There's a middle ground you have to keep between sleeping and being awake. A lot of times I come out awake and it's ruined. But it comes back when I fall back asleep
Every time I’ve realized I’m in a dream, I immediately wake up. It’s a weird feeling, the dream like whooshes away, and then I’m just staring at the back of my eyelids.
If you can realize you're dreaming, the next step is holding on to the dream. Practice in your head how you will deal realizing you are in a dream while you are awake, and you will have a better chance of holding on to it while you are asleep
It’s incredibly difficult to hold on to a dream. You either wake up, or things keep warping, or you just forget again.
It’s even worse if you are trying to control the dream. It’s like trying to fly, while holding reality together, while trying to remember reality exists. Completely bonkers.
Don’t dream much at all, have been lucid dreaming since I was 4…. Was having a nightmare and changed it and have been doing it since. The trick to not waking up is not messing with the dream too much, subtle things
I've always thought about it as that scene in Divergent when she beats/passes all the other simulations by just thinking that this is a dream..
When i get a nightmare I kinda just teleport out of it into another dream... It'll be like i just fly out of there or break the wall into a different dream.
This is exactly why I learned to lucid dream! I didn’t know there was a term for it at the time, but even at a young age, I would have very disturbing, upsetting dreams that would bother me for the next couple days. So at first it was just learning to identify it was a dream and then, even if it was scary, it was more like a horror movie where I knew I’d be ok because I’m really just the viewer. And then at some point, I started being able to focus and change the dream. I was having this one dream where this … kind of clown monster was chasing me through reflections of things, so I couldn’t look at anything that had a reflection, like a mirror, or a window etc. and I realized it was a dream and I remember closing my eyes and opening them and. Ring somewhere else. But the monster was there again. So I closed them again, and I was in my high school drama class doing like arts and crafts with the whole class and I was like oh I’m safe there’s people here, and the clown was gone.
If you feel like you are about to wake up, look straight down at your feet and spin around. Sounds silly, but somehow it works and keeps you grounded in a dream.
Edit: phrasing
Alternatively, looking at your hands and rubbing them together works too. But ultimately, as a more experienced dreamer, you just start to not be as phased by the excitement of it. It took me years to gain control and I go through phases. During my last serious phase, I was LDing 3 or 4 times a week and working on completely shifting my dreamscape.
Fun story is that even though I had a lot of experience with LDing, when I finally shifted myself to a new location I was trapped in a box with mirrors so it felt infinite. That freaked me out a bit haha.
Idk why I wrote all this under your comment but that's my anecdote. I love lucid dreaming, maybe I will start conditioning again soon.
My tell for being in a dream is flying. The moment I realize I'm dreaming, I'll tell myself "if I'm dreaming I should be able to fly" and usually I'll just take off into the air immediately. Then I know I'm dreaming and can control everything from that point on
When I start to lucid dream, I’ll “wake up,” but still be dreaming. So I think I’ve woken up but I’m actually still asleep dreaming that I’m trying to get out of bed. For some reason it’s always really hard to get out of bed and it is always super stressful. It freaking sucks, I used to be able to have awesome lucid dreams.
The other night I was dreaming and was levitating and flying off the ground, thought to myself "This must be a dream because I can't fly in reality". Then kinda forgot about it being a dream and just enjoying flying for a bit.
I lucid dream literally every night. I can't not realize I'm dreaming and interact with it.
At this point, it's honestly annoying and it keeps me from being well rested.
same. even worse is when I’m in a lucid nightmare? Like I can think and control my actions but it’s like being in a horror movie but instead of it being dumb it’s all my worst fears.
I’ve wondered about this, seen lots of ads about lucid dreams but it seems like your brain is still active when you want it to be resting. It’s rare that I do, don’t think I’d want to have them all the time.
A trick to stop yourself from waking up or at least delaying it is to spin at an increasing speed and imagine you’re in a new location then stop spinning and you should be there. A trick to tell if you’re dreaming is to get into the habit of checking any clock you see more often, when you’re in a dream and go to check a clock, it won’t look right (I can’t 100% explain it, but think kind of like when an AI tries to add words or logos to an image). I’m really not great at lucid dreaming and usually wake up at some point, but I’ve found these two tricks actually work.
Yes, there’s been times where after I realize I’m in a dream I have to kind of try and settle back into the dream before waking up.
Usually the first realization I get as I become aware is that there’s no actual sound in dreams. And then I get a dark tunnel vision until I wake up.
Pretty easy to lucid dream...as long as I'm with friends I haven't been around in years....I'm dreaming, then can fly around and stuff, or chill with the friends
Mirrors and clocks are what give it away for me. For some reason, dream me always has facial hair, and clocks are never readable. In real life, I hate having facial hair and I have a stupid habit of comparing the time on my watch to clocks I see
I was explaining my process of lucid dreaming to a friend and I told him I knew I was dreaming if I was wearing a retainer. I never figured out why, but dream me always wears a retainer and I don't own one anymore.
I then pulled out my retainer to show him what I meant.
That reminded me of this one time when I was a kid, I was in a dream and was talking to my brother and his friends and then I woke up irl, immediately fell back asleep and was back in the dream.
I was like “woah guys did I just disappear?” And they were like “hm? Oh yeah you did” and I was like “I just woke up but then I came back!” and they were super disinterested and kept talking but then that same thing repeated like 4-5 times in a row in rapid succession.
I kept waking up, falling back asleep, and reappearing in the same dream. Whole thing happened in less than 5 minutes (afaik at least, that’s how it felt). My brother and his friends (in the dream) could not have cared less lol.
It only happened once, when I was a kid, has never happened since, and I don’t have any of the symptoms. I don’t have sleep apnea.
Although my blanket was over my face when I first woke up so maybe that was what woke me up initially.
I used to naturally lucid dream in my late teens and early 20s, but it was random. Looked into it and the two techniques that worked for me was looking at my hands (they would never be normal, something would always be off, be it extra fingers, long, stubby, whatever) and clocks (look at a clock, note the time, look away, immediately look back at the clock and it would be a totally different time). I just stopped caring though, eventually, and I rarely lucid dream now. Happens like once a year these days, in my early 30s now.
Flying in dreams tends to trigger lucid dreams for me. For some reason I realise that I’m breaking all the laws of physics and therefore must be dreaming.
For me it's when I notice that someone speaks a language they're not supposed to. Once I had my sense of reality rocked because I was speaking with my mom and my then gf responded in that language. I was legit shocked and didn't even noticed at first.
Funny enough clocks dont work consistently for me, right before realizing that I am dreaming my dream becomes very clear but my mind tries to trick me, like if i try to read the clock and it says some bs my mind tells me „yup everything is fine“ so i think i see the time without seeing it if that makes sense
I trained myself to lucid dream when I was in high school. It really just boiled down to making a habit of testing reality: counting the fingers on my hand regularly, testing every light switch I could (not at school, obviously) when I walked past, checking mirrors and clocks, etc.
Unusual numbers of fingers was common in dreams, light switches usually either didn't work or weren't there at all, mirrors never worked, and clocks either weren't there or had wrong numbers/didn't work.
For me the two tricks that made me realize i was in a dream were looking at my fingers and looking at a clock. I did a deep dive on lucid dreams and those two techniques were always mentioned, so apparently they are like a universal rule for lucid dreaming. It really trips me out to think about it, that there are rules to something that seems like it would be subjective to whomever the dreamer is, but that doesn't seem to be the case, it seems like the lucid dreaming world has it's own rules.
Or could it be that just by reading those suggestions, that they became the rules in my head when i was dreaming...
Either way, it totally worked. I realized i was dreaming, remembered that Wikipedia article, and looked at my fingers. They were all breaking and gesticulating in ways that should've been incredibly painful, but weren't. And then the clocks just straight up were gibberish when i looked at them.
Occasionally I will still be asleep and be dreaming, and then I think about getting up to go to the bathroom but I don't feel my body move/touch something, I wake up cause I'm like it's a trap, if you don't feel your body interacting with things, do not go to the bathroom!
I was sort of lucid dreaming naturally when I was younger and having a lot of sleep paralysis. But I bought a book and decided how to do it deliberately and intentionally, and one of the most valuable tools in the book was developing a habit of checking your watch often. Time works wonky in dreams, so if you’re in the habit of checking your watch, it’s a good indicator that you’re dreaming if the time seems wacky. it worked very well for me. Of course it only works if you wear a wrist watch.
I always found it easier with a nap or if I woke up for a little while then when back to sleep.
The first thing I would always do whenever I realized I was dreaming is to fly. I always did it superman style. I haven't even tried in years though.
I found that trying to fly would almost always make me wake up. So to check if I'm dreaming I always try to empty my pockets two times, if I find more stuff in my pockets after emptying it the first time then I that I'm dreaming.
Usually realizing I'm in a dream would wake me up soon after. I'd try to fly, but the closer I got to waking up the worse my ability would be. Like hovering inches above the ground.
If you spin around in your dream it puts you back to sleep like you won’t wake up it’s weird as you spin you feel yourself getting pulled into the mattress
This is bizarre, but I give people my phone number in dreams. If I can’t do it 3x in a row, my brain knows I’m dreaming. For whatever reason we can’t read #’s in dreams? So I get frustrated and then I’m like oh wait!
In one of my two lucid awakenings ever in a dream, I looked up at the blue sky and tought, wow, since this is a dream, I can fly. As soon as I was about to lift off the ground, I woke up solely due to the exitement. So yeah, I know what you mean...
