Lucid Dreaming: Knowing you're dreaming while you're dreaming

[Baculus]

I had a lucid dream just last night - I ended up running around for a minute exploring my "dreamscape," which is always interesting. (I was outside some house, near a farm field - nothing terribly interesting.)

Really, when I have a lucid dream, it is unexpected and planned, but there are supposed to be techniques with helping to intentially lucid dream.

[DC_Skins]

How to Lucid Dream

The most basic definition of lucid dreaming defines it as "being aware you are dreaming while dreaming." Lucid dreams usually occur while a person is in the middle of a regular dream and suddenly realizes that she or he is asleep and must be dreaming. The person is now said to be "lucid," and may enter one of many levels of lucidity. At the lowest level, the dreamer may be dimly aware that he or she is dreaming, but not think rationally enough to realize that events/people/actions in the dream are not real/pose no real threat. At the highest level, on the other hand, the dreamer is fully aware that she or he is asleep, and may have complete control over his or her actions in the dream. It is possible to control your dreams by employing the lucid dreaming methods that follow.

StepsKeep a dream journal. This is, perhaps, the most important step in establishing a foundation for lucid dreams. Keep it close by your bed at night, and write in it immediately after waking, you can also keep a recording device near if repeating your dream outloud is easier to remember, it will also be much easier than writing it down. -- if a dream is remembered. This tells your brain that you are serious about remembering your dreams!

Learn the best time to have a lucid dream. By being aware of personal sleep schedules, a person can arrange his or her sleep pattern to help induce lucid dreams.

Studies strongly suggest that a nap a few hours after waking in the morning is the most common time to have a lucid dream.

Lucid dreams are largely associated with REM, which means they most commonly occur right before waking up. REM sleep is more abundant just before the final awakening. People with narcolepsy have sleep-onset REM, so if you have lucid dreams right after falling asleep, narcolepsy ought to be considered. (You may consider seeking medical advice from a sleep medicine specialist.) However, it should also be noted here that there are reports of people who recall dreams after being awakened during non-REM stages of sleep.

Dreams usually run in 90-minute cycles during sleep, so if a person is working on dream recall, it may be helpful to attempt to wake oneself up during one of these cycles (interrupted dreams are often the ones we remember).

Practice mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming (MILD).

Set your alarm clock to wake you up 4, 5 1/2, or 6 hours after falling asleep.

When you are awakened by your alarm clock, try to remember the dream as much as possible.

When you think you have remembered as much as you can, go back to sleep, imagining that you are in your previous dream, and becoming aware that you are dreaming. Say to yourself, "I will be aware that I'm dreaming," or something similar. Do this until you think that it has 'sunk in.' Then go to sleep.

If random thoughts pop up when you are trying to fall asleep, repeat the imagining, self-suggestion part, and try again. And don't worry if you think it's taking a long time. The longer it takes, the more likely it will 'sink in,' and the more likely you will have a lucid dream.

What time is it?

Establish a habit of reality checks. In a dream, these will tell you that you are sleeping, allowing you to become lucid. But in order to do a reality check in a dream, a person must first establish a habit of doing reality checks in real life. A reality check includes looking for "dream signs," or things that would not normally exist in real life. When these actions become habit, a person will begin to do them in her or his dreams, and can come to the conclusion that he/she is dreaming. Some tactics include:

looking at a clock to see if it stays constant;

looking at a body of text, looking away, and then looking back to see if it has changed;

flipping a light switch;

looking in a mirror (your image will most often appear blurry in a dream);

pinching your nose closed and trying to breathe;

glancing at your hands, and asking yourself, "am I dreaming?" (when dreaming, you will most often see greater or fewer than five fingers on your hand);

jumping in the air;

pinching or poking yourself; when dreaming, you usually do not feel any pain, and your "flesh" might be more elastic than in real life;

Prolong lucid dreams by spinning your body in the dream (suspected of prolonging REM), and rubbing your hands (prevents you from feeling the sensation of lying in bed).

Tips

When recalling a dream upon waking, try not to move. Activating your muscle neurons can make it more difficult to access the parts of your brain that allow you to recall your dream.

Lucid dreaming may be helpful for people who frequently experience nightmares, as it gives them a chance to take control of their dreams.

Performing reality checks upon awakening can help you to detect "false awakenings" within dreams, wherein you dream that you have woken up, and thus lose lucidity.

Do not drink any fluids for one hour prior to sleeping. The last thing you want is to wake up from successfully lucid dreaming just because you had to use the bathroom.

Do not use a radio alarm clock. Once you hear talking, or a song, that will distract you, and may clear the dream out of your head. If you have to use a radio alarm clock, don't think about what is playing and quickly turn it off. Alternatively, change the radio setting to a non-assigned frequency so the alarm creates static (white noise).

