Hey all, I have been wondering about this question for a while. Is it possible to dream about what you want? I have seen advertisements for devices that will begin playing a recording of something you want to dream about when it senses REM (Rapid Eye Movement). I have not used one of these myself, but I have heard mixed results and was wondering if it is really possible to manipulate your dreams into something you would like or for some odd reason dislike.
-NHL
You can guide your dreams to a certain extent through repeated self-suggestion over the course of a couple of weeks. Using the same method, you can induce lucid dreaming in which you are able to introduce your waking consciousness into the dream state. While dreaming lucidly, you can change the details of the dream.
I was in the Navy a the time, stationed in Pearl Harbor. I was trying to get across Kalakaua Avenue in Honolulu (on foot, mind you), but my progress was being impeded by a presidential motorcade that was blocking traffic horribly. Also, I was wearing my dungaree pants (a no-no off Subase), a plaid shirt, and my Dixie cup (that’s the sailor hat the guy on the Cracker-Jacks box wears, for you civvies). Anyway, Ronald Reagan stops the motorcade, calls me over, and starts tearing me a new one for being out of uniform. About then, I realized that this was a dream, so I started tearing HIM a new one about Him being the public Servant, and how DARE he interfere with my enjoyment of my day off?
I realize that I didn’t have a leg to stand on.from a legal standpoint. It was a DREAM!
I rarely dream – or, at least, rarely remember them, in which case all evidence of their purported existence is lost 
– but I have had a number of experiences like kaylasdad99: I’m dreaming; something impossible happens; I realize I’m dreaming. At this point I wake up.
(The best one was when something impossible happened and I decided to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming. Literally, I did this in my dream. And when I couldn’t feel anything, I said “Oh, so it IS a dream,” and promptly awaoke.)
– Beruang, the Bear with the Remarkably Logical Subconscious
I have wierd dreams that I occationally remember. I vaguely remember that once in a dream i tried to pinch myself… and I thought it hurt. Sooo i didn’t wake up. Only once did i aware become aware of a dream and stay dreaming. It was after reading on the board about people controlling their dreams and flying like superman. So of course i took off and started flying around and probably woke up a few minutes later.
I had a few lucid dreams once a few years back. It would happen only when I was laying down in the morning after the alarm went off and I knew I had a few more minutes before I needed to get up. I would drift off and then suddenly I would consciously notice something “different”, then think to myself that I was rising up and flying, and lo and behold, it worked. I picked up a book on lucid dreaming, and though what they said sounded logical, that I could consisently do this and train myself to do things other than fly, I never seemed able to do it. As soon as I would get away from flying and start trying to go into another scenario, I would realize I was dreaming and wake up. And certain times when I was flying I would wake up, also, especially when I would do something that would make my stomach fly up into my throat, like making a big dive or trying to do loops or something. It was always cloudy, also, and sometimes, although it sounds funny, the apprehension of running into something would make me scared enough to wake up. Unfortunately, I seem to not be able to do it anymore. It’s been a long time since I was able to do it.
Well, dream books tell you that if, as you’re falling asleep, you tell yourself over and over again what you want to dream about, you will. I’ve had it work for me once. However, I never know when I’m falling asleep. I’m usually almost fully awake, then <snaps fingers> sound asleep. I bet it works better for people with normal sleeping patterns too, and no forms of insomnia. I don’t stay asleep for more than 4 hours at a time, but I do remember more dreams than most people…
I’ve always had very vivid dreams and I remember them, or parts anyway, each time I wake up. A significant portion of the time I’m aware, while in the dream, that I’m asleep and dreaming. Once I dreamt I was in my dorm room at college, then I woke up and found I was in my old bedroom at my Mom’s house, then I woke up again, for real this time, in my own house. Very disorienting. But no really on topic I guess.
I can alter my dreams somewhat, usually if something dreadful is happening that I don’t like. I had to practice a bit to do it though. Thinking before I fall asleep what I might do in my dream for example. However, and this may sound a little odd perhaps, I’ve found my dreams tell me more about the workings of my inner self than I’m able to find out when I’m awake so I don’t try to totally control them. It can be quite cool as well to just go along for the ride and enjoy the weirdness of the subconscious mind. Floating in air and flying around the neighborhood. Watching people shrunk to microscopic size then reconstituted like dehydrated potatoes. Going on a covert mission with a bunch of time travelers being pursued by evil aliens. It’s free entertainment.
