Lucid dreaming can be a space for creative problem-solving.

A recent study shows haiku poems written in lucid state are more creative than in waking.

The effects of lucid dreaming imply that becoming more present in waking life can also enhance creativity.

Have you ever written a song in a dream? Paul McCartney did, or at least he woke up with the melody for "Yesterday" playing in his mind (Barret, 2001).

Dreams have long been associated with creativity. From novels to art, scientific breakthroughs to inventions, many brilliant ideas have first been revealed in dreams. I’m no Paul McCartney—I can’t even read music—but I once woke up with a song in my head about my dog. I sang it to a musician friend who turned it into a score and recorded it for my birthday.

History abounds with anecdotes of people experiencing these kinds of surprising creative moments, and the products that result from them. Recently, however, researchers have also studied what happens when we intend to use dreams to consciously create something. One such example is writing poems while lucid dreaming.

Waking Up to Dreaming

Lucid dreaming is the state of being aware that one is dreaming. Once lucid, we can move around in a dream, direct it, and consciously change its contents. I have had clients who described choosing to fly in a dream or looking for—and finding—a solution to a daytime problem.

We can also use lucid dreams to find solutions to problems within the dream itself. I once dreamed I was in a messy dorm room with dirty clothes and bedding strewn everywhere. At that moment, I became lucid and decided to clean it up. Suddenly, a gleaming white washing machine appeared, and I threw everything inside. In my work with clients, I have observed that emphasis on this “within-dream” repair leads to a higher sense of agency for actively engaging in solving waking-time problems. Indeed, lucid dreaming has been correlated with an increased ability to manage waking emotional and cognitive functions (Gruber et. al. 1995).

If you aren’t already a lucid dreamer, you may be asking at this point, how you, too, can have lucid dreams. Lucid dreamers are also known to have high dream recall (McNamara, 2019). This means that the first step to being a lucid dreamer is to begin to intentionally create a practice of remembering your dreams and—this is key—to write them down (McNamara, 2019). Once you begin to remember your dreams, other techniques include paying attention to your thoughts while falling asleep and asking yourself several times throughout the day if you are dreaming or not, and noting the sensorial differences between the two states (Konkoly & Burke, 2019).

Beyond problem-solving, lucid dreaming can also be used for a creative purpose. Researchers have demonstrated it is possible to have an assignment in mind before going to sleep and then, in a lucid dream, perform the task.

Štuikytė and Stumbrys (2025) instructed a group of lucid and non-lucid dreamers to write a haiku poem. The non-lucid-dreamer group did so while awake, while the lucid-dreamers did so both while awake and while lucid dreaming. Expert judges ranked the poems from high to low, and then from least to most creative on a scale of 1-6, in two different readings of the poems.

And the winners were: the lucid dreamers. However, only their poems, which were written while lucid dreaming, ranked higher in creativity. Poems written by lucid dreamers while awake were rated no differently than the poems written by non-lucid dreamers.

The question remains: Is lucid dreaming a creative superpower?

'Snap Out of It?' Not So Fast!

It may sound like magic, but really, lucid dreams show us how all dreams help us to be and become more creative. These nighttime sleep stories help us form unexpected connections between memories and experiences (Cai et. al., 2009), and this type of associative thinking is theorized as an integral part of the creative process (Beaty & Kenett, 2023). And the farther out we go in our associative networks, the more unusual the connections we may make.

Consider the moon. A relationship between the tides and the moon is fairly close. That network is short. Connecting the moon to say, a Cat Stevens song or a Cher movie is an example of a more distant associative network.

Štuikytė and Stumbrys (2025) point to enhanced associations as one part of why, perhaps, the lucid dreamers in their study were able to write more creative haiku poems when they were asleep. Part of the assigned task was to create a poem based on the environment they found themselves in—colors, sounds, and so on. Participants noted in their feedback that they found a more “creative” or unusual environment while in a lucid dream.

Getting Creative in Waking Time

At this point, you may also be wondering if we can use the lessons of lucid dreaming to boost our waking creativity. Lucid dreamers have indeed been found to be more creative while awake (Štuikytė and Stumbrys, 2025). But we don’t need to be lucid dreamers to apply a few lessons and start boosting our creativity today.

Remember that one part of what participants in the haiku study felt enhanced their creativity was the environment of the lucid dream. Add to that the fact that they were conscious of that environment—in other words, they were acutely paying attention. What amazing colors, tastes, scents, textures, and sights do we race by in our waking time without noticing? Whether we decide to fly on purpose in a dream or write a poem, we can certainly get more present in waking life to appreciate the sounds, smells, and sights of daily living around us. That noticing, perhaps, is where true creativity lies.

Barrett, D. (2001). The committee of sleep: How artists, scientists, and athletes use their dreams for creative problem solving-and how you can too. Crown House Publishing.

Beaty, R. E., & Kenett, Y. N. (2023). Associative thinking at the core of creativity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(7), 671–683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.04.004

Cai, D. J., Mednick, S. A., Harrison, E. M., Kanady, J. C., & Mednick, S. C. (2009). REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(25), 10130–10134. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0900271106

Gruber, R. E., Steffen, J. J., & Vonderhaar, S. P. (1995). Lucid dreaming, waking personality and cognitive development. Dreaming, 5(1), 1–12.

Konkoly, K. & Burke, C.T. (2019). Can learning to lucid dream promote personal growth? Dreaming, 29(2), 113-126.

Štuikytė, G. & Stumbrys, T. (2025) Lucid dream poetry: An exploration into creative potentials of the lucid dream state. Dreaming. Vol. 35 (S1), S82-93 https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000328

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