Lucid dreaming... how do you take full control?

[XtremelyBaneful]

tl;dr at the bottom

Sometimes in a dream I am lightly aware of the fact that I am dreaming. But me as an entity in my dream, I don't want to tell myself that too much because if I think about it too much I'll just wake up, since I know that what I'm in is not a reality.

So last night, I forgot some of the context of my dream but I remember entering the outskirts of a city, and since I knew I was dreaming I thought to myself in the inception movie style - "I hope I have enough genuine inspiration to be able to continue building the city in my mind as I continue to go into it, coz all I see now from here is the skyline"

so I was in the outskirts of the city, it looked sort of like a shipping area. But anyways I enter what looks like a 3 story parking lot with a park on the side, I see some young people and I ask them if I could have a bike or a longboard or something so I could venture into the city. One of them said to go down to the lower level and take a car. And I'm like... "and hot wire it?" and they're like "yeah".

so I go down there, open the door and attempt to hot wire, now reminding myself that I'm dreaming I'm able to do it and I'm like "hell yeah!" the car starts off slow, but in time I'm in the middle of traffic telling myself "wow I hope my dreaming ability's integrity lasts" and then the dream goes all crazy and tornadoes pop in and yeah. soon enough i end up on the tippy top of a sky scraper, desperately trying to STAND on it

NOW thinking to myself, "I KNOW I'm dreaming, why can't I just stand on this thing? Why can't I make myself do it? Why do I have fear of falling