AnxietyEarly Phase 1NCT07408206
Sleep, Dreaming, and Virtual Reality for Mental Health
A Early Phase 1 study testing Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention and Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP) in people with Anxiety, run by Northwestern University at 2 sites in United States.
Trial summary
People spend approximately one-third of their lives asleep, yet sleep is often underused as an opportunity to support psychological well-being. Contemplative traditions, including Tibetan Dream Yoga, have developed practices that use waking imagination and lucid dreaming to explore perception, awareness, and habitual… Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Anxiety
- What is being tested?
- Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention and Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP)
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 70 participants
- Where
- 2 sitesUnited States
- Study dates
- 15 Jan 2026to 31 Dec 2027
- Phase
- Early Phase 1
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 years and older
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- Individuals interested in participating will be screened for eligibility through a Qualtrics survey, a Score between 5-21 points in GAD-7.
- Healthy, English-speaking adults (at least 18 years old) with high dream recall (at least 1/week).
Who cannot join
- We will exclude people who self-report any of the following:
- history of an established meditative practice
- psychological or psychiatric disorders (other than mild anxiety)
- sleep disorders, nightshift work in the past month, extreme chronotype or irregular sleeping pattern
- use of recreational drugs in the past month
- history of asthma, seizures or heart problems
- unwillingness to wear headband during sleep
Trial locations and contacts
2 sites in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States2 sites, 2 recruiting
- Recruiting
Contemplative Sciences Center
Charlottesville, Virginia, 22903-2628
Michael Sheehy, Ph.D, (434) 982-6057, ms4qm@virginia.edu
gabriela.torresplatas@northwestern.edu
- Recruiting
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois, 60208
Susan Florczak, 847-491-3741, s-florczak@northwestern.edu
About this study
Official title: Transformative Benefits of Contemplative Sleep Practices and a Novel Pathway to Deliver Benefits to the General Public
People spend approximately one-third of their lives asleep, yet sleep is often underused as an opportunity to support psychological well-being. Contemplative traditions, including Tibetan Dream Yoga, have developed practices that use waking imagination and lucid dreaming to explore perception, awareness, and habitual patterns of thinking. Recent advances in sleep monitoring, dream communication, and lucid dream induction now make it possible to study these practices using scientific methods.
This study is a randomized controlled trial designed to examine the feasibility and effects of a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention compared with an active control condition. The intervention combines waking and dreaming practices that are adapted for individuals without prior experience and delivered using virtual reality-based training and home sleep technology. The program is designed to be scalable and culturally neutral, without requiring prior knowledge of contemplative or religious traditions.
Read more
The primary goals of the study are to characterize sleep and waking neurophysiology associated with Dream-Yoga-inspired practices and to evaluate whether participation is associated with changes in sleep-related brain activity and cognitive processes. Outcomes include measures of lucid dreaming, sleep physiology, and waking cognitive and perceptual processes. Anxiety will be assessed as an exploratory outcome to examine whether participation may be associated with changes in emotional experience. This study is not designed to provide treatment for anxiety or other clinical conditions.
Results from this study will help inform the development of scalable sleep-based mental training approaches and guide future research on the use of dreaming and sleep practices to support psychological health and well-being.
Read the detailed description
Dream Yoga is a contemplative practice with a documented history spanning more than a millennium, described in traditional manuals as a set of waking and sleep-based exercises intended to cultivate insight, perceptual flexibility, and altered self-referential processing. These practices include the intentional induction of lucid dreaming, in which individuals become aware that they are dreaming and may exert varying degrees of volitional influence over dream content. Advances in sleep physiology, polysomnography, wearable sleep monitoring, and methods for inducing and verifying lucid dreams now make it possible to examine such practices using objective neurophysiological measures.
This randomized controlled trial evaluates the effects of a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention compared with an active control condition in healthy adults without prior contemplative training. The intervention adapts core elements of traditional Dream Yoga into a standardized, secular program designed for accessibility and scalability. The study focuses on characterizing sleep and waking neurophysiological features associated with participation in the intervention and assessing changes in lucid dreaming, cognitive, and perceptual measures. Anxiety is assessed as an exploratory outcome.
