Funny, I just had one for the first time in a long time last night. In real life, one of my wisdom teeth is on the move and was causing some discomfort. In my dream, all my teeth were shattering and falling out one by one, which is a dream I’ve had many times before. It got so ridiculously unhappy and unlikely that I had this dialogue:
Me: “I think I might be dreaming right now. Whenever my teeth break it always turns out to have been a dream.”
My husband: “Well, try something out. Do something you can’t do in real life.”
Me: “OK, I am going to fly now.”
And so I did. I pushed off of the ground and swam around in the air, yelling down to my husband, “See? I am just dreaming!” I flew back down to him and tried to seduce him, and as I was getting his pants off I woke up. Good times.
I have lucid dreams quite often, perhaps once a month. Typically I realize I’m dreaming and then decide to do something fun, like hover or fly. What’s really interesting is that although I know it’s a dream I like to watch the reaction of others in my dream when I suddenly lift off the ground and start flying around.
Sometimes I’ve tried to engage in sexual activities during lucid dreams and it’s fantastic! But I always wake up before the fireworks.
On another note, I sometimes dream that I’m awake. I’m out of bed, getting dressed, ready for work, etc. and then realize I’m actually still in bed dreaming. Weird.
I can do it sometimes. It only happens when I am sleeping in late on the weekends which is rare.
If I wake up and go back to sleep several times is when I can do it.
In the dream I realize I’m dreaming and then I try to fly or float around or move things around with my mind. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it does not.
Sometimes I know I’m dreaming and I know I can fly in the dream and I try but it doesn’t happen and I am aware that I should be able to fly because it is a dream and that I am just not able to even though I am trying to.
Once I was lucid dreaming and flying around and I decided to see how high I could fly and I ended up in space looking down on the earth and I was thinking, “Wow this is so cool.” Then I remembered that there is no air in space (“there’s an aero space museum”) and that I shouldn’t be able to breath and it scared me and woke me up.
EDIT: For me the first time I did it with out trying about two years ago and from then on if I try to do it by waking up and going back to sleep several then I can occasionally do it.
I did a lot of lucid dreaming when I was into the whold chakra thing in the late 80s-early 90s. Lots of flying, etc.
Lately I haven’t had much lucidity in my dreams, but on occasion I will notice something like the buildings are wrong: bigger on the inside than the outside, multiple stories underground, fast food restaurants that turn into hotels, garages with industrial kitchens downstairs, Olympic swimming pools upstairs… sometimes I’m not able to read, or the text changing when I go back to re-read something, or walking around outside naked will make me realize that I’m dreaming.
I’ve also used the trick of asking myself “am I dreaming?” often, which helps lucidity in dreams. Another is to try to remember waking up that morning, or ask myself “how did I get here?”
When I realize I’m dreaming I usually look for a woman to have public sex with, or try to levitate, or something else I can’t do in waking life, as actions in dreams leave no consequences after waking.
Though, for me, lucid sex dreams are strange because there usually something "wrong " with the partner or situation - strange physical proportions, impossible positions, or unfortunate locations. I notice the inconsistencies, so I don’t really believe the dream.
Other types of my dreams are very detailed and accurate. I can read text in my dreams, and it makes sense in small portions if it. Other dreams are very detailed in the environment - one was a futuristic apocalyptic society, where there was a city on a beach with huge curved pillars coming out of the surf. I remember thinking that this would look great in a movie!
I can fly pretty regularly, too, if I’m having an “active” dream.
I have found I can have Lucid dreams pretty much whenever I want to. Being surprised and not in control frequently produces better dreams so I don’t do it much anymore. But then again, You are always in control of your dreams. It may not be conscious control but somepart of you is making the dream happen. Once you believe you can take control of your dreams, you can.
For me it is as simple as saying to myself just before I fall asleep, “tonight, you will be in control.” The down side is I always wake up in the middle of the night after having a lucid dream, usually around 2:30 AM and have trouble returning to sleep. Also, even in the best of controlled dreaming, some parts are a surprise and you just have to exert control over the parts you want to.
I am a long time insomniac who will dream that I am in my bedroom trying to fall asleep. When I realize that I am probably dreaming, I try to make things happened. They do, but they are always violent things. The last time was Tuesday night. I clearly saw a guy wearing red, white and black from head to toe come into my bedroom and stomp on me. Then I woke up.
