Lucid Dreamers: Are we cheating ourselves / Can we do better?

[Dogdoctor]

I would guess by the type of dream they are having. It sounds like the two are fairly distinct, which is what prompted my question as to whether or not the differences were a "rule" for dreaming. It looks like I will have to look into myself rather than take the lazy way out.

They don't sound very different to me. I have lucid dreams now but it is rare that I remember a dream. Every dream I do remember is a lucid dream. My guess is that I recall the dreams only if I wake immediately after dreaming them.

 

[Hokulele]

They don't sound very different to me.

Going by the description in the OP, they sound very different to me. I read it as being similar to the difference between homework and final exams.

I have lucid dreams now but it is rare that I remember a dream. Every dream I do remember is a lucid dream. My guess is that I recall the dreams only if I wake immediately after dreaming them.

I remember a fairly large number of dreams and some nights I have multiple dreams before waking up. I am also prone to trying to answer questions put to me while asleep, much to my husband's amusement.

 

[kellyb]

I would guess by the type of dream they are having. It sounds like the two are fairly distinct, which is what prompted my question as to whether or not the differences were a "rule" for dreaming. It looks like I will have to look into myself rather than take the lazy way out.

From the "ask the expert interview":

A recent article in the journal Sleep shows that lucid dreaming is accompanied by an increased activation of brain regions that are normally suppressed during sleep and that control rational thinking and executive control. Just such a link had been predicted by many people for years, so these findings support the notion that lucid dreaming represents a brain state somewhere between normal REM sleep and wake

"Normal REM" is the most "awake-like" of the sleep stages, so it seems very probable to me that lucid dreaming would be most likely to happen in an REM state.
I bet the actual for-sure answer is in that Sleep article he mentioned, though.

 

[Hokulele]

From the "ask the expert interview":

Thanks.

"Normal REM" is the most "awake-like" of the sleep stages, so it seems very probable to me that lucid dreaming would be most likely to happen in an REM state.
I bet the actual for-sure answer is in that Sleep article he mentioned, though.

Yep, tracking that down and reading it is the work I was trying to avoid doing. It looks like it will be worth the effort though.

 

[kellyb]

Thanks.




Yep, tracking that down and reading it is the work I was trying to avoid doing. It looks like it will be worth the effort though.

The pdf is down, but here's the html link:
http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cac...om/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2008&as_yhi=2009

They don't specifically say, but my impression is that they can only happen in rem sleep.

 

[Hokulele]

Thanks again. Yeah, it looks like the study ignored non-REM sleep, but there are a lot of technical terms in there, so I should probably tackle that article a bit more seriously once I have had some sleep.

 

[Piggy]

I would guess by the type of dream they are having. It sounds like the two are fairly distinct, which is what prompted my question as to whether or not the differences were a "rule" for dreaming. It looks like I will have to look into myself rather than take the lazy way out.

The NOVA special didn't make that clear a distinction. The language they used indicated that non-REM dreams tended to be significantly less negative, and the REM dreams significantly more negative.

I certainly wouldn't call any of this established science.

But it's intriguing.

 

[Piggy]

Well, I've had mixed success.

A couple of weeks ago I was faced with two dreams in one night in which things turned threatening and I actually recalled my options, but wimped out.

I have since forgotten the first one, but the second one involved being with a group of friends in a tropical country and facing kidnapping by a drug gang.

I couldn't handle it, and so turned us into armed undercover narcotics agents instead, and the kidnappers backed off when they realized we weren't likely victims.

I had a pseudo-success last week in a dream where I was swimming through a flood and rescuing kids. These eddies developed that could suck people under, and instead of changing the situation I left it as it was and swam through it.

But I'm a very good swimmer, so it was only the kids who were really in danger, so I don't count that as a victory, since I wasn't actually facing up to a very big threat to myself.

Last night I had a spectacular failure.

All the pipes in my house started bursting, and I was so upset and distracted that I forgot I was dreaming, and I was running around in complete disarray trying to salvage what I could, thinking it was real. When I finally did realize again that I was in a dream, I was so keen to just be away from it that I literally flew off into a different space.

Utter fail.

Btw, in that new space I ended up in a room with some old friends, with a large glass wall looking out onto a lush garden. They started a petty argument and I couldn't get them to look out into the garden, where a komodo dragon and a gila monster -- both with elaborate patterns of brilliantly colored scales -- were trying to eat the same dragonfly.

 

[Symbol]

The film Waking Life is fascinating (and technically very interesting to watch) if one is interested in lucid dreaming.

One thing that the film proposes is that the way to tell whether you're in a dream or not is to flip a light switch. If you're in a dream the light won't change, so you'll know you're dreaming.

I tried this once in a dream, and the light didn't go out, but I only realised once I awoke what I'd done. So I never realised during the dream that it was a lucid dream.

Perhaps a new category of dreaming - pre-lucid? semi-lucid?

One way I know if I'm in a lucid dream is if I can't read anything. I had a dream a few nights ago where I was on top of a mountain, and I really wanted to know how high above sea level I was. I could see the sign marking the peak, but no matter how much I tried I couldn't read it.