Study Design and Procedures
Participants are randomly assigned to either a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention or a structurally matched active control condition. All participants complete baseline ("pre") and post-intervention ("post") assessments separated by an eight-week intervention period. Baseline procedures include informed consent, demographic questionnaires, neuropsychological testing, and self-report measures. Participants receive standardized training in the use of home sleep monitoring devices and study procedures.
Throughout the four-week intervention, participants attend weekly virtual group sessions of approximately 35 mins each, led by trained facilitators. Both study arms are matched for contact time, group interaction, facilitator attention, and homework expectations. Participants complete daily brief self-report measures related to sleep and dreaming during the intervention period.
A subset of participants undergoes additional laboratory-based electrophysiological assessments, including overnight polysomnography and waking electroencephalography, at baseline and following the intervention. These recordings are used to examine sleep architecture and EEG microstructure, including exploratory analyses of oscillatory activity and functional relationships between brain regions. Participants not included in laboratory recordings provide sleep-related data using wearable devices, which offer longitudinal but lower-resolution physiological measures.
Dream-Yoga-Inspired Intervention
The intervention introduces participants to structured waking and sleep-based mental practices derived from Dream Yoga, adapted for individuals without prior experience. Waking practices emphasize attention regulation, imagery, metacognitive awareness, and intention-setting prior to sleep. Sleep-based components include instruction on recognizing dream states, cultivating lucidity, and engaging in specific cognitive exercises during dreams.
Participants use wearable sleep devices that deliver auditory cues during REM sleep to support lucid dreaming and remind participants of intended dream-based practices. Participants are instructed in established signaling methods to indicate lucidity during sleep using predefined eye-movement patterns. The intervention integrates both waking and sleep-based exercises and includes individualized check-ins to support adherence to assigned practices.
The intervention also incorporates two group-based virtual reality (VR) sessions delivered early in the study period. These sessions are designed to engage perceptual flexibility and self-referential processing through immersive, interactive experiences. The VR component serves as an adjunct to waking Dream-Yoga-inspired practices and is intended to reinforce experiential learning relevant to the intervention's goals.
Active Control Condition
The control condition consists of a modified Health Enhancement Program (HEP) adapted to match the intervention in duration, format, and participant engagement. The program includes education and experiential activities related to health-promoting behaviors with a particular focus on sleep and dreaming such as physical activity, nutrition, sleep habits, stress management, and expressive activities. VR sessions in the control condition focus on general health and well-being topics rather than contemplative or dream-related content. Home practice is encouraged, and adherence is supported through individual check-ins, mirroring the intervention arm.
Randomization and Blinding
Randomization is performed by a statistician not involved in recruitment or assessment. Outcome assessors and investigators involved in data analysis are blinded to group assignment. Facilitators deliver only one intervention type to minimize cross-condition contamination.
Sample Size and Statistical Approach
Participants are enrolled and randomized equally between groups. Primary analyses examine changes in sleep and waking neurophysiological measures from baseline to post-intervention between groups using mixed-effects models. Secondary analyses examine changes in cognitive measures. Exploratory analyses assess changes in additional self-report measures, including sleep-related experiences, lucid dreaming characteristics, and anxiety.
- Conditions
- Anxiety
- Being tested
- Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention, Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP)
- Keywords
- lucid dreaming, dream yoga, contemplative practices, meditation, mind-body interventions
- Medical subject headings
- Anxiety Disorders
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Dream Yoga Inspired InterventionBehavioural
Also called Dream Yoga, Contemplative Sleep Practice Intervention
This customized contemplative training will guide participants in exploring techniques used in Tibetan Dream Yoga. Strategies in Tibetan manuals are thus transferred to a modern context and adapted as a group intervention. Goals will be set for dreaming that include gaining lucidity, a degree of volitional influence over the dream. Participants will be instructed on how to work with their dream-world self-concept, which can include changing the environment deliberately, making other individuals appear, and switching identities with other individuals in the dream. Wearable devices will be used to present cues during sleep both to provoke lucidity and to remind individuals of Dream-Yoga exercises to be engaged during sleep. The intervention includes both wake- and sleep-based instructions, with instructions on learning to apply the new orientation in their daily lives.
Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP)Behavioural
Also called Health Enhancement Program
The control group will receive a modified version of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), which was developed as an active control condition for mindfulness-based interventions, with a particular focus on sleep hygiene and dream journaling. It controls for several non-specific factors such as expectations of positive change, group support, behavioural activation, facilitator attention, at-home practice, treatment duration, and format (MacCoon et al., 2012; Rosenkranz et al., 2013). Our modified HEP will be structurally equivalent to the Dream-Yoga condition, with high similarity on non-program-specific factors, including timing and number of sessions. The two VR sessions will focus on relaxation. Participants will be taught positive health-enhancing practices, such as healthy diet and gentle exercise, with activity-based sessions covering exercise, sleep, dreaming, stress, anxiety, nutrition, journaling, music enjoyment, and drawing.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention | Experimental | This customized contemplative training will guide participants in exploring techniques used in Tibetan Dream Yoga. Strategies in Tibetan Dream-Yoga manuals are thus transferred to a modern context and adapted as a group intervention. Goals will be set for dreaming that include gaining a degree of volitional influence over the dream. Wearable devices will be used to present cues during sleep both to provoke lucidity and to remind individuals of Dream-Yoga exercises to be engaged during sleep. Virtual-reality (VR) sessions provide a novel adjunct to Dream Yoga, in keeping with prior research integrating lucid dreaming and VR (Gott et al., 2021). The protocol progresses though several group activities; individuals feel themselves dispersing into a void within the VR world, and then blending with others, leading the reduced self-grasping. If this unique VR component can blur conventional self-other boundaries, it may reinforce the progressive instructions in Dream Yoga. Receives: Behavioral: Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention |
| Sleep Health Enhancement program | Active comparator | A modified version of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), which was developed as an active control condition for mindfulness-based interventions, with a particular focus on sleep hygiene. It controls for several non-specific factors such as expectations of positive change, group support, behavioural activation, facilitator attention, at-home practice, treatment duration, and format (MacCoon et al., 2012; Rosenkranz et al., 2013). Our modified HEP will be structurally equivalent to the Dream-Yoga condition, with high similarity on non-program-specific factors, including timing and number of sessions. The VR sessions will focus on health enhancement. Participants will be taught positive health-enhancing practices, such as healthy diet and gentle exercise, with activity-based sessions covering exercise, sleep, dreaming, stress, anxiety, nutrition, journaling, music enjoyment, and drawing. Home practice and implementation will be similar in both groups. Receives: Behavioral: Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP) |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Changes in frontal midline theta
The intervention will preferentially increase frontal midline theta during a short period of breath meditation (one recording session before and one after the intervention); EEG power band-passed at 4-10 Hz will be quantified and related to findings on self-referential processing (Nondual Awareness Dimensional Assessment)
Measured: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Sleep Architecture
Sleep architecture will be compared with regard to time spent in each sleep stage, microarousals, slow-wave power, sleep spindles, and coupling between slow waves and spindles. Spectral power differences in different sleep stages.
Measured: Baseline and 8 weeks
Secondary outcomes (4)
Changes in Lucid Dreaming Frequency
Lucidity will be assessed with a composite of questionnaires at week 1 and measuring changes at week 8 and using self-reports of lucid dreams recorded in daily dream journals and/or nightly reports during the 7-week intervention.Additionally participants will fill tge Self-report Questionnaires: 1. Lucid Dreaming Skills Questionnaire (LUSK) 2. Lucid Dream Control-Specific Experiences (LDC-SE)
Measured: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Cognitive Flexibility Scale
Several facets of cognitive flexibility will be measured with the Cognitive Flexibility Scale
Measured: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Probabilistic Reversal
Several facets of cognitive flexibility will be measured with several standard neuropsychological tests such as the Probabilistic Reversal Learning.
Measured: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Stroop Test
Several facets of cognitive flexibility will be measured with standard neuropsychological tests such as the Stroop color-word test, Emotional Stroop.
