Lucid Dream Mask Turns Bedtime into ‘Inception’

Lucid Dream Mask Turns Bedtime into ‘Inception’

Hollywood has glamorized the notion of lucid dreaming with films like "Inception" and "Waking Life." But what if “waking up” inside your dream was as easy as putting on a sleep mask? You could hurdle any impossible obstacle, like flying without a jet or swimming to the bottom of the ocean, from your bed.

Brooklyn-based Bitbanger Labs, run by two childhood friends, has dreamt up such a mask: It’s called Remee and it promises to put wannabe lucid dreamers behind their dreams’ steering wheel.

“The first time anyone lucid dreams, they wake up the next morning and are just blown away,” said Duncan McCloud Frazier, one half of the Bitbanger Labs’ duo. “Becoming lucid gives you the tools to all of the sudden create in that world that is so high fidelity and you can do whatever you want.”

Frazier and his Bitbanger partner, Steve McGuigan, said the key to lucid dreaming is to recognize a recurring sign that alerts you to the fact that you’re dreaming. In the movie "Inception," this recurring signal was effectively accomplished by Leonardo DiCaprio’s spinning top.

The Remee mask, which looks and feels like any regular sleep mask, blinks red dots while you’re in the REM portion of your sleep cycle, which is when you dream. Frazier and McGuigan said Remee’s blinking red lights bleed into your dream, and that with time and practice, you will come to recognize these lights as the signal that you’re dreaming. After that, it falls to you where and how you lead your dreams.

“The first time anybody lucid dreams and manages to stay asleep, [they choose] to fly,” said McGuigan. “It’s an exhilarating feeling to fly in your dreams. But there are still so many things that you can do. Their creative output is just different inside a dream.”

Remee was first introduced on Kickstarter in 2012, earning its initial investment goal of $35,000 in one day. At Remee’s initial price point, that was the equivalent of moving 400 units. One year later, the lucid dreaming mask has more than $572,000 in Kickstarter pledges.

While the mask isn’t the first device that aims to induce lucid dreaming, Frazier said it’s the cheapest on the market, at $95, and easiest to wear in your sleep.

“Our real innovation was taking some of the existing ideas and folding them into a package that people would use,” Frazier said.

Interested in peering into Remee’s red lights? Check out Bitbanger Labs’ website and start thinking about what you’ll do in your first lucid dream.