Dream Experiences

[Claire]

[FONT="Arial"]I think my very first thread here was about weird dreams. Hah.

The past few weeks I've been trying to have a lucid dream; the ability to completely control your dream after realizing you're dreaming.

I would fall asleep saying "I'm dreaming" over and over in my head, or I would sleep for five or six hours, wake up and read about lucidity for about an hour, then go back to sleep (called the Wake Back to Bed technique).

The first time I did the WBTB thing, I dreamt that I woke up (a false awakening). I didn't realize it was a dream, though, so when I woke up for real I was mad at myself. The next morning the exact same thing happened.

I became less interested in lucid dreaming for a couple of days, but I kept waking up after five hours of sleep. Today I went to bed around midnight and woke up before 8. After doing stuff on the computer, I decided I was way too tired to stay awake, so I went back to bed.

This time I had yet another false awakening, but I finally remembered to check and see if I was dreaming. I plugged my nose and I could still breathe through it--which meant I was definitely dreaming.

Before I could take control over the dream, though, I found myself back in my bed and completely paralyzed. I remembered reading about sleep paralysis so I remained calm and hoped that once I got out of it I would be back in a dream. Unfortunately, I just woke up, and I was mad.

So, talk about your experiences with dreams. Nightmares, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis (also called Old Hag dreams, I think), astral projection or whatever, etc.[/FONT]

[eleanor]

[color=dimgray] I've had some pretty bad nightmares. Most of which include me being chased by a killer, scared of out my wits, and then waking either right before I was killed or after I had safely gotten away. :| My other nightmares are just incredibly weird or disturbing dreams, like dreaming about me discovering some freakish cult or murder.

Another repeating theme for me is one where I'm able to jump incredibly high, and then I can't stop myself and I jump higher and higher each time I do it.

But there's only about two dreams I can remember specifically, and everything else, even if I manage to remember what happens after I wake up, is forgotten after a while.

I was actually weirded out a little because I saw this thread, and last night I had another long dream. If I try to tell what the story was, it'd just sound like an idiot, but the weird thing was at some points I would see the dream as a person watching a movie, and then I'd become a main character and actually feel what was happening.

P.S. What's this book you're reading? It sounds interesting.[/color]

[Retribution]

[size=1]My worst nightmares are when I?m running from someone trying to harm me, and no matter how much I strain, I cannot accelerate. It?s like the person pursuing me has a massive gravitational pull. Sometimes they have a gun, others they have a crude weapon (hatchet, sword, knives). And sometimes I have a gun as well, at which point I find a nice bunker and start exchanging fire.

Another common theme for my nightmares is running around a convoluted version of my neighborhood, where I don?t know the roads exactly and houses are dilapidated. Oddly enough, these dreams occur in a daytime setting.

As for regular dreams, well, they have a very odd plot to them. Most of the time they involve some sort of object I?ve been wanting for a while, or my social relationships are manifest (taking the form of what I think they are, or what I?d like them to be). But these days I rarely remember my dreams due to my really erratic sleep schedule.[/size]

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR="goldenrod"]Is the book by chance Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge? I picked that up in the library a few weeks ago. And the idea of Lucid Dreams fascinates me to no end. For the simple reason that I've always had these dreams where I realize I'm asleep. They're my favorite type of dream since I usually end up doing something like flying. Even though I know it's not real I just love it.

By far my most favorite one was about a week ago, I realized I was dreaming and since I was at a beach in my dream I went swimming underwater. Even if the scenery wasn't real or the feel of the water, since I'm betting the ocean isn't warm, it was the coolest dream ever. :catgirl:

I don't have my own copy of the book so I can't recall the exact name for it Clurr. But one of the methods the book talked about to help you stay asleep is do actually do something before you get pulled out of the dream. I think it mentioned turning around or some other form of movement. I tend to get excited when I realize I'm in a dream like that so I usually move immediately. Sometimes I wake up immediately into a false awakening like you've mentioned. But most of the time I don't.