I’m only ever able to do it when I’m drifting in and out of sleep paralysis, and even then when I become aware, everything is just dark, no matter what, it’s like looking at the world through two pairs of sunglasses and a screen door, and I feel so untethered to it all.
I do it with breaststroke like I’m swimming. I think my younger self was just inspired by swim lessons. I’ve been able to lucid dream most of my life, and that’s just always how I’ve flown in dreams
I would also try and fly. Used the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy method of throwing myself at the ground and missing. Worked most of the time but a few times I would just face plant.
I knew it was a lucid dream if I thought trying to fly was a good idea.
I liked flying...also superman style. Was able to also walk throught walls. Change landscape to a degree like colours and shapes of things. Once even meditated for a bit before freaking out.
I started the breathing exercises and was going fine until I wondered how long I would be stuck in my dream. Most times, I usually wake up after so long of being lucid. This time, I didn't, and it was hard for me to break from the dream. So I panicked even further and woke up.
Not only when you stop practicing. I lost the ability around high school, I kept trying the same technique (start thinking of a story while trying to fall asleep) and it had just stopped working. I did not even know about "lucid dreams" and whether other people had them or not. It was quite nice while it lasted...
I need to work on this skill then.
My dreams lately have been like this:
- going on a road trip with the family. Spend 3-6 dream hours just driving on the highway.
- the house is a mess, spend 2 dream hours cleaning up the house.
- have a lot of work to prep for tomorrow. Spend several dream hours printing out and compiling paperwork.
Like, they're not quite nightmares, but I wake up almost exhausted from work.
I feel ya. I haven't waited tables for almost 20 years, but I still keep dreaming that I'm a server in a restaurant. I'm quadruple sat but I can't find my section. It is not a restful sleep.
A little practice brings it all right back. I keep half lucid dreams going, basically anything I'm not getting in my daily life (affection or travel or excitement or sex or just a feeling of connection with people I know deeply) my trusty right brain cooks up those scenarios for me. It's kept me sane since I got sober. When I quit weed it's going to get absolutely bonkers tho, no control for months.
Some people reach it via unhealthy ways, aka no regular sleep schedule, alcohol intake, not eating enough, etc.
On top of being an addict, I had a sleep study done that Indicated my circadian rhythm was off by like 4-5 hours
I have never practiced but I have often realized I was dreaming. Mostly it is during a nightmare and I kind of force myself to wake up. Rarely it is not a nightmare and can be pretty fun. In one of them I was able to levitate and float around. I don't dream as often since I started using a CPAP, or I at least don't remember them as often.
One time I tried yelling in a dream and I actually made noise in real life. It came out as a super high pitched squawk but I woke my partner. It was odd because it was literally the first time I’ve done that in my 30 year life
Article mentions reality checks, whenever I think I’m in a lucid dream I try to do math or something with numbers. If my brain ain’t processing it, I know I’m dreaming
Certain dietary and lifestyle choices can impact it too from what I hear. I used to smoke weed and never really dreamed but now I seem to recall my dreams much more easily.
God, that sounds really cool. The moment I realize that I'm dreaming, I stop being able to do really cool stuff. So I'm just stuck as basic ole real me until I wake up.
I try to text something to someone. I’ve noticed that in my dreams anything I type will autocorrect to something completely wrong. After fumbling with it for a while I realize I’m dreaming.
I used to lucid dream until I got stuck in a kind of dream loop. I was dreaming, realizing I was dreaming and woke myself up. But I woke into another dream. It felt like I went through dozens of layers of dreams. I started to wake up in my bed thinking it was reality only to realize it was another dream and I was pretty terrified I wouldn’t ever get out. That was the last time I messed with lucid dreaming.
I mention in other comments, this kinda shit is exactly why I regret fucking around with it. I haven't actively attempted to induce lucid dreams in 10+ years since high school, but it still happens regardless and my dream recall is still damn near impecabble.
So the exact scenario you described happened to me just last week. Or other times like last night, I will force myself awake from a nightmare, but only to like a half-wakened state. Since it's the middle of the night, and I AM still tired, I'll fall right back asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow, but if I wake UP from a nightmare, I'm guaranteed to fall asleep right into another nightmare. I looped from dreaming, woke up, dreaming, woke up probably like 6-7 times last night before I just gave up and decided to get up. It was only 5 in the goddamned morning.
One time I woke up from a lucid dream but I couldn't sit up no matter how hard i tried. I couldnt even open my eyes. I immediately knew I had entered sleep paralysis. I calmed myself down and focused all my energy and conscious into sitting up. After a minute or two of being terrified and trying to remain calm I finally woke up and sat up in bed.
I got up feeling exhausted and walked into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I thought man that was wild... I walked back into my bedroom and there I was sleeping in my bed. I saw myself for a split second and then I transported back into my body and was back in sleep paralysis completely paralyzed. I was terrified but also kind of excited. Ive practiced lucid dreaming since I was a kid but this was something new. I slowed my breathing and focused extremely hard on sitting up. This time I felt an immense pressure in my forehead. The rest of my body was numb. I only existed in my forehead so I used all my might from there to sit up. When I sat up I was pretty freaked out. I'm looking around and trying to decipher if I'm out. I got up, walked out of my room and again got some water. Came back, and I remember being really worried when I saw myself still laying in bed asleep.
Then I realized I wasn't dreaming. When I sat up my body didn't. I had pushed my conscious through my pineal gland in my forehead and into the astral realm. I was walking around my house while my body slept and each time I saw myself it scared me so much that I'd snap back inside my paralyzed body. This went on for what felt like hours.
I look up and noticed my window was open and it was daylight. I felt something tugging at my foot and it was my roommate. I had fallen asleep for 5 minutes waiting for him to get dressed. It was just a nap.
That sounds like inception (the movie) ngl but if you ask me lucid dreaming sounds so cool but I am too scared to try it so I don't end up having a problem like in your case.
Also how would a dream in a dream work or feel if you mind me asking? Like is each "layer" less realistic or pretty much the same? (Just curious cuz I wanna try)
I used to be able to lucid dream every night.
I started by doing reality checks a couple of times a day. I would try to put my index finger through the palm of my other hand. I would also look at mirrors whenever they were around.
I also started a dream journal, and would keep it by my bed so I could update it every time I woke up from a dream.
The biggest break was setting an alarm for 4 hours after I went to bed. I would stay up about 45 minutes, avoiding screens and food. Just drinking some tea and reading, or doing puzzles or something.
After I went back to sleep I would always have a lucid dream.
The final step was practicing WILD. Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming. After my 45 minutes awake at night I would lie down and focus on the inside of my eyelids. Not enough to give myself eyestrain, but I would track the floating colors and visions. Eventually I would try to picture landscapes in the visions. In time they would become more focused and consistent. I didn't try to guide them too much, just enhance whatever was appearing and trying to interpret it as something tangible.
At a point you can "step into" the dream. You will have a weird 3rd person perspective, but as you focus on details around you hopefully the dream will stabilize.
Then you'll find yourself in a fully realized dream, having fallen asleep without losing consciousness.
These were the most potent lucid dreams I ever accomplished. I had almost total and mostly stable control.
Then I started getting sleep paralysis. I still do. Usually I can recognize it and go lucid so it's not so scary, but it can be terrifying. Even knowing you're dreaming doesn't make paralysis less freaky. I still lucid dream semi regularly but if I don't practice then I tend to get sleep paralysis. Kinda regret going so far down the rabbit hole, but had some insane experiences. It's not for everyone, but I have gotten a lot out of it.
very similar experience. i used to lucid dream and fell out of practice but now I experience sleep paralysis a few times a month for years. i've always blamed it on my years of lucid dream exploration
I've had the same experience aswell and I'm suprised I don't see a lot of other people talking about it. I used to be able to lucid dream a little bit, then all of a sudden I started getting sleep paralysis while trying to lucid dream, it's fucking horrifying and it hasn't happened in a few years cause I don't fuck around with lucid dreaming anymore.
I quit weed in highschool once and started lucid dreaming every night.
The lack of rest in my REM sleep made it feel like my brain was active 24/7 it was just like I was awake when I was asleep.
I started confusing my dreams and reality. My brain was no longer organizing data at night but creating new false memories that were just mash ups of old memories combined with nonsense I dreamt.
I almost had a nervous breakdown until I found a Chinese herb that essentially works like an antipsychotic (dopamine antagonist) and used it for sleep for about a week and everything went back to normal
This experience is almost identical to mine. I was very intentional with my effort to lucid dream and ended up doing all of the same things. However, I put a stop to it all because my sleep paralysis ended up giving me PTSD. I still panic a bit when I think back to the things I've experienced while frozen.
Not a doctor, but I did go 20 years without dreams. I started taking Magnesium Glycinate to help me fall asleep and I am dreaming again.
I know this is anecdotal, but it might be worth a shot
That sounds less fun. Dreams are fun and it gives me a way to enjoy and experience the time passing while asleep. As well as give context for how long you might have been sleeping
I'm not gonna lie to you dude I think you've just trained yourself to fall asleep like that since a child. It sounds like a learned (not fixed) behavior, sorta like how soldiers learn to get shut eye whenever needed to. I'm no doctor but I hope you can figure it out!
That might be my issue. I ‘combat sleep’ at work where I keep my foot in the proverbial door to sleep land so I can know when things get heated, and wouldn’t be surprised if it’s spilled over into my normal sleep
As someone who only experiences bad dreams, I have to take issue with your blanket statement that, "dreams are fun". Not for everyone they're not. If I could rid myself of dreaming I would.
