Going to Sleep to Dream

Lucid dreaming has always been near and dear to my heart. I have had vivid and lucid dreams since childhood. The first time I recall becoming lucid was during a flying dream. I was up in the air, flying like an airplane, just cruising around. Eventually I realized I was dreaming and started exploring the dream world. I still have flying dreams quite frequently, this has become a good reality check. If you're flying then you're dreaming!

For the past few years I have had a dream journal, this has helped with dream recall, among other things. On my days off I WILD, set my alarm clock at 3:30 am and get out of bed for about 20 minutes, then back to sleep. I also practice reality checks through out the day, can I breath with my mouth and nose closed? No, I'm awake, yes I'm dreaming.

My husband barely ever remembers his dreams, in fact he swears he rarely dreams at all. We just started taking vitamins at about the middle of February, that are supposed to help induce more vivid dreams. This has helped him to recall a few of his dreams, unfortunately not every night. So this raises some questions like: why does dream recall vary do vastly? why do people have lucid dreams? Is there anything out there to help stimulate lucid dreams or dream recall?

The term Lucid Dreaming was coins by a Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden.

Just in case there's someone that's not familiar with lucid dreaming here's a quick definition

Link

The basic definition of lucid dreaming requires nothing more than becoming aware that you are dreaming. However, the quality of lucidity can vary greatly.

Lucidity is not synonymous with dream control. It is possible to be lucid and have little control over dream content, and conversely, to have a great deal of control without being explicitly aware that you are dreaming.

There was a study done on dream recall, why some remember dreams, others don't They suggesting it's due to alpha waves,

When asleep, both groups showed similar changes in brain activity in response to hearing their names, which were played quietly enough not to wake them. However, when awake, high recallers showed a more sustained decrease in a brain wave called the alpha wave when they heard their names, compared with the low recallers.

A well-established theory suggests that a decrease in the alpha wave is a sign that brain regions are being inhibited from responding to outside stimuli. Studies show that when people hear a sudden sound or open their eyes, and more brain regions become active, the alpha wave is reduced. In the study, as predicted, both groups showed a decrease in the alpha wave when they heard their names while awake. But high recallers showed a more prolonged decrease, which may be a sign their brains became more widely activated when they heard their names. In other words, high recallers may engage more brain regions when processing sounds while awake, compared with low recallers, the researchers said. While people are asleep, the alpha wave behaves in the opposite way —it increases when a sudden sound is heard. Scientists aren't certain why this happens, but one idea is that it protects the brain from being interrupted by sounds during sleep, Ruby said.

Alpha Waves

Alpha waves are one type of brain waves detected either by electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) and predominantly originate from the occipital lobe during wakeful relaxation with closed eyes. Alpha waves are reduced with open eyes, drowsiness and sleep.

So alpha waves occur in the occipital lobe and aid in dream recall and a neuroscientist suggests the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex aids in recognizing you are dreaming:

Neuroscientist J. Allan Hobson has hypothesized what might be occurring in the brain while lucid. The first step to lucid dreaming is recognizing one is dreaming. This recognition might occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is one of the few areas deactivated during REM sleep and where working memory occurs.

Lucid Dream



The brain is such a complex organ! I find it interesting that multiple areas of the brain are involved in dreaming. Obviously there's is some much more going on in our brains while dreaming, such as the REM cycle, but this is new information for me and I thought that other dreamers may enjoy. Dreams can feel so real it makes me wonder how they're even possible.

What is out there that can help induce or stimulate lucid dreams, so they happen more often? I am currently dream journaling, using reality checks, WILD, meditation and vitiams (melatonin and valerian root)

WILD Wake Initiated Lucid Dream

Reality Check


What techniques are some other ATSers using for lucid dreams? Any suggestions or cool lucid dreaming stories?

PS

There is this weird headband for lucid dreaming, not sure about this one!

Can a headband help you take control of your dreams?

Fiona Apple said she doesn't go to sleep to dream, but I do!!

reply to post by Jennyfrenzy


A semi off-topic question: I noticed that you said that your dream journal has helped you with other things besides lucid dreaming. What are those other things? The reason I'm asking is because I'm flirting with the idea of using a dream journal, but I've only seen that it benefits having lucid dreams. I've had very many lucid dreams, but they are not as "fun" to me as they normally seem to be to everyone else. Therefore, I'm not that crazy about lucid dreams. But I am interested in knowing what else they've helped you with.


