Lucid Dreaming!

[SkyBry]

Anyone here who can Lucid Dream?

Please share your dream with the rest of us. What can you do in your dreams and what can't you do. And how much of that is due to lucid dreaming.

Could you do it automatically or did you teach it to yourself, if so what is the best way!?

I want to be able to do it as well.

[Opisthokont]

I'm interested in it, but I have never really attempted it, except trying to memorise the finger-counting trick. I've been trying to find some decent literature, but it seems hard to find something that isn't a load of new age bollocks.

[Lady Shadow Cat]

Anyone here who can Lucid Dream?

Please share your dream with the rest of us. What can you do in your dreams and what can't you do. And how much of that is due to lucid dreaming.

Could you do it automatically or did you teach it to yourself, if so what is the best way!?

I want to be able to do it as well.

I lucid dream sometimes, but definitely not something I learned. I didn't even know thats what I was doing until I met my husband and we talked about it.

My husband has vivid lucid dreams, but it is very erratic, and he doesn't control when they happen. Most of his dreams are somewhat apocolyptical, a lot of large scale disasters, dying, and general unpleasantness.

Mine are more random and fantastical. One dream I had, I was viewing in first person, and was in a swampy jungle area. There were rope bridges and tree houses everywhere. I was being chased by a huge crocodile. In the dream (before it was lucid) I was terrified and was sure that I would die, as I just couldn't seem to get high enough to get away from the croc. Then it became lucid and I was able to very rapidly climb up the vines and ropes and escape. When I knew I was safe I woke up.

I have also had lucid dreams where I am flying. But not flying "Peter Pan" style, I start out by walking and slowly gain altitude. Eventually I am "walking" above everything. It was so realistic, I could feel the wind the higher I got.

I honestly can't give you much info about if, ands, whys, and hows, as I don't know much about it myself. It kinda just happens "to me".

[SkyBry]

There's a theory out there that is if you take 3x 1 minute a day (morning, afternoon, evening) to stop everything and think about who you are, what you are doing, if it logical and possible etc. You adventually will think about that while you are dreaming thus finding out you're dreaming which makes lucid dreaming possible.

[Éadaoin]

I lucid dream almost every night. But I also have a sleep disorder (possible mild narcolepsy or hypersomnia) so that may have something to do with it. Does anyone want to take my lucid dreams off of my hands? Seriously, I'm sick of it. I've never done anything to induce lucid dreaming. It just... happens. I also have the habit of dreaming while still awake.

But yes, I'd say that I lucid dream 95% of the time.

Okay, I'll admit, sometimes it's very cool. I love being able to decide what happens in my dreams, to choose what course of action to take. I've had many "great adventures" while dreaming because of it, haha.

I can do pretty much anything in my lucid dreams - that I've tried, anyway. I've made things and people appear, I've gone to new places, I've done strange things. Once I was at the edge of a cliff in a dream and I was SO frightened - and then I reminded myself that it was just a dream, and the fear ceased.

eta: Just googled and there appears to be some link between narcolepsy and lucid and/or vivid dreams. Welp. I guess that explains it.

eta2: Has anyone noticed certain medications affecting their dreams? I was on Lamictal for a while, and jfc, I had the most intense/beautiful/crazy dreams. I miss that stuff for the dreams alone.

Also, not to get TOO off topic, but does anyone have recurring dreams? Since I was a little girl I've had the same dream recur/continue ever year or so - it always takes place in a hidden city underneath a museum. One of my favorite dreams.

[SkyBry]

@ Eadaoin

This topic + your Jigglypuff avatar is just too much hahaha

Eta: i do have several recurring dreams. After each dream i get a little bit more further in the story. One has something to do with hijacking a Huge cargo ship?! It's weird i know :P

[Éadaoin]

@ Eadaoin

This topic + your Jigglypuff avatar is just too much hahaha

Eta: i do have several recurring dreams. After each dream i get a little bit more further in the story. One has something to do with hijacking a Huge cargo ship?! It's weird i know :P

Haha, I didn't even realize how appropriate this avatar was until now. :cool4:

And that's what happens with my recurring dreams as well. Each time I get further in the story. It's bizarre, though, how I've been getting them for years.

[SkyBry]

It's weird because some i completely forget and months later i'll continue and when I wake up i realise this is part 20 or something :P

But unfortunately it's not lucid.

[Dakonic]

I've been trying for awhile, I found keeping a Dream Journal helps a lot but I got discouraged after awhile but got back into it. So far I've only had 1 lucid dream, I was a wolf in a field. I had been leaping around/running before I became lucid and after it happened I just stopped and took in the surroundings. It only lasted a few moments though.