Or maybe I’m just deranged.
And a lousy typist.
That no should be not.
I seem to have this ability to do amazing things when I am dreaming. I can alter my dream, I can let it progress without interfence and be aware of it. I often have preminitions of people I haven’t met before that I meet in the next few weeks, I had a dream where I mourned the death of an imediate member of my family but was never able to change the dream without changing the preminition… My dad died 2 days later.
One day while I was awake I added all the numbers from 1 to 100 up in my mind. When I went to sleep that night in my dream I Deducted the numbers from 100 to 1 and then said the prime numbers up to 100.
Although I have trouble remembering stuff I should remember while I am awake… but it’s a small drawback to have 3 Dimensional Spacial-thinking.
I watched a show that measured the mental activities of a dreaming person. They were only dreaming for about 5 minutes but swear they were dreaming for hours. This is because we have no real concept of time while we are dreaming because our minds are so fast.
The mind is an incredible biological machine, it can preform thousands of complex tasks while you are awake. But when you go to sleep and your mind need not worry about your external sensors… It can make dreams as real as you want them to be.
PerfectDark
Well, the original question was, partly, whether outside interference in the form of sounds or whatever could influence what you dream. Dunno. Certainly most of us have had experience with incorporating sounds - alarms, barking dogs, wailing kids - into dreams, but I note that those sounds don’t always affect the dream in the way you’d think. When my alarm becomes a part of my dream, it might be anything from a warning siren to a background noise.
I also can’t help but note that when I used to sleep with music playing (thanks to a former bedmate), or when I fall asleep in loud places, the sounds don’t get to my dreams at all.
So I don’t know; I’d be really skeptical about the described device. It’s more likely that, when it works, it’s 'cause you expected it to work, or because you were thinking about it while you dozed off, or something.
But it is possible to dream what you want. From the time I was six months old, I had awful nightmares - every single night, often more than once, usually meaning half my sleep cycle was spent awake and screaming or crying or recovering. (My father’s sleep cycle was similarly affected, poor guy.) My pediatrician tried just about everything he could think of - to give you some idea of the severity, at one point he actually gave me barbituates, hoping that dreamless sleep would be the result. (It wasn’t, btw - result was a cranky, constantly tired four-year-old who still had nightmares.) Nothing worked.
Eventually, though, I got old enough to try a kind of psychological ju-jitsu on myself - or, actually, I got old enough to have a lover try it. (I can describe the method, but really, it’s just a matter of really believing that whatever you do will work.) It worked, and I don’t have nightmares anymore. It also appears to have triggered some strange relationship with my dreams - now I can change them and alter them a lot of the time, where before I was pretty much a helpless victim of them. I can decide to revisit a dream I’ve had before, or I can continue a dream where I left off the night before, or I can decide I want to dream about a certain thing - either before I go to sleep or during a different dream - and sometimes I will. Lots of stuff like that.
My conclusion, based only on personal experience: it is possible to decide what you dream. And you’d probably be more able to get this effect from learning lucid dreaming, or using some other technique (I didn’t use the lucid dreaming techniques at all, never have), than from buying a machine that plays sounds. Still, the latter might work, and if you really want to change your dreams and can’t learn how, give it a shot, as long as you’re willing to risk the money. The placebo effect alone might be enough.
I had a dream manipulated once by a person in the “real” world. At the time I was in grade school. I was dreaming and one of the people in my dream was myself. She didn’t look like me, and was an adult to boot, but it was me. The adult me was speaking with someone else when she heard her name called, and looked around to find out who it was. At this point I woke up. At my bedroom door was the lady who did some housework for my mother, and got us up in the morning and ready for school. So the people in my dream were influenced by the real world.
I happen to go to sleep with the TV on, and, being too lazy to set the offtimer, just leave the thing on all night. Infomercials, consequently, have been influencing my dreams. My dreams are often ended with removing scratches from my car or trying out some new exercise equipment. I guess it gives me an opportunity to try before I buy.
I dreamt that I went to an R.E.M. concert and my eyeballs wouldn’t stop flickering to and fro.
