4 ms·

I used to lucid dream a lot. Probably the most wonderful experiences of my life. I did everything you could think of. Flying, visit impossible places, superhero

I used to lucid dream a lot. Probably the most wonderful experiences of my life. I did everything you could think of. Flying, visit impossible places, superhero, wreck stuff, bang movie stars, deepest oceans, space. Sometimes you get into a wierd head space where everything is hyper real. Impossible colors, undescribable textures. I got good at keeping myself from waking up, and had lucid dreams that lasted seemingly hours. It seems I've lost the ability with age :( . They became less common in middle age and I haven't had one in years now. How I wish I could have that skill back

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Same here. More than once a week when I was a kid, once a week as a teen, now it's about once every few months in my late 30s. I have correlated it to body temperature though - the more blankets I use and the hotter I am over night, the more dreams remembered, lucid dreams, and nightmares I get. Although they're fun, I value my sleep more, and so these days sleep with the thinnest donna with the windows open (even in winter).
dorkwood 6y ago
Me too! I was quite obsessed as a teenager. People don't believe me when I tell them that a lucid dream can be indistinguishable from reality. I think to most people, a dream is a fuzzy unrealistic thing. While reading Richard Feynman's biography, I was struck by one of his descriptions of lucid dreaming, which I found very relatable: "The next time I had a dream, there was a girl lying in tall grass, and she had red hair. I tried to see if I could see each hair. You know how there's a little area of color just where the sun is reflecting -- the diffraction effect, I could see that! I could see each hair as sharp as you want: perfect vision!"
- bodhi_mind 6y ago
  Don’t you need to be able to distinguish it from reality in order to convince yourself it’s a dream? Otherwise, aren’t you just dreaming of lucid dreaming?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dorkwood 6y ago
    Sorry, I meant visually indistinguishable. There's other ways to convince yourself you're in a dream. The one I found worked best for me was blocking both nostrils and trying to inhale through my nose. If you're dreaming, this will still work. If you're awake, you obviously won't be able to breathe. Another simple one is to ask yourself "how did I get here?" If you're dreaming, there won't be a clear sequence of events leading up to where you are. Even with these tricks, it can still be difficult to convince yourself you're dreaming. If you're about to leap off a cliff, you don't want to be 90% sure -- you want to be 100% sure. I'd often wake up with my heart pounding in my chest because my brain was convinced I was about to kill myself.
    - s_gourichon 6y ago
      > The one I found worked best for me was blocking both nostrils and trying to inhale through my nose. If you're dreaming, this will still work. If you're awake, you obviously won't be able to breathe. Learned and practiced exactly this about 6-8 years ago. A little strange to observe, and a definite sign one's dreaming! No need for any interpretation like "clear sequence of events". Your nose is fully blocked yet you can breathe through. Dreaming! This is interesting also as I felt it like a schism in body image. When dreaming, body representation is the dreamed one, separated from the actually perceptible body. Only airway (as "does air flow normally") does not have this separation, allowing you to block your dreamed nose and continue to dream peacefully because actual airway is not blocked.
      - dorkwood 6y ago
        > No need for any interpretation like "clear sequence of events". Your nose is fully blocked yet you can breathe through. Dreaming! Most people I try to explain this to look at me like I'm crazy. I'm glad the internet could show me one other person who had the same experience! This is also the reason I couldn't fully immerse into the movie Inception. The spinning totem doesn't make much sense once you're aware of the nostril trick.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I only ever lucid dreamed if I had a very bad nightmare, then I could realize it was a dream, take control and turn the tables on whoever was causing me problems in the dream. That said I have periods of non-lucid extremely complicated dream narratives - for example maybe I'm not even a character in the dream and there is a narrator of a story that could span generations.
