Lucid Dreaming

Have any of you heard of this before?
it's a really interesting subject that i read about a few years ago but never really got around to trying.

Some information on Lucid Dreaming

The basic definition of lucid dreaming requires nothing more than becoming aware that you are dreaming. However, the quality of lucidity can vary greatly. When lucidity is at a high level, you are aware that everything experienced in the dream is occurring in your mind, that there is no real danger, and that you are asleep in bed and will awaken shortly. With low-level lucidity you may be aware to a certain extent that you are dreaming, perhaps enough to fly or alter what you are doing, but not enough to realize that the people are dream representations, or that you can suffer no physical damage, or that you are actually in bed.

And the part that interests me the most:

Often, the first thing that attracts people to lucid dreaming is the potential for wild adventure and fantasy fulfillment. Flying is a favorite lucid dream delight, as is sex. Many people have said that their first lucid dream was the most wonderful experience of their lives. A large part of the extraordinary pleasure of lucid dreaming comes from the exhilarating feeling of utter freedom that accompanies the realization that you are in a dream and there will be no social or physical consequences of your actions. One might think that this is a rather intellectual concept, but an ecstatic "rush" frequently arises with the first realization that one is dreaming.

The way i see it, all the time that i lose from sleeping every day could be used for fun dream adventures. and that's just awesome.

It's kind of a weird subject, but it seems really interesting.

Lucid dreaming can be hard to achieve at your own will, i know because a few weeks back i tried to. I should start over and see if i manage it, since quite honestly there is good amount of untaped potential there.

Also you could research on Binaural and Isochronic Tones, it says that it help reaching a perfect state of mind for lucid dreaming.

[MENTION=5555]Zelkova[/MENTION]; knows a lot about Lucid Dreaming. That he does.

I used to have recurring nightmares when I was younger and my therapist taught me to essentially tell myself it was a dream while I was asleep, which meant I'd bring myself out of them. I never used to be able to 'control' them, but if I was conscious I'd be able to wake myself up. Sometimes I'm able to do stuff while I'm dreaming now (like change the direction I'm walking, or pick things up), but for the past few weeks I've been having trouble sleeping and haven't been remembering any of my dreams at all.

I feel like I don't dream often enough to bother training myself to realize it. Instead, when I DO finally get a good dream, I feel anxious and guilty about doing "something" (whatever that something may be cough), and then I don't do it and wake up disappointed Lucid dreaming suuuure would be nice some nights, though.

Heard of this before, several sources on the internet about it and there's an entire subreddit on the matter too. It's nothing I'd ever try any time soon though, already pretty disconnected from reality without the need to leap into my own dreams (the vast majority of which I don't remember/don't have). Have also read it can get unbelievably terrifying if something goes wrong, with sleep paralysis and horrific hallucinations being potential symptoms of screwing up.

 Spoiler

That said, even if I were in any state to try they wouldn't be very interesting. The last dream I actually recall was a kind of festival being held in some exaggerated school hall. The big events of that dream were wandering among the crowds alone, watching the fireworks since the ceiling was immeasurably high and ordering a sweet sour chicken and rice from a chinese stall whose staff didn't change their expressions from a old smile. When I recieved my order it had no chicken or sweet sour sauce, just rice. At this point the staff proceeded to ignore my complaints and serve the other faceless patrons. Interesting stuff, totally worth risking unbridled terror to experience first-hand.

if you purposely dream of having sex while lucid dreaming, will you get nocturnal emissions ?

I'd really like to try this, but since I hardly ever remember my dreams, I've been trying to do that first (not really a point in lucid dreaming if you can't remember it, right?). I basically write down any dream I manage to remember (it's called a dream journal, might be in the information links, haven't read those yet it's in there).

I have personally experienced this many times, whenever I want to Lucid dream I simply Start thinking of a situation or an "adventure", while keeping my body still. Staying still is the hardest part, since your body checks if you are awake by giving you itches everywhere, if you can overcome this you will start to go into a dream state. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

[MENTION=1683]Scaeva[/MENTION]; You will always remember lucid dreaming. Or at least most of it.

if you purposely dream of having sex while lucid dreaming, will you get nocturnal emissions ?