ETA (before the ETA ): I take it back. I've seen the benefits being described as better dream recall. You're thread describing lucid dreams threw me off, and made me mistakenly remember the benefits as being lucid dreams. Sorry! But I can see how they would help with lucid dreams.

reply to post by brazenalderpadrescorpio


The other things the journal helps with is recognizing what my subconscious knows and my conscious mind doesn't. For example I have a reoccurring dream I am late for school. (Been out of school for 18 years, lol) When I have that dream I know there's most likely something in my real life that I'm putting off doing.

If I'm having a bad day I'll write about it in the journal. It may have nothing to do with dreaming but it helps to get it out, seeing my feelings on paper helps me get them out in a more positive direction. (I have a tend to jump the gun and go off on people for minor things or misunderstandings.)

Hope that makes sense

reply to post by Jennyfrenzy


Wow, that's interesting. That definitely makes me want to start a dream journal! Do you recommend writing in your dream journal as soon as you wake up? The only thing is that, for me, when I wake up I have to get going (I don't always have time to linger, and write in a dream journal soon after awakening). I don't know if you have any tips for that. Sorry for the barrage of questions.

I'll second that, this thread makes me want to start a dream journal too. The connection you made about being late for school and you putting something import off shot my mind off into another direction in how to think about what is happening in our dreams and make sense of them.

I've always been a lucid dreamer came natural to me. Accept I sleep because I quit. lol

In all seriousness though starting a dream journal seems like a really good idea I'll have to start doing.

reply to post by brazenalderpadrescorpio


If you can, do it first thing in the morning. I give myself an extra 10 minutes on workdays. Sometimes something that you see or happens to you during the day will cause you to remember a dream. When that happens I use the notes in my phones and transfer it when I get home.

Love talking about dreams

Have you had any interesting dreams lately?

reply to post by Timing


You should do it! It's fun to look back to an old journal to see what was going in in your mind a year ago.

I also reaffirm my reality checks in there and give myself tasks, such as trying out different methods of inducing a lucid dream (WILD or FILD).

reply to post by Jennyfrenzy


I will definitely start a dream journal, I'll have to look more into WILD sounds interesting.

I still remember this dream I had when I was 15 and wanted a Chevy Tahoe and changed the color of the truck. I've only had one dream where I was flying from what I can remember.

reply to post by Jennyfrenzy


My dreams are very bizarre. My hunch is that they are odder than most people's dreams. I think that the reason being is because I have schizophrenia, and have a creative background as well. The last dream I had was that I was in some kind of amusement park (I get that dream a lot), and every twist and turn was leading me deeper. Towards the end of that dream, people were just lounging on the slopes of parts of the amusement park as if it were a regular park instead of just an amusement park and it seemed like I knew these people (possibly from high school). At the very end of the dream, I was analyzing all the people and things that I loved on a list called Oaxaca. The list showed various sundry people that I was not consciously aware of, and right before I woke up, the list showed foods that I liked (mostly Mexican food, even though my taste in food is international). Right after I woke up I realized that the reason I may have seen the name Oaxaca is because I like Mexican food of that region a good deal (even though I can't remember a specific dish right now; a popular Mexican restaurant in my area was featuring Oaxacan food a while back). I know it sounds weird, but that's what my dream was.

I tend to have a lot of recurring dreams. But the variation within the dream is what's different. Also what's interesting is not just the content of the dreams, but the feeling I get from them. They tend to have a futuristic feel to them. That could be because of the music I hear -- I hear a lot of techno. Lol.

the other night i mastered the art of flight. i have had many dreams i have the ability of flight, but this one was like me discovering it for the first time and me mastering it. in my dream if i concentrated enough in the back and top of my head i was able to float. i would then levitate to the ceiling, eventually my orientation ending up parallel to the ceiling. Over time I learned to concentrate this mindset and control my fight pattern. it was so intense, for a moment i thought i actually gained the power of flight in my physical life.

all this makes me interested in edgar cayce's works and the practice/pre-suggestion for lucid dreaming. can anyone supply any info or references for the control of meditation/lucid dreaming? i know that cayce and tibetan monks were/are able to place themselves anywhere, in any situation, through the power of meditation and lucid dreaming.

here are the resources i can stir up to kick everything off:

52 ways to lucid dream

10 things youd didnt know about lucid dreaming

TED Talk on lucid dreaming

There's a commercial product called Alpha Brain, which is marketed as a more general mental stimulant, but which is widely reported to have a significant impact on lucid dreaming as a side effect. It has a money back guarantee for a month worth, so try it cost free if you like.