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  Some of mine definitely started that way, but there's many that didn't. I used to have a ton of false awakenings, as I would go lucid in nightmares and attempt to wake myself. Often successful but sometimes trapped in a cycle. I would have 3-5 false awakenings sometimes, just like Inception. I'm sure a lucid dreamers experience with that is what inspired the movie
justaguyhere 6y ago
Did you consciously develop lucid dreaming skill? Or was it natural? Any good/bad side effects? Also, why do you think you lost it with age? Is this like physical abilities that degrade with age?
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  It was natural at the beginning. Of course once you realize how awesome it is, you try to do it as much as possible. For me this was mostly learning how to recognize the dream state and how to manipulate it without waking myself up. I'm not sure how universal this is, but in my lucid dreams exercising too much control from the concious part of my brain would eventually wake me. It was a balance of manipulating the dream and riding the wave of what was playing out. Make a change then wait a few minutes. Don't try to fight it. No side effects of note, except for awesome memories of experiences that are quite difficult to explain. No idea why I lost it with age. Probably declining sleep quality, less REM sleep. I doubt there's any studies on it but it's a sentiment echoed by many lucid dreamers I've talked to. It's quite unfortunate, a solid lucid dream could lift my mood for days.
  - kamaal 6y ago
    >>I'm not sure how universal this is, but in my lucid dreams exercising too much control from the concious part of my brain would eventually wake me. Man I could get a lot of flying, and fast running, and at times even leveling a sky scraper without waking up. But at times, you wake up for something as trivial as meeting your dream woman.
    - throwaway189262 6y ago
      Haha same! Attempting... Relations... Always ended with waking up :) . Sometimes too early. Sometimes not.
- kamaal 6y ago
  You can develop lucid dreaming abilities. I don't think it goes with age. Basically the problem is with dream recall after you wake up. And establishing a routine so frequent you could witness that routine even in dream, so that you can spot anomaly in the routine in the dream. Basically there are certain things you can't do properly in a dream. Things like adding numbers, counting, reading a watch correctly twice in a row etc. For some reasons our brains seem to have a hard time maintaining state in dreams. So you establish a stateful routine in wakefulness which would not be possible in dream, making you realize you are now in a dream. As you can see there are a range of things that need to happen. Routines in wakefullness(like counting, repeating clock check), well rested body, low stress, ability to remember a dream etc. I think with age a lot of parameters are hard to keep up with.
kamaal 6y ago
I used to have them too. They are rare now in middle age. Though even in youth they were not as long as yours.
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  My started short, a few minutes, but I practiced to not wake myself until they would last presumably a whole REM cycle. Of all the things from my youth, I probably miss lucid dreams the most :'(
  - kamaal 6y ago
    The longest dreams I've had were layered ones. Like dreams within dreams. They were not lucid though. But I've woken up mentally exhausted after such dreams. They seemed to go on forever.
godshatter 6y ago
I've never had a natural lucid dream. I have had a few lucid dreams using an induction technique called SSILD. I haven't played with it for a while, but at one point I was having one LD per every two or three nights. Usually an LD followed by a string of false awakenings. This is in my early 50s. Very fun stuff.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Same here. More than once a week when I was a kid, once a week as a teen, now it's about once every few months in my late 30s. I have correlated it to body temperature though - the more blankets I use and the hotter I am over night, the more dreams remembered, lucid dreams, and nightmares I get. Although they're fun, I value my sleep more, and so these days sleep with the thinnest donna with the windows open (even in winter).

