Lucid dreams

[UberScout]

THESE. THINGS. ARE. AWESOME.

Have you ever had this much fun doing absolutely nothing?! It's so hard to do though, yet there are methods that people use like "wake to sleep", I've tried that before but it's hard.

Has anyone here ever had a lucid dream before? I actually had my very first one in the hospital, while I was under getting a bad tooth taken out. It was pretty exciting, but, after about 1/16th of two hours hanging upside down from a stained-glass baptism chamber, you start to wonder if anything is real. Then you hear your name called, nearly shouted. "Tyler, you gotta WAKE UP to what you believe in! You gotta WAKE UP to it! Tyler! WAKE UP!"

Now that last part? Yeah, I was definitely awake after that. So spooked I didn't even have to sleep off the rest of the gas.

But yeah, lucid dreams are fun and stuff. You guys?

 

[Misery]

Sometimes I think it'd be nice, but then I remember just how warped my dreams already are. Not so sure I particularly want to dive deeper into that.

Every now and then I'll have really vivid dreams though. Had one about a week ago. I'm talking like "I can feel the exact texture of this worm thing I just tried to pick up" sort of real (dont even ask, the explanation makes even less sense).

I will say though, there sure wouldnt be any question of whether it was real or not. The presence of twisted, warped geometry and various other nonsensical things would be a bit of a hint.

 

[Hylian]

I have semi-lucid dreams all the time. I will usually have control over things in them, but I'll only sometimes notice that I'm dreaming and actually realize I'm not just thinking about random things. I think that for me it's related to having issues with sleep though, since whenever that happens I barely feel rested. I never intentionally try to have them.

 

[Sara3]

Mmmm I wouldn't call the experience fun but it surely demands a lot of energy. When lucid dreams happen, I feel like I didn't rest.

 

[Ezra]

I have been leery of trying it out.

 

[Karamazov]

I have no memory of dreaming barring one repetitive nightmare from when I was a small child: for all I know I don’t have any dreams to be lucid within.

Interesting phenomena though.

 

[Thinx]

I can see that I dream quite a lot, often around 20 to 25% of the night, as my Fitbit sleep report shows REM, Deep sleep, light sleep and awake time it's really interesting. However I only recall snatches of dreams, or a general feel, it often doesn't make full sense.

 

[Misery]

I have no memory of dreaming barring one repetitive nightmare from when I was a small child: for all I know I don’t have any dreams to be lucid within.

Interesting phenomena though.

It's interesting how the frequency of dreaming can vary so much from one person to another. I have them pretty much every night, but they're almost never nightmares. Warped, yes, but scary, no.

That and the content of dreams. I always hear people saying that it's the brain processing the day's events, or some nonsense like that. I could believe that, if my day ever consisted of 7-dimensional bubbles or doors that open into a backwards infinite space full of weird. But I do not recall having any days like that. I'm pretty sure I'd remember.

Yet other people will dream of realistic events with people they know, or something like that. Generally mundane stuff. Whenever family members talk about their dreams, I'm always thinking "but that's so boring".

It's all so odd, the whole thing.

 

[SusanLR]

I lucid dream all the time.
Vivid in colour dreams too.
I don't have nightmares and they are realistic everyday type things I'm doing.
It just came naturally to me and has happened all my life most everynight.
I can talk, see people, go places, feel like in real life, eat, smell. Anything that can be done when awake.

Even though I don't try to control them, I am aware it is a dream and have the freedom to do what
I want. They aren't boring to me because most consist of being somewhere I like, even though
I don't know where it is. Like by a lake, driving through the countryside, talking with people I don't know
or eating something good.
Some call it astral travel/projection. And, yeah, if I have a night it happens a lot in, I wake up tired
because it's like I haven't slept. But, it's enjoyable and wouldn't change it for the world.

The perfect song for this experience:

 

[Karamazov]

It's interesting how the frequency of dreaming can vary so much from one person to another. I have them pretty much every night, but they're almost never nightmares. Warped, yes, but scary, no.

