Draft:Charlie Morley

Charlie Morley

Charlie Morley (born in Kingston upon Thames, London) is a British author, teacher, speaker and researcher in the field of lucid dreaming, sleep and shadow work.

Buddhist Path

Morley is a follower of Tibetan Buddhism within the Karma Kagyu lineage. He formally became a Buddhist within the Karma Kagyu lineage of Vajrayana Buddhism in 2003, at age of 19. His refuge Lama was the late Akong Tulku Rinpoche. For seven years Charlie lived at the Kagyu Samye Dzong London Tibetan Buddhist Centre in Bermondsey, London. He completed a solo three month meditation retreat in 2016.

Career

Charlie has been lucid dreaming for over 20 years. In 2008, at the age of 25 years, was ‘authorised to teach’ within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche Abbot of Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre. Charlie has spoken about lucid dreaming at The Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium, The Houses of Parliament, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and TEDx SanDiego in California.

Work with Military Veterans

Most of Charlie’s career has focused on teaching lucid dreaming as a way to support psychological growth. However, in 2018 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship grant to research “mindfulness based PTSD treatment in veterans” in the US and Canada. Charlie continues to teach people with trauma-affected sleep among military veterans, serving military personnel and wider populations. He is known for his approach combining breath-work, lucid dreaming and Yoga Nidra, to help regulate the nervous system and integrate trauma.

Research

In 2022, alongside lead scientist and molecular biologist Dr Garret Yount, from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in California, Charlie Morley facilitated a pilot study exploring the use of lucid dreaming practices to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Traumatology published the results of the peer-reviewed scientific study in June 2023 in which 85% of participants experienced “a remarkable decrease in PTSD Symptoms” by using lucid dreaming practices to become conscious within their dreams and heal their nightmares. The average PTSD score of the 55 participants dropped well below the PTSD threshold by the end of the week-long study. By the end of the sixth day of the study over 85% of the participants were no longer classified as having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (using the self-report PTSD Checklist for DSM-5). When a four week follow up was conducted those 85% of participants were still well below the PTSD threshold.

In February 2024 the results of a 100 person randomised control study also conducted by Institute of Noetic Sciences and Morley (using the same lucid dream protocol as the pilot study) confirmed similar results. This paper is due to be published in the summer of 2024.

Publications

He is an author of several books on lucid dreaming, shadow integration and mindfulness-based approaches to trauma affected sleep.

Dreams of Awakening, Hay House (2013) Dreaming Through Darkness, Hay House (2017) Lucid Dreaming Made Easy, Hay House (2018) Wake Up to Sleep, Hay House (2021)