Is that what you mean? :rolleyes:
Cartooniverse
about two years ago, i had a consistent dream sequnce- same world, night to night, always a consistent event line. i’d go to sleep here, spend about 16 hours there, then go to sleep there, wake up here, 8 hours had passed, spend about 16 hours awake, go to sleep, 8 hours had passed there. i could always tell the diference between the waking world and my dream world, because the dreamworld was always in pastel.
i’ve described it in all of these dream threads, but here is a recap. the world had a brotherhood of dragons, guild of wizards, and some technologically advanced guys. all fought each other in a three front war. no alliances-all hated the other two with equal passion. i was a low rank dragon, of the lightning-breather type.
about one and one-half years ago, i just stopped dreaming.
no dreams, whatsoever. i just go to sleep, then wake up. 8 hours pass, but to me, my eyes close, then open again instantly. i always feel just as tired waking up as i did going to sleep, so i always walk around in a state of partial unconciousness.
i can’t seem to dream. ive tried many things- massaging my eyes before going to sleep, massaging other parts of my head, thinking intensely about my dreamworld prior to sleep, suppressing thought before sleep, and even building a small random-blinker to help me dream- three led’s in paralell, with each having a different power capacitor and resistor so they have different blink cycles and setting it on my eyes like a R.E.M. glasses thing.
nothing works, i just don’t dream.
Aaaaannnyway, back to the question…
Nope, nothing outside my head affects my unconcious state. no outside influence to those dreams i don’t have.
I’m so envious of the people I know who claim they can lucid dream almost at will, or at least it happens often (like once a week). I’ve had about 10 or 15 lucid dreams in my life, a few more vivid and lucid than others.
I suggest reading some of the work of Stephen LeBarge (I think that’s how you spell it). He was the leading authority on lucid dreaming a few years back and he probably still is though I don’t know. IIRC, a couple of techniques he outlines in his book Lucid Dreaming are:
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Repeatedly throughout your day look at something (preferably something with text like a road sign, or even just a clock), then look away and then look back at it to see if it has changed (in a dream it will most likely have changed). Get into the habit of doing this throughout your daily life. The idea is that if you get into this habit you will do this in your dream and if the text of a sign or the time changes you will know that you are dreaming and be able to become lucid.
(I must admit, I don’t think this method ever worked for me, but I’m not sure) -
Repeatedly throughout the day simply take a moment to ask yourself “Am I dreaming”. This works by the same logic as #1.
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Right as you are falling asleep, count with the hopes that you will continue counting as you slip into the dream state. This, to me, would seem to only be affective if you have woken in the middle of the night and will thus go immediately into REM sleep. At the beginning of the night you will sleep a good 60-90 minutes before REM sleeping, so counting would be useless. (you may want to count: “one I’m dreaming, two I’m dreaming, etc.”)
I gotta go. I’ll get back if I remember others.
I’ve been able to manipulate my dreams to some extent.
If I concentrate really hard on a particular scenario right before I go to sleep (and have a strong emotional investment in the subject), I will dream about it maybe 33% of the time. I may or may not realize that I am dreaming; this happens in about half of my unplanned dreams anyway.
If I do realize I’m dreaming (spontaneous or rehearsed) I usually have some control over the events; rarely have I been the full-time Director.
I love dreams and usually remember them for at least 30 minutes after I wake up. If you dig vivid dreams, I recommend Melatonin (3mg. works best for me). It’s like harmlessly tripping in your sleep!
Peace,
TN*hippie
I often have dreams where I’m running away from somebody and have no idea why–also a fair amount of flying dreams, though those power lines do get in the way. But then I also have dreams where I’m telling someone a story or singing them a song or explaining some complicated fact. I even remember a dream in which I told somebody about a dream I had. Weird.
Sometimes I figure out I’m dreaming but I usually wake up pretty quickly afterwards.
Yes you can dream what you want! Like many have pointed out, a lot of it has to do with self-suggestion. If you intend to dream about something you probably will. But to take it much further I would have to agree that the world of lucid dreaming deserves to be tapped.