I only wish I had them more often. I tend to have a dream like that about twice a month. Though I have plenty of other weird dreams in the mean time. Oh and Lunox. I've done the same thing, had a dream where it was like watching a movie and then it switched to where I was a part of it. I've even had ones where there's music like some silly theme song while I was watching and then it changed once I became a part of it. [/COLOR]

[Claire]

[font=arial]I haven't looked at any books on it, but whenever I wanted to focus on lucid dreaming I would read the stuff at [u][url=http://www.dreamviews.com/]www.dreamviews.com[/url][/u] and poke around their message board.

I've read that if you get too excited during a lucid dream, you could wake up or lose control. That might be what happened to me this morning, but I don't remember feeling very excited. Who knows. :P[/font]

[Guest Copycatalyst]

I have actually worked at a thing called astral projection a bit. . .And as far as lucid dreaming goes. Vitamin B6 may help you with that. There are studies which indicate it can help increase the frequencies of dreams. A great place to get B6 is from bananas. . .Bananas also have a precursor to serotonin, one of the chemicals involved with sleeping produced naturally by the body. You may also want to look into buying some melatonin, which can be found over the counter. Melatonin is often called the "hormone if darkness" and is endogenously produced in the pineal gland. It's created when the eyes are in darkness and it is also key to good sleep, and may help increase the frequencies of dreams for you. There are also various other "dream herbs" one can find online or at especially good herb stores. . .Calea zacatechichi is one such herb. There are many others if one merely does a search on google for them.

Also it may help to, before going to sleep, have the intention and frame of mind that you are going to have a lucid dream. You have to believe it. You have to suggest it to yourself and never doubt its possibility. Also you need to have an idea of what you want to do once in the dream, or you need to have an idea of what kind of dream environment you wish to have.

And, potently, it is interesting how much this life is merely a dream itself. Dreams, to me, are just as real as this existence, because I have a mindset which is like that, which is not necessarily easy to explain. If you've seen [I]The Matrix[/I], or you test your mind for a long enough time, you will come to the understanding that this is much like a dream; and I have to ask, which dream have you been awake in the most often, and which one seems the most real? It is this one, isn't it? :D

As far as astral projection. . .it's the attempt to leave the body and go to other levels of awareness merely by the power of one's own admonitions. It is not an easy task and it is quite painful. Basically it is about focusing one's energy and using it as a means to leave one's body. . .whilst still attached to one's body in some means or matter. There's always been this picture of a man out in space. . .with a cord attached to the Earth. . .which I thought bodes well for the kind of thing that happens there. My progress hasn't been much. . .but I have had a near out of body experience and I am quite certain in time I will have more. With the aid of entheogenic substances it is much easier to leave the body, so that is what helped aid me with that. It was a very frightening experience and I had panic attacks for a month afterwards, but I became much stronger because of it. It's interesting that the progress I make isn't really easily able to be seen. . .and you can't just explain it to people. But I know what I know and have, so that's what's great for me.

Astral projection is an astonishing, powerful concept. It basically means we can travel through various spaces and other-places of reality. . .with or without a spaceship; merely with the spaceship of our own minds, you could say--our own bodies. I suppose this all sounds strange to all of you. . .but it's always made sense to me. It's a beautiful, sacred thing. . .when we're born we in essence go from an intermediary level of reality, to this direct one. . .My experiences have mostly led me to an intermediary level of reality, where anything is possible, and where the illusions of this world are shattered and revealed to me for what they are. It's a very sacred thing to me and it has to deal with my spirituality.

[center][img]http://www.crystalinks.com/astralprojearth.jpg[/img][/center]

As far as sleep paralysis. . .I have had that before. It felt like I was leaving my body, and then these rough hands sequestered me back into my body, and I could not stop it. It was not necessarily frightening, but I did feel like I was being controlled, but I let it go smoothly. It is all about keeping one's keen sense of peace in all times if one attempts these types of things. . .

Also I often have a falling kind of reflex before going to sleep at times. This usually involves me seeing a treadmill and it being as if I fall off of it. It's this jolting kind of feeling, which makes you come back awake. It may be a remnant of when we lived in trees and we had to have that so we didn't fall from branches to other predators. . .or for when we fell.

There is also something called the hypnagogic state, which is easy for me to enter. It is hard to explain. Often I get kind of "fuzzy" feelings all over my body; and it's a perfect state to meditate or to harbor a lot of feeling and beauty and much into one moment. . .all to one's self. It's kind of like sleeping awake I guess.

