Years before “lucid dreaming” became a fad, Carlos Castaneda
(¿hey, what happened to the tilde in Castañeda?)
wrote that “Don Juan the Yaqui shaman” taught him the technique. The trick had to do with looking at your hands in your dream. If you could just get the hang of this simplest of volitional acts – look at your hands! – you could develop the will to do more and more advanced things in your dream.
Usually when I realize that I am dreaming I wake up in what feels like a few seconds (though I know dream time can be very different from real time). I did once have a dream when I was a freshmen in high school that I was at school, and I realized that some of the people in my class were friends from the town I lived in the year before - I realized I was dreaming, but stayed asleep long enough to get up and walk out of the school.
I am frequently able to go back to sleep and continue a dream, which I am told is a form of lucid dreaming, but I usually forget that I am dreaming not long into it once I am back in.
Lately I have been having more lucid dreams - I can only think of a couple before the last few months, but I’ve had several since then, including some where I changed the subject of the dream and did things I could not do in real life. It’s all been since I switched to working overnight and have been sleeping in the day. I used to be a light sleeper and it was virtually impossible for me to fall asleep if I wasn’t in a dark room, or if there was any sound other than white noise like from a fan, but I have had to adapt and can now fall asleep easier. I think it’s somehow related.
I’ve had insomnia my whole life. It got to the point where when I was asleep I would be dreaming that I was in bed unable to sleep. When I heard about lucent dreaming, I decided to see what I could do about it.
The next time I thought I was dreaming about trying to fall asleep, I decided to “make something happen.” I turned over, and a guy on a diving board jumped onto my stomach. That woke me up in a hurry.
Since then, when I’m dreaming I’m in bed trying to fall asleep, I’ve been stabbed, shot, carved up, strangled, and even hit by vehicles, all in my bedroom. On August 30, 1997, I dreamed a huge black car came into my bedroom through a tunnel and ran over me. Then I woke up and heard about Princess Diana. Coincidence, but very weird.
I vote with the folks who say ‘practice being aware of your dreams’ - that’s all I did.
You don’t even have to write them down, but spend some time each morning (or whenever you wake up) going over (in your mind or with anyone who wants to listen) whatever you can remember of your dreams - even if it is just a vague feeling. You can also write them down, which is useful, as one tends to forget the details fairly quickly. Do this every day. After a few months of this, I was remembering 15-16 dream periods each night, from snippets that were probably less than a second long to multiple stages of a single dream. I realized that my longer dreams were actually several dream states, where I would continue the previous dream in the next dreaming phase of sleep, continuations being sometimes three or four sections. Often in the continuation, there would be some weird shift, like ‘suddenly I’m flying over the ocean’ or a sudden plot or character change (often really intense complex plots - apparently my subconscious likes adventure/thriller/spy movies). In remembering them, I could recall the slight hiccup between sections. Hard to describe, it was like a layer of black in between two spaces, or like a bad spool change in a movie theater.
For lucid dreams, I could be aware that I was dreaming, or I could do something about the dream. I used to have a LOT of nightmares (like at least one really horrible one a night), so I was trying to manage these, as well as doing a lot of self-analysis through them (which has been mighty useful). What I ended up doing was pulling myself to a lucid state at the normal end of a bad dream, then re-winding the dream to some decision-point and running a new ending. Sometimes several times, until the new ending stuck. Usually worked, or at least ended the dream with a sense that I was somewhat in control of the process. Sometimes I would go lucid mid-stream, and just go along for the ride, knowing that it was all a dream. I love the flying feeling, so I would often just extend that part of a dream as long as I could before feeling enough pressure to let the plot continue. (Kind of like me and my subconscious were working together, rather than me trying to take complete control, which would probably have woken me up.)
I no longer keep that level of dream ‘fitness’ - and I also now only remember dreams a few times a week. Practice, stay in shape, and see where it goes. I also recommend being specific to your subconscious that you don’t want to take over, just join in. Say it out loud, so your subconscious can ‘hear’ you. Dreaming is seriously important to your processing of daily info and life events, so if you ‘take over’ too much and don’t allow time for normal processing of info, your subconscious will probably boot your butt right out.
Good luck!
Try coming up with some control gimmicks. You want to fly? Tell yourself that whenever you extend your arms up in classic Superman style, you fly. You want to change dreams, or simply change the setting or POV of a current dream? Use your eyes as a remote control, ie. blink to “change channels”.
I know it sounds goofy, but it’s all a matter of suggestion and convincing your dream self of your control. It works really well for me, and has for years.
Have a nice flight! 
hi. i’m new.
i’d have to agree with pretty much everything that has been already said, but i figured i’d add a little based on my own experiences (and from reading a lot from the lucidity.com site mentioned above): getting enough sleep and wanting to have a lucid dream are essential. testing to see if you are dreaming also seems to help me. simply asking ‘am i dreaming’ might not be enough (it’s too easy to say ‘no - this is real’, but be wrong if you’re not aware enough in the dream state.) every so often when awake, conduct a few mental tests to see if you are dreaming - can you will yourself to fly? do machines work properly (it’s common in dreams for things to not work when you need them to - lights won’t turn on, and if they do, they often don’t actually increase the amount of illumination in a room, mirrors don’t reflect the correct image, etc.)? does written text stay consistent from reading it once, looking away, and reading it again (in dreams it will often change)?
by checking a couple of these things at random times during the day, you can train your mind to check them while dreaming (as an aside, i’d recommend testing more than one thing at any given time. i had a dream a couple of nights ago in which i tested to see if i could fly. i wasn’t able to, and so convinced myself that i was awake. i think a second test could have prevented that).
once you become lucid, i’ve found that rubbing my hands together vigorously helps to keep me in that state pretty well. as was mentioned in the op, spinning your dream body can also do it, but i’ve found that that will prompt a ‘scene change’ in the dream, which i usually don’t like much. the rubbing causes an interesting sensation, as i can feel my dream hands moving, but i’m also aware that my 'real 'hands aren’t.
hope that helps.