dorkwood 6y ago

Me too! I was quite obsessed as a teenager. People don't believe me when I tell them that a lucid dream can be indistinguishable from reality. I think to most people, a dream is a fuzzy unrealistic thing. While reading Richard Feynman's biography, I was struck by one of his descriptions of lucid dreaming, which I found very relatable: "The next time I had a dream, there was a girl lying in tall grass, and she had red hair. I tried to see if I could see each hair. You know how there's a little area of color just where the sun is reflecting -- the diffraction effect, I could see that! I could see each hair as sharp as you want: perfect vision!"

bodhi_mind 6y ago
Don’t you need to be able to distinguish it from reality in order to convince yourself it’s a dream? Otherwise, aren’t you just dreaming of lucid dreaming?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dorkwood 6y ago
  Sorry, I meant visually indistinguishable. There's other ways to convince yourself you're in a dream. The one I found worked best for me was blocking both nostrils and trying to inhale through my nose. If you're dreaming, this will still work. If you're awake, you obviously won't be able to breathe. Another simple one is to ask yourself "how did I get here?" If you're dreaming, there won't be a clear sequence of events leading up to where you are. Even with these tricks, it can still be difficult to convince yourself you're dreaming. If you're about to leap off a cliff, you don't want to be 90% sure -- you want to be 100% sure. I'd often wake up with my heart pounding in my chest because my brain was convinced I was about to kill myself.
  - s_gourichon 6y ago
    > The one I found worked best for me was blocking both nostrils and trying to inhale through my nose. If you're dreaming, this will still work. If you're awake, you obviously won't be able to breathe. Learned and practiced exactly this about 6-8 years ago. A little strange to observe, and a definite sign one's dreaming! No need for any interpretation like "clear sequence of events". Your nose is fully blocked yet you can breathe through. Dreaming! This is interesting also as I felt it like a schism in body image. When dreaming, body representation is the dreamed one, separated from the actually perceptible body. Only airway (as "does air flow normally") does not have this separation, allowing you to block your dreamed nose and continue to dream peacefully because actual airway is not blocked.
    - dorkwood 6y ago
      > No need for any interpretation like "clear sequence of events". Your nose is fully blocked yet you can breathe through. Dreaming! Most people I try to explain this to look at me like I'm crazy. I'm glad the internet could show me one other person who had the same experience! This is also the reason I couldn't fully immerse into the movie Inception. The spinning totem doesn't make much sense once you're aware of the nostril trick.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I only ever lucid dreamed if I had a very bad nightmare, then I could realize it was a dream, take control and turn the tables on whoever was causing me problems in the dream. That said I have periods of non-lucid extremely complicated dream narratives - for example maybe I'm not even a character in the dream and there is a narrator of a story that could span generations.

throwaway189262 6y ago
Some of mine definitely started that way, but there's many that didn't. I used to have a ton of false awakenings, as I would go lucid in nightmares and attempt to wake myself. Often successful but sometimes trapped in a cycle. I would have 3-5 false awakenings sometimes, just like Inception. I'm sure a lucid dreamers experience with that is what inspired the movie

justaguyhere 6y ago

Did you consciously develop lucid dreaming skill? Or was it natural? Any good/bad side effects? Also, why do you think you lost it with age? Is this like physical abilities that degrade with age?

throwaway189262 6y ago
It was natural at the beginning. Of course once you realize how awesome it is, you try to do it as much as possible. For me this was mostly learning how to recognize the dream state and how to manipulate it without waking myself up. I'm not sure how universal this is, but in my lucid dreams exercising too much control from the concious part of my brain would eventually wake me. It was a balance of manipulating the dream and riding the wave of what was playing out. Make a change then wait a few minutes. Don't try to fight it. No side effects of note, except for awesome memories of experiences that are quite difficult to explain. No idea why I lost it with age. Probably declining sleep quality, less REM sleep. I doubt there's any studies on it but it's a sentiment echoed by many lucid dreamers I've talked to. It's quite unfortunate, a solid lucid dream could lift my mood for days.
- kamaal 6y ago
  >>I'm not sure how universal this is, but in my lucid dreams exercising too much control from the concious part of my brain would eventually wake me. Man I could get a lot of flying, and fast running, and at times even leveling a sky scraper without waking up. But at times, you wake up for something as trivial as meeting your dream woman.
  - throwaway189262 6y ago
    Haha same! Attempting... Relations... Always ended with waking up :) . Sometimes too early. Sometimes not.
kamaal 6y ago
You can develop lucid dreaming abilities. I don't think it goes with age. Basically the problem is with dream recall after you wake up. And establishing a routine so frequent you could witness that routine even in dream, so that you can spot anomaly in the routine in the dream. Basically there are certain things you can't do properly in a dream. Things like adding numbers, counting, reading a watch correctly twice in a row etc. For some reasons our brains seem to have a hard time maintaining state in dreams. So you establish a stateful routine in wakefulness which would not be possible in dream, making you realize you are now in a dream. As you can see there are a range of things that need to happen. Routines in wakefullness(like counting, repeating clock check), well rested body, low stress, ability to remember a dream etc. I think with age a lot of parameters are hard to keep up with.

kamaal 6y ago

I used to have them too. They are rare now in middle age. Though even in youth they were not as long as yours.

throwaway189262 6y ago
My started short, a few minutes, but I practiced to not wake myself until they would last presumably a whole REM cycle. Of all the things from my youth, I probably miss lucid dreams the most :'(
- kamaal 6y ago
  The longest dreams I've had were layered ones. Like dreams within dreams. They were not lucid though. But I've woken up mentally exhausted after such dreams. They seemed to go on forever.

godshatter 6y ago

I've never had a natural lucid dream. I have had a few lucid dreams using an induction technique called SSILD. I haven't played with it for a while, but at one point I was having one LD per every two or three nights. Usually an LD followed by a string of false awakenings. This is in my early 50s. Very fun stuff.