I guess I consider myself a "psychonaut" and I enjoy exploring my consciousness and pushing the barriers of myself as much as possible. This allows me to learn things which are really. . .unexplainable and would sound weird if I tried to even explain anyway, so what's the point. We saw how most people reacted to what I said in the Beauty thread, or my more "esoteric" posts more or less.

[Umbra II]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]
First and foremost, its good to be back (if not for long...).

My dreams are usually not lucid; however, more often then not in my dreams I assume other identites (Mostly the same two, both from written compositions that I'm am in the process of completing.) Especially when the dream turns part night-mare, ( a Satanic cult inside a large, circular building, attacking me and others) I gain that character's abilities and and able to manipulate the world around me, to varying extents, but I am never really conscious of the fact I m sleeping. I also dream of social situations, and am sometimes better able to understand my relationship with someone because of it. Lastly, the dreams I really look forward to are the ones I call "border line" dreams. In these dreams, totally unrelated points of reality merge together. I have only remembered one clearly. I was travelling through a long dark hallway of an old house, reading Edgar Allen Poe's "the Fall of House Usher". But it wasn't the same story, and on the to outermost corners were snatches of phrases. From these phrases I assertained that teh reason the family of the house died was because of a woman. Who or what she was, and how it happened, I couldn't tell. I made my way outside to a courtyard (very dark), and I saw three doors. The one I needed was blocked, and the other two went nowhere. At the time, Mozart's Andante to the 40th symphony was playing through my head, and I knew that, since the music was descending , so must I. I found a large boulder, moved it, and went into the revealed hole. Before I could find the woman/Evidence i was looking for, it became a falling dream and I woke up. (Grrr....) :mad:

Another book I would recommend is "The Einstein Factor". It deals with dreams and mental states. (Einstein believed the imagination was more important than intellect). But where it really is usefull is here: their theory that we are always dreaming, all the time. Our right brain is constantly day-dreaming, but our left brains shuts down almost every message like that because, quite simply, we couldn't function if we were constantly bombarded with day dreams. Here's how you experience a wake dream. (I haven't achieved freedom like when I am asleep, but see a few interesting places) First, sit down somewhere quiet, and relax. Focus on breathing. When you feel considerably relaxed (not just kind-of, really [B][I]really[/I][/B] relaxed, let you mind wander. If you can't seem to focus on something, picture a painting or some visual and describe it to yourself (It's important you actually say something, or your asking to fall asleep) Even if you feel you aren't picturing it, the book says it's impossible to describe something well and not have an image, so just keep trying. When you see things changing, let them change. (Controlling your dreams is good when you are asleep, but you want spontineity in a wake-dream) Continue describingwhat you see. And don't stop because you think you sound stupid. If you keep working on it, you'll eventually become pretty good at it. (I don't have alot of time to practice, but when I am tired but don't feel like going to be, that's what I do.)

I hope it helps some!
[/FONT]

[Darren]

Any time I have a nightmare, I experience "sleep paralysis," but it's more inside the dream instead of being paralyzed when I wake up.

And while I wouldn't really call it a lucid dream, I believe the in-dream paralysis is due to the fact that I try to take control, and my mind isn't ready for that, so my body inside the dream feels stiff and the movements don't want to occur. Of course any time you focus that hard, your bound to become aware and find yourself lying in your bed. (or some place else if you sleep-walk like I do)

I remember when I was little, my nightmared consisted of blackness followed by a childhood monster just screaming at me or something... very rarely did my nightmares have actual settings... The only two times they did have a setting (such as my bedroom) were the times that lucid dreaming was close.

The first was when I was little, and I'd just watch Steven King's IT... I had a bunk bed and when I peered over the edge, he popped up from the side and said something really creepy. When I woke up, I really thought I was awake; it wasn't that feeling you get when you're dreaming. I peered over the edge again and the same scene happened only it felt real. Then I really did wake up. That was my only experience with false awakenings.

The only time I've actually been successful with controlling my dream was when I was in my room again, and I was on my bunk bed and there were several of my childhood fears (the Crypt keeper, Chucky, Pennywise the Clown, etc.) and I remember feeling really stiff in the dream as I attempted to fight back. And then I managed to poke out the cryptkeeper's eyes before I woke up. I was excited because I felt like I won!