Then I knew I was in a dream, so I just had fun with the rest of it!

 

[Whiplash]

Yes I am never able to read anything in dreams, it all looks scrambled and keeps changing. I also have a horrible time with phones.. I routinely dream of trying to reach someone and dialing wrong over and over and over.

However, even with these clues, and other blatantly unrealistic imagery and settings, I find myself rejecting the idea it's a dream, whereas I used to have many more lucid dreams. It's frustrating.

 

[Symbol]

I also have a horrible time with phones.. I routinely dream of trying to reach someone and dialing wrong over and over and over.

Yes!

I think frustration is a mark of many dreams, lucid or not. We've all had the "running but can't move" dreams.

Perhaps it's proportional to the amount of frustration we feel in our waking lives.

The power of normal dreams lies in remembering them upon waking and then working out what you're trying to tell yourself.

The power of lucid dreams is in answering, during the dream, questions that are troubling you.

Or just having a free vacation - that can be fun too.

 

[iknownothing]

Do you feel that you have impaired abilities to solve problems?

Some people are plagued by more nightmares than others -- is there any evidence that they are better problem solvers?

I doubt you did yourself a disservice. I don't imagine there's anything constructive in spending your childhood scared of falling asleep and scared while you do sleep.

 

[Piggy]

Do you feel that you have impaired abilities to solve problems?

Some people are plagued by more nightmares than others -- is there any evidence that they are better problem solvers?

I doubt you did yourself a disservice. I don't imagine there's anything constructive in spending your childhood scared of falling asleep and scared while you do sleep.

It worked for me at the time, sure. But strategies that are functional when we're kids can become dysfunctional when we grow up.

I don't have trouble solving problems, but I do have problems facing certain kinds of problems. I mean, hey, I'm a semi-recluse.

 

[Piggy]

Btw, another lucid dream strategy, in addition to idea-seeding before you sleep, is to run dreams through your mind when you wake up during a dream. Just recall it, and make a point to get a gut sense for how the dream state simply feels different from the waking state.

That's the next step beyond using cues. The goal is to get to the point where you recognize how dreams and waking feel different, like being on land and underwater feel different.

 

[Piggy]

Hi, folks.

An update, if anyone is still following after 3 months.

I seem to have made it to the next step, but there's another biggie ahead of me. And there are some very interesting "side effects".

I no longer bail out of my dangerous dreams. Unfortunately, I'm still rather passive and tend to get waked up before I act.

For instance, I recently had a dream in which 3 kids -- another kids-in-danger-in-water dream -- ended up in an enormous water disposal system.

It was an old brick-and-mortar conduit, extremely large, cavernous. They were clinging together in the middle of it, and slowly drifting. Way overhead, small skylights showed the night sky. There are dark niches and recesses along the sides, perhaps doors but you really can't tell in the darkness. There's the occasional dim bulb in a sconce.

(This was not a dream I was in. I sometimes have dreams that I simply observe, like watching a movie. In this one, my brother and I were observing it.)

They cling together, holding on to some pieces of wood or some such. They move slowly at first. One of the boys is a year or two older than the others. They're pretty much doing what he advises, but he's just going with the flow, quite literally. Waiting til they get to some place where they can get out safely.

As they progress, the cavern gets smaller. As it does, the water moves faster, and it seems to thicken.

And as this happens, my perspective merges more closely with that of the boys. Until, after a time, I am seeing things as if I were floating there along with them, as they hug their pieces of debris, and each other, in the cold water. (My brother is no longer watching with me.)

Before long, they are moving rapidly through a completely dark tunnel. There are no more spaces through which to see the sky. You can feel and hear the closeness of the walls.

The tunnel begins to incline more sharply. The pace accelerates. Until finally, it drops off, and the tunnel becomes a tube filled with water. The boys are going to drown.

That's when I wake up.

True to my goals, I did nothing to alter the nightmare artificially, like making the bricks vanish and turn it into a river, or drop a net down to rescue the kids.

But I also offered no solutions that worked within the existing framework of the dream.

I could have assumed the identity of the older boy and swum to the side while there were still recesses to swim to, before it got hopeless. But I didn't.

There was another dream in which shape-shifters appeared. We were in a room with only one door, no other exits. The shape shifters come, and someone says "They're changing" and they do, to horrible things.

I quickly make that scene vanish, but then remember, and I "rewind" back to when they are approaching in friendly guise. Again, someone says "They're changing" and they do.

And I wake up.

So now my challenge is to not be passive so that I get so scared I wake up. Now I have to figure out how to be active in the dream to find solutions on the dream's terms, to stay in and fight.

One side effect of reaching this point is that I have many more nightmares.

I went, I guess, some 30 years without nightmares. Sometimes, actually, but extremely rarely. Now they're common. I've unleashed them again.

Another side effect is that I might be losing my ability to lucid-dream consistently. I feel like I'm falling back to that state when the worlds are harder to tell apart.

We'll see if that is the case or not.

I've glad I've done this experiment.

I'll keep posting here, as things develop. But it's a slow process.