If you can not remember the dream you have had, and want to remember it, focus on the feelings that you felt. Trying too hard to remember the dream will only take your mind away from it. Chances are your mind will think of everything but the dream.

If you have recurring dreams, then aspects of these dreams can act as reality checks. If you notice something happening that is part of a recurring dream, think to yourself, "this only happens in my dreams, I must be dreaming."

If you notice something happening that is impossible in real life, such as being able to breathe underwater, this can act as a reality check to alert you to the fact that you are dreaming.

When you wake up naturally -- that is, without an alarm -- focus your gaze on the first object you see as you open your eyes. Look at the object; focus on it. That object will most often take the vague recollection of your dream to a placemark in memory where it is easier to recall details. A doorknob, a lightbulb, a set of car keys, or a nail in the wall, for example, will quell your urge to begin your day, and will help you to settle into memories of what you had experienced while sleeping.

Some people have found it helpful to take a low dosage of caffeine (a caffeinated tea, for instance) shortly before sleeping, claiming that this keeps them mentally aware, while the body is going to sleep. For many other people, caffeine would simply postpone or disrupt sleep.

To end sleep Paralysis (which is not dangerous) simply try to wiggle your toes, or try swallowing. When you are in a state of sleep paralysis, the brain is sending a signal to the rest of your body to immobilize your muscles so you don't thrash around while you sleep. The larger muscles are usually more affected than the smaller ones. So trying to wiggle your toes tends to wake you up during a state of sleep paralysis.

An interesting sensation is "flying" during a lucid dream. Aim for this experience and you will start enjoying lucid dreaming a lot more. To start "flying" try to start bouncing higher and higher after each step (while "walking" in the dream.) Also try walking on walls or the ceiling, as flying for the first time can be very intimidating if you are not totally convinced that you are dreaming.

You can pre-determine what you want to achieve in a lucid dream while you are awake. That way when you become lucid in a dream, you already know what you want to do.

It is a good idea to purposely wake up 1 or 2 minutes after becoming lucid, after you have experience what you want to experience. This way, you can wake up with the dream very fresh in your mind, and have excellent recall. If you do not wake up, the dream may simply fade away into the night, and could be forgotten.

Do not get into the habit of saying "I'm obviously dreaming" or something similar in real life. This won't trigger a lucid dream in your sleep.

If you ask people in your dream "Am I dreaming?"...the most of the time they'll say "No."

Warnings

Wake-initiated lucid dreaming (WILD) -- wherein a person can maintain awareness as s/he falls asleep, and can carry awareness into the dream -- is quite likely to initiate sleep paralysis and anxiety during the transition. It can also, in some instances induce "hypnagogic hallucinations". These are not to be feared, as Sleep Paralysis happens every night, you are just asleep. The HH is just your mind. Always remember that in Lucid Dreaming, you are aware and can "wake yourself up" if feeling overwhelmed.

[gbear]

Frequently. It happened more often when I was dating. It was kind of cool to be able to change the enviroment when making out. I've made out or farther in some wierd places...50 yard line of a packed stadium,church, etc. Since marriage, the thrill is kind of gone, and the dreams are of different things. Now my lucid dreams are usually just a moment in the dream where I disbelieve a bad dream and wake up.

Of late, my dreams are far more apt to give me the answer to a problem I have at work. What's cool is that while I am occassionally aware of being dreaming, the answers for how to program this or that or how to solve a problem still work in real life when I wake up. If I'm really stuck at work, I'll keep a note pad and pen by my bed. It's worked for me a few times when I've been really pissed that I couldn't figure out why a program wasn't working. When I wake from one of those dreams, after I hurry to write down the answer, I'm kind of emotionally confused. I'm happy because I have a solution to a problem I couldn't solve and pissed because it should be enough that my work gets 9 hours of my day anyway. It shouldn't get my 7 hours of sleep as a bonus!

[iheartskins]

My experience with lucid dreaming has been relatively limited. I seem to hit a roadblock that whenever I come to the realization (while I'm dreaming) that I'm dreaming, I seem to wake up. This happens without fail.

With that said--I've had many very lucid dreams to the point that the feelings I felt stayed tangible for days afterward. Kind of crazy, but that's how potent the dreams were.

One of the more poignant dreams, whether it qualified as lucid, I don't know, was of my step-father after he died. In the dream I had the opportunity to get in a last hug, and somehow ascertain approval for my life's course. I have no memory of whether there was any dialogue or what was said--just a sense of presence. His death wasn't easy for me--so getting to see him, in whatever shape or form, was comforting and helped in the greiving process.

I guess this whole thing goes to show just how incredibly powerful the brain is--and how little we really know about its function. Consider the possibilities if we had the ability to take control of our thoughts and our brain, whether to stimulate and control dream-like experiences during sleep (likely eliminating the need for video-games and other virtual world games) or for more practical application like controlling appetite or depression.