Anyway, one thing that I found to be true when I was little, (and used to scream for Mommy and Daddy after a nightmare) if it was really scary, then I wouldn't be able to speak at all. It was like my throat had constricted and what came out my mouth was less than a whisper... Scary dreams = bad childhood experiences
The times where a dream rendered me speechless, I ended up curling into the fetal position for about an hour until my voice came back, too afraid to get out of bed, afraid of what was on my floor.

My dreams nowadays are all pretty realistic, and most of my nighmares deals with the death of either myself, family, classmates, or friends. I've had several dreams where my brother, parents, and friends have died... Sometimes I'm in the dream and usually I end up dead as well. (Not actually dead, but just seconds before)

My most recent dream that I remember felt like a re-enactment of Stephenie Meyer's book [I]Twilight,[/I] that I'm still reading. I became obsessed over the chapeter where she's almost pinned in between her truck and the other vehicle. (If you've read it, then you know what I'm talking about) In my dream, however, I actually did get pinned in between them and I didn't die immediately... I just felt pain and then woke up.

I also find that when I have a dream that causes pain (especially pain to my back) I'll wake up with it feeling like I'd just been hit in a pressure point and that part of my body won't loosen up... I assume that it's just my dream comprehending for the real pain I'm feeling.

I never have any nice dreams, at least none that I remember... :(

[Aberinkula]

[COLOR="Navy"]My dreams all have meaning to me. After some dreams I fantasize on what was going to happen next. I love doing that. I'm not very religious, I do believe that Christ is our savior, but I don't like to think of the life here-after. I love Kingdom Hearts so much because the whole dark and light thing are spiritual in my views.

I've never really tried these things before. I'd love to be able to control all of my dreams so I can make my own story, but that is a very hard thing to accomplish and I doubt anyone could possibly master that. But sometimes I feel that my dreams are meaningless and are just a way for my mind to occupy itself while sleeping. I feel that dreams have both scientific and spiritual meanings. A lot of things are explainable like blood flow in our bodies. but the true mysteries are our brains. B
I'm siding with Einstein on this!

I love to write fantasy stories because you can control the fantasy world around it. the story "Gates of Ruin" which is in the anthology, is based on the dreams and thoughts of those deceased. But you'd have to read it to find out.

Maybe dreams are completely bumkus. If so, I don't care! My dreams are what I make of them. I'd love to find a site on the web that has a "Dream Dictionary." that's a book that explains what dreams mean. I'd go on a rant for a looong time but this is it for now!

Another way to control your dreams is by playing music during the night. When you have a dream and music is looping inside the visions your more likely to realize your dreaming. Thus, you might gain control of it. It happened to me anyway >_<

During some of my dreams I'll move slowly and sluggishly. Never knew why though, same thing happens to my mother.[/COLOR]

[Claire]

[quote name='Darren']My most recent dream that I remember felt like a re-enactment of Stephenie Meyer's book [I]Twilight,[/I] that I'm still reading. I became obsessed over the chapeter where she's almost pinned in between her truck and the other vehicle. (If you've read it, then you know what I'm talking about) In my dream, however, I actually did get pinned in between them and I didn't die immediately... I just felt pain and then woke up.[/QUOTE]
[FONT="Arial"]
OMG<333333
I love that book more than I should, probably. :]

I definitely know what I'd want to do in a lucid dream. One time I was trying to sleep, but I kept envisioning my idea, and the excitement kept me awake. If I can manage to stay asleep long enough, I would go on tour with my band and have amazing abilities on stage, such as flying up to some random horizontal bar and hanging upside down from it like a bat while shredding the hell out of a Les Paul.

I also think it would be awesome to take control of a dream in progress. Suppose I had a lucid dream that there was some kind of gang or something making a mess of my neighborhood or school. I would either go super saiyan (lolz) and beat them up or turn it into a Pokemon battle. Because that's how I handle my fights. :]

For anyone interested in trying to have a lucid dream, the method that always gets me closest is called "Wake Back to Bed." What you do is go to sleep for five or so hours, then wake up for about an hour and focus on dreaming and whatnot (when I had the false awakening/sleep paralysis dream, though, I didn't bother with reading about dreams because I wasn't even planning on going back to bed. Waking up early had been an accident). Every time I've done this, I had a false awakening, which I think are probably easiest to attain lucidity in.