Wow, I thought that I was the only one that this happened to. When I was still trying to lucid dream, 4 out of 5 of them turned really ugly. Terrible, terrible things would happen. Must say something about us, huh? 
Something to do when the rush of realization hit you and you think that you’re going to wake up: spin around. Concentrate on twirling, and when the rush of feeling that you get when you realize that you are asleep and dreaming passes, you can stop. It’s concentrating completely on one small action that anchors you. It doesn’t work all the time, but I had a fairly good sucess rate.
I have heard that the herb mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) helps to have more vivid dreams. You sleep on a pillow stuffed with mugwort. I tried it and it seems to help. Another suggestion is to take vitamin C before bedtime. This too seemed to help. I think.
I’ve had a longtime interest in this subject, for I had experienced lucid dreaming since early childhood. Didn’t even know what they were called until I stumbled across a book on the topic in a library while looking for books on dream for a high school psychology paper. The book, called Lucid Dreaming was written by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., a researcher (at Stanford?) and is largely concerned with the background and research in the subject. His second book, which is called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, IIRC, has more of a “how-to” approach. I highly recommend both.
Both should still be in print and available at the online book vendor of your choice.
Wow, great thread! I’ve had lucid deams for years & have recently been asking friends if any of them are able to…
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Realize they were dreaming, remain in the dream, and do whatever they want. I usually fly around or try to find a car to drive like a madman.
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Bring themselves out of a bad dream. Often, during a nightmare I realize it’s a dream & ‘pull’ myself out by repeating ‘this is a dream’ and sort of ‘swimming’ upward.
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Wake up from a great dream & go back to sleep intentionally to re-enter successfully.
I read a book recently, called ‘Journeys out of the Body’ where the author claimed that he was able to have Out-of-body experiences at will just before falling asleep. Some of what I’ve heard here reminded me of his experiences which he documented for years.
Sorry to do a slight Hijack, but has anybody heard of this book or what ever became of his experiments? Has anyone ever thought they had an OOB experience themselves? Someday, I’ll start a new thread on the subject with descriptions of the 3 different dimentions he suggested & all, but right now I have to go pop some Vitamin C & drive my crazy dream car!
I started lucid dreaming (sometimes called directed dreaming?) at the tender young age of 6 or so. I was having nightmares and for some reason was annoyed at the fact that I was bringing this suffering upon myself.
I figured if I had a problem in my dream, I would just fly away: hey, it’s a dream, right? I speculate that I acquired the ability to do that by thinking about the issue before I went to bed. After a while, within-dream flying (more like floating, actually) became a standard motif, as it were.
If I am aware that I am dreaming, I can generally manipulate the dream at will, with partial (never complete) success.
JCThunder: 1) Yes, but I usually don’t focus on driving cars. 2)Yes, but I generally just make a conscious effort to wake up (sometimes with mixed success: I dream about waking up!) 3) Yes, directed dreaming is easiest on weekends, when you can drift in and out of sleep.
The only additional advice I’d give aspiring practitioners is not to take it too seriously. It’s not that big a deal. I confess that I haven’t actively monitored my dreams for years. I understand that certain religions encourage lucid dreaming although I’m not sure why…
This is something of a hijack…I mentioned that usually (almost always until recently) when I realized I was dreaming I would wake up almost immediately. This comes in handy in nightmares, but when horrible things are happening in real life I try to wake up, and it always makes me feel worse when I realize it’s real.
Well, one time I had this very vivid dream…I was in a mountainous jungle-type area, and me and a bunch of other guys in green uniforms were lined up at a rope bridge over a gorge. There were men with gray uniforms on both sides of us, and in the middle of the bridge there was a man in a khaki uniform with a pistol. When a guy in green got to the front of the line, where the guy in khaki was standing, he would get down on his knees and bend his head forward, and the guy in khaki would shoot him in the head and then kick him off of the bridge. Then the next guy would step up, and the process would repeat. I was towards the end of the line, so I saw this happen over and over again and was dreading getting to the front of the line. When I started to get close, I thought to myself ‘This must be a dream’ and tried to wake up, but I didn’t, and I thought to myself ‘This is no dream, you are about to die’. When I got to the front of the line I kneeled and closed my eyes, and I kept thinking over and over that this was going to be the last thought that went through my mind, knowing that I would not feel or hear anything when I was shot, that my existence would just stop. I was squeezing my eyes shut so tight my head was shaking, but I wasn’t as afraid as I thought I would be. I then thought ‘Why is it taking him so long?’ and then suddenly I felt like I was in a different place, and felt something soft pushing up at my face. I was surprised, as I don’t believe in an afterlife, and then after a few seconds I realized I was in bed, and I was surprised again as I was sure I wasn’t dreaming.
That dream really effected me, made me think about death a lot, and I was kinda proud that I didn’t start panicking or crying when I knew I was about to die. Less than a week later I was in an accident where I was sure I was going to die (I was sliding backwards down a slick highway and towards the guardrail of the overpass I was going over) and I remembered the dream while I was thinking ‘I’m about to die’.
I’ve found that people in my dreams don’t much like to be told that they are just in my dream–of course, people in the office don’t like it much either.
The advantage to the dreamstate is that you can do something to prove it to them, like fly, or cop an unconsequenced feel on Cindy Crawford. Then they usually believe me, but I always wonder how it makes them feel.
Just waiting for the day at the office when my attempt to fly fails, and the joke is on me…
Or worse yet, someone ELSE tells me I am just in THEIR dream, and then perform a triple barrel roll around the quad to prove it.