Lucid Dreaming!

[Lily Valley]

I was aware that the house had people talking next door, and that I'm in my bed, but I couldn't lift my hands. I kept being sucked into the dream and I had to focus really hard to stay aware of external stimuli.

One weird question, have you ever heard wind in one or both of your ears while on the threshold of lucid dreaming? I get that too.

I have bouts of sleep paralysis and this happens to me a lot. I wake up and cant move and will have auditory hallucinations, either a rushing noise or the sound of people talking. I am also convinced that there is something or someone evil in the room. It's so terrifying that I did some homework. Apparently this is one of the steps people go through if they're trying to have an out of body experience. My thoughts were, "Shit! People do this to themselves on PURPOSE??"

What I did learn, is the next step once your are awake, paralyzed and scared out of your mind is that you kind of roll out of your body. I tried this the next time and instead of trying to move, I tried to roll over. It totally worked. I rolled right back to regular sleep and had an awesome flying dream.

Only bad part is when I wake up and can't fly in real life.

Theda and Noontidal, if you google sleep paralysis and out of body experience, you'll get to a ton of crackpot websites. That said, the techniques described did help me to just go back to sleep instead of laying there frightening myself half to death, or worse, having repeat episodes in the same night.

Edit: Replied before I saw the other incubus victims.

[maarsen]

Couple of nights ago i had a Dream in a dream. Totally screwed me up when i woke up. Was really weird yet fascinating!

@amilas i wanted to dm you but 'profile view is off'?

I have had this happen to me enough times that I wish it would just stop. Lucid dreaming is fun the first time, but when you are in a dream that is so real, it scares you, and then you "wake up", and into another lucid dream... Make it stop!

[Nerolunar]

I have tried it. Mostly I fly around cities... I can control myself and where I want to go, but I can´t make other things happen.

[Theda Baratheon]

It's weird, I'm always just watching my dreams play out as films. It was nice to have a maniac try to kill me last night whilst I locked myself in my room, climbed out the window, only for him to be running out the front door. Then there was running and almost getting hit by a train as I ran on the track.

But I couldn't change anything, just watch it happening and be like ''FFS, DYING AGAIN?!!''

[straits]

I have bouts of sleep paralysis and this happens to me a lot. I wake up and cant move and will have auditory hallucinations, either a rushing noise or the sound of people talking. I am also convinced that there is something or someone evil in the room. It's so terrifying that I did some homework. Apparently this is one of the steps people go through if they're trying to have an out of body experience. My thoughts were, "Shit! People do this to themselves on PURPOSE??"

Oh yes, whatever's with me in the room is definitely evil. It's an odd sensation; your awareness of it all being a dream does not matter, and you are convinced something bad will happen if you push yourself towards the dream instead of away. I remember hearing voices next door (I recognized them and was aware that a few people had come over), but that couldn't help me snap out of it either. I recall myself stepping into lucidity upon answering a door (in the dream, my sister casually told me not to open it). Some very vivid and disconcerting images came to me afterwards.

[roxWolfox]

Great topic.

In the 70s I began having recurring dreams/nightmares of being chased by werewolves or a T-Rex. Scary as hell. They were so vivid I never had to write them down, and I still remember most of them to this day. Then, as part of therapy in the 90s, I practiced meditation, sometimes falling asleep during the process. The first time I did this I had a werewolf chasing me and a group of people I'd known in my life. Halfway down a set of stairs I realized that I was dreaming, and stopped, turned around and commanded the werewolf to sit. And it did! I've never had a werewolf dream since. A few meditative naps later, I dreamt of being chased by a T-Rex when I realized I was dreaming. I thought of what would bring the beast down when a rocket launcher (bazooka) appeared at my feet. I picked it up, turned around and shot the T-Rex. No more dinosaur dreams after that.

The saddest one was of a man I knew to be my father (he died before I was born) who had a message that my mother just passed away...I reached out to him only to be woken up by my cat! Grr.

The weirdest was when I was in a small library/office. On old oak desk were several books that I knew I had to read. When I reached out to look at the titles, a raven or crow flew into the room and screamed over and over again. My alarm clock! That was the last lucid dream I had (about 15 years ago).

Dreams are an essential part of North American Natives (I'm from the Arctic), so I do feel a sense of loss at the lack of dreams these days, but I've accepted that it could be a side effect of the 'change of life'. Plus the accursed lactose-intolerance (I used to eat cheese and crackers as a midnight snack back then, but can't now). Or, I've faced my fears, accepted my losses, accepted the mysteries that life has in store for me, and moved on. Who knows? :cheers:

[Sci-2]

So I still can't manage this. I can have dreams in which I realize I'm in a dream, but I'm not actually in control.

It's like dream me realizes he's in a dream world, but the narrative of the dream keeps running.