You need to get in the habit of doing "reality checks," or at least remember to do one when you wake up. That way if you have a false awakening, you'll realize it's a dream. I always plug my nose and try to breathe through it--for some reason, you can always breathe in a dream. There are plenty of other reality checks as well, such as glancing at a clock or reading fine print several times. I've heard that the time and text hardly ever stays the same in a dream.[/FONT]

[Anakoni Stark]

[SIZE=1] when I usually dream it just ends up feeling like tv static, but every now and again I dream about something strange.

like these two dreams I've been having alot lately:

one invovles me reliving last year's homecoming, it starts out how it originally happened then it happens again, without the other girls I hung out with, and two new djs on the stage and the crowd dissapears. All that's left is the food, my friends, my little sister and my older brother just sitting at a table eating. while my friend and I are slow dancing, to what the two djs are playing [mostly trance and electro music] and at the end of the night, I end up buying chocolate for myself, but I end up buying too much, and I give a bar of chocolate to the girl I danced with, the dream ends with the girl kissing me in the rain, while I stand there dumbfounded and my two siblings dragging me home.

the other invovles me waking up on a hard cold cement floor with all these people dancing to live music, Bloc Party,Daft Punk, The Prodigy and Justice, when I get up I notice that the people dancing are my friends and the only person not dancing is my girlfriend she pulls me close and we start slow dancing to Daft Punk, then the cops come in to attempt to break up the party while me and my girfriend run away to this empty mansion, and then some things i wont talk about here happens[/SIZE]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Clurr'][FONT="Arial"]I also think it would be awesome to take control of a dream in progress.[/FONT][/QUOTE]
[FONT=Arial]I do this quite frequently, mainly because I am able, for some odd reason, to catalogue and retain each and every dream I have had, so that if I ever have it or a variant again I realize that it is the same. (That sentence was ridiculous.) I can't recall all of them while waking, of course, but they're all on sort of an "instant recall" notice for whatever neuron I had stored them in. :p

But, yeah. Once you realize you're dreaming, you can have some serious fun with what's going on. I love mixing things up; almost godmodding from behind the scenes, so to speak.

I've never tried to initiate a lucid dream, though. I might have to try that sometime. See if it works, and what.[/FONT]

[Jiazu]

[quote name='Allamorph][FONT=Arial']I do this quite frequently, mainly because I am able, for some odd reason, to catalogue and retain each and every dream I have had, so that if I ever have it or a variant again I realize that it is the same. (That sentence was ridiculous.) I can't recall all of them while waking, of course, but they're all on sort of an "instant recall" notice for whatever neuron I had stored them in. :p[/FONT][/quote]

I don't think I've ever actively controlled any of my dreams.. I've gotten pretty close, but just when I realise I'm dreaming, I stop. :( I do have this tendency to go to the same places when I'm dreaming though... sort of like movie sets or something...

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]meh. I very rarely have dreams (well, the kind you actually act in) but I always remember the ones I have. In fact, before about a 2 years ago there was a long time where I didn't have a songle dream, then I moved and after I while I started getting them again.

My dreams, in my opinion, tell me how i feel about people. At least that's my opinion, since all the dreams I have usually take place at school or with people I talk to at school. The reason for this is probably because when I lay in bed I usually thik about the people i know at school and how I wish I could be better friends with them. Yes, I'm that lame.

I can only vividly remember a few of them. I remember like 6 months ago there was this girl who i talked to a lot - I can't say that I really liked her, since we were so increadibly different, but every time I had PE we would talk for like 30 minutes (usually about the same crap, XD) I had a couple weird dreams about her, but one that really struck me was one where I accidently knocked her down a sort of knoll or small hill into an area with these bushes - I remember she was laying down, and I went and layed down next to her and was hugging her - yeah, it was kind of odd.

There was one i had a week after school ended that I think was of utmost significance. It was another school dream, but like in most of my school dreams, the school was nothing like any I've been to (I've been to like 15) and in this particular drea, it was super futuristic. In fact it was actually just like a school from a different school dream I'd had long before - also similar in that it was insanely long.