Measured: Baseline to 8 weeks
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted13 Feb 2026
- Study start15 Jan 2026
- Primary completion31 Oct 2027 (estimated)
- Study completion31 Dec 2027 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Other trials for AnxietyStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- More trials run by Northwestern UniversityThe sponsor's other registered studies.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Early Phase 1
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Double blind
- Who is masked
- Participant, Outcomes assessor
- Enrolment
- 70 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Northwestern University
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- University of Virginia
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Ken Paller, Northwestern University
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07408206
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- STU00222189-MOD0004
- Status last verified
- Oct 2026
- First submitted
- 6 Feb 2026
- Last updated
- 16 Oct 2026
- Results posted
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: De-identified individual participant data (IPD) underlying the primary and secondary feasibility outcomes will be shared, including retention and adherence data, responses to feasibility and acceptability questionnaires (FIM, AIM, SSQ), and basic demographic variables (age, sex). No identifying information will be included. Exploratory questionnaire data and behavioral task data may also be shared in de-identified form, depending on journal or funder requirements.
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 16 Oct 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Transformative Benefits of Contemplative Sleep Practices and a Novel Pathway to Deliver Benefits to the General Public
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07408206
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- STU00222189-MOD0004
- Conditions
- Anxiety
- Keywords
- lucid dreaming, dream yoga, contemplative practices, meditation, mind-body interventions
- Phase
- Early Phase 1
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Enrolment
- 70 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- Northwestern UniversityUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- University of Virginia
- Study start
- 15 Jan 2026 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 31 Oct 2027 (estimated)
- Study completion
- 31 Dec 2027 (estimated)
- First posted
- 13 Feb 2026 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
People spend approximately one-third of their lives asleep, yet sleep is often underused as an opportunity to support psychological well-being. Contemplative traditions, including Tibetan Dream Yoga, have developed practices that use waking imagination and lucid dreaming to explore perception, awareness, and habitual patterns of thinking. Recent advances in sleep monitoring, dream communication, and lucid dream induction now make it possible to study these practices using scientific methods.
This study is a randomized controlled trial designed to examine the feasibility and effects of a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention compared with an active control condition. The intervention combines waking and dreaming practices that are adapted for individuals without prior experience and delivered using virtual reality-based training and home sleep technology. The program is designed to be scalable and culturally neutral, without requiring prior knowledge of contemplative or religious traditions.
The primary goals of the study are to characterize sleep and waking neurophysiology associated with Dream-Yoga-inspired practices and to evaluate whether participation is associated with changes in sleep-related brain activity and cognitive processes. Outcomes include measures of lucid dreaming, sleep physiology, and waking cognitive and perceptual processes. Anxiety will be assessed as an exploratory outcome to examine whether participation may be associated with changes in emotional experience. This study is not designed to provide treatment for anxiety or other clinical conditions.
Results from this study will help inform the development of scalable sleep-based mental training approaches and guide future research on the use of dreaming and sleep practices to support psychological health and well-being.
Detailed description
Dream Yoga is a contemplative practice with a documented history spanning more than a millennium, described in traditional manuals as a set of waking and sleep-based exercises intended to cultivate insight, perceptual flexibility, and altered self-referential processing. These practices include the intentional induction of lucid dreaming, in which individuals become aware that they are dreaming and may exert varying degrees of volitional influence over dream content. Advances in sleep physiology, polysomnography, wearable sleep monitoring, and methods for inducing and verifying lucid dreams now make it possible to examine such practices using objective neurophysiological measures.
This randomized controlled trial evaluates the effects of a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention compared with an active control condition in healthy adults without prior contemplative training. The intervention adapts core elements of traditional Dream Yoga into a standardized, secular program designed for accessibility and scalability. The study focuses on characterizing sleep and waking neurophysiological features associated with participation in the intervention and assessing changes in lucid dreaming, cognitive, and perceptual measures. Anxiety is assessed as an exploratory outcome.
Study Design and Procedures
Participants are randomly assigned to either a Dream-Yoga-inspired intervention or a structurally matched active control condition. All participants complete baseline ("pre") and post-intervention ("post") assessments separated by an eight-week intervention period. Baseline procedures include informed consent, demographic questionnaires, neuropsychological testing, and self-report measures. Participants receive standardized training in the use of home sleep monitoring devices and study procedures.
Throughout the four-week intervention, participants attend weekly virtual group sessions of approximately 35 mins each, led by trained facilitators. Both study arms are matched for contact time, group interaction, facilitator attention, and homework expectations. Participants complete daily brief self-report measures related to sleep and dreaming during the intervention period.
