The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Living the (lucid) dream
Sherelle Jacobs spends a surreal night at a hotel using virtual reality to encourage conscious dreaming
“Welcome to the dream factory,” a Sirismooth voice cooed as clouds swirled at accelerated speed, sometimes morphing into Grecian sculptures. It is hard to describe the world into which I had been transported – perhaps a meditation class on acid wrapped inside a video game. And yet, as I watched the melting red sunset solidify into pink marshmallows – taking deep yogic breaths as per dream-Siri’s instructions – it felt like a rational and natural place to be.
Though my imagination was larking across a daisy-spattered meadow, in reality I was propped on my bed at the Kimpton Fitzroy London hotel. The plush property in Russell Square has launched a virtual-reality “lucid dreaming” package, tapping into one of the big wellness crazes for 2024.
Most of us have never actually had the pleasure of a lucid dream. They are dreams where you are conscious that you are dreaming. Rather than being swept along in the storyline crafted by your subconscious, you are able to guide yourself quite deliberately through the landscape and even decide what happens next. Celebrated for their alleged ability to help us unpack traumas, problem-solve and refine creative skills, they are rare – though, interestingly, more common among video gamers.
The wellness market is increasingly saturated with lucid-dreaming sleep powders and eye masks that emit light and sound cues when you enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. With the dawning of virtual reality, the race to build the perfect lucid dream machine is being taken to another level. Kimpton Fitzroy’s offering is the brainchild of Charlie Morley, in partnership with AI artist Sam Potter – who leverages a language algorithm to draw up a virtual artists’ impression of guests’ dreams to keep as a memento.
The Kimpton Fitzroy is an apt setting for such a package, surrounded by the leafy tranquillity of Russell Square. Though all pink-veined marble, lyre-clutching cupids and glittering mosaic tiles, there is an intimate, spa-like serenity to the place, with its black-curtained corridors, bouquets of white roses and oversized candles.
Before my lucid dreaming experience, I couldn’t resist a drink in the hotel’s cocktail bar, Fitz’s – a quirky collision of original stained-glass windows, fringed lampshades and funky disco balls. At the moment the bar is offering an appropriately Freudian drinks menu, whereby you choose your drink based on the painting that most appeals to you in a booklet that, when illuminated with the mini torch provided, is supposed to reveal insights into your mood. My subconscious drifted towards a tenebrous floral oil painting that apparently indicated my need to “embrace the void to find stillness and deep contemplation”. That is to say, by way of a cocktail called Rothko’s Abyss, with whisky, vanilla bean and cocoa nibs. Eventually I headed up to my room, soothing with its succulents and oatmeal furnishings, not to mention an immensely comfortable king-sized bed.
After a splendid bath in a roll-top tub overlooking Russell Square itself, I set to work. As per the instructions I’d been given, I took a few Lab Tonica lucid dream drops with valerian root and mugwort, and rubbed sleep balm into pulse points, all provided in a “dream trunk” that had been put in my room. Then I put on the headset. The experience is designed to last only five minutes, which I found a bit short, so I played it on loop for a while, enjoying the feeling of suspension in the hypna gogic state between wake and sleep.
Sadly, after taking off the headset and immediately falling asleep, I didn’t lucid-dream – but I did have one of my most memorable and cathartic dreams for a while. Even though the content was dark, encapsulating many things I am feeling and thinking about, I felt a strange clarity and calmness the next day. Not even an unexpectedly disappointing breakfast in the hotel restaurant, with cold scrambled eggs and tea that reached my table mid-meal, could knock me off-kilter.
I must confess that when I set out to try the Room to Dream experience, I thought it would be a fun novelty. But after trying it, I am intrigued. I continue to write in my Kimpton dream journal every day and have ordered a dream mask. This could be the start of a very interesting journey.
Double rooms from £399, including breakfast; the Room to Dream package costs £50 extra.