved away from my old school. I never found anything similar out where I’m living now, and I had forgotten a lot of my old forms due to lack of practice, so I decided I’d try to remember one.

It took a while, but eventually I was able to recall the bare minimum - and later compared it with videos I found online of the same routine (which I couldn’t find at the time I wanted to remember it) that make me feel pretty confident that I got it more or less right.

I’m still not great, and I’d definitely be a lot better if I’d found someone to teach me again rather than just going through the form alone, but it seems to have been significantly better than nothing at all.

With respect to research, I actually participated in a small study by a grad student at Heidelberg University who was collecting anecdotes on just this subject - lucid dreams and motor skills practice. Her paper hasn’t been published yet, (fingers crossed!) but keep an eye on Melanie Schadlich if you’re interested. She was very thorough, and from what she told me, there were a few really interesting lucid dreamers practicing all kinds of things - including musical instruments and horseback riding.

not sure if this is of any help but this could be the link about that university…

hfe.co.uk/blog/lucid-dreaming/

also, whe i read stephen leberges LD book, he mentioned a ballet dancer that broke her ankle, she used LD to heal her ankle, and the doctors was amazed how it healed faster

That’s definitely the right university, but it doesn’t look like they cited their source…which is always a little frustrating. The timeframe is wrong for the study I was in though. She hadn’t started data analysis until September 2013 at the earliest, the same month this article was posted.

The article also describes “sports people” specifically, so it was most likely this study they are referring to, also involving Heidelberg. We only get the abstract for free though, which is pretty typical of published, peer-reviewed articles.

Still, from the abstract it look like anecdotes from people who claim to have practiced and improved motor skills in lucid dreams - not anything like people being hooked up to EEGs and asked to practice to see what happens. Though I seem to remember that being a thing somewhere. I’ll try and look into that when I get the chance…

Either way, good catch.

((EDIT: Turns out my school does have access to this particular journal (Imagination, Cognition and Personality) despite my earlier doubt, so I’ll try to find it and confirm/disconfirm what I assumed above.))

((EDIT AGAIN: Turns out the database I was relying on only goes up to Vol. 28, and this was published in Vol. 31 so uh…nevermind. Sorry.))