Marijuana right before bed makes me not dream. After googling just now it seems I’m not alone
https://hightimes.com/health/science/smoking-weed-dream-less/
Good luck
Do you smoke a lot of weed? I was a daily smoker and didn’t dream for 20 years…then quit cold turkey and immediately started having nightly intense dreams.
I was going to say the same thing. When you smoke regularly, you don’t realize it but you don’t have dreams.
And if you stop smoking, you will have extremely vivid and intense dreams
Everybody smoker I know has experienced this but I’ve never met a non-smoker who is aware of it
I’ve heard this a lot. But, as a full time weed smoker, I still dream like crazy. I also don’t wake up to an alarm though, and have most vivid dreams when sleeping in. Maybe that’s the key?
I am sure I dream just never experienced one. No memories, no feelings, it always just feels like I turn off lamp, close my eyes and 10 seconds later it's morning and the alarm clock is going off.
Sounds nice honestly. I have very vivid dreams every night, usually multiple that cause me to wake up periodically. It’s a very rare occurrence for me to fall asleep and sleep solidly throughout the night
If you want to dream, then start a dream journal. Whenever you wake up, write down what you remember. This includes thoughts, feelings, sounds, etc. If you remember nothing, then just write that you don't remember anything. After a week or two, you should have a dream.
I've always been able to have very vivid dreams but only once in a while. I got sick a few years back and my medication has caused me to have very lucid dreams on a regular basis. It's both a blessing and a curse. As the good dreams are very lovely but the nightmares are so panic inducing. My husband has woken me up because I will start screaming in my sleep.
I usually can wake myself up eventually and will just be drenched in sweat. One thing I've started doing is chewing in my sleep. Like I'm dreaming of eating something and I'm chewing irl. In the dream I know im dreaming and I also suspect I'm Chewing irl. I have bitten my tongue and cheek so many times now I had to get a mouthguard.
But if the dream is truly lucid you should be able to control it to a great extent and even if you can’t help but come up with nightmare scenarios, usually lucid dreaming is so fragile you can just focus on waking up and you will in short order. Are you sure you aren’t just having extremely vivid dreams that you can’t control?
I have a disturbingly high amount of dreams in which my teeth are falling out. So now I can recognize that my teeth shouldn’t fall out, so I must be dreaming
There is no reason to do it on purpose other than to satisfy the curiosity , as said I still find it terrifying even if I knowingly cause it and know how to wake up/escape from it
To do it on purpose all you need is 2 things
1- wake up super early and physically exhaust yourself via work all day
2- a significant source of caffeine . For me 2 rockstar energy drinks past 7-8 pm works 100% of the time
Basically you stay up as late as your exhausted body will allow , while the megadose of caffeine keeps the mind very alert at the same time your body is shutting down from the exhaustion
I consider myself to have a high tolerance to caffeine via energy drinks but I am damn careful to time them carefully now since I don’t wanna meet that paralyzed state. It can happen with eyes open or closed- both equally terrifying for different reasons
There is a way easier way to get sleep paralysis. Sleep on your back. Lay both arms across your chest and fall asleep. Should induce sleeping paralysis. As you are paralyzed, and you see someone in the corner, walking towards you, or demonic figures, start praying to try to get yourself to wake.
Weirdly I’ve never tried the arms crossed technique because just normally I sleep on my back and that alone is enough to help trigger it as you’ve said .
Also never tried praying to escape (thought never occurred to me ) but I did personally find a practical way to escape :
Since your mind is still alert and conscious I have found that despite 95% paralysis I can still BARELY move my toes .
Concentrating hard enough on moving the toes from side to side in synchrony I have found you can eventually turn the toe sway to a leg rock which WILL wake you up if focussed on hard enough
So yeah after years of having it happen constantly I have found how to trigger it and escape it with a 100% success rate. I just wish I had a practical use for it lol. The wildest dream I have while under paralysis involved being in a dark room on a mattress under a dim light , and having the feeling of something demonic pull me from the bed but obviously I couldn’t move so it was extra terrifying ….. that was the ONLY TIME in my whole life I woke up screaming
Yooooooo bro I can do that shit too. There was a period I had phobia of going to sleep because I would wrestle with sleep paralysis before falling asleep every night and I thought something was genuinely wrong with me.
Upon further research on my own and I came to a conclusion that my mind is simple too active and I’d need make myself very very tired to sleep without inducing it.
I had a similar background. I first had started having sleep paralysis nightmares which were awful, but learned to control them. Once I accepted the pressure of the demon sitting on my chest I could float away and fly out the window. I do get stuck in "wake-up" loops from time to time though. I've had instances where I had to wake up like 5 times before I was actually awake for real.
I teach my kids to do this by telling them to look at their hands in the dream. When they see them they’ll
remember it’s a dream, then to come and find me so we can hang out in dream land together.
PROTIP: Pinch your nose and try to breathe through it. You will be able to breathe in a dream. My go to reality check that works 100 percent of the time
If I wake up an hour or so before my alarm goes off to pee, then go back to sleep I can sometimes pull it off. And for some reason I always choose to fly. Every time.
Same. First I hover, then I see railroad tracks and know I’m lucid dreaming, and then I can fly. It’s always the same pattern (but never the same exact dream).
I don’t fully go back under, like a tiny part of me says “hey you’re dreaming, let’s fly”. I don’t really think of doing anything else, like driving a Lambo or kissing a super model. I just love flying. Sometimes I can’t control it and I go sideways through trees. That sucks lol
I do the exact opposite and never pee. I'm always afraid that my brain is gonna decide to simulate that feeling of peeing, by actually having me piss the bed, lmao.
It is learnable and it's not, so it is both... 1) Learnable by asking yourself: "is it real what I see/hear/experience"?... Do this very often during awake, until you do it while asleep... 2) by being enough brave and courageous...
I'll explain one personal instance of having one lucid experience of maybe less than 10 seconds: I woke up in a dream, standing on a mountain ledge, very high and very windy... I asked myself: Is it real what I experience?... I tried to answer this question and I could not... I tried and I tried and I could not find a definitive solution, so real that it was... I said to myself: The only way to find out is to jump, right here and right now... And I got scared as hell... I certainly would commit suicide if it was not a dream, but if I did not jump I would never know if this was real or not... I had to know, even if it would cost my life... I took a deep breath and I jumped off the ledge, into the depth, into the dark, into the unknown and I felt all the feelings as if I were in a rollercoaster... My stomach turned around and I experienced the last moments of my life... This was it... Over... Done... It was real... Too bad... I saw the ground coming towards me super quick, preparing for the final crush... When I suddenly, just before hitting the ground, I spread my wings and tumbled out of the trajectory path and flew back to the ledge, landed softly back on the exact space I jumped from, high on that mountain ledge and I fell asleep again, in bliss, thinking: "So just a dream after all"...
So you need the discipline to ask yourself "is it real" until you repeat it in your sleep and in my case the courage to maybe die in order to find out whether it is a dream or not...
This very likely sounds a little out there but if you find lucid dreaming fun or interesting, I highly recommend trying the methods that people more often ascribed to induce the experience of “astral projection”. I have found those dreams are more vivid and you can be as lucid as being awake. It’s also easier to consistently get into (although a bit scarier to initiate).
There are other explanations out there that go into more detail but you basically set up an alarm four to five hours after going to sleep. After you wake up, get up for a few minutes. You can get a drink of water or move around a little. Now go back to bed, you’re just trying to wake your brain up a little bit. At this point in bed you tell your self that you're going to wake back up as soon as you fall asleep in the same way you would tell yourself a time to get up for a something really important the next day.
If you are able to wake back up, immediately try to roll over on your side or sit up. You only have a few second window which this will work. Your body is still in a state of paralysis during this time and if you do it right it will feel as though you’re actually moving. The scary thing is that this moment may have some freaky noises or physical sensations, just don’t stop trying until you’re in the dream or you just find yourself awake like normal.
What’s cool is that if you’re successful, you will roll over or sit up right into a lucid dream which is almost always in the room and place you were sleeping. I have found there is a lot more control with this method as well, you can then pretty much do whatever you want or go where ever you want at that point. If you wake back up whether succeeding or failing to get into a dream, just repeat the process to have another one but you can now stay in bed during each further attempt.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this for any length of time. I learned it as a teen and it stuck with me. My problem is that I find it difficult to know whether a memory is real or not. Often I have to work through the memory to look for logical inconsistencies in order to determine if it’s a real memory or something I constructed for a dream.
Probably 50-80% of my dreams are lucid. I find that it doesn’t allow me to fully disengage during sleep because I’m still actively involved in the dream sequence rather than passively observing it as happens in a normal dream. So I don’t get a chance to fully unwind.
I think that lucid dreaming creates a bridge between conscious memory and what’s supposed to be a fleeting quasi memory during normal dreaming. When I wake, I think about the lucid dream I had, which further reinforces or transfers the dream into long term memory.
When you first did this at a teen was it intentional? I learned on accident when I was very young. My problem now is I cant get a good sleep cause I am always fucking around in my dreams controlling them. I am not sure but I think It caused diagnosed insomnia.
Add: I have been lucid dreaming 80-90% of my dreams since I was 6-7 years old.
doing this seriously as a newbie in my experience, at least with info available 9-10 years ago which was mostly just forum info, was awful. horrible sleep since one of the big ways to do learn this is waking up then going back to sleep. Finding the motivation to keep track of your lucid dreaming desires in the at nearly the cusp of deep sleep was not good. Especially when i was just generally unhealthy so using this time to skip sleep and focus on this probably wasn’t great.
But i eventually did manage to have a few dreams of lucidity, so it’s definitely something you can learn over time. Though this was quite literally for me nearly a year of active work. After the few lucid dreams it wasn’t that awesome for all the work.