The problem is we rarely question our wakefulness-reality in the waking life, so of course we don’t think to ask ourselves if we’re dreaming in our dreams (called a “reality check”). The trick is to train yourself to ask if you are dreaming several times during the day–whenever you go to the bathroom, pick up the phone, eat, etc. Then when you’re dreaming you’ll dream about the things you normally do during the day–go to the bathroom, pick up the phone, eat, etc.–with the added hitch that you’ll remember to ask yourself if you are dreaming. Usually just asking will turn your dream lucid, but if you honestly don’t know if you’re dreaming (I’ve been caught on both sides of reality with the question) then look at an object like a ring on your finger or text on a page, look away, and then look back again. If it is a dream, chances are the object will have changed when you look back. Also, if you become lucid in a dream the best way to stay lucid is to immediately become involved with your “dream body”–twirling, rubbing your hands together, moving around, etc. Staying engaged with the sensations coming through the dream scene is the best way to keep participating in it. It also helps if you have a plan of what to do when you become lucid so you have some direction. It can even be as simple as “when I become lucid I want to explore my dreamscape.”
One web site to check out is http://www.lucidity.com. This organization, the Lucidity Institute, is based out of Stanford University and headed by Stephen LaBerge (who has written two very popular books on lucid dreaming as well as numerous research papers). They sell products like the P.E.S.T., which is basically a beeper that randomly beeps to remind you to ask yourself if you’re dreaming. Also, there is a mask you can wear to bed that will flash lights on your eyes while you’re in R.E.M. sleep. The idea is that the light will be incorporated into your dream (like tfnb34a and deepbluesea shared with their background influences). If you have been using “seeing light” as your reality check, then anytime you notice a lamp or police lights or a flashlight beam you’ll question your reality. So no matter how the light is translated into your dreamscape you should be able to pick up on the message.
Couple other dream notes, just fyi: The normal adult sleep cycle brings you through four stages of sleep within the first hour and a half of sleep (so if you take a nap, either make it less than 20 minutes or more than 80 minutes or else you’ll wake up very groggy). You then move on to R.E.M. sleep in cycles starting as short as five minutes and increasing in length to 40 or even 60 minutes per dream cycle if you’re getting 8-10 hours of sleep. You drop back into deeper stages 1 or 2 between R.E.M. cycles, but not usually 3 or 4. Your brain state is actually the same in R.E.M. sleep as it is in alert, waking life.
However, particularly for those of you getting 8 or more hours of sleep a night but not feeling rested, please consider whether or not you have a form of sleep apnea. Not to jump too heavily on Dr. Dement’s bandwagon (Stanford professor and author), but sleep apnea is a major health problem that rarely gets due credit (most doctors spend their entire practice looking only for cause and effect in the waking world). If your partner says you snore, or you ever wake up at night gasping for breath, chances are you have some degree of sleep apnea and are literally cutting years off your life. Just look into it.
And to remember your dreams… again, intention is the main ingredient. Have a dream journal and pen RIGHT by your bed so you don’t need to sit up in order to write down just a few key words before the dream slips away. Also, keep in mind that your early morning dream life is the most active with the longest dream cycles, and if you can sleep more than 10 hours some weekend then you should be having lots of dreams. You can also try setting your alarm 2-3 hours early to record your dreams. Although it may mess up your sleep pattern if you can’t go back to sleep, you’ll remember your dreams better by waking/writing and then going back to sleep. You’ll go right back into R.E.M. sleep, so it’s not like starting over.
Anyhow, I could go on for some time about this topic, so I best leave it be for now. I’d love to hear from any of you who have experienced shared lucid dreaming–anyone out there? Any examples of shared dreams?
Lulu - um, wazzat? I realize I could probably just go check out the site you gave and find out for myself, but I’ve spent a chunk of the evening combing through the Catholic catechism in response to another thread on the board, and frankly, my brain is shot. (No offense to any Catholics on the board, but that stuff is just grimly dull.) So - what’s shared dreaming? Is this like when you tell someone else about your dream and that person has it, or is this like when two people have the same dream at the same time?
I’d also like to add to Jolly Green Lulu’s nifty discussion of sleep cycles and apnea and so forth: emotional state can affect how much of the time you spend in REM sleep. Clinical depression, for example, can affect frequency of REM sleep, as well as when it occurs in your sleep cycle; so can psychoactive meds (and other drugs). In fact, lots o’ meds can change your sleep patterns, especially REM.