Personally, I have always had a knack for lucid dreaming. It just happens for me. I would say that 80% of the time, I am lucid in my dreams. It actually is a good thing, since I do occasionally suffer from night terrors and sleepwalking. I can usually tell when one or the other is ocurring, and wake myself up with the lucidity, but I have found that that elusive 20% of my dreams is when I usually have the problems.
I think (or at least it has been my experience) that many people confuse lucid dreaming with out-of-body experiences. While I do not discount that those may be possible, it is not the same thing as lucid dreaming and I wish people would realise that. you’d be surprised how many times I have mentioned that I am a lucid dreamer only to be asked “wow, so where do you go when you leave your body?”
For those interested in trying it, I had a good friend who swore by the following method:
Set a bedtime routine – go to bed at the exact same time every night and wake up at the exact same time every morning. Do this for a couple weeks. On the third week, place a notepad and pen by the bed – set your alarm clock to go off 1 hour after you go to sleep. When the alarm goes off, write down whatever you were dreaming. Do this, but vary the time the alarm goes off from 1 hours after sleep to 2 and back…so your sleep patterns don’t adjust. After 2 weeks of this, go back to sleeping normally. He swore that it made him more aware of his dreaming and helped him become a lucid dreamer…I donno, I never had to try.
As far as my reading in dreams it is kind of weird. Although you’re looking at the text it comes from an internal source, and you can feel it, which is why it makes sense to you although it’s gibberish
I almost always know that I’m dreaming, but I can’t always direct the dream, any more than I can direct the world around me just because I’m aware of it.
I think that ‘lucid dreaming’, or for that matter, comprehensible dreaming, is an illusion. The human brain comprehends logic and will tend to organize random information into logical, comprehensible patterns. The only way to analyze dreams is to have the dreamer relay the experience. The is no way to be objective in such a study.
Bolding mine. There is no conceivable way to objectively analyze content, it’s purely subjective. People who subject themselves to this research are predisposed to certain conclusions, even if they may not concientiously acknowledge it. I believe that dreams are simply random thoughts generated by the brain during periods of unconciousness. Most of this is never acknowledged by the concious brain, ( i.e.: totally forgotten) but when we attempt to recall these periods, the concious brain organizes the events into a logical, uderstandable sequence. If we try to analyze these “dreams” we are inclined to attach them to real life events.
Or try the method mentioned in the movie “Waking Life”-- try flipping light switches on/off-- if it doesn’t work you’re dreaming [or you’re in my old apartment where some of the light switches apparently weren’t connected to anything… I thought I was in a lucid dream the whole 4 years I lived there…].
Possible TMI warning:I find that the difficulty with such dreams is physiological, not psychological. In the not-uncommon event that I realize I’m dreaming, I can usually control the dream enough to ensure a ready supply of willing and eager women. I don’t generally dream about specific women (like Jessica Alba), but that may just be a quirk of mine. The problem, though, is that eventually (usually all too soon), such dreams lead to ejaculation, which usually leads to a very abrupt awakening at just the worst time.On lucid dreaming in general, I find that some things are easier to control than others. I can almost always fly in my dreams (even when I don’t realize that I’m dreaming), and I can often walk through walls, but to my knowledge, I’ve only once ever managed to teleport (despite trying many times). And I can manipulate people and objects, but objects are a lot easier than people.
That happens to me all the time. I dream that my teeth are shattering or falling out, and recently I’ve realized that I’m dreaming when that happens. Still behave like an automaton, though – no dream control for me.
It also happens when I dream that I’m putting in contact lenses that are the size of dinner plates – even though I haven’t worn contacts in years, I still have the “giant contacts” dream frequently, and now I’ve learned to recognize it as a dream, at least sometimes.
My wife, on the other hand – she claims to be able to lucid dream, generally when having a nightmare because she “snaps herself out” of it and then takes over the dream. I wish I could do that.
I had a lucid dream once. I was in my old middle school except I was an adult and people from different parts of my life were walking by. it didn’t start out lucid but after I realized I was dreaming I then began to walk around where I wanted to and say what I wanted to say.
Speaking of sex and lucid dreaming, after I got bored of walking around, I did indeed try to find a hotty and do the waist shake. I found a girl and during the stripping portion I started becoming very dizzy. I felt that I was melting like the Witch in The Wizard of Oz. After I had fallen/dissolved into the floor I woke up. That sucked
