Lucid Dreaming via Dream Journaling: Let's Do It!

[Lady Sabine]

So, some of my most vivid creative experiences are from lucid dreams. On and off again, I find myself able to sort of enter god mode when I'm dreaming, and literally the world becomes my playground. Think Inception. The scenery, characters, physics, everything, becomes mine to toy with.
Lucid dreaming is awesome- lucid dreaming is also difficult.
There are many methods about lucid dreaming, but the one that works best for me is simply to train your mind to recognize dreams, because once you realize lucid dreaming tends to come naturally. How can you recognize a dream? Here are a few easy tips:
Start asking yourself multiple times per day "How did I get here?". Dreams almost never include travel. If you're at your granny's house but you don't remember arriving, you might be dreaming! Once asking the question becomes habit, you'll do it even in the dream.
Check for your phone, ring, necklace- any item you always have on you. Chances are your dream self forgot to put on the ring. Upon realizing that you aren't wearing it, you might snap into lucid mode.
Review how you met everyone whenever you see them. When you get to a dream, you might realize you don't know how you met this person who is now your best friend.
Stop and think! Get in the habit of clearing your mind regularly. In a dream, this sudden clarity might make you realize that something funny is going on.

Now, those tips work OK, but it can be difficult. The other thing that really helps me is dream journaling. Put simply, you're going to write down every single detail of every single dream you have. I find it helpful to keep a notepad on my headboard for just this reason, because you forget dreams FAST. Writing the details down help them stick in your mind, and then forever.
Once you get used to how dreams roll, stepping from first person to third ought to be easy. ^^

Use this thread to share tips, as well as a dream journal, of sorts, where you can share when you have interesting dreams or even lucid ones. ^^

 

[Kylulu]

I've been trying to induce a Lucid Dream for a while now. I've gotten a few moments of clarity, but they come so unexpected that they tend to wake me up. I hear that's common, but it's still frustrating.

 

[Torack]

I've been trying lucid dreaming myself for a while because I was interested in it, the closest I got was knowing I was in a dream but I woke up; perhaps those tips you have will help out a bit!

 

[VerbalAbuse]

Lucid Dreaming

No

Let's do it

Stop

Lucid Dreaming...Let's do it

You do not want to do this, really

So, let me tell you about my experience with it.

Awhile back, my sleep schedule was all to shit. Worse than it is now, and I'm posting this at 2:20 in the morning, and I didn't sleep on Christmas Eve. So I find myself on the edge of my subconscious, and suddenly I'm drowning in my dream. I'm drowning in real life. I can tell because I'm aware, I see, but the dream is still happening I can't breath, I can't move, panic, I try to move, all I can manage is to wiggle my tongue, all the while, slowly suffocating, and panicking is only making it worse. I move my tongue the right way and I gasp as I achieve full consciousness.

You do not want to experience this. This was just an accident, and I hated it. It's not "lucid dreaming", it's SLEEP PARALYSIS and it CAN kill you, albeit in extreme circumstances.

 

[RiverNotch]

No

Stop

You do not want to do this, really

So, let me tell you about my experience with it.

Awhile back, my sleep schedule was all to shit. Worse than it is now, and I'm posting this at 2:20 in the morning, and I didn't sleep on Christmas Eve. So I find myself on the edge of my subconscious, and suddenly I'm drowning in my dream. I'm drowning in real life. I can tell because I'm aware, I see, but the dream is still happening I can't breath, I can't move, panic, I try to move, all I can manage is to wiggle my tongue, all the while, slowly suffocating, and panicking is only making it worse. I move my tongue the right way and I gasp as I achieve full consciousness.

You do not want to experience this. This was just an accident, and I hated it. It's not "lucid dreaming", it's SLEEP PARALYSIS and it CAN kill you, albeit in extreme circumstances.