Probably, maybe.
I suppose the only thing stopping you from acting out your dreams is the sleep paralysis, but i think that only affects movement, and with enough mental stimulation i imagine it would be possible

A year back I tried to achieve lucid dreaming in the way Solarboy has explained before, but that didn't really cut it for me. I usually ended up falling asleep without realising I was dreaming or only being aware of it for the first three minutes or so.
Instead I used a different approach for a while, it worked twice but that's because I stopped doing it after a about a month.
What I was doing was repeating a standard set of questions at random points during the day. The ones I used are in the spoiler down here. The first time I asked them to myself in my dream I noticed I was slipping back into reality and awaking, but I read something on the internet about running in circles to prevent that from happening and tried it. It worked. Sadly I wasn't able to control my dreams quite well, I only managed to change the location. Nevertheless it was an awesome experience.

 Spoiler

I used the questions 'Who am I?', 'Where am I?', 'How old am I?' and 'Am I dreaming?' to test if I was dreaming. The first time that I remember asking it in a dream was when I was in a location (holiday camping) at a time it wasn't possible to be there (about a month after I left)

I have personally experienced this many times, whenever I want to Lucid dream I simply Start thinking of a situation or an "adventure", while keeping my body still. Staying still is the hardest part, since your body checks if you are awake by giving you itches everywhere, if you can overcome this you will start to go into a dream state. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

[MENTION=1683]Scaeva[/MENTION]; You will always remember lucid dreaming. Or at least most of it.

This is called the WILD method (Wake induced lucid dreaming or something along those lines), its supposed to be the most effective means of lucid dreaming/astral projecting, althoug you were doing it a little wrong, you need to stay still AND have a clear mind, you must avoid at all cost any kind of thoughs until you are completely sure your body is "Asleep". Thats when you open your "Mind" eye and can start the lucid dreaming, if you open your "Physical" Eye you will instead enter into sleep paralysis (You can hold your breath while in this state to awake), also Sleep paralysis can also let you into astral projecting but not lucid dreaming.

At least thats what i remember reading about the theme.

I have personally experienced this many times, whenever I want to Lucid dream I simply Start thinking of a situation or an "adventure", while keeping my body still.

I learned to do it when I was little by creating a staging area to enter my dreams from. Staying still has never been an issue for me, I just find a comfortable position, slow my breathing, enter my staging area and go.

I only got to the point where my memory of dreams had increased exponentially. Never true lucidity. =[

I do this randomly. Latest one I had was 2 months ago where I was fighting a piece of fanart.

This made sense in my head.

Just Lucid dreamed again yesterday, I didn't use any technique at all. I was very very very tired, I have been told that this "encourages" lucid dreaming, so maybe some of you guys and girls could reach lucid dreams by getting super tired. Also, I started lucid dreaming after waking up in the middle of the night and going to sleep again, that helps too.

I've lucid dreamed once, and that was on accident. I've looked into it before, but it never worked out. I'll try out [MENTION=4195]Slaking[/MENTION]; 's method though, I've never heard of that before.

Probably only happened to me once, and that's what led me to write a Fatal Frame II fanfic. The content of the first half of that fanfic was exactly just as I dreamed the night before, no changes whatsoever. I viewed it from the viewpoint of one of the (original) characters. Kinda felt like I was watching a movie though, and I didn't really do anything to affect the dream.

When I woke up, my first reaction was "what the fuck?", then "holy crap I've gotta get this typed out".

i tried. i felt itches all over but i failed when i "fell" and got the shock of my life jerking my whole body. staying still was no problem though.

If you are dreaming during your normal night sleep you are probably getting less rest. A deep sleep goes beyond REM and means you won't remember your dreams. I usually only remember my dreams when sleeping in sub-par conditions (fever, too cold, too hot, noisy, too bright, other diseases, etc.) so it's usually not recommended to try and dream every night.

I've never tried anything close to lucid dreaming, I guess the best I've had was during some bus trips where I'd be in a semi-awake state bouncing back and forth between asleep and awake on my seat and having wild dreams that usually ended with me feeling like I was falling forward.

The idea of Lucid Dreaming sounds cool, but I think I have enough social escapism with gaming/internet and I'm always unconsciously trying to maximize my time awake. Whenever I get long vacations again I might consider this.