Don't know if this is called lucid dreaming , but I had a dream about a week or a bit less ago , one of those uncomfortable feeling ones.
It goes like this ,I was at the train station and stupidly jumped on the back of a suburban train . You know like those kids that hang of the back off them ( Is it called train surfing ?)
Anyway I have attached myself to the back right hand upper corner of the train carriage , and the train takes off and I am looking forward and a overpasss/tinybridge comes up and electrical wires and I am very frightened and try to move my hands lower down as , I think I am gonna get hit by the wires , then the train speeds up and goes around a bend and I am freaking and inside screaming lol ,panic fills me , there is a slight gap and the next thing you know I am jumping off at the next station.

I told my husband about the dream , about three days later on the news comes a story about a kid jumping off a train onto the platform while it was still going , he was ok ,took a bit of skin off though. It was like a weird coincidence.

I was trying to dream , I have been experimenting , just a bit with trying to induce or just remember my dreams lately and I discovered maybe sleep deprivation , or rather broken sleep could work like you said I might sleep for three or four hours wake up ,get up ,do some stuff then go back to sleep and that worked for me. Also I notice that too much sleep and I get dreams that feature that paralyzed feeling like a bit above stuck to the train nothing I could do about it.

There is something I take that makes it hard for me to remember my dreams hence that's why I have been trying these things .
Sometimes the fog is better than the real world, at the same time I am respectful of pushing the boat out.

This might not even be what your talking about ,just felt like a dribble , better go get a bib lol cheers 1%

reply to post by hexillion


Ill check it out, thanks for the info

reply to post by nomoregmo


Thanks for the links

reply to post by my1percent


Maybe it was an inutitive dream? I really think there are a few people that can see things coming in the future via their dreams. A friend of mine has a dream that her teeth fall out and a few days later someone she knows passes away, she said it has happpened more than once.

Dreams are not dreams, they are our astral bodies visiting other dimensions. Oobe or obe, out of body experience and other great information and videos by Rich2150x on YouTube holds the answers you are looking for.

reply to post by Jennyfrenzy


I have always loved my dreams & lucid dreams because they have always been more vivid, more interesting and somehow more REAL than real life. I have had both lucid dreams and sleep paralysis (consequential OBEs) since my early teens. The lucid dream that really got to me was the one where I was balancing on the tippy top branches of a tree in my mom's front yard when someone on the ground, a blond male called up to me "Hey, don't you wish you could do that in real life?" My best lucid dreams have come from the time where I sleep until I wake up naturally without an alarm, or when I get up for some reason and then go back to sleep to wake up without an alarm. The alarm is the problem. Even if I was having a wonderfully vivid dream the alarm just obliterates it...

vivid1975
Dreams are not dreams, they are our astral bodies visiting other dimensions. Oobe or obe, out of body experience and other great information and videos by Rich2150x on YouTube holds the answers you are looking for.

The topic of dreams, LD and OOBES or even "alternate realities" is utra-interesting to me so I wouldn't even know where to start.

For starters, what I find very fascinating is the fact(s) that I often am in alternate scenarios/reoccurring dreams as if any of those locations or settings would be extremely familiar to me, as if you were shifted into a parallel existence where basically all is different, the location, the people, your friends, etc... but in the dream it seems normal and familiar to you.

The second extremely fascinating thing is that we find ourselves in whatever dream scenarios but HAVE NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER OF OUR "REAL" LIFE. How can that be? If I were to believe that dreams are only a "function" of our brains which is "imagining" scenarios.... (as some people may well state)...how is it possible that our entire "normal" life is basically blocked and is not remembered?

(Say, if I dream tonight I am living in XYZ and I have a job as X, wouldn't at some point my memory/brain kick in and tell me that isn't the case because "in reality" I might not have that job and possibly never ever was in XYZ in my life? All the memories of the "real life" are gone like it never happened, like the "me" dreaming is a true "alternate" person....if you know what I mean : )

I am also an extremely Vivid and lucid dreamer and often know I am dreaming but have done little dream work.

Recently after years of not flying I flew again this was after an extremely painful event that I stood up for myself about although I am unsure if the two are related.

At first it was like I could fly but had little control but then realized I was dreaming and BOOM I shot off like a bolt of lightening. It was cloudy in the dream and there were these creatures down below so I flew down to talk to them. They were frightened of me and began making a portal to disappear into. As a landed their leader told me I wasn't ready to meet them and left as well and I woke up. Felt wonderful to fly again I had forgotten how much I missed it, felt even cooler to be able to control it, I used to just make really high jumps but this was sustained controlled flight! I did wonder about the creatures though...

This is more what it is like when I dream!