But that's not exactly what we're talking about here. Lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis are very different things, with lucid dreaming being a method of dreaming and sleep paralysis being some sort of medical condition. Lucid dreaming is something you can control (in fact, that's the very point of lucid dreaming: control), while sleep paralysis is something you can't. I've experienced both, and I can tell you with a lot of confidence that they're two very different things.

Lucid dreaming is fun. I experience it every now and again, controlling the dream world as if it was my bitch (xD). Really wacky stuff... Though I kinda prefer not lucid dreaming. I dunno, being locked in the narrative of a subconscious-controlled dream, it's just more exciting... more unpredictable. And usually more memorable for me.

And sleep paralysis is fucking scary. Oh gods, I think I wrote in my blog one instance of that... Though in the dream I was being chased by this really massive monstrosity, I could feel my body not being able to move, to breathe... never want to experience that again.

 

[Lady Sabine]

Yes, sleep paralysis is EXTREMELY different from lucid dreaming. Control is key. Lucid dreaming happens when your conscious mind is a step ahead of your body (being able to control your dream before you snap awake) whereas sleep paralysis is where your mind is step ahead of your body (body's awake but brain isn't, it feels paralyzed and you freak the fuck out). I've actually heard that lucid dreaming can help you fight sleep paralysis because it trains your mind to take control instead of just working at its own pace.
But it is a very real threat. A lot of "triggers" to help lucid dreaming often lead to it- the "set an alarm for the middle of the night", "relax as much as you can without sleeping", and "go sleep deprived until you start nodding off involuntarily" methods are all VERY prone to sleep paralysis, which is why I don't recommend any of them.


@Torack, @LuluRS
Waking up is very common. :c My recommendation would be to try and avoid an "aha!" moment. If you go "OMG I'M NOT DREAMING" and let yourself get excited, you're more likely to wake up than if you go "Meh, so it happened". I think it's linked to the whole excitement -> adrenaline -> waking up cycle, but I'm not sure. In any case, the more often you can realize, the more experienced you get, and eventually you'll find your own technique for staying in the dream. ^^

 

[fatalrendezvous]

Making a habit of turning on the lights, and looking twice at clocks and other text is also a good way to help figure out when you're lucid dreaming.

Many people report that lights simply don't work in dreams. Rooms you are in will be lit (or dark if you dreamed them that way), but if you hit a light switch nothing happens. Text in books, newspapers, magazines, on computers, on clocks, etc. also seem fine at first glance, but if you look back at them in a dream, you often see that they are just a jumbled mess of characters without actual words that mean anything.

What works most often for me is to look at the palms of my hands. There is something about it that startles your brain - because your palms don't look right in your dreams, it kind of stirs you but not so much that you wake up usually. This is typically how I achieve lucidity.

It's hard to describe the feeling you get when you achieve lucidity this way. Because your brain kind of freaks out about the appearance of your palms, it starts as an almost sinking feeling like you get when you suddenly realize things have gone to shit. Then suddenly it's like an adrenaline rush kicks in as your brain realizes you are only dreaming. Then, the world becomes your playground.

But yes, the best way to start lucid dreaming is by dream journaling.

Also, while VerbalAbuse had a bad experience with it (and I encourage him to try it again!), sleep paralysis is a rare co-occurrence with lucid dreaming. The fortunate (or I guess unfortunate?) thing about it is that you're really just losing breath in your sleep. Even if you were to actually choke yourself out and fall unconscious, once you lost consciousness your body would begin to regulate itself as normal. This is the same reason we can't hold our breaths and kill ourselves. Once we pass out, we start breathing again.

 

[Lady Sabine]

Thank you, @fatalrendezvous. ^^ Excellent pieces of advice. Really, anything with a distinct pattern your brain will be unlikely to replicate exactly. It's all in the way we process things - our minds don't consciously take in every detail, so when we're projecting images outwardly, we rarely capture the details correctly. Think about the skyline or the treeline outside your window. Can you recreate it exactly from memory? Probably not. Routines are the enemy of detail. But can you easily recognize when that skyline or treeline is wrong? Think like tetris. The things that go right vanish, but the things that go wrong pile up. It's only a matter of time before your brain catches on that something isn't quite right.