In any case, this is interesting:

Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science

[Theda Baratheon]

So I still can't manage this. I can have dreams in which I realize I'm in a dream, but I'm not actually in control.

It's like dream me realizes he's in a dream world, but the narrative of the dream keeps running.

In any case, this is interesting:

Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science

Yep. Exactly the same in most of my dreams.

I have bouts of sleep paralysis and this happens to me a lot. I wake up and cant move and will have auditory hallucinations, either a rushing noise or the sound of people talking. I am also convinced that there is something or someone evil in the room. It's so terrifying that I did some homework. Apparently this is one of the steps people go through if they're trying to have an out of body experience. My thoughts were, "Shit! People do this to themselves on PURPOSE??"

I know!!! It's fucking terrifying! not something I'd actually like to happen.

Theda and Noontidal, if you google sleep paralysis and out of body experience, you'll get to a ton of crackpot websites. That said, the techniques described did help me to just go back to sleep instead of laying there frightening myself half to death, or worse, having repeat episodes in the same night.

Yeah, I don't take the internet too seriously for stuff like this, it was just nice to know sleep paralysis was an actual thing and I'm not completely insane.

It's now happened about 5 times, maybe more, and each time it's truly horrible.

Last time I heard very loud radio static, and this horrible feeling that something else was in the room and pressure all over my body shaking me. Ew. It's scary when it's happening but at least I'm not as terrified afterwards, because I know what it was.

[Sci-2]

Still working on this. I'm really paranoid about getting enough sleep though as I get nauseous otherwise.

So if I'm half-awake I'd rather go back to sleep then write shit down which means I lose lots of details.

Here's a summary of tips from D-News, with a bit of science thrown in.

[Every]

I can lucid dream, but only in nightmares. (Un)fortunately I have a lot of nightmares, so it happens quite often! Generally it happens towards the end when whatever terrible thing is coming is about to get me, and I can tell myself that it's a dream and I can just step right off the edge of that building and still be fine, or I can choose to put a wall between me and the thing with the big teeth, or if I want I can become something with even bigger teeth and have that monster for breakfast. Sadly I usually wake up soon after that.

[Sci-2]

Question/favor for people who can lucid dream:

Has anyone tried to fall asleep and dream within the lucid dream?

Or does falling asleep in the lucid dream awaken you back in the real world?

[drawkcabi]

Question/favor for people who can lucid dream:

Has anyone tried to fall asleep and dream within the lucid dream?

Or does falling asleep in the lucid dream awaken you back in the real world?

More like "let myself" fall back asleep in a lucid dream rather than try, usually when I'm caught in a "loop"* I can't wake up from. In my experience, falling to sleep in a lucid dream only makes things go inception-ish deeper. I go from a semi-plausible dreamworld to an upside down batshit fucked up crazy dream world. Sometimes it's fun like a roller coaster, but sometimes my subconscious brings me into deep disturbing areas.

Also there's different levels of lucid dreaming. Like at times I know I'm dreaming but "reality" for me is that I'm sleeping back at my old house, or on the bench at my parents' restaurant, or even in a chair at the mall, but the dream makes me think it's plausible, so I'm lucid to the point I know I'm dreaming, but dreaming to the point where my reference to reality is messed up.

* I know I've talked about the loops before in this thread and someone posted a great link about them in connection with lucid dreaming. They are the most frustrating kind of dreams imaginable.

I know I'm dreaming, so then I try to wake myself up - by focusing on the light switch on the wall or something like that. I tell myself, ok, get up and go turn on the light, then you will be awake. I feel myself struggling to get up but then I'm suddenly at the light switch and it was all too easy - no middle of the night joint pains getting up, no heavy feet, etc. - and I realize shit! I'm still dreaming! and as soon as I have the thought I feel myself back in bed again and I have to try again to make it to the lightswitch. And it just repeats like this over and over.

Then there's the loop where, again, my perception of reality is altered. I'm trying to wake myself up, but I'm trying to wake myself up and be in my old house or wherever. That's when if I know I'm dreaming I have my tests. Like if I'm dreaming, I have "the force" I look for a pencil or a remote control or whatever and I can "call it" into my grasp. That happens - I know I'm still dreaming. Or I make myself levitate 3 feet off the ground, that happens I know I'm dreaming. But I'm stuck in this damn loop and it's more insidious because I want to wake up somewhere I'm not really at, and it makes things more difficult.

Then there's the loop where I wake up, start my day, everything seems normal, then crazy shit just starts happening and I realize I'm dreaming, then wake up again, try to start my day again, crazy shit again, repeat ad nauseam.

[Sixshells]

I only have experienced a limited awareness and control of my dreaming, and only when I'm already well on my way to waking up or half awake anyway. I never tried to fall asleep within the dream, it just doesn't come to my mind at those moments, nor does flying or things like that.