A subset of participants undergoes additional laboratory-based electrophysiological assessments, including overnight polysomnography and waking electroencephalography, at baseline and following the intervention. These recordings are used to examine sleep architecture and EEG microstructure, including exploratory analyses of oscillatory activity and functional relationships between brain regions. Participants not included in laboratory recordings provide sleep-related data using wearable devices, which offer longitudinal but lower-resolution physiological measures.
Dream-Yoga-Inspired Intervention
The intervention introduces participants to structured waking and sleep-based mental practices derived from Dream Yoga, adapted for individuals without prior experience. Waking practices emphasize attention regulation, imagery, metacognitive awareness, and intention-setting prior to sleep. Sleep-based components include instruction on recognizing dream states, cultivating lucidity, and engaging in specific cognitive exercises during dreams.
Participants use wearable sleep devices that deliver auditory cues during REM sleep to support lucid dreaming and remind participants of intended dream-based practices. Participants are instructed in established signaling methods to indicate lucidity during sleep using predefined eye-movement patterns. The intervention integrates both waking and sleep-based exercises and includes individualized check-ins to support adherence to assigned practices.
The intervention also incorporates two group-based virtual reality (VR) sessions delivered early in the study period. These sessions are designed to engage perceptual flexibility and self-referential processing through immersive, interactive experiences. The VR component serves as an adjunct to waking Dream-Yoga-inspired practices and is intended to reinforce experiential learning relevant to the intervention's goals.
Active Control Condition
The control condition consists of a modified Health Enhancement Program (HEP) adapted to match the intervention in duration, format, and participant engagement. The program includes education and experiential activities related to health-promoting behaviors with a particular focus on sleep and dreaming such as physical activity, nutrition, sleep habits, stress management, and expressive activities. VR sessions in the control condition focus on general health and well-being topics rather than contemplative or dream-related content. Home practice is encouraged, and adherence is supported through individual check-ins, mirroring the intervention arm.
Randomization and Blinding
Randomization is performed by a statistician not involved in recruitment or assessment. Outcome assessors and investigators involved in data analysis are blinded to group assignment. Facilitators deliver only one intervention type to minimize cross-condition contamination.
Sample Size and Statistical Approach
Participants are enrolled and randomized equally between groups. Primary analyses examine changes in sleep and waking neurophysiological measures from baseline to post-intervention between groups using mixed-effects models. Secondary analyses examine changes in cognitive measures. Exploratory analyses assess changes in additional self-report measures, including sleep-related experiences, lucid dreaming characteristics, and anxiety.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Double blind (participant, outcomes assessor)
- Number of arms
- 2
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention | Experimental | Behavioral: Dream Yoga Inspired InterventionThis customized contemplative training will guide participants in exploring techniques used in Tibetan Dream Yoga. Strategies in Tibetan Dream-Yoga manuals are thus transferred to a modern context and adapted as a group intervention. Goals will be set for dreaming that include gaining a degree of volitional influence over the dream. Wearable devices will be used to present cues during sleep both to provoke lucidity and to remind individuals of Dream-Yoga exercises to be engaged during sleep. Virtual-reality (VR) sessions provide a novel adjunct to Dream Yoga, in keeping with prior research integrating lucid dreaming and VR (Gott et al., 2021). The protocol progresses though several group activities; individuals feel themselves dispersing into a void within the VR world, and then blending with others, leading the reduced self-grasping. If this unique VR component can blur conventional self-other boundaries, it may reinforce the progressive instructions in Dream Yoga. |
| Sleep Health Enhancement program | Active comparator | Behavioral: Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP)A modified version of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), which was developed as an active control condition for mindfulness-based interventions, with a particular focus on sleep hygiene. It controls for several non-specific factors such as expectations of positive change, group support, behavioural activation, facilitator attention, at-home practice, treatment duration, and format (MacCoon et al., 2012; Rosenkranz et al., 2013). Our modified HEP will be structurally equivalent to the Dream-Yoga condition, with high similarity on non-program-specific factors, including timing and number of sessions. The VR sessions will focus on health enhancement. Participants will be taught positive health-enhancing practices, such as healthy diet and gentle exercise, with activity-based sessions covering exercise, sleep, dreaming, stress, anxiety, nutrition, journaling, music enjoyment, and drawing. Home practice and implementation will be similar in both groups. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (2 listed)
- Individuals interested in participating will be screened for eligibility through a Qualtrics survey, a Score between 5-21 points in GAD-7.