The best sensation I can think of for describing the waking process within a dream is a sudden shift in focus, like when you've been reading for hours and suddenly you look at something several yards away. There's that weird shift as your mind gets used to the idea of objects further than a few inches from your nose. ^^ It's quite unique... and varies from person to person. A falling sensation is quite common, and I've gotten that once or twice.

 

[Torack]

So I followed the advice posted on here to achieve lucid dreaming, namely questioning how I got to where I was and looking at my palms and I achieved lucidity! It was completely awesome!

 

[Lady Sabine]

Dude! That's great! :D
How much do you remember of the dream? I would strongly recommend you write it all down and relive the dream as often as possible. For me, at least, there's a definite connection between one lucid dream at the last. Achieving multiple lucid dreams in a row is much easier than trying to start again from scratch. ^^

 

[Torack]

I remember quite a bit, but it was a short-lived, though. I think because I was doing too many crazy things all at the same time, like making NY appear in middle of the a desert, spawning a shit load of dragons, imagining up a massive war, and spawning a giant floating pirate ship.

 

[fatalrendezvous]

Lol, that's nuts! I usually just fly =P

 

[Lady Sabine]

I'm pretty big on the creative world thing as well. ^^ It's like suddenly going from live mode to build/buy in The Sims. XD All of a sudden I can put anything anywhere... or do anything, anywhere.

 

[Fijoli]

I check to see if light switches work, if they don't I know I'm dreaming. unless....the power is out. lol. looking at digital clocks works for me too. Most of the time I am letting myself go, letting my subconscious just take over.

 

[RiverNotch]

Lol, that's nuts! I usually just fly =P

Usually what I do too. But then when I fly, I end up getting sucked back into the unreal reality of the dream, so that oddly enough I remember the finale of the experience as something completely against my will.

 

[TatteredWings]

Shortly after reading this I proceeded to to to sleep, and had a dream. Not a lucid one but hey. I can't remember the first part at all already but the part I do remember was like this.

I was watching over the entire scene(I am usually watching my dreams rather than being a character in them. Kinda like watching a movie.) where a king who was blonde with long hair I believe, was talking to his queen. The queen had quite long dark brown hair. And she was getting very upset.
"But what about our daughter?" The king asked.
"You know I love her, but this was not the life I wanted or asked for when I left way homeland." The queen looks sadly out the window and sighs. "It's time I went home." She then looked sad but determined.
"No, please don't(he might have said her name here but I can't recall). Please."
She patted his cheek gave a last quick smile and ran to the window. Where she perched herself as two enormous wings unfurled from her back. They where reddish purple, and torn a bit in places. "I'm going home!" She called into the wind before leaping from the tower window, and flying away towards the mountains. The king was horribly upset standing by the window reaching for his beloved. Then he turned back to the nearly empty room. The only things in there were the small table in front of the window that he was sitting on, a colorful rug in the middle of the floor, and a square wooden chest on the other side of the room and to the left. Deciding he shouldn't do anything stupid, for he had a daughter to take care of he left the tower walking slowly down stairs.

Time passes and it's years later.
The young princess looks a lot like her mother, but her hair color is a beautiful mix of her parents. But she seems upset standing in the courtyard with her arms crossed in front her chest. The king is wearing a very worn out look.
"It's not fare. I get dirty stares because of her. Why did you have to go off thinking it was okay to marry a demon!" She screams her face red with frustration.
"I loved her. And loved you." The king replies.
Growling the girl turns around and balls her hands into fists.

Then some time passes and the king and princess are making their way to the mountain.
They happen upon a village, largely populated but smart mice. (I forget what else lived there.) When seemingly enraged at being woken by someone a bear tears through the trees. The rest of the dream consisited of running around and fighting/ trying to lead the bear away. (Can't remember it well enough to describe.)

But yeah that was my dream.