I have tried semi-consciously to go back in time in the dream at the end of a "story" to replay the events I dreamed about, to try for a different outcome or explore more of the world of the dream. The more I try though the more the world of the dream tends to unravel and and either I wake up directly or I am transported in another "story". In the second case, sometimes I forget I am dreaming and what I was dreaming about but after a while the consciousness pops back up. At that point I usually wake up but I often try to get back to the previous dream before that. In that case it's the back and forth between trying to go back to the previous dream and being railroaded again to the new one that wakes me up.

At other times I have been stuck in a loop and on the contrary spent all my efforts to get out of it, by trying to push the boundaries of the dream world until it unravels, or looking for inconsistencies my mind would get sufficiently caught on for it to concentrate on that and forget the story that is being played in the dream. Recently it was about errors of scale for example: there was something huge nearby and my first impression was "oh, that's 40 m at least but then it moved and I started thinking that it was not 40 m but 4 m. I became so engrossed by wondering what the real dimensions were that I woke up.

I have also tried to go back to a dream after waking up if I'm still half-asleep, but with little success. The dream usually losts consistency really fast and even if I manage to go back it's not the same. It's very rare that emerging didn't interrupt the narrative flow.

[Sci-2]

Reddit posted a tutorial on techniques for lucid dreaming:

Lucid Dreaming Tutorial

Before we get started I want to explain a little bit of my thought process to help explain where I get this from.

I'm a lucid dreamer of ~15 years (Currently 26), and I've made it a daily/nightly habit to develop my skills in the dream world. As it stands now I can achieve lucidity pretty much any time I dream and can recall nearly every dream I've ever had with great detail. The amount of control I have in the dream world is vast at this point--and I completely credit both my practical way of viewing dreams and the subconscious, as well as the daily practice I put my imagination through.

This post will be explaining my perspectives on the imagination and how it effects the dream state, as well as how I go about improving it.

[Sci-2]

Devil in the Room

"Have you ever woken from a deep sleep, totally lucid but unable to move? Devil in the Room explores this space between dream and reality, explaining the science and history behind sleep paralysis, a mystifying and often terrifying phenomenon in which dreams intrude upon waking life. Through evocative stop-motion animation and puppets, the film recreates these waking dreams, bringing vividly to life spiders that seem to crawl out from under the bed, and the feeling of a monstrous presence lurking just out of sight. Weaving together such personal experiences of sleep paralysis with scientific analysis of the phenomenon, this fantastical and probing documentary demolishes the boundaries between imagination and science, between dream and reality."

[theUsurper]

I could lucid for as long as I can remember..

I don't know... my vision and the picture in my dreams are never clear like in real life and I feel like I'm not REALLY there... I don't know how to explain it lol. Sometimes I just let my dream take me where it wants, to be honest, but other times I choose what I do. I tried to fly once... didn't work :(. Went to the top of a building and jumped off, I kind of just floated to the ground as if I had a parachute (I didn't.) so that was cool. I've done lots of other things too.

[amberStone]

I've been keeping a dream diary and doing "reality checks" for about two months now, and before I go to sleep each night, I tell myself "I'm going to have only good dreams tonight, and I will remember them and write them down in the morning." I haven't had any luck lucid dreaming yet, but my dreams are usually good ones now, and I remember them much better. It's like my mind is saying "oh, you want entertainment, not stress, I can do that, why didn't you say so before?" I guess it's positive reinforcement or something. I'm not going to give up on lucid dreaming though. If anyone has any other good tips, I'd really like to hear them :D

[Sci-2]

I've been keeping a dream diary and doing "reality checks" for about two months now, and before I go to sleep each night, I tell myself "I'm going to have only good dreams tonight, and I will remember them and write them down in the morning." I haven't had any luck lucid dreaming yet, but my dreams are usually good ones now, and I remember them much better. It's like my mind is saying "oh, you want entertainment, not stress, I can do that, why didn't you say so before?" I guess it's positive reinforcement or something. I'm not going to give up on lucid dreaming though. If anyone has any other good tips, I'd really like to hear them :D

Don't know if you saw my post above but check out:

Lucid Dreaming Tutorial

But it mentions some techniques.

=-=-=

This will sound crazy but I've been watching a lot of Korean TV in place of English TV. I don't dream in Korean but I think the time spent listening to a foreign language has impacted my dreams which now almost always involve the Korean stuff I've been watching.

My hope is that being inside the Korean TV shows I watch will help me realize I'm in a dream.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I also fall into the pattern of dreaming where I realize it and take control of the dream, but my 'control' is very limited; I can't always do the things I want to, or even get certain people or things to manifest. I have about a half dozen recurring dreams that are all horrifying nightmares, but they're slightly more tolerable when I know what's happening.

[amberStone]

Don't know if you saw my post above but check out:

Lucid Dreaming Tutorial

But it mentions some techniques

That is cool! And difficult. Thanks for showing me, guess that will teach me to skim posts :)