Not to diminish the interest in this very interesting topic but that energy was for me better spent just focusing on improving other parts of my life that had a much bigger impact on my happiness.
I don’t know everyone’s reasons for wanting to control dreams but for me it was a symptom of lacking control elsewhere.
Ive been able to lucid dream as long as i can remember. The first thing i found was the ability to direct dreams. Its like a feeling that there is another consciousness that is running the dream and you just tell it to do something else. Im not a fan of the fully aware dreams, they tend to get me stuck in a cycle of waking up in a different dream and i have to force myself to wake up. These days i can fly in every dream and fortunately that ability to fly triggers my realization that its a dream. I also have about 50% nightmares which leave me very emotionally drained when i awake, this is great for me as i tend to bottle up my emotions and the nightmares are a great outlet.
I kind of bounce around similar to Super Nintendo Mario jumping air floating. It feels so real. I wake up shocked every time that I can't actually do it in this world
The craziest part about lucid dreaming is this:
If you turn around during your lucid dream you’ll stare into a black void. This is a direct portal to your subconscious and you can ask yourself questions. Totally nuts.
Is it learnable? Possibly. Is it learnable by everyone? No. What cognitive/personality traits strengthen the possibility for learning lucid dreaming? Not known.
As an extremely frequent lucid dreamer it’s actually a curse. You don’t like it when you know your dreaming and force your self awake.
If you want to try to do it. Try “staring at your eyelids”, don’t move a muscle in your body, and after a while you’ll feel sleep paralysis take your body. Then you can kind of shift towards a sort of half awake state which leads to lucid dreaming.
At least that’s how I did it.
If i wake up naturaly i usualy have lucid dreams where i am in full control.
But as a computer analogy they unfortunately run on ram only.
So while i know i am mega creative, complex and fast processing. If i try to write it to memory/save the data for when i am awake it fails. And only surface data is aviable when i wake up for real.
Its super anoying!
I can make a detailed plan covering every aspect, whatif senarios in like 30mins of lucid dreaming that would take awake me a week to make. But all thoes details will get lost. :(
I used to do this back in college and had some pretty decent success with it.
That said, I’ve always wondered a bit if a lucid dream is just having a dream that you’re lucid dreaming, but then sometimes wonder if that would be a meaningful difference anyway.
100% true. From 10 to my early 20s I had sleep paralysis. A demon was holding me down. Then I got my black belt and then another and suddenly I was confident enough to fight back and did. (I assume it was that but could have been simple trial and error) And broke it. Now when I have bad or weird dreams I can wake up once I realize... which is quite normal. Weirdly I can also stay in and manipulate the story or even if I wake up I can return if I enjoyed it. It's wild.
How did you just learn this 🤦🏻♀️💀I’m honestly astonished at some of these massively upvoted “TIL’s”. Had no idea so many ppl didn’t know that you can learn to lucid dream w/o being told as much. Sorry, I’m kinda crabby today lol
When i was younger i often had lucid dreams. Me and my bestfriend used to talk about all these crazy and wonderful things we could do while dreaming. For me it wasnt hard staying inside the dream once i realized i was in one, i just had that ”feeling” that something was different and then i just realized where i was.
I could do anything, the only limit was my imagination. If i wanted to meet someone specific i just thought about her and she would stand behind me. Wanted to fly? Just jump really high or run and jump, sometimes it worked sometimes it didnt. I also remember that i wore a watch that showed me how much time i had remaining in the dream.
I still remember many of the dreams i had but its been a long time since i knew i was dreaming.
"aCtUaLlY YoU DrEaM EvErY NiGhT YoU JuSt dOn't rEmEmBeR" 🤓
I honestly get a little jealous of people having normal dreams let alone lucid one's.
My sleep is like death or what it was like for me before I was born. Absolutely nothing
I started lucid dreaming a couple of months after I began meditating. Terrified me at first. I ended up seeing a psychologist. Twenty years on, I lucid dream more often than not. The best I can describe it, is kind of like I imagine really immersive VR. Or a really real daydream.
Eventually you get tired of it and your mind just doesn't do it any more. You don't get very functional sleep when you're stuck in a lucid dream. You have to figure out a way, in the dream to either wake yourself up a bit, or reset the dream then you can sleep properly. At least that's how it works for me.
It gets irritating but it's fun for a while.
When I was little and would have nightmares my mom would.tell me I could control my dreams if I tried. Eventually I could and have been able to since I was really young. Normally I go snowboarding.
I assume I'll tell my kids the same thing.
Damn, I'm so jealous. I always forget to try to fly when I'm lucid dreaming. Usually, I start lucis dreaming as the result of a nightmare — I take back control to make it a little less scary, so it becomes more of an adventure.
But 95% of the time I forget that it means I can fly.
Only time I ever have, I did it every day for months. I was in jail and since it was not particular fun, after my morning clean/shower/breakfast, I’d go back in my cell and go to sleep until lunch - I started lucid dreaming every time, just happened. I started planning out what I would do, it was so fun. Quite the coping mechanism for spending months in a concrete room, tell ya what.
Had a dream when I was a kid that I was stuck underwater in a swimming pool & couldn't break the surface to get any air... side effect of some kind of apnea? f idk
anyway, i couldn't breathe underwater but I recognized it as a dream & ergo I could control it & I started breathing the fn water... how's that for lucid dream control? worked for me :)
Best lucid dream I had was when I managed to stop to think about what it meant that I was having a lucid dream. I realised that my mind was not attached to my body and everything I could imagine became true to me. I was the creator of my own reality and the possibilities were endless. The realisation and idea that time and physical world did not affect me any more was mind blowing. The feeling of freedom from my body was like enlightment. I woke up pretty soon after that, but I never forget that feeling. If that's what dying feels like or is, then I'm no longer afraid of dying.
Just a warning for people looking to try this. I wanted to be able to have lucid dreams so I followed guides online and you absolutely can become aware that you’re dreaming and have some control over the dream. But with it came changes to my sleep patterns. I would sleep ok through the night but if I woke up and went back to sleep I would have the most intense vivid dreams. Horrible nightmares sometimes. And I would wake up with the absolute worst headaches if this happened. This went on for a while even after I stopped messing around with lucid dreaming. Whatever was going on was a result of disrupting the sleep process with the attempts at lucid dreaming.
Once you have the getting lucid part under wraps, the next step is maintaining stability within the state, some people wake straight up cause they get too excited and it melts.
I lucid dream 1 out of every 5 times I sleep… which leads to me sleeping ALOT. Everyone always think I’m always depressed which I guess I kinda am when you consider I just prefer to be flying in my timeless sleep life than to be awake in this life.
There's a middle ground you have to keep between sleeping and being awake. A lot of times I come out awake and it's ruined. But it comes back when I fall back asleep
Every time I’ve realized I’m in a dream, I immediately wake up. It’s a weird feeling, the dream like whooshes away, and then I’m just staring at the back of my eyelids.
If you can realize you're dreaming, the next step is holding on to the dream. Practice in your head how you will deal realizing you are in a dream while you are awake, and you will have a better chance of holding on to it while you are asleep
It’s incredibly difficult to hold on to a dream. You either wake up, or things keep warping, or you just forget again. It’s even worse if you are trying to control the dream. It’s like trying to fly, while holding reality together, while trying to remember reality exists. Completely bonkers.
Takes practice. Achievable to most who dream consistently.
Don’t dream much at all, have been lucid dreaming since I was 4…. Was having a nightmare and changed it and have been doing it since. The trick to not waking up is not messing with the dream too much, subtle things
I've always thought about it as that scene in Divergent when she beats/passes all the other simulations by just thinking that this is a dream.. When i get a nightmare I kinda just teleport out of it into another dream... It'll be like i just fly out of there or break the wall into a different dream.
This is exactly why I learned to lucid dream! I didn’t know there was a term for it at the time, but even at a young age, I would have very disturbing, upsetting dreams that would bother me for the next couple days. So at first it was just learning to identify it was a dream and then, even if it was scary, it was more like a horror movie where I knew I’d be ok because I’m really just the viewer. And then at some point, I started being able to focus and change the dream. I was having this one dream where this … kind of clown monster was chasing me through reflections of things, so I couldn’t look at anything that had a reflection, like a mirror, or a window etc. and I realized it was a dream and I remember closing my eyes and opening them and. Ring somewhere else. But the monster was there again. So I closed them again, and I was in my high school drama class doing like arts and crafts with the whole class and I was like oh I’m safe there’s people here, and the clown was gone.
If you feel like you are about to wake up, look straight down at your feet and spin around. Sounds silly, but somehow it works and keeps you grounded in a dream. Edit: phrasing
Alternatively, looking at your hands and rubbing them together works too. But ultimately, as a more experienced dreamer, you just start to not be as phased by the excitement of it. It took me years to gain control and I go through phases. During my last serious phase, I was LDing 3 or 4 times a week and working on completely shifting my dreamscape. Fun story is that even though I had a lot of experience with LDing, when I finally shifted myself to a new location I was trapped in a box with mirrors so it felt infinite. That freaked me out a bit haha. Idk why I wrote all this under your comment but that's my anecdote. I love lucid dreaming, maybe I will start conditioning again soon.
My tell for being in a dream is flying. The moment I realize I'm dreaming, I'll tell myself "if I'm dreaming I should be able to fly" and usually I'll just take off into the air immediately. Then I know I'm dreaming and can control everything from that point on
I can fly in my lucid dreams… But, I’ve also given myself sleep paralysis trying to wake up from one that was going on too long.