That and the content of dreams. I always hear people saying that it's the brain processing the day's events, or some nonsense like that. I could believe that, if my day ever consisted of 7-dimensional bubbles or doors that open into a backwards infinite space full of weird. But I do not recall having any days like that. I'm pretty sure I'd remember.

Yet other people will dream of realistic events with people they know, or something like that. Generally mundane stuff. Whenever family members talk about their dreams, I'm always thinking "but that's so boring".

It's all so odd, the whole thing.

I know: from “nothing to report for decades” all the way through to “I had several last night, and the night before that, and etc”.

*note to self: Must get hold of an overview of neurological research on sleep*

Well: the brains doing something! I’ve never found any of the explanations I’ve heard convincing either... as a phenomena that occurs it’s fascinating, the fact they can be either blissful or mundane or hellish is interesting, that people can realise they’re dreaming and take control of the dream is very interesting:
But accounts of actual individual dreams, well, doesn’t hold my attention.

I had a girlfriend in my twenties who wanted (demanded) to talk about her dreams from the previous night every day...
Urgh: both boring, and weirdly invasive to have the details forced on me like that.

 

[Pieplup]

THESE. THINGS. ARE. AWESOME.

Have you ever had this much fun doing absolutely nothing?! It's so hard to do though, yet there are methods that people use like "wake to sleep", I've tried that before but it's hard.

Has anyone here ever had a lucid dream before? I actually had my very first one in the hospital, while I was under getting a bad tooth taken out. It was pretty exciting, but, after about 1/16th of two hours hanging upside down from a stained-glass baptism chamber, you start to wonder if anything is real. Then you hear your name called, nearly shouted. "Tyler, you gotta WAKE UP to what you believe in! You gotta WAKE UP to it! Tyler! WAKE UP!"

Now that last part? Yeah, I was definitely awake after that. So spooked I didn't even have to sleep off the rest of the gas.

But yeah, lucid dreams are fun and stuff. You guys?

As in knowing you're dreaming yes sometimes I think, but In general i don't remember most of my dreams that's gotten better in the last year or so. AS in controlling the dream now.

 

[tree]

Related threads:

Inducing dreams/nightmares

https://www.autismforums.com/threads/my-first-lucid-dream.2644/#post-32740

 

[AprilR]

I can't control my dreams but more often than not i recognize when i am dreaming.

 

[Daydreamer]

I've been able to lucid dream since I was eight, maybe earlier. Taking control of my daydreams and my dreams at night comes naturally to me. Usually I have an awareness that I am dreaming, so I am aware that I can take control whenever I want to. I often allow my subconscious to go in whichever way it wants. Since I'm curious where it's going. However, if it becomes too much then I tend to step in. Or if I'm bored of what is happening, then I'll change it.

Sometimes I have nightmares and I let them play out because I like the challenge or I'm in too much shock to change the narrative. If you're wondering what you mean by the challenge; here's an example- if someone's chasing me I could just wish them away or make them someone else that isn't a threat, but I prefer to either change my course, summon a magical cage to trap them or I stop in my tracks and ask them why they're chasing me. I have no fear of this, since I know it's not real. My favourite option is to change their weapon into something harmless such as a bouquet of flowers and then thank them for it.

There have been moments in repeated nightmares where I've recognised the story. I remember one time this happened and I asked the people in my nightmare "Really? We're doing this again?" then I chose a different ending. Thankfully that particular nightmare stopped after that. A nightmare has to be particularly shocking if I struggle to control it and I will eventually gain control of it if it repeats.

 

[MyLifeAsAnAspie]

I have been trying to have lucid dreams for many months. I have increased my dream recall but have not had a lucid dream yet. For the wake-back-to-sleep do I need to use an alarm to wake or just stay up awhile after I naturally awaken late in the night? I think I may have to stay up longer than I have been too.

I have found that having new experiences the day before increases vivid dreaming. Also, being very tired and sleeping sounder causes vivid dreaming.

I can see from your responses that YMMV .

 

[BenderRodriguez]

I have them once in a while. When I was much younger I played around with lucid dreaming for a bit and got them frequently mostly by concentrating intensely on something I wanted to dream about as I slowly fell asleep. But I wasn't in a good place in my life and stopped it as I was starting to get obsessive and not want to do anything else but sleep.