 

[Miss_Kitt]

If that's it, then I don't do it very often, and when I do know in the dream that it is a dream, I never care. Usually it's not really 'me' in my dreams, there's backstory and memories.

Thank you, SGM!! I was, until I read this post, the only person I knew who consistently is not "me" in my dreams. I am someone; I am the viewpoint character, as it were, with that person's memories and history and context--but that person is not me, Miss_Kitt. In fact, being myself in a dream is quite noteworthy, and therefore I tend to remember those dreams (I think).

Usually, when I tell someone this, they look at me like I've just grown a third eyeball. So I have not posted about it, nor told many people. I have dreams where I am male; dreams where I am some accomplished spy/adventure movie heroine; dreams where I am exploring some new planet with my cool hightech equipment; dreams where I am part of the secret telepathic underground...but precious few dreams where I am me.

In the context of this thread, it is noteworthy that one of my most vivid and memorable nightmares occurred when I found myself in the mansion of the lead character in a novel I was writing at the time. After surviving the not-uncommon "being chased by bad guys" portion of the dream, I was taken by the Security team to meet the property owner, who had some very pointed questions for me about How did I get in? Where did I get the gun (it was from his study in a secret drawer)? How long had I been in the house? etc. At one point in the questioning, I suddenly realized the answer to all these questions and announced with relief, "Oh! This is just a dream!"

Then, I didn't wake up.

I knew it was a dream; I knew he was the character from my book--except he wasn't, exactly, his life had taken a major twist I had not included--I knew the names and faces of the minor characters; I knew my real life name, home, phone number, etc. But the phone number was disconnected; there was no listing for me or any of my family; my driver's license ID # was invalid. I was a non-existant person in a world I did and yet did not know. I kept trying to wake up, and I couldn't. Events were completely outside my control, without the "re-do" option my dreams usually have...I was trapped in a dream.

At the last, they were kindly but firmly keeping me seated in a room with only one door and one window, three guards, and a team coming to take me to some kind of mental hospital. I woke up shaking and too scared to go back to sleep.

It has probably been 25 years since that dream, and I still remember it vividly. It wouldn't be too bad a basis for a book in and of itself, would it?

Just thinking, Miss_Kitt

ETA -- One thing that usually identifies a dream for me is that I read something, close the book or magazine, then flip it open and read it again. The words are not the same, or aren't in the same place on the page, or the typeface is different, or some such. And, with the exception of the above, I can usually wake up at will once I know I'm dreaming.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I do that too! Although, I have been able to turn on lights in my dreams. Sometimes though, the lights don't work, so I make light somehow from myself. Once, I looked under a bed by pinching the tip of an overripe banana----which WORKED. overripe bananas produce beams of light, who knew?

It was very disturbing that one time someone in a dream called me by name. It wasn't me, I am not like that, why did she use my name?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I recall my dreams often since I started taking melatonin. I'm pretty sure it must increase REM sleep but that's just a guess. While I don't consciously know it's a dream while I'm dreaming, if I accidentally fall asleep before turning off the TV or radio, quite often the dream incorporates whatever I'm hearing. When I was a kid I still remember a dream where I came to a barn like building with a door and heard something scratching on it. I awoke to my dog scratching to get in my room and sleep in with me.


I doubt it matters if you dream what you are hearing, or lucid dream during REM sleep. I suspect the brain gets the sleep benefit it needs regardless of what you do unless you interfere with drugs or something radical like that.

 

[Piggy]

2 months later I'm making progress.

Had a dream that I was in this prison which looked remarkably like my 7th grade school (which in real life looked remarkably like a prison, right down to the chain link fences topped with barbed wire).

Someone picks a fight with a guy and I ask "Why did you do that? Why did you do that?"

Then I realize this person is only a figment of my imagination and I picked the fight.

Rather than ending the dream or changing the scene, I square up for the fight and engage in it.

This is a good feeling.

I didn't finish the fight, tho, because at one point I make a kick, and my body kicks IRL (very common for me) which wakes me up.

Still, this is the point I was trying to get to, so I consider it a triumph.

So it's taken me 6 months of training to get here. Not bad, I suppose.

I'm glad I did it. We'll see where it leads me.

I know this is probably the slowest progressing thread on the forum, but I do plan to check in whenever there's anything to report. It's just that changing your dreams is a very slow process.

 

[Whiplash]

I didn't finish the fight, tho, because at one point I make a kick, and my body kicks IRL (very common for me) which wakes me up.

I do this as well. I have a fan sitting on my bed itself, near the foot end of the bed, leaning against the wall. As odd as that may seem.

One night a few months ago I dreamed I was fighting off some kind of creatures that were attacking me from all sides, and at one point I was angry and kicked very hard at one. And I ended up kicking that fan very hard with a bare foot, and woke up in some very bad pain. Fortunately, didn't hurt myself.

I still am having bad luck with lucid dreaming. From the first time I saw the subject discussed on these forums, where I reported that I do have them.. I have only had one or two at all in all that time since then. And is always the case for me, once I realize I'm dreaming, I am destined to wake up in about 3 seconds.

Still, you had some good ideas and tips throughout these threads, I'll have to revisit them and see if I can train myself to do better.