Anyway, pretty cool stuff AtB.

[Mass_SkinsFan]

In my youth I had several experiences with what might be classified as Lucid Dreaming, though I'm still not sure they weren't Out of Body Experiences instead. None of them were terribly pleasant experiences, and that's probably part of the reason why I've forced myself into a mentality where I no longer remember any of my dreams once I've woken up.

[jrockster21]

They actually sell masks that flash red lights when your eyes start moving in REM sleep. Supposedly you get used to this as a signal within your dream that you are in fact dreaming, and you can become lucid.

Also, my friend researched it and one of the techniques he tried was using a digital watch. Whenever it beeped on the hour, he would stare at it for 5-10 seconds. The rationale is that once it becomes habit, when you hear it beep at night while you're dreaming, you'll do it subconciously within your dream. Theoretically though, the watch's face will not be the same, and you'll know something is off leading to becoming lucid. Supposedly it works. :whoknows:

[SparkleMotion]

One strange thing I've noticed....is that whenever I tell a character in my lucid dream that they aren't real and that I'm dreaming, they immediately attack me. This has happened roughly 3 or 4 times.

[Xameil]

I have these all the time. However, the oddest one was when I kept telling the people in my dream I was dreaming, and they answered back how do you know this isn't real and the other place is a dream?

I'd wake myself up..go back to sleep and they were still there and they said see...I was like DAYUM!!!

[gbear]

iheart,

I had a similar dream the night after my grandfather's funeral...I was walking down a long hallway with him just talking about life and what he expected of me. 12 years later, I still feel the hug at the end of that dream and I still remember the feeling of weight as he passed a torch to me to light my way back.

I'm still not sure if it was real or just the result of the 103 degree fever I had at the time. Over the years, I've come to the conclussion that I just don't care. It's real for me.

[iheartskins]

gbear--I think that's the right conclusion. Whether it was "real" or not, it had tremendous meaning, and that's what you take with you irrespective of the underlying issues to do with reality.

I'd argue (and think you'd agree) that the take away is the memory and the associated feelings--not the discussion of whether it was "just a dream" or something similar.

[Jumbo]

One strange thing I've noticed....is that whenever I tell a character in my lucid dream that they aren't real and that I'm dreaming, they immediately attack me. This has happened roughly 3 or 4 times.

I have these all the time. However, the oddest one was when I kept telling the people in my dream I was dreaming, and they answered back how do you know this isn't real and the other place is a dream?

I'd wake myself up..go back to sleep and they were still there and they said see...I was like DAYUM!!!

A couple of quick comments.

Lucid dreaming is really more than just knowing you are in a dream, but also gaining control over your actions and what happens in the dream, which inlcudes the other "characters" to varying extents (usually slanted toward the 'lesser' end of a scale) based on your control and what you are interested in accomplishing in the dream.

On the matter of "other characters" interacting with the "you", many dream analysts would suggest you start with the premise that it is you who populates and stages your dream, though at a different level of conciousness, and a good place to start would be to explore the angle "what am I telling myself here?" and relate that to your waking experience of life and see if soemthing "clicck" or makes sense on an intuitve and/or logical/rational level.

There is more, and a quick, and likely valid, interpretation could be given to each of you just from what you reported here, but doing it yourself is a place to start.

[LD0506]

This is a fascinating and interesting thread to me in an "oh, there's a unicorn" kinda way. I haven't had a dream I remembered in decades (?), so it's difficult for me to really grasp what it would be like to be conciously directing one.

Sounds cool though.

[Jumbo]

What really surprised me about my experience at first was that when I finally was able to do it towards the end of the term, in the dream I lost interest. I was flying and helping people escape a Spanish mission that was under attack from uniformed soldiers with cannon, sword, and musket. I think I was SuperZorro . As I was took charge in the dream and begain flying people to safety and fighting off the soldiers I realized that I was controlling everything, and everything was responding. It then lost its appeal quickly. I even started kissing on the dark-haired damsel (Lois Zeta-Jones no doubt) to keep it going figuring (in the dream) "you gotta at least do this" but I woke up and just sat there wondering wtf happened. I hoped it wasn't guilt about "cheating" on my girlfriend at the time. :laugh: Soon after that, I had moved on to other coursework and the dream exercises fell by the wayside.

[bschurm]

I have lucid dreams all the time. But it is not like I sit there and think about it and enjoy it while I am in the dream. What usually happens is that I realize I am in a bad dream and I wake myself up to get out of it. When I first quit drinking I would constantly have nightmares and wake myself to escape whatever danger I was experiencing in the dream.