 

[Mary Terry]

I hesitate to post this because my dream was so disturbingly vivid that it has upset me for several days, but here goes. If you are unduly worried about coronavirus, then please don't read any further.

I learned last Wednesday that a friend of mine from high school had died from Covid-19 in a local hospital where she had been on a ventilator for weeks. She was 66 years old, same age as I am. Her husband and children made the difficult decision to turn off the ventilator, and she died a few hours later.

That same night, I dreamed that I was at a wedding, sitting in a chair, and that there was a trash can on the floor nearby. I looked in the trash can and saw a kitten sealed inside a plastic bag, struggling to breathe. I could see the bag moving in and out as the kitten tried to breathe. I ripped open the bag and began massaging the kitten until it started breathing normally, then put the kitten back in the trash can to keep it safe. Then I stood up, in the middle of the wedding, and started screaming and ranting about the "bad people" who put the kitten in the bag and tried to kill it. Then I woke up.

The next morning I told my husband about the awful dream and went to sit on the front porch by myself for awhile, thinking about my friend and things we did together in high school. We were cheerleaders and basketball teammates together, experimented with drinking alcohol we stole from her parents, worked on school projects together, etc. Then I suddenly remembered that I was her maid of honor at her wedding way back in the mid-1970s. I had totally forgotten about that until that moment.

Then it hit me - I think my dream was about her, struggling to breathe and suffocating to death from Covid-19. The location in my dream was a wedding and I think the kitten represented her. This is so disturbing to me. I guess my brain was dreaming to help process the news of her death. It is an horrible situation in every way. There was no funeral so I can't say goodbye or pay my respects to her family in person. She is just gone now.

 

[Aspychata]

My last one shocked me, l was with a corpse of a older overweight man. But it was very real down to his skintone. l woke up shaking and perturbed. l had nightmares in LA but those have subsided. No, they are never good. They are nightmares that leave me upset when l wake-up.

 

[jleeb05]

I don't have a ton of experience but I've had several lucid dreams over the years.

The last one I had, I was in this office building. Somehow I realized I was dreaming and manipulated some things (made the clock on the wall melt, changed the shape of a table, etc). There were people in this office building and I told them to fight to the death. They immediately started punching and kicking each other then stopped. I repeated my command and again they fought but stopped after only a second or two. For a third time, I commanded them to fight to the death and at this point, none of them move except one, who approached me and said, "Yeah, we're not going to listen to you anymore." They then proceeded to kick me out of the building! Haha

I still wonder about this. I knew I was dreaming and that my brain had created the building and the people inside of it. How were they able to kick me out! Outside of the building I tried to manipulate the weather but was only able to get a few clouds to swirl before waking up. That's my typical experience, some control over the dream, but not total. Not sure why but I hear this might improve, the more you have them.

I've had more disturbing lucid or semi-lucid dreams where I know I'm dreaming but can't wake up. Or dreams within a dream, where I realize I'm dreaming, wake up only to realize I'm still dreaming. Those types of lucid dreams are usually very stressful and disturbing.

 

[SusanLR]

I've had more disturbing lucid or semi-lucid dreams where I know I'm dreaming but can't wake up. Or dreams within a dream, where I realize I'm dreaming, wake up only to realize I'm still dreaming. Those types of lucid dreams are usually very stressful and disturbing

I have both of those type dreams occasionally and they do leave me feeling bad.
One that is particularly distressful for me is when I dream I wake up, but, I can't get my eyes open
or totally wake up. I realize I am still in a dream, only it feels like a half dream because I can walk
around, but, I can't talk or get my eyes open all the way.
I will think in the dream I wish someone would come help me.
Then I finally do wake up and I feel so crazy and disoriented.

But, I have good ones too.
Two nights ago I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very steep waterfall. And somehow
I knew I was in Africa.
I observed the rocks as the water went over them and the water was not clear. Rather muddy looking.
Someone was standing beside me and I ask the name of the falls. They said Ajora.
I looked it up after I awoke and there is an Ajora falls with muddy looking water and very steep just
like it looked in the dream. Ethiopia.