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Something strange has been happening to me lately, my gf has to wake up at 6 to go to her job so I wake up with her to brew her some coffee etc and then go back to bed when she leaves. Now every couple of days, instead of just falling asleep I go straight from being awake to being in some kind of dream state, except that I'm very consciously aware of the fact that I'm dreaming & can control to some degree what happens in my dream. It's very limited for now but it's a lot of fun, I've been trying to make myself fly & float around and generally make strange things happen. Some googling led to a wikipedia article on "Lucid Dreaming" which resembles closely what happens to me, eg one big part that I've noticed is the "false awakening" where I dream that I wake up and go to the bathroom and brush my teeth etc. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

Never had Lucid Dreaming...

I do have sleep paralysis/hypnagogia few times per year... It's a REM phase dream-like-state... and if you manage to let it go (because it feels like pain) you actually get into hallucinations!

One of them is that I'm flying through universe at great speed... I stopped at Neptune, I was afraid that I will not be able to find my way back home... as I stopped I heard Miles Davis playing trumpet above Neptune!

It mostly gets into dark visions though...

Once I had feeling that I was sucked into a great white tunnel in which I was floating then it opened up, and people with masks were above me, huge robotic hand cutting my belly and putting chip like implants into my heart!

One of the scientist was having a eulogy how "it's not so good for me to fly so far away from home!"

Yeah, it's a tripped out state... and people tend to connect it with "voodoo" or with alien abductions!

At first I was afraid of it - but now it's just that I try to let it go...

For many years I've been able somewhat control some of my dreams - sort of as you describe - dreaming but being "aware" of the fact it is a dream.
It's handy when dreaming something you do not want to dream, then I either "decide" (in the dream) to just wake up, or start changing it.

There's no real pattern to it for me, but I just "know" that I'm dreaming and therefore am in control.

So I am guessing some of you saw Inception? Not a bad movie.

Tricky wrote:So I am guessing some of you saw Inception? Not a bad movie.

Nope - gonna wait for the BluRay release.

Tricky wrote:So I am guessing some of you saw Inception? Not a bad movie.

Movie of the year... But Nolan is a crazy guy, so it's no wonder... Just love his work generally...

The best part was perhaps the music, you can't beat Hans Zimmer. That being said, I thought the movie was good, if a tad predictable. But that's all I have to say about it. Not spoiling anything for Xandax here. I love Danes.

Except for Viggo Mortensen, I adore him. DENMARK YEAH!

*coughs*

At times I too experience lucid dreaming. Being in control of your dreams and being completely sure that "it is just a dream" happens every now and then to me. Seems to come in waves though, where it can happen to me during several weeks in a row and then be completely gone for a couple of weeks/months.

Irony?

I'm reviving a semi-old thread here, but hey, I'm apparently, a semi-relic, myself so I find it almost appropriate. *waves*

As far as lucid dreaming goes...considering your situation Tricky, I would say that the fact you are waking up, then going back to sleep sort of nulls you of that process if you aren't sleeping for more than 2-3 hours or between when you fall back asleep and start experiencing these things. Your body has to be in a sleep state for a certain amount of time to actually do any sort of dreaming. I have found many people that assume that the strange dream state that happens where a person is bordering on sleep, while utilizing their imagination in order to attempt to fall asleep as lucid dreaming.

As far as differing dream states, there are several that I have experienced. Most strange of all, is the random, scattered dreams I have had throughout my life that have came true. Premonitions people call them, however, I have had too many dreams to count, some as old as 20 years ago, that happen randomly one day, in real life. These are set, and you cannot alter, or escape them, like a lucid dream.

To be honest, I haven't really dealt with lucid dreaming more than several times. However, several friends of mine do so as a sort of sub-sect of religion, attempting to understand them. Their beliefs vary, as they do not know each other and have different backgrounds. Some believe, that the spirit, or soul of a person explores another plane, or reality while sleeping. Others believe that their mind can control their dreams like it is a video game, or movie, in which certain rules apply, and sticking to them grants them power to manipulate things.