[Raub]

I have them frequently, some good, some bad. I can force myself awake from a bad dream pretty much at will. The good dreams, I usually have total control over what I'm doing, but not always control over the environment the dream is taking place in. It's kind of like a video game, I'm stuck in the game, but I can do whatever I want in that game. Other times I can change the environment like switching TV channels. I don't remember how long this has been happening, but I know as a kid I certainly couldn't do it. It's probably just become frequent in the last 4-5 years. One thing I have noticed: the lucid dreams are never sexual, and if I try to "go there" in a lucid dream I usually wake up. No idea why.

[SkinsNumberOne]

I have had them as well. I actually had a series of nightmares growing up stemming from watching something on TV my parents warned me not to watch at a very young age (4 years old). They haunted me for sometime, and in some cases, I didn't really want to sleep because I was scared. As I got older, though, I realized the important thing was to realize that these were dreams, and dreams were just reactions your brain has to stimuli (this is obviously fairly simplistic, but whatever, you get the drift).

Anyway, point being, no sense in being scared. I still had the nightmares after this, and I was still scared during them, but I wasn't scared to sleep anymore. I think this kind of thinking though probably led me to the ability to recognize that extreme situations without explanation of how I got there = me dreaming. And once you recognize that, as AtB says, to consciously realize that you are under control and to exert that control. It's just as fun as he says it too, as I had a very similar dream (people breaking into the house, and I turned into a hero). Of course, maybe me controlling the dream was part of the dream too.... ohhhhhhhh (someone was going to make that comment probably, which I don't find that compelling or interesting).

Anyway, yeah, I've done it in other dreams as well, but I dream much more rarely these days.

[28rdsknsfn28]

Warnings

Wake-initiated lucid dreaming (WILD) -- wherein a person can maintain awareness as s/he falls asleep, and can carry awareness into the dream -- is quite likely to initiate sleep paralysis and anxiety during the transition. It can also, in some instances induce "hypnagogic hallucinations". These are not to be feared, as Sleep Paralysis happens every night, you are just asleep. The HH is just your mind. Always remember that in Lucid Dreaming, you are aware and can "wake yourself up" if feeling overwhelmed.

Sleep paralysis is still some scary stuff, I have done the lucid dreaming thing a few time but quit trying to because of the paralysis stuff.

[Jumbo]

Just another reminder that "real" lucid dreaming is not just being aware you're in a dream.

It's having significant or total control over what's happening while remaining in the dream.

BTW, recently some skilled mental health professionals used this technique to successfully help clients who has problems with nightmares.

[Reic]

I had a dream one night that I was with 2 girls at once, and could control everything in the dream.

Then I woke up and realized it was actually happening, I was just really tired

[Ancalagon the Black]

Just another reminder that "real" lucid dreaming is not just being aware you're in a dream.

It's having significant or total control over what's happening while remaining in the dream.

I think it's actually a spectrum, from being aware that this is a dream environment but still having no control, all the way to being able to control the environment and all the other dream characters.

[Ancalagon the Black]

One strange thing I've noticed....is that whenever I tell a character in my lucid dream that they aren't real and that I'm dreaming, they immediately attack me. This has happened roughly 3 or 4 times.

Sometimes I find in a lucid dream that characters behave the way I would normally expect them to (in a deep-down kind of way), and if I want to change their behavior I really have to work at it.

[Jumbo]

I think it's actually a spectrum, from being aware that this is a dream environment but still having no control, all the way to being able to control the environment and all the other dream characters.

Yes. That's why I put the "real" in quotes to help narrow the spectrum and covered what you just said in earlier posts in the thread. There's also a layman and a professional (behavioral sciences/psychology) usage. The professional usage generally emphasizes the meaningfulness of the control aspect once awareness is established. But being aware is certainly the start, and yes, it is a spectrum. The "meat of the matter" lies in the control aspects.

I may have to take this back up with all this talking about it.

[SkinsNumberOne]

Sometimes I find in a lucid dream that characters behave the way I would normally expect them to (in a deep-down kind of way), and if I want to change their behavior I really have to work at it.

This is true, and I have had lucid dreams as well where I can change other "characters'" behaviors.

[bschurm]

Just another reminder that "real" lucid dreaming is not just being aware you're in a dream.

It's having significant or total control over what's happening while remaining in the dream.

BTW, recently some skilled mental health professionals used this technique to successfully help clients who has problems with nightmares.

Jumbo, can you provide a link? I am not calling you out but my psychology professor explained to me that the dreams I had were lucid.

I would nearly always wake myself from them as I figured out I was in a dream. I wasn't remaining in the dreams and she told me they were lucid.

[Sinclair]

this normally happens to me in nightmares so I attempt to do something about it (normally it involves an axe) but for some ****ty reason i always seem to miss the target and just prolong my misery...oh well...its all good as long as i wake up!