Lucid dreaming

[Excited Penguin]

Have you ever had a lucid dream? Are you familiar with the concept? 

I recently started 'training' myself to have them. I know about reality checks and methods to prolong a lucid dream - I've read some articles on it and listened to some podcasts about it but I hope I could get some real-time advice from experienced lucid dreamers, if there are any among you. Feel free to also share your experiences and say what you think about lucid dreaming.

[geckomamasita]

My brother was really into lucid dreaming. I've never tried it, but just throwing my lil factoid out there

[Whateverist]

Certainly is something I've heard people say. I think I'd settle for a lucid waking state and leave dreaming -lucid or otherwise- to the subroutines beneath my conscious mind.

[c172]

I remember my dreamsa fair about, and I love it when it happens. But I've never done lucid dreaming.

[dyresand]

Yes i did lucid dream last night i probably will again tonight depending it does make you feel terrible when you wake up.

[Athene]

I learned to do this many years ago. It doesn't happen as frequently since I just don't sleep much these days, but I still have lucid dreams now and then. Recognizing that I'm dreaming isn't the difficult part...staying asleep is.

[Nine]

Try lucid nightmares. You're pretty sure your dreaming but doesn't make that vivid twisted chasing you any less terrifying. I don't like dreams anymore..

[emjay]

I've never learnt to do them on command, and I haven't had one for a long time, but I used to have them all the time back when I had interrupted sleep patterns. I found that if napped a couple of hours in the afternoon and had the rest of my sleep at night I was very likely to have a lucid dream. I miss them so much - they were some of my best experiences in life and just as memorable as anything that happens in waking life. In theory, at least when I was reading about it, two ways to train yourself to have them are to a) make it a habit in waking consciousness to check 'am I dreaming?' so that that habit will pass into the dreamstate and allow you to realise it's a dream and take control, and b) as you're going to sleep try to remain aware and keep repeating to yourself 'I'm dreaming' until it is true because you are. And one other way I can think of, if you're too lazy, like me, to learn any of these methods is to set an alarm to interrupt you in your sleep. And if that alarm happens to, or can be arranged to, coincide with a period of REM sleep I think it's likely that you'd get a lucid dream.

[brewer]

When I start dreaming of chain saws I know in the dream that I am snoring and need to roll over before I get the elbow in the ribs. Does this count?

[emjay]

When I start dreaming of chain saws I know in the dream that I am snoring and need to roll over before I get the elbow in the ribs. Does this count?

It's hard to explain exactly what they are but I'll try. A lucid dream is when you have conscious awareness just like in waking life but in a dream, and you are aware that it's a dream. In other words you have the lucidity of waking consciousness, which would usually navigate the real world, now navigating the dream world. It's amazing because you can take control of the dream and do anything you can imagine. You just will things to happen in the dream and they do - essentially saying I'm bored of this place, let's go somewhere else etc. Or instead of taking control you can just go with the flow but still aware that it's a dream. But I found that it was delicate - will too much and the whole thing would crumble and you'd wake up so more like a case of guiding the dream. But when you're in that state you think just like you do in waking life - so any thoughts you could have in waking life you could also have there... so I've had lucid dreams where I've solved problems and took the solutions back out into waking life etc, because just as your waking consciousness is in full operation in a lucid dream, so it seems is your memory. Basically it's more like real life than a dream, but it just happens to be taking place within a dream world which you control.