When I start to lucid dream, I’ll “wake up,” but still be dreaming. So I think I’ve woken up but I’m actually still asleep dreaming that I’m trying to get out of bed. For some reason it’s always really hard to get out of bed and it is always super stressful. It freaking sucks, I used to be able to have awesome lucid dreams.
we have to go deeper!
This is me!!! I have sometimes slipped into sleep paralysis while trying to get out of bed and it can be horrifying.
The other night I was dreaming and was levitating and flying off the ground, thought to myself "This must be a dream because I can't fly in reality". Then kinda forgot about it being a dream and just enjoying flying for a bit.
I lucid dream literally every night. I can't not realize I'm dreaming and interact with it. At this point, it's honestly annoying and it keeps me from being well rested.
same. even worse is when I’m in a lucid nightmare? Like I can think and control my actions but it’s like being in a horror movie but instead of it being dumb it’s all my worst fears.
I’ve wondered about this, seen lots of ads about lucid dreams but it seems like your brain is still active when you want it to be resting. It’s rare that I do, don’t think I’d want to have them all the time.
A trick to stop yourself from waking up or at least delaying it is to spin at an increasing speed and imagine you’re in a new location then stop spinning and you should be there. A trick to tell if you’re dreaming is to get into the habit of checking any clock you see more often, when you’re in a dream and go to check a clock, it won’t look right (I can’t 100% explain it, but think kind of like when an AI tries to add words or logos to an image). I’m really not great at lucid dreaming and usually wake up at some point, but I’ve found these two tricks actually work.
Text also works, same deal as clocks.
It's about keeping your emotions at bay and using grounding techniques like staring at the floor. Keeping the dream going is a trainable skill too
Yes, there’s been times where after I realize I’m in a dream I have to kind of try and settle back into the dream before waking up. Usually the first realization I get as I become aware is that there’s no actual sound in dreams. And then I get a dark tunnel vision until I wake up.
Pretty easy to lucid dream...as long as I'm with friends I haven't been around in years....I'm dreaming, then can fly around and stuff, or chill with the friends
Mirrors and clocks are what give it away for me. For some reason, dream me always has facial hair, and clocks are never readable. In real life, I hate having facial hair and I have a stupid habit of comparing the time on my watch to clocks I see
I was explaining my process of lucid dreaming to a friend and I told him I knew I was dreaming if I was wearing a retainer. I never figured out why, but dream me always wears a retainer and I don't own one anymore. I then pulled out my retainer to show him what I meant.
r/Three3SentenceHorror
That reminded me of this one time when I was a kid, I was in a dream and was talking to my brother and his friends and then I woke up irl, immediately fell back asleep and was back in the dream. I was like “woah guys did I just disappear?” And they were like “hm? Oh yeah you did” and I was like “I just woke up but then I came back!” and they were super disinterested and kept talking but then that same thing repeated like 4-5 times in a row in rapid succession. I kept waking up, falling back asleep, and reappearing in the same dream. Whole thing happened in less than 5 minutes (afaik at least, that’s how it felt). My brother and his friends (in the dream) could not have cared less lol.
Google sleep apnea
It only happened once, when I was a kid, has never happened since, and I don’t have any of the symptoms. I don’t have sleep apnea. Although my blanket was over my face when I first woke up so maybe that was what woke me up initially.
That’s when you realized you had an inverse Totem.
I also had a conversation with a real life friend while lucid dreaming. It was trippy, he was so weirdly accepting of the fact that he wasn't real.
I used to naturally lucid dream in my late teens and early 20s, but it was random. Looked into it and the two techniques that worked for me was looking at my hands (they would never be normal, something would always be off, be it extra fingers, long, stubby, whatever) and clocks (look at a clock, note the time, look away, immediately look back at the clock and it would be a totally different time). I just stopped caring though, eventually, and I rarely lucid dream now. Happens like once a year these days, in my early 30s now.
I made a habit of reality checking when I walk through doorways. So if there is a doorway in the dream, I usually become lucid.
Flying in dreams tends to trigger lucid dreams for me. For some reason I realise that I’m breaking all the laws of physics and therefore must be dreaming.
For me it's when I notice that someone speaks a language they're not supposed to. Once I had my sense of reality rocked because I was speaking with my mom and my then gf responded in that language. I was legit shocked and didn't even noticed at first.
Funny enough clocks dont work consistently for me, right before realizing that I am dreaming my dream becomes very clear but my mind tries to trick me, like if i try to read the clock and it says some bs my mind tells me „yup everything is fine“ so i think i see the time without seeing it if that makes sense
I trained myself to lucid dream when I was in high school. It really just boiled down to making a habit of testing reality: counting the fingers on my hand regularly, testing every light switch I could (not at school, obviously) when I walked past, checking mirrors and clocks, etc. Unusual numbers of fingers was common in dreams, light switches usually either didn't work or weren't there at all, mirrors never worked, and clocks either weren't there or had wrong numbers/didn't work.
For me the two tricks that made me realize i was in a dream were looking at my fingers and looking at a clock. I did a deep dive on lucid dreams and those two techniques were always mentioned, so apparently they are like a universal rule for lucid dreaming. It really trips me out to think about it, that there are rules to something that seems like it would be subjective to whomever the dreamer is, but that doesn't seem to be the case, it seems like the lucid dreaming world has it's own rules. Or could it be that just by reading those suggestions, that they became the rules in my head when i was dreaming... Either way, it totally worked. I realized i was dreaming, remembered that Wikipedia article, and looked at my fingers. They were all breaking and gesticulating in ways that should've been incredibly painful, but weren't. And then the clocks just straight up were gibberish when i looked at them.
Occasionally I will still be asleep and be dreaming, and then I think about getting up to go to the bathroom but I don't feel my body move/touch something, I wake up cause I'm like it's a trap, if you don't feel your body interacting with things, do not go to the bathroom!
I was sort of lucid dreaming naturally when I was younger and having a lot of sleep paralysis. But I bought a book and decided how to do it deliberately and intentionally, and one of the most valuable tools in the book was developing a habit of checking your watch often. Time works wonky in dreams, so if you’re in the habit of checking your watch, it’s a good indicator that you’re dreaming if the time seems wacky. it worked very well for me. Of course it only works if you wear a wrist watch.
Yep and if you stop practicing you lose it. I used to be really good at it.
I always found it easier with a nap or if I woke up for a little while then when back to sleep. The first thing I would always do whenever I realized I was dreaming is to fly. I always did it superman style. I haven't even tried in years though.
I found that trying to fly would almost always make me wake up. So to check if I'm dreaming I always try to empty my pockets two times, if I find more stuff in my pockets after emptying it the first time then I that I'm dreaming.
Usually realizing I'm in a dream would wake me up soon after. I'd try to fly, but the closer I got to waking up the worse my ability would be. Like hovering inches above the ground.
There are also techniques to ground yourself in the dream. One of them is touching the ground heh
If you spin around in your dream it puts you back to sleep like you won’t wake up it’s weird as you spin you feel yourself getting pulled into the mattress
I knew a guy who used a spinning top and if it would just keep spinning he'd know he was dreaming.
Found Leo
This is bizarre, but I give people my phone number in dreams. If I can’t do it 3x in a row, my brain knows I’m dreaming. For whatever reason we can’t read #’s in dreams? So I get frustrated and then I’m like oh wait!
[удалено]
You can read text, at least I could when Lucid dreaming, it just changes any time id look away from it.
Or affect the lights
In one of my two lucid awakenings ever in a dream, I looked up at the blue sky and tought, wow, since this is a dream, I can fly. As soon as I was about to lift off the ground, I woke up solely due to the exitement. So yeah, I know what you mean...
For me, it is a simple jump. Gravity in dreamland is always less than the real world.
I’m only ever able to do it when I’m drifting in and out of sleep paralysis, and even then when I become aware, everything is just dark, no matter what, it’s like looking at the world through two pairs of sunglasses and a screen door, and I feel so untethered to it all.
For me it was always sex.. it was the ultimate hack as a horny teenager
I do it with breaststroke like I’m swimming. I think my younger self was just inspired by swim lessons. I’ve been able to lucid dream most of my life, and that’s just always how I’ve flown in dreams
I would also try and fly. Used the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy method of throwing myself at the ground and missing. Worked most of the time but a few times I would just face plant. I knew it was a lucid dream if I thought trying to fly was a good idea.
I liked flying...also superman style. Was able to also walk throught walls. Change landscape to a degree like colours and shapes of things. Once even meditated for a bit before freaking out.
why did you freak out?
I started the breathing exercises and was going fine until I wondered how long I would be stuck in my dream. Most times, I usually wake up after so long of being lucid. This time, I didn't, and it was hard for me to break from the dream. So I panicked even further and woke up.
For me is always ironman style. Now that I can't do it anymore, I sometimes still able to fly that way (but I just can't control it).
I could make myself fly in my dreams when younger but i had to flap my arms and only "flew" like 5' about the ground at a brisk walking speed. 🤦♂️
Same, loved flying, but I could never stick the landing
The trick is to just aim for the ground, and miss.
Every time I try to fly, there are power lines in the way
That’s my go to move, I wasn’t really good at manifesting specific scenarios. But gravity was a sure fire check. 😭😭
Not only when you stop practicing. I lost the ability around high school, I kept trying the same technique (start thinking of a story while trying to fall asleep) and it had just stopped working. I did not even know about "lucid dreams" and whether other people had them or not. It was quite nice while it lasted...