At the end, though, it was the last day of school and everybody was leaving in a massive wave, though it was taking a long time because the place was so complex. At regular intervals, I kept running into people I had known from school. What was interesting about it, though, was the people I met.

Most of the people I hold significant and plan to meet in the future weren't there. On the other hand, a lot of people that I didn't plan on seeing again I was there saying goodbye to. In fact, I met that girl from the other dream in a place that was sort of like a bomb shelter and said goodbye, lol.

the weirdest one, though, was my friend who graduated this past year. We were on these conveyer-belt walkways, but we were both on opposite ones that were about 20 feet apart. There were a ton of people, so I could only barely see him. He was waving at me with his car keys in hand (significant because he always did this to tell me he could give me a ride home that day). I yelled,

"It was really freaking hard to find your house!" This is because he lives in my neighboorhood, and my brother and I rode our bikes around looking for his house which took us forever because our neighboorhood is so complicated. Odly enough, this was only the day before I had this dream.

Oh, I just remembered an increadibly strange one I had about a month ago that scared the living crap out of me...

It started out when my little brother (14 yrs) was hit by a truck and died. The entire dream was me suffering from the hardship of his death. For the first few days i just sat in bed and cried and slept. Afterward I was trying to cope but failing miserable. I remember being in this really odd classroom and at even the slightest word that could remind me of him I would burst out crying. I remember the dream lasted almost 2 weeks and I was so sad that I almost feel like crying right now thinking about it.

I NEVER EVER want to see that happen. Period.

I have some other strange recurring dreams, though they can wait till post two...[/COLOR]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="goldenrod"]I've always remembered my dreams. Even if later I don't recall what they were about. When I first wake up I always have one or two that I can clearly remember. And those dreams tend to vary from normal everyday settings to completely and totally wacky ones as well as nightmares. Though I've long since gotten past the point of having a dream bad enough that it kept me awake afterwards. It's more like a reaction of 'oh that was intense' and then I just curl up and go back to sleep.

Anyway... I'm familiar with the Lucid Dreaming you mentioned Clurr and it's something that after reading the book Aaryanna mentioned I got into and learned how to do it. I've even got a journal somewhere full of Lucid Dreams that I've had since I use to write them down. I'm not sure why I quit doing that though. Those are always my favorite dreams since like Allamorph mentioned it's like being able to God-Mode and do anything you want.

I positively love those dreams, I tend to experiment just to see what I can do. Since I know it's a dream so they are completely and totally fun. I don't have them anywhere as much as I'd like to.

But putting those aside. My regular dreams can really be out of there, loaded with all sorts of weird stuff like you'd see or read in a fantasy or sci-fi show/novel. The everyday life type ones are what's rare for me. And even then they end up having totally whacked out stuff that doesn't happen in real life.

But nothing is safe from getting into my dreams, characters from video games and anime as well as creatures from the movie Aliens. Even RPG's here at OB!

I've been part of an RPG called the Panopticon and damn if I didn't have a dream about it. >_< From getting shot at, cut, burned, stabbed, to running like mad to escape traps. And in the end I got nailed by a trap that took my head off. I was in the dream wondering why it didn't hurt and then I woke up.

I never wake up before getting hurt, it's always after when I'm wondering why it didn't hurt. Or if I fall in water I just start swimming and think nothing of the fact that I should be drowning. Which is kind of cool, I like dreams where I'm swimming underwater almost as much as I like Lucid Dreams. Anyway...

Now I'm just wondering what my next wacky dream will be. Heh.[/COLOR]

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=#9933ff][font=Lucida calligraphy] I don't always dream, but when I do they're rather strange and I do tend to remember them.

I had a very odd one back when I was pregnant. It was after my second ultrasound when I was positive I was having a girl (which is what I have ) and in this dream I went into labor and gave birth to a boy... not only that but when they handed me the kid he was about two years old an I kept saying that's not mine, I was supposed to have a girl. But that's not too out of the ordinary since pregnancy triggers all sorts of strange things.

I've heard of lucid dreaming, but I'm not all that familiar with it. [/color][/font]

[Guest Copycatalyst]

[quote name='ChibiHorsewoman'][color=#9933ff][font=Lucida calligraphy]

I've heard of lucid dreaming, but I'm not all that familiar with it. [/color][/font][/QUOTE]

Actually you are. It's called this thing you call "your life."