- Healthy, English-speaking adults (at least 18 years old) with high dream recall (at least 1/week).
Key exclusion criteria (7 listed)
- We will exclude people who self-report any of the following:
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Dream Yoga Inspired InterventionAlso: Dream Yoga, Contemplative Sleep Practice InterventionThis customized contemplative training will guide participants in exploring techniques used in Tibetan Dream Yoga. Strategies in Tibetan manuals are thus transferred to a modern context and adapted as a group intervention. Goals will be set for dreaming that include gaining lucidity, a degree of volitional influence over the dream. Participants will be instructed on how to work with their dream-world self-concept, which can include changing the environment deliberately, making other individuals appear, and switching identities with other individuals in the dream. Wearable devices will be used to present cues during sleep both to provoke lucidity and to remind individuals of Dream-Yoga exercises to be engaged during sleep. The intervention includes both wake- and sleep-based instructions, with instructions on learning to apply the new orientation in their daily lives. | Behavioural | Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention |
| Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP)Also: Health Enhancement ProgramThe control group will receive a modified version of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), which was developed as an active control condition for mindfulness-based interventions, with a particular focus on sleep hygiene and dream journaling. It controls for several non-specific factors such as expectations of positive change, group support, behavioural activation, facilitator attention, at-home practice, treatment duration, and format (MacCoon et al., 2012; Rosenkranz et al., 2013). Our modified HEP will be structurally equivalent to the Dream-Yoga condition, with high similarity on non-program-specific factors, including timing and number of sessions. The two VR sessions will focus on relaxation. Participants will be taught positive health-enhancing practices, such as healthy diet and gentle exercise, with activity-based sessions covering exercise, sleep, dreaming, stress, anxiety, nutrition, journaling, music enjoyment, and drawing. | Behavioural | Sleep Health Enhancement program |
Primary outcome
Changes in frontal midline theta
Time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
The intervention will preferentially increase frontal midline theta during a short period of breath meditation (one recording session before and one after the intervention); EEG power band-passed at 4-10 Hz will be quantified and related to findings on self-referential processing (Nondual Awareness Dimensional Assessment)
Changes in Sleep Architecture
Time frame: Baseline and 8 weeks
Sleep architecture will be compared with regard to time spent in each sleep stage, microarousals, slow-wave power, sleep spindles, and coupling between slow waves and spindles. Spectral power differences in different sleep stages.
4 secondary outcomes
Changes in Lucid Dreaming Frequency
Time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Cognitive Flexibility Scale
Time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Probabilistic Reversal
Time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
Changes in Cognitive Flexibility - Stroop Test
Time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 16 Oct 2026.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: Yes. De-identified individual participant data (IPD) underlying the primary and secondary feasibility outcomes will be shared, including retention and adherence data, responses to feasibility and acceptability questionnaires (FIM, AIM, SSQ), and basic demographic variables (age, sex). No identifying information will be included. Exploratory questionnaire data and behavioral task data may also be shared in de-identified form, depending on journal or funder requirements.
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
2 sites in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A Early Phase 1 study testing Dream Yoga Inspired Intervention and Sleep Health Enhancement Program (SHEP) in people with Anxiety, run by Northwestern University at 2 sites in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 7 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: looking for participants now, as of the sponsor's last update on 16 Oct 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 2 sites in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
What does this phase mean?
Early Phase 1 (sometimes called Phase 0) studies give a very small amount of a treatment to a few people, mainly to see how the body handles it.
Not every study follows the same path, and some studies (observational studies, device studies) have no phase.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
Contact S. Gabriela Torres Platas, Ph.D. ((847) 491-3741, gabriela.torresplatas@northwestern.edu), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Changes in frontal midline theta (time frame: Baseline to 8 weeks). The study lists 2 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 16 Oct 2026.