My dreams usually don't make much sense... however they're starting to keep to a theme more now. Before they use to be odd things like being at a dock jumping competition with Al Pacino as my dog and we're being chased by Xenomorphs.

[drawkcabi]

I need to figure out that while I'm dreaming that I'm dreaming first, if I realize it's a dream, I gain control. The power I use most in lucid dreams is stopping/starting time and resetting time back a bit to redo mistakes. Also I can fly.

One issue I have though is sometimes I can't "escape" from a dream. I think I wake up, but then weird stuff starts happening again and I'm like "shit! I'm still dreaming!" I get caught in a continuous loop of thinking I've waken up only to realize I'm still dreaming. It becomes a battle trying break out of the cycle that sometimes seems to repeat for dozens of times. I wake up exhausted from these dreams and it takes a good 10-30 minutes for me to be completely sure I really really awake this time.

[Theda Baratheon]

Haha, I attempted to Lucid dream because I wanted to keep a dream diary as I have very vivid and strange dreams.

I tried to stay completely still locking my muscles and concentrating but my muscles went into a weird shock? And it felt like someone had a hold of me and was shaking me aggressively and it was really fucking frightening and the same thing happened the next night, my muscles just locked and I couldn't stop shaking and then it never happened ever again.

Seriously fucking scary though. Safe to say I haven't tried again :lol:

[Sci-2]

Weird, I was just thinking about this today....yeah, been trying for awhile.

[Theda Baratheon]

Also, not to get TOO off topic, but does anyone have recurring dreams? Since I was a little girl I've had the same dream recur/continue ever year or so - it always takes place in a hidden city underneath a museum. One of my favorite dreams.

Not for a few years, but when I was a little girl up until the age of about 14 I would have about three different recurring dreams and all of them horrific nightmares. I seriously don't understand why this happened because I was suuuuch a happy kid, but I had a massive fucking imagination.

I had a recurring dream of a group of my friends running into a room and locking me out, only for me to turn around and see that the Grim Reaper was descending upon me.

I had another recurring dream of a gigantic bed and I would always fall off of the bed and something would crawl out from underneath it. Once it was a horrible gollum type creature and once it was a giant earwig. It would always attack and kill me.

I aint making this shit up, either.

And another recurring dream I remember was when I used to fall asleep to the sound of my heart beating and a shadow would walk up this massive staircase in time with the beating of my heart.

:lol:

I remember at the time not being TOO frightened of these, perhaps the first few times I dreamt them, but then getting used to them. Only a few years later when I thought back and still remembered them pretty clearly did I think ''shit, those dreams really WERE fucking WEIRD''

[tzanth]

I'm usually aware that I'm dreaming, but I generally only have a moderate amount of control over what happens. Usually its of the channel changing variety. For example, if I don't like the direction a dream is going I can usually decide to start dreaming of something different, sometimes with a moderate degree of control over the content. Alternately, If I like the direction a dream is going and it starts changing, I can usually say "no, I want to keep following this story" and the dream will keep following those events. Often I can also go back and make things happen a different way if I did not like the way they turned out, although sometimes that takes several attempts before it happens the way I want. I almost never dream from a first person perspective, though... usually I'm just a non-corporal 3rd person observer of whatever I'm dreaming about. Even if I'm in the dream myself (which is actually pretty rare) I usually observe events going on from an out-of-body perspective.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

When I was in high school I was into dreams and other New Agey stuff and I had a lucid dream and became slightly fixated on them. I forget where I read it, but the advice that I had taken was to keep a dream journal and to immediately record your dreams as soon as you remembered them. Supposedly this was supposed to make you more aware of your dreams or something. The other piece of advice, which was supposed to elicit lucid dreams, was to make a conscious effort, as you were falling asleep, to tell yourself that you were going to dream, and that it was going to be lucid, and even to try to propose a "scenario" or environment to dream in. During the period I did it actively (probably about two weeks), I did experience several lucid dreams that I wrote down. Eventually, I think I just came to the conclusion that it wasn't as entertaining was I thought it would be and stopped.

I have been told that my dreams are fairly strange - not necessarily in a bizarre/surreal way, but that they are usually somewhat aesthetically campy or just make no sense. Probably my most lucid vivid dream was a scenario where it was in the middle of the night and my friends and I were hiding from some kind of a humanoid monster that was stalking us around the cul-de-sac where I grew up. At some point I realized the dream was lucid, and I had always wanted to try to something stupid like cast magic spells like that kid in the Nightmare on Elm Street movie who becomes a wizard (who, of course, gets killed by Freddie, so I'm not sure why I'd want to try to be him). So I immediately become completely unafraid and march out to confront the monster. Of course, I can't cast any fucking spells, so I settle for just trying to beat the shit of him. It ended up being like a fight between two people wearing giant sports mascot costumes. We hit each other, but nothing had any weight. At some point I said "well this is lame" and immediately woke up.