[Raiyuu]

[quote name='Copycatalyst']It's called this thing you call "your life."[/quote]You know full well what she means by lucid dreaming. You're just being difficult on purpose. Stoppit, or no treats for you.

@Clurr: do you have any plans for when you do manage to lucid-dream? Because it sounds (from this thread and your LJ) that you're progressing in leaps and bounds. I've managed (completely by accident) to have a couple of lucid dreams in the last couple of years - usually when I do an unconscious reality check and realise a) this isn't actually anywhere I recognise and b) what am I doing outside in my pyjamas anyway (no joke, it really was that typical a dream). I was a bit nonplussed, to be honest - it was novel, being aware that I was dreaming, but there was a definite sense of "well, what now, then?"

I think in the end I conjured an apple out of thin air - complete with sparkly special effects - just to see if I could, and then woke up.

[Claire]

[quote name='Raiyuu']@Clurr: do you have any plans for when you do manage to lucid-dream? Because it sounds (from this thread and your LJ) that you're progressing in leaps and bounds.[/QUOTE]
[FONT="Arial"]
I do have a lot of plans for such dreams, and they often keep me awake because I continually expound upon them as I try to fall asleep, and most of the time my mind seems to do it on it's own.

My ideas range from playing concerts to meeting certain people to actually live all my stories as if the characters really existed. In all of the dreams I'd use abilities that I definitely don't have in the waking world, such as flight.

It's sort of strange, since a lot of sources I've read claim one must record all their dreams in a journal for at least a month in order to attain lucidity, but I definitely haven't done this. In fact, the many times I woke up early I couldn't even remember having any dreams the previous night. Then when I went back to sleep an hour later I was so close to having a lucid dream (and one morning I actually did, albeit a very very short one).

I've also found out that experience sleep paralysis makes a person extremely tired. I hardly had the energy to move the entire day after I was paralyzed. My mom is really skeptical of this whole thing and didn't seem to believe that I really had experienced any of it, and blamed my excessive sleepiness on being vegetarian. Psssh.[/FONT]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Clurr][FONT="Arial"']I do have a lot of plans for such dreams, and they often keep me awake because I continually expound upon them as I try to fall asleep, and most of the time my mind seems to do it on it's own.[/FONT][/quote]
[FONT=Arial]Hunh. Yeah, thinking always keeps me awake, too. I don't really make any efforts to plan out lucid dreams, though ? I prefer to make everything up as I go. Besides, once you're lucid, you should be able to think just as clearly as if you were awake, so trying to retain a list of goals into the dream state seems a little odd, to me.

[QUOTE][FONT="Arial"][I]It's sort of strange, since a lot of sources I've read claim one must record all their dreams in a journal for at least a month in order to attain lucidity, but I definitely haven't done this. In fact, the many times I woke up early I couldn't even remember having any dreams the previous night. Then when I went back to sleep an hour later I was so close to having a lucid dream (and one morning I actually did, albeit a very very short one).[/I][/FONT][/QUOTE]
I think the purpose of the recording bit is so that you can etch into your head all the dreams you've had. I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but....

Supposedly we dream every night as part of the regular sleep cycle. I think I've heard that one only remembers the dreams one had right before waking up. I couldn't cite you anyone on that, though.

[QUOTE][FONT="Arial"][I]I've also found out that experience sleep paralysis makes a person extremely tired. I hardly had the energy to move the entire day after I was paralyzed. My mom is really skeptical of this whole thing and didn't seem to believe that I really had experienced any of it, and blamed my excessive sleepiness on being vegetarian. Psssh.[/I][/FONT][/QUOTE]

I was actually talking with one of my coworkers about this subject recently, and apparently your brain sends out a paralysis signal to the rest of your body when you enter the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep ? the one where dreams actually occur. (Just general info there.) To be a little more specific, here's what Wiki said:

[QUOTE][I][FONT=Arial]Originally posted as [B]"Sleep Paralysis"; Wikipedia[/B] (yeah, yeah; it was quick.)