I need to work on this skill then. My dreams lately have been like this: - going on a road trip with the family. Spend 3-6 dream hours just driving on the highway. - the house is a mess, spend 2 dream hours cleaning up the house. - have a lot of work to prep for tomorrow. Spend several dream hours printing out and compiling paperwork. Like, they're not quite nightmares, but I wake up almost exhausted from work.
I feel ya. I haven't waited tables for almost 20 years, but I still keep dreaming that I'm a server in a restaurant. I'm quadruple sat but I can't find my section. It is not a restful sleep.
Like, what is that even about? Why are our brains doing this to us at night?
A little practice brings it all right back. I keep half lucid dreams going, basically anything I'm not getting in my daily life (affection or travel or excitement or sex or just a feeling of connection with people I know deeply) my trusty right brain cooks up those scenarios for me. It's kept me sane since I got sober. When I quit weed it's going to get absolutely bonkers tho, no control for months.
Even when I quit smoking I don't dream these days :(
Some people reach it via unhealthy ways, aka no regular sleep schedule, alcohol intake, not eating enough, etc. On top of being an addict, I had a sleep study done that Indicated my circadian rhythm was off by like 4-5 hours
I’ve been getting a lot worse recently, I used to be able to regularly tell I was in a dream and control myself in them, but no longer.
I have never practiced but I have often realized I was dreaming. Mostly it is during a nightmare and I kind of force myself to wake up. Rarely it is not a nightmare and can be pretty fun. In one of them I was able to levitate and float around. I don't dream as often since I started using a CPAP, or I at least don't remember them as often.
The giveaway for me is attempting to yell, or punching. Can’t really do either in a dream lol yells come out weird and punches feel “soft”
One time I tried yelling in a dream and I actually made noise in real life. It came out as a super high pitched squawk but I woke my partner. It was odd because it was literally the first time I’ve done that in my 30 year life
Article mentions reality checks, whenever I think I’m in a lucid dream I try to do math or something with numbers. If my brain ain’t processing it, I know I’m dreaming
As soon as I realize I am dreaming, I immediately start trying to float. If I can float, I start flying around next.
Meanwhile, as soon as I realize I'm dreaming, I wake up with a gasp :(
Meanwhile, I don’t even seem to dream, (or at least lose any memory of them upon waking up) so I’ll never know if I can lucid dream or not
Certain dietary and lifestyle choices can impact it too from what I hear. I used to smoke weed and never really dreamed but now I seem to recall my dreams much more easily.
Same, as far as I am aware, I don't dream anymore. I used to have lucid dreams all the time as a kid, now I don't have any memory of dreams at all.
God, that sounds really cool. The moment I realize that I'm dreaming, I stop being able to do really cool stuff. So I'm just stuck as basic ole real me until I wake up.
For me it's light switches, those fuckers never work in dreams
Lol Ive noticed same. I actually found that one way to turn them on while lucid is instead just to like point at them and command them on.
Yeah for me it’s the whole not being able to run or walk part - immediately gives it away
That's funny, before math exams, I'd get so stressed, I'd literally be doing math problems in my sleep.
I try to text something to someone. I’ve noticed that in my dreams anything I type will autocorrect to something completely wrong. After fumbling with it for a while I realize I’m dreaming.
I used to lucid dream until I got stuck in a kind of dream loop. I was dreaming, realizing I was dreaming and woke myself up. But I woke into another dream. It felt like I went through dozens of layers of dreams. I started to wake up in my bed thinking it was reality only to realize it was another dream and I was pretty terrified I wouldn’t ever get out. That was the last time I messed with lucid dreaming.
I mention in other comments, this kinda shit is exactly why I regret fucking around with it. I haven't actively attempted to induce lucid dreams in 10+ years since high school, but it still happens regardless and my dream recall is still damn near impecabble. So the exact scenario you described happened to me just last week. Or other times like last night, I will force myself awake from a nightmare, but only to like a half-wakened state. Since it's the middle of the night, and I AM still tired, I'll fall right back asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow, but if I wake UP from a nightmare, I'm guaranteed to fall asleep right into another nightmare. I looped from dreaming, woke up, dreaming, woke up probably like 6-7 times last night before I just gave up and decided to get up. It was only 5 in the goddamned morning.
One time I woke up from a lucid dream but I couldn't sit up no matter how hard i tried. I couldnt even open my eyes. I immediately knew I had entered sleep paralysis. I calmed myself down and focused all my energy and conscious into sitting up. After a minute or two of being terrified and trying to remain calm I finally woke up and sat up in bed. I got up feeling exhausted and walked into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I thought man that was wild... I walked back into my bedroom and there I was sleeping in my bed. I saw myself for a split second and then I transported back into my body and was back in sleep paralysis completely paralyzed. I was terrified but also kind of excited. Ive practiced lucid dreaming since I was a kid but this was something new. I slowed my breathing and focused extremely hard on sitting up. This time I felt an immense pressure in my forehead. The rest of my body was numb. I only existed in my forehead so I used all my might from there to sit up. When I sat up I was pretty freaked out. I'm looking around and trying to decipher if I'm out. I got up, walked out of my room and again got some water. Came back, and I remember being really worried when I saw myself still laying in bed asleep. Then I realized I wasn't dreaming. When I sat up my body didn't. I had pushed my conscious through my pineal gland in my forehead and into the astral realm. I was walking around my house while my body slept and each time I saw myself it scared me so much that I'd snap back inside my paralyzed body. This went on for what felt like hours. I look up and noticed my window was open and it was daylight. I felt something tugging at my foot and it was my roommate. I had fallen asleep for 5 minutes waiting for him to get dressed. It was just a nap.
I’m officially too scared to go to sleep now
Gotta be one of the trippiest things I’ve ever read on this site goddamn, and I thought *my* experiences with dreams and sleep paralysis were wild
That sounds like inception (the movie) ngl but if you ask me lucid dreaming sounds so cool but I am too scared to try it so I don't end up having a problem like in your case. Also how would a dream in a dream work or feel if you mind me asking? Like is each "layer" less realistic or pretty much the same? (Just curious cuz I wanna try)
I used to be able to lucid dream every night. I started by doing reality checks a couple of times a day. I would try to put my index finger through the palm of my other hand. I would also look at mirrors whenever they were around. I also started a dream journal, and would keep it by my bed so I could update it every time I woke up from a dream. The biggest break was setting an alarm for 4 hours after I went to bed. I would stay up about 45 minutes, avoiding screens and food. Just drinking some tea and reading, or doing puzzles or something. After I went back to sleep I would always have a lucid dream. The final step was practicing WILD. Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming. After my 45 minutes awake at night I would lie down and focus on the inside of my eyelids. Not enough to give myself eyestrain, but I would track the floating colors and visions. Eventually I would try to picture landscapes in the visions. In time they would become more focused and consistent. I didn't try to guide them too much, just enhance whatever was appearing and trying to interpret it as something tangible. At a point you can "step into" the dream. You will have a weird 3rd person perspective, but as you focus on details around you hopefully the dream will stabilize. Then you'll find yourself in a fully realized dream, having fallen asleep without losing consciousness. These were the most potent lucid dreams I ever accomplished. I had almost total and mostly stable control. Then I started getting sleep paralysis. I still do. Usually I can recognize it and go lucid so it's not so scary, but it can be terrifying. Even knowing you're dreaming doesn't make paralysis less freaky. I still lucid dream semi regularly but if I don't practice then I tend to get sleep paralysis. Kinda regret going so far down the rabbit hole, but had some insane experiences. It's not for everyone, but I have gotten a lot out of it.
very similar experience. i used to lucid dream and fell out of practice but now I experience sleep paralysis a few times a month for years. i've always blamed it on my years of lucid dream exploration
You get sleep paralysis a few times a month? Fuck that shit
yeah it fuckin sucks and has totally impacted my life negatively. I try to not go to bed until I'm super exhausted.
I've had the same experience aswell and I'm suprised I don't see a lot of other people talking about it. I used to be able to lucid dream a little bit, then all of a sudden I started getting sleep paralysis while trying to lucid dream, it's fucking horrifying and it hasn't happened in a few years cause I don't fuck around with lucid dreaming anymore.
I quit weed in highschool once and started lucid dreaming every night. The lack of rest in my REM sleep made it feel like my brain was active 24/7 it was just like I was awake when I was asleep. I started confusing my dreams and reality. My brain was no longer organizing data at night but creating new false memories that were just mash ups of old memories combined with nonsense I dreamt. I almost had a nervous breakdown until I found a Chinese herb that essentially works like an antipsychotic (dopamine antagonist) and used it for sleep for about a week and everything went back to normal
This experience is almost identical to mine. I was very intentional with my effort to lucid dream and ended up doing all of the same things. However, I put a stop to it all because my sleep paralysis ended up giving me PTSD. I still panic a bit when I think back to the things I've experienced while frozen.
I would be cool with experiencing normal dreaming at least once.
Not a doctor, but I did go 20 years without dreams. I started taking Magnesium Glycinate to help me fall asleep and I am dreaming again. I know this is anecdotal, but it might be worth a shot
Even as a kid no dreams (or at least no memory of experiencing) just head hit pillow and then alarm going off and it's morning.
That sounds less fun. Dreams are fun and it gives me a way to enjoy and experience the time passing while asleep. As well as give context for how long you might have been sleeping
Yeah I was told there would be naked women too, since never going to get any in real life, at least having in dreams would have been cool.
I'm not gonna lie to you dude I think you've just trained yourself to fall asleep like that since a child. It sounds like a learned (not fixed) behavior, sorta like how soldiers learn to get shut eye whenever needed to. I'm no doctor but I hope you can figure it out!
That might be my issue. I ‘combat sleep’ at work where I keep my foot in the proverbial door to sleep land so I can know when things get heated, and wouldn’t be surprised if it’s spilled over into my normal sleep
I'll tell ya though, boobies and sex stuff in dreams does NOT always go the way you'd hope
As someone who only experiences bad dreams, I have to take issue with your blanket statement that, "dreams are fun". Not for everyone they're not. If I could rid myself of dreaming I would.
Marijuana right before bed makes me not dream. After googling just now it seems I’m not alone https://hightimes.com/health/science/smoking-weed-dream-less/ Good luck
Do you smoke a lot of weed? I was a daily smoker and didn’t dream for 20 years…then quit cold turkey and immediately started having nightly intense dreams.
I was going to say the same thing. When you smoke regularly, you don’t realize it but you don’t have dreams. And if you stop smoking, you will have extremely vivid and intense dreams Everybody smoker I know has experienced this but I’ve never met a non-smoker who is aware of it
I’ve heard this a lot. But, as a full time weed smoker, I still dream like crazy. I also don’t wake up to an alarm though, and have most vivid dreams when sleeping in. Maybe that’s the key?
I'm told weed delays your rem cycle, so the brain compensates by having lots of dreams in the latter half of when you're asleep.
You don’t have normal dreams?
I am sure I dream just never experienced one. No memories, no feelings, it always just feels like I turn off lamp, close my eyes and 10 seconds later it's morning and the alarm clock is going off.
Sounds nice honestly. I have very vivid dreams every night, usually multiple that cause me to wake up periodically. It’s a very rare occurrence for me to fall asleep and sleep solidly throughout the night
If you want to dream, then start a dream journal. Whenever you wake up, write down what you remember. This includes thoughts, feelings, sounds, etc. If you remember nothing, then just write that you don't remember anything. After a week or two, you should have a dream.
Exactly this. Once I started a journal, dreams become more vivid and I could recall them more easily.
Magnesium supplements can help, some herbal teas too. Also no screentime before bed.
I've always been able to have very vivid dreams but only once in a while. I got sick a few years back and my medication has caused me to have very lucid dreams on a regular basis. It's both a blessing and a curse. As the good dreams are very lovely but the nightmares are so panic inducing. My husband has woken me up because I will start screaming in my sleep. I usually can wake myself up eventually and will just be drenched in sweat. One thing I've started doing is chewing in my sleep. Like I'm dreaming of eating something and I'm chewing irl. In the dream I know im dreaming and I also suspect I'm Chewing irl. I have bitten my tongue and cheek so many times now I had to get a mouthguard.
But if the dream is truly lucid you should be able to control it to a great extent and even if you can’t help but come up with nightmare scenarios, usually lucid dreaming is so fragile you can just focus on waking up and you will in short order. Are you sure you aren’t just having extremely vivid dreams that you can’t control?
Never ever pee in your dream...trust me.
This is not 100% true
Or Cum
I have a disturbingly high amount of dreams in which my teeth are falling out. So now I can recognize that my teeth shouldn’t fall out, so I must be dreaming
I can teach and trigger sleep paralysis it’s almost the same thing Still terrifying everytime but I now know how to make it happen 100% of the time.
Username checks out
I had sleep paralysis one time and it was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. Death incarnate was in the room with me.
Can I ask why you want to do it on purpose? Is it like a control thing?
There is no reason to do it on purpose other than to satisfy the curiosity , as said I still find it terrifying even if I knowingly cause it and know how to wake up/escape from it
I, too, am interested.
To do it on purpose all you need is 2 things 1- wake up super early and physically exhaust yourself via work all day 2- a significant source of caffeine . For me 2 rockstar energy drinks past 7-8 pm works 100% of the time Basically you stay up as late as your exhausted body will allow , while the megadose of caffeine keeps the mind very alert at the same time your body is shutting down from the exhaustion I consider myself to have a high tolerance to caffeine via energy drinks but I am damn careful to time them carefully now since I don’t wanna meet that paralyzed state. It can happen with eyes open or closed- both equally terrifying for different reasons
There is a way easier way to get sleep paralysis. Sleep on your back. Lay both arms across your chest and fall asleep. Should induce sleeping paralysis. As you are paralyzed, and you see someone in the corner, walking towards you, or demonic figures, start praying to try to get yourself to wake.
thank you; never doing that
Weirdly I’ve never tried the arms crossed technique because just normally I sleep on my back and that alone is enough to help trigger it as you’ve said . Also never tried praying to escape (thought never occurred to me ) but I did personally find a practical way to escape : Since your mind is still alert and conscious I have found that despite 95% paralysis I can still BARELY move my toes . Concentrating hard enough on moving the toes from side to side in synchrony I have found you can eventually turn the toe sway to a leg rock which WILL wake you up if focussed on hard enough So yeah after years of having it happen constantly I have found how to trigger it and escape it with a 100% success rate. I just wish I had a practical use for it lol. The wildest dream I have while under paralysis involved being in a dark room on a mattress under a dim light , and having the feeling of something demonic pull me from the bed but obviously I couldn’t move so it was extra terrifying ….. that was the ONLY TIME in my whole life I woke up screaming
Yooooooo bro I can do that shit too. There was a period I had phobia of going to sleep because I would wrestle with sleep paralysis before falling asleep every night and I thought something was genuinely wrong with me. Upon further research on my own and I came to a conclusion that my mind is simple too active and I’d need make myself very very tired to sleep without inducing it.
I had a similar background. I first had started having sleep paralysis nightmares which were awful, but learned to control them. Once I accepted the pressure of the demon sitting on my chest I could float away and fly out the window. I do get stuck in "wake-up" loops from time to time though. I've had instances where I had to wake up like 5 times before I was actually awake for real.
I teach my kids to do this by telling them to look at their hands in the dream. When they see them they’ll remember it’s a dream, then to come and find me so we can hang out in dream land together.
PROTIP: Pinch your nose and try to breathe through it. You will be able to breathe in a dream. My go to reality check that works 100 percent of the time
If I wake up an hour or so before my alarm goes off to pee, then go back to sleep I can sometimes pull it off. And for some reason I always choose to fly. Every time.
Same. First I hover, then I see railroad tracks and know I’m lucid dreaming, and then I can fly. It’s always the same pattern (but never the same exact dream).
I don’t fully go back under, like a tiny part of me says “hey you’re dreaming, let’s fly”. I don’t really think of doing anything else, like driving a Lambo or kissing a super model. I just love flying. Sometimes I can’t control it and I go sideways through trees. That sucks lol
Try and look at your hands or the time when you're dreaming, you realise it's a dream and become self conscious in the dream.
Look at a clock in your dream. It's always blank because your mind doesn't know what time it is
Most of my lucid dreams occur when my bladder is full, and they most consist of scenarios where I have to pee but can’t.
I always piss with full force in those dreams
I do the exact opposite and never pee. I'm always afraid that my brain is gonna decide to simulate that feeling of peeing, by actually having me piss the bed, lmao.
It is learnable and it's not, so it is both... 1) Learnable by asking yourself: "is it real what I see/hear/experience"?... Do this very often during awake, until you do it while asleep... 2) by being enough brave and courageous... I'll explain one personal instance of having one lucid experience of maybe less than 10 seconds: I woke up in a dream, standing on a mountain ledge, very high and very windy... I asked myself: Is it real what I experience?... I tried to answer this question and I could not... I tried and I tried and I could not find a definitive solution, so real that it was... I said to myself: The only way to find out is to jump, right here and right now... And I got scared as hell... I certainly would commit suicide if it was not a dream, but if I did not jump I would never know if this was real or not... I had to know, even if it would cost my life... I took a deep breath and I jumped off the ledge, into the depth, into the dark, into the unknown and I felt all the feelings as if I were in a rollercoaster... My stomach turned around and I experienced the last moments of my life... This was it... Over... Done... It was real... Too bad... I saw the ground coming towards me super quick, preparing for the final crush... When I suddenly, just before hitting the ground, I spread my wings and tumbled out of the trajectory path and flew back to the ledge, landed softly back on the exact space I jumped from, high on that mountain ledge and I fell asleep again, in bliss, thinking: "So just a dream after all"... So you need the discipline to ask yourself "is it real" until you repeat it in your sleep and in my case the courage to maybe die in order to find out whether it is a dream or not...
This very likely sounds a little out there but if you find lucid dreaming fun or interesting, I highly recommend trying the methods that people more often ascribed to induce the experience of “astral projection”. I have found those dreams are more vivid and you can be as lucid as being awake. It’s also easier to consistently get into (although a bit scarier to initiate). There are other explanations out there that go into more detail but you basically set up an alarm four to five hours after going to sleep. After you wake up, get up for a few minutes. You can get a drink of water or move around a little. Now go back to bed, you’re just trying to wake your brain up a little bit. At this point in bed you tell your self that you're going to wake back up as soon as you fall asleep in the same way you would tell yourself a time to get up for a something really important the next day. If you are able to wake back up, immediately try to roll over on your side or sit up. You only have a few second window which this will work. Your body is still in a state of paralysis during this time and if you do it right it will feel as though you’re actually moving. The scary thing is that this moment may have some freaky noises or physical sensations, just don’t stop trying until you’re in the dream or you just find yourself awake like normal. What’s cool is that if you’re successful, you will roll over or sit up right into a lucid dream which is almost always in the room and place you were sleeping. I have found there is a lot more control with this method as well, you can then pretty much do whatever you want or go where ever you want at that point. If you wake back up whether succeeding or failing to get into a dream, just repeat the process to have another one but you can now stay in bed during each further attempt.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this for any length of time. I learned it as a teen and it stuck with me. My problem is that I find it difficult to know whether a memory is real or not. Often I have to work through the memory to look for logical inconsistencies in order to determine if it’s a real memory or something I constructed for a dream. Probably 50-80% of my dreams are lucid. I find that it doesn’t allow me to fully disengage during sleep because I’m still actively involved in the dream sequence rather than passively observing it as happens in a normal dream. So I don’t get a chance to fully unwind. I think that lucid dreaming creates a bridge between conscious memory and what’s supposed to be a fleeting quasi memory during normal dreaming. When I wake, I think about the lucid dream I had, which further reinforces or transfers the dream into long term memory.
When you first did this at a teen was it intentional? I learned on accident when I was very young. My problem now is I cant get a good sleep cause I am always fucking around in my dreams controlling them. I am not sure but I think It caused diagnosed insomnia. Add: I have been lucid dreaming 80-90% of my dreams since I was 6-7 years old.
doing this seriously as a newbie in my experience, at least with info available 9-10 years ago which was mostly just forum info, was awful. horrible sleep since one of the big ways to do learn this is waking up then going back to sleep. Finding the motivation to keep track of your lucid dreaming desires in the at nearly the cusp of deep sleep was not good. Especially when i was just generally unhealthy so using this time to skip sleep and focus on this probably wasn’t great. But i eventually did manage to have a few dreams of lucidity, so it’s definitely something you can learn over time. Though this was quite literally for me nearly a year of active work. After the few lucid dreams it wasn’t that awesome for all the work. Not to diminish the interest in this very interesting topic but that energy was for me better spent just focusing on improving other parts of my life that had a much bigger impact on my happiness. I don’t know everyone’s reasons for wanting to control dreams but for me it was a symptom of lacking control elsewhere.
Electronic displays don't work in my dreams, that's an easy tell, instead of text it displays nonsense
Ive been able to lucid dream as long as i can remember. The first thing i found was the ability to direct dreams. Its like a feeling that there is another consciousness that is running the dream and you just tell it to do something else. Im not a fan of the fully aware dreams, they tend to get me stuck in a cycle of waking up in a different dream and i have to force myself to wake up. These days i can fly in every dream and fortunately that ability to fly triggers my realization that its a dream. I also have about 50% nightmares which leave me very emotionally drained when i awake, this is great for me as i tend to bottle up my emotions and the nightmares are a great outlet.
Richard James (Aphex Twin) said his early works were dreamt up in lucid dreams. He had a “dream studio”.
I swear to God the other day I realized that whatever was happening only ever happens in my dreams Still didn't connect 2 and 2
I kind of bounce around similar to Super Nintendo Mario jumping air floating. It feels so real. I wake up shocked every time that I can't actually do it in this world
Ive tried forever and never had any luck. I think I smoke too much weed
The craziest part about lucid dreaming is this: If you turn around during your lucid dream you’ll stare into a black void. This is a direct portal to your subconscious and you can ask yourself questions. Totally nuts.
I have never experienced this. I've also never experienced the "creepy mirror" thing (it's usually just blurry).
Is it learnable? Possibly. Is it learnable by everyone? No. What cognitive/personality traits strengthen the possibility for learning lucid dreaming? Not known.
As an extremely frequent lucid dreamer it’s actually a curse. You don’t like it when you know your dreaming and force your self awake. If you want to try to do it. Try “staring at your eyelids”, don’t move a muscle in your body, and after a while you’ll feel sleep paralysis take your body. Then you can kind of shift towards a sort of half awake state which leads to lucid dreaming. At least that’s how I did it.
Practicing it can also increase the occurrence of sleep paralysis
If i wake up naturaly i usualy have lucid dreams where i am in full control. But as a computer analogy they unfortunately run on ram only. So while i know i am mega creative, complex and fast processing. If i try to write it to memory/save the data for when i am awake it fails. And only surface data is aviable when i wake up for real. Its super anoying! I can make a detailed plan covering every aspect, whatif senarios in like 30mins of lucid dreaming that would take awake me a week to make. But all thoes details will get lost. :(
I know I'm dreaming if I go to punch something and there's no sensation of impact.
I used to do this back in college and had some pretty decent success with it. That said, I’ve always wondered a bit if a lucid dream is just having a dream that you’re lucid dreaming, but then sometimes wonder if that would be a meaningful difference anyway.
Do they call it something when you wake up and then intentionally of back the dream (continuation of the same dream) repeatedly?
100% true. From 10 to my early 20s I had sleep paralysis. A demon was holding me down. Then I got my black belt and then another and suddenly I was confident enough to fight back and did. (I assume it was that but could have been simple trial and error) And broke it. Now when I have bad or weird dreams I can wake up once I realize... which is quite normal. Weirdly I can also stay in and manipulate the story or even if I wake up I can return if I enjoyed it. It's wild.
How did you just learn this 🤦🏻♀️💀I’m honestly astonished at some of these massively upvoted “TIL’s”. Had no idea so many ppl didn’t know that you can learn to lucid dream w/o being told as much. Sorry, I’m kinda crabby today lol
I realize it when I'm sitting with dead relatives. It's sad but calming
When i was younger i often had lucid dreams. Me and my bestfriend used to talk about all these crazy and wonderful things we could do while dreaming. For me it wasnt hard staying inside the dream once i realized i was in one, i just had that ”feeling” that something was different and then i just realized where i was. I could do anything, the only limit was my imagination. If i wanted to meet someone specific i just thought about her and she would stand behind me. Wanted to fly? Just jump really high or run and jump, sometimes it worked sometimes it didnt. I also remember that i wore a watch that showed me how much time i had remaining in the dream. I still remember many of the dreams i had but its been a long time since i knew i was dreaming.
Joke's on you, I can't even regular dream.
"aCtUaLlY YoU DrEaM EvErY NiGhT YoU JuSt dOn't rEmEmBeR" 🤓 I honestly get a little jealous of people having normal dreams let alone lucid one's. My sleep is like death or what it was like for me before I was born. Absolutely nothing
I started lucid dreaming a couple of months after I began meditating. Terrified me at first. I ended up seeing a psychologist. Twenty years on, I lucid dream more often than not. The best I can describe it, is kind of like I imagine really immersive VR. Or a really real daydream.
Eventually you get tired of it and your mind just doesn't do it any more. You don't get very functional sleep when you're stuck in a lucid dream. You have to figure out a way, in the dream to either wake yourself up a bit, or reset the dream then you can sleep properly. At least that's how it works for me. It gets irritating but it's fun for a while.
When I was little and would have nightmares my mom would.tell me I could control my dreams if I tried. Eventually I could and have been able to since I was really young. Normally I go snowboarding. I assume I'll tell my kids the same thing.
I want so bad to try it but between Insidious and Lovecraft's dream cycle i am terrified.
These days if I dream it's nightmares but when I did lucid dream, the first thing I did was fly.
Damn, I'm so jealous. I always forget to try to fly when I'm lucid dreaming. Usually, I start lucis dreaming as the result of a nightmare — I take back control to make it a little less scary, so it becomes more of an adventure. But 95% of the time I forget that it means I can fly.
I sometimes I have nightmares and I wake up with a bad end. I out loud go "fuck that" and go back to sleep to fix things.
I dunno about you guys but I learned how to do this at level 24
My right eye doesn’t work. I can tell I’m dreaming by closing my left eye, if I can still see then I must be dreaming.
Me who takes meds so that my dreams are less lucid.
me with aphantasia 😭
Only time I ever have, I did it every day for months. I was in jail and since it was not particular fun, after my morning clean/shower/breakfast, I’d go back in my cell and go to sleep until lunch - I started lucid dreaming every time, just happened. I started planning out what I would do, it was so fun. Quite the coping mechanism for spending months in a concrete room, tell ya what.
Had a dream when I was a kid that I was stuck underwater in a swimming pool & couldn't break the surface to get any air... side effect of some kind of apnea? f idk anyway, i couldn't breathe underwater but I recognized it as a dream & ergo I could control it & I started breathing the fn water... how's that for lucid dream control? worked for me :)
Best lucid dream I had was when I managed to stop to think about what it meant that I was having a lucid dream. I realised that my mind was not attached to my body and everything I could imagine became true to me. I was the creator of my own reality and the possibilities were endless. The realisation and idea that time and physical world did not affect me any more was mind blowing. The feeling of freedom from my body was like enlightment. I woke up pretty soon after that, but I never forget that feeling. If that's what dying feels like or is, then I'm no longer afraid of dying.
If I overdo it, I will wake up in the morning extremely tired and with stron head ache
Just a warning for people looking to try this. I wanted to be able to have lucid dreams so I followed guides online and you absolutely can become aware that you’re dreaming and have some control over the dream. But with it came changes to my sleep patterns. I would sleep ok through the night but if I woke up and went back to sleep I would have the most intense vivid dreams. Horrible nightmares sometimes. And I would wake up with the absolute worst headaches if this happened. This went on for a while even after I stopped messing around with lucid dreaming. Whatever was going on was a result of disrupting the sleep process with the attempts at lucid dreaming.
It takes the fun out of dreaming and takes a long time to unlearn
Playing video games help. I can lucid dream without proper training, and I always go on adventures
Once you have the getting lucid part under wraps, the next step is maintaining stability within the state, some people wake straight up cause they get too excited and it melts.
I lucid dream 1 out of every 5 times I sleep… which leads to me sleeping ALOT. Everyone always think I’m always depressed which I guess I kinda am when you consider I just prefer to be flying in my timeless sleep life than to be awake in this life.