Can lucid dreaming help your mental health? What the evidence says

I somehow learned to do this by accident.

I used to have terrifying dreams of falling. Now, instead of falling, I fly. Super empowering --- and I don't have these dreams much anymore.

Try muscimol :)

my theory is that the main "cleansing" cycles are complete by this point and then the subtler psychic strata are more gently accessible. Kind of like how a river in the peak of snowmelt will be devastatingly strong and pull everything along with great force, but towards the end of the year the trickle of the stream lets you see the stones and plants under.

During my late twenties and throughout my thirties I had bad sleep paralysis. It was terrifying for the first couple of years. I would wake up (or I would think I was awake) to being suffocated, unable to inhale or exhale, unable to move at all, and with a feeling of impending doom. I could open my eyes and move them back and forth, and I could hear. Most of the time I would see a menacing dark figure moving toward me, and I could hear loud static in the air or popping noises all around me. I genuinely thought I was going to die.

I researched it, and learned that it wasn't going to kill me. It was still terrifying, but after some time I learned that if I didn't fight it and struggle to wakeup by attempting to move my pinky or attempting to grunt to alert my wife, I could "drop" into a lucid dream.

In order to do this I would have to convince myself that I wasn't going to suffocate to death, and I had to fight the urge to breathe. This wasn't easy, and it didn't always work, but when it did I would drop into a dream where I was totally aware that I was dreaming, and I could do almost anything.

As I got older it began to happen less frequently, and eventually I stopped having sleep paralysis, and I stopped dreaming. It was fun while it lasted though.