[SIZE="3"][U]Possible causes[/U][/SIZE]

Sleep paralysis occurs during REM sleep in order to prevent the body from manifesting movements made in the subject's dreams. Very little is known about the physiology of sleep paralysis. However, some have suggested that it may be linked to post-synaptic inhibition of motor neurons in the pons region of the brain. In particular, low levels of melatonin may stop the depolarization current in the nerves, which prevents the stimulation of the muscles, to prevent the body from enacting the dreamt activity (e.g. preventing a sleeper from flailing his legs when dreaming about running).

Many people who commonly enter sleep paralysis also suffer from narcolepsy. However, various studies suggest that many or most people will experience sleep paralysis at least once or twice in their lives.

Some reports read that various factors increase the likelihood of both paralysis and hallucinations. These include:

[list][*] Sleeping in a supine position (facing upwards)
[*] Irregular sleeping schedules; naps, sleeping in, sleep deprivation
[*] Increased stress
[*] Sudden environmental/lifestyle changes
[*] [B]A lucid dream that immediately precedes the episode[/B]. Also, conscious induction of sleep paralysis is a common technique to enter a state of lucid dreams, also known as WILD.
[*] Artificial sleeping aids, ADD medications and/or antihistamines[/list][/FONT][/I][/QUOTE]

From what my coworker told me, sleep paralysis ? and, from the opposite side, sleepwalking or such similar activities ? occurs when the mechanism that controls the paralysis fails to operate properly; either not shutting off the signal, or failing to actually induce it, etc., etc.

I found that fifth bullet kind of interesting, given the topic.... [/FONT]

[Miro]

I don't have many dreams as I don't really sleep in good dream capable conditions, but I was told, (oh noez, Science on my OB?) that large amounts of vitamen E can cause some of the most vivd dreams and insane dreams,
Vita E is harmless but I was told it can cause dreams like crazy,
Anyone ever hear or expirence this? (People who take E tablets maybe?)

[pooperson]

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"][SIZE="1"]I always dream about work. Always, always, always. I'd say that about 95% of my dreams have to do with work.
In my dream last night, I dreamt that my three managers got fired by the State for drinking on the job (I work at a sports bar) and for smoking pot - not on the job, but just smoking it in general.
In their place, a new, cuter guy was put in, but he changed everything. We turned into a seafood restaurant with only two TV channels... for 41 TVs, that sucks! The kitchen looked completely different, and most of the serving staff was replaced. Also, the new tables were triangular, and smoking was officially banned from the bar area.
Then there's the owner - Paul - who decided that HE would be the entire kitchen staff. He also decided to keep a puma in the freezer.


That's what most of my dreams are like.[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Fyxe]

[size=1]I usually have very interesting dreams involving me and an attractive female. That female is usually my lovely wife Alex. <3

Otherwise, lately I had a dream about being pregnant, and I could like touch my stomach and feel the baby. So when I woke up I thought, "Ah crap, I'm preggers." But then I realized I wasn't, and as weird as it is to admit, I felt like I just lost a child. I was sad.

Hehe.[/size]

[pooperson]

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"][SIZE="1"]As an update, last night I dreamt about work again, but I also dreamt about the OB, sadly. It was really strange. There was some guy on here - I don't even know who - and I met him, and we had to do this really weird challenge thing. It involved ice and rope. Weird. All I knew about him was that he was a member of OB. Whatev.
But whoever it was, he waas pretty hot.[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[kenshinsbabe]

[SIZE="2"][FONT="Georgia"]I've generally had some strange experiences with dreams, but the most recent one came to mind when I read the other posts.

A few months ago, my friend Lexi became interested in a guy, so she got his phone number and constantly called him and found his house. Eventually, he felt like she was stalking him, so she left him alone and they haven't really talked since.

In this dream, I was talking on the phone with her and on a whim, she decided to call him and invite him out to eat. So she three-wayed him and I heard the conversation they had. She invited him to go to Perkins (a "we serve breakfast all day" kinda place), and he thought about it for a minute, then agreed. I don't remember anything after that.

The next day, I was talking to her and she said that after she got off work, her and another friend went to Perkins. On this particular occasion, she saw this guy there. When she told me that, all I said was "No way." When I told her about my dream, she was as surprised as I was.[/FONT][/SIZE]