Lucid Dreams

Have any of you ever heard of the phenomenon of dreaming, while having complete awareness of the fact that you're dreaming? That's called a lucid dream. If you're good at inducing them, you can learn to control their content. Kids have them frequently, but it's less common for them to occur naturally in teenagers and adults, but with practice you can learn to induce them yourself.

So, has anyone here ever had a lucid dream before? I used to have them when I was younger, but I only used them to wake myself up from nightmares. I didn't know they could be controlled. There are lots of induction techniques, but those are difficult to master. Very difficult, and they screw with your sleeping schedules, if you have any.

I've heard of a device that you put over your eyes, in which shines a light on your eyes that goes through your eyelid, but is not bright enough to wake you up, so it tells you that you are sleeping. So, you can control your dreams.

yeah, weirdest experience of my life.*shudders*

Originally Posted by Zien

I've heard of a device that you put over your eyes, in which shines a light on your eyes that goes through your eyelid, but is not bright enough to wake you up, so it tells you that you are sleeping. So, you can control your dreams.

I heard that thing was awkward to wear, and its shape and size made it hard to sleep comfortably. It'd be great if someone invented something similar, but smaller and more practical so as not to obstruct your sleep.

Originally Posted by Angus Young

yeah, weirdest experience of my life.*shudders*

Oh, yeah? Did you have any control over it or anything?

If you get really good at dream control, you can do all sorts of... things you can't do in real life.

I very frequently have dreams in which I'm perfectly aware that I'm dreaming. It's absolutely lovely =) Often the dreams have a very strange and unnatural environment, which appears perfectly normal because it's a dream. Realising this, you can simultaneously admire its wonderful and bizarre setting.

Usually, if I fall asleep again after initially waking up in the morning, my dreams will be lucid. While I am aware that it's a dream, I can't always control it. Often it's like floating down a river, you can't control where the bends go. In those cases it's like a very real and vivid sightseeing tour.

There are some days I control it, though, but it only rarely occurs to me to do something I wouldn't be able to do in real life. The first time I had a notable (very scary) dream which ended in a really horrible way and caused me to wake up kicking my sleeping bag. I remember being really angry with my own stupidity in the dream. When I went back to sleep, I purposely dreamt it again, this time changing my course of action slightly, though the outcome was still bad. I repeated this twice more until I had turned things around completely. Apparently it took some practice :>

This kind of wake-initiated dreaming is uncommon for me, though, and I can only do it if I want to continue a dream that was, say, rudely interrupted by my alarm clock :3 Most of the time it takes me a few minutes in the dream before I start realising that I'm dreaming.

I had one once.

I tried to wake myself up but I couldn't.
I found eventually that when I jump off a cliff, I wake up.

Does thinking, "I want a Pepsi" and a Pepsi appears on the table when you turn around count?

They're pretty awesome. Semi in control, not completely.

Mine always last around 3-5 minutes :/

I wish they were longer

/thatswhatshesaid

I used to have a lot of very dreams which were very clear and... lucid... where, yeah, I knew I was dreaming.

But not for the past few months. Lately my dreams have just kind of been a sort of haze of random images and nonrelated events, one sort of melting into the other and not making any sense at all.

I miss the way I used to dream. :/

Originally Posted by Mini-Link

I had one once.

I tried to wake myself up but I couldn't.
I found eventually that when I jump off a cliff, I wake up.

Does thinking, "I want a Pepsi" and a Pepsi appears on the table when you turn around count?

I dunno. XD

I've had about two lucid dreams in the last few years, but they were each only a few seconds long; right when I became lucid, my little cousin or my grandma inadvertently woke me up.

The last one i had was a few months ago. It was pretty wierd. I did stuff in it that I never thought I would consider doing. I didn't know I coud control it though. I wonder if it was my subconcious running the dream using some of my darker desires.

I had a lucid dream years ago that I was Sub-Zero (or at least had the powers of). I actually thought to myself in the dream "Well, I can feel this, so it can't be a dream".

Anybody ever fly in a dream? It's the greatest feeling ever.

I've had a few dreams like this before. I remember when I was little, I'd always have recurring dreams, but there was this one I absolutely hated. I tried several times to realize that it was a dream, while I was dreaming, but only twice was I able to realize it. The first time, I tried to open my eyes and end the dream, but I couldn't. I was still stuck in the dream. Second time, I managed to wake up, and I never had that dream again. I think that was the end of all my recurring dreams.

More recently, I tried to realize when I was in a dream for one reason only: I always remember dreams with fuzzy visual detail. I wanted to see if my dreams looked real visually while I had them. They did.

Even more recently, like just a week ago, I somehow felt like I wanted to get up from sleeping while in my dream. For some reason, I decided to switch bodies with a cat on a high ledge and jump off, killing myself inside the cat so I could wake up. I can't be dead inside my own dream, now can I? I might have been able to realize I was in a dream that time because I was still petrified from a dream I had woken up from less than an hour earlier.

If I summarize all this, I come to this conclusion:

Yes, I have lucid dreams, but very rarely. Even in these dreams, I have no more control than in a normal dream.

It's funny, I'm 17, and I have lucid dreams very frequently actually. I have absolute control in my dreams, and I can decide what I want to do, where to go, etc.

It's odd how you all say teenagers get them very rarely, because I get them pretty frequent.

Originally Posted by DrZaius1

Anybody every fly in a dream? It's the greatest feeling ever.

I've never flown in a dream. I always think I would like to experience it some day, but at the same time I've never really felt a desire to fly. Perhaps I like for my legs to stay firmly grounded.

The closest I've come to flying, it's as if I was floating and drifting slowly as I dozed off, and I could see myself a few meters up in the air. Every time this happened, though, it was accompanied by waking up with a sudden shock and that unpleasant feeling of falling back on the bed with force.

Originally Posted by Twilight~09

It's funny, I'm 17, and I have lucid dreams very frequently actually. I have absolute control in my dreams, and I can decide what I want to do, where to go, etc.

It's odd how you all say teenagers get them very rarely, because I get them pretty frequent.

Well, I didn't really mean all teenagers, I was just generalizing.

Tried for months to induce one, got like three seconds of control and woke up.

I'm always interested in the idea, though. Seems like I have some shaky control most of the time.

I only get them when I wear my glasses to sleep. And only when they're dirty

But still, LDing is amazing.

I never have the chance to dream anymore so it's very rare now. About 4 hours of sleep a night. Go to sleep at 5 AM wake up at 9 AM. It's terrible. I can't get to sleep early anymore.

I've never had a lucid dream before in my life, because I can't remember most of my dreams, and certain details are lost when I try to remember them. For some reason though, I now know what San Francisco looks like, despite never going to America in my life, and I rarely watch TV.

Originally Posted by AXavierB

Oh, yeah? Did you have any control over it or anything?

If you get really good at dream control, you can do all sorts of... things you can't do in real life.

yeah, I have complete control when I have one