One of my stranger non-lucid dreams involved me eating at a restaurant with my mother in New York and we are going to see a Broadway show after. The restaurant structure was made entirely out of transparent glass so everyone could see in and out. A ninja broke in and we began to fight (I am a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, although this is one of the few times karate has ever taken a prominent role in my dream). We end up basically walking all over the walls and ceiling, fighting horizontally and upside down and stuff. It sounds cooler than it was. At some point, I punch the ninja in the groin, and there's no effect. I rip off his mask - and it's a woman. I then look over at a big poster and realize that this ninja woman is starring in the Broadway show that my mother and I are about to go see. I tell her that she better get going or she's going to be late, and she says okay and leaves. Then I woke up.

As far as recurring dreams, I can only ever remember one. I'm hanging out with some of my similarly-aged extended family (second cousins or something) and we break into an abandoned karate studio. Nothing about the setting is particularly creepy. It's just a square building that doesn't have lights on. In my dream, it's in a strip mall that is fairly well trafficked. So we go into it and are surprised to find that it's inhabited my monsters. I mean like Hammer Films style Dracula and Frankenstein and stuff. They look like people dressed up in cheesy costumes. We all get scared and we run out of the studio. I always run next door into a hair salon and hide behind a bunch of boxes of beauty products shouting "The monsters are coming!" I had this dream sporadically for YEARS until one night, I didn't make it out of the studio. I got "captured" by the monsters and pretended to become one of them. For some reason, they bought it. When nobody was looking, I walked out the door. I woke up thinking that I finally saw that dream to the end and I would never have it again, and it's been eight or nine years and I never have.

[Sixshells]

I lucid dream from time to time, but it happens it's usually mostly awareness, and little control. The most control that I can remember of was in a creepy dream where I was in a big gothic-style house, and there was this presence around, people I knew were there but that I didn't want to run into. I was getting gradually aware that it was a dream and I tried to make it move to a more pleasant direction, but couldn't, and in the end I was trying to get out of it. I found a different way to get into a hall I had been in already, but the geometry of the room was so completely wrong, it threw me off the dream and woke me up. Afterwards I got the feeling the part of me that was conscious of the dream had looked for a way to make the dream run into a bug and crash, or something like that.

Sometimes when I wake up I also try to get back into the dream so I can know the rest of what happens but with mixed results: if I do I often end up dreaming about something else.

I have had several recurring dreams, but the one I had the most often was always a variation of me and some members of my family, not always the same, trapped into my childhood house while there is some sort of invasion or attack going on. Usually it was aliens, but it could also be some sort of fantastical being, and a few times it was a horde of apes helped by parrots.

[S John]

It sounds cool but at the same time, maybe not all that restful? One of the best things about sleep is that I'm blissfully unaware of anything. Usually when I fall asleep I might as well be dead. Most of the time I don't remember my dreams and when I do I'm more like a spectator than someone who has any control over them.

I seem to only have really vivid dreams when I'm in an unfamiliar place or I'm going through some kind of unusual circumstance in my waking life. Don't think I've ever had the same dream more than once either.

[Serious Callers Only]

My favourite dreams come from waking in the early early morning and sleeping some more (though some might have been 'false awakenings').

They tend to induce a wildly distorted sense of time... feeling like you just spent 2 days having a dream, when it actually was 20 minutes is pretty cool.

Had some lucid dreams (including yesterday) but they don't last long. My 'flying' (when not falling) dreams are more like 'bouncing'. It only happened twice but was pretty cool.

[Spring Bass]

It only happened once to me, when I was 15-16. I was doing some weird "cliff" dream, and then ended up in a library. I remember becoming aware in the dream that it was a dream, although not much else happened before I woke up.

[Serious Callers Only]

I need to figure out that while I'm dreaming that I'm dreaming first, if I realize it's a dream, I gain control. The power I use most in lucid dreams is stopping/starting time and resetting time back a bit to redo mistakes. Also I can fly.

One issue I have though is sometimes I can't "escape" from a dream. I think I wake up, but then weird stuff starts happening again and I'm like "shit! I'm still dreaming!" I get caught in a continuous loop of thinking I've waken up only to realize I'm still dreaming. It becomes a battle trying break out of the cycle that sometimes seems to repeat for dozens of times. I wake up exhausted from these dreams and it takes a good 10-30 minutes for me to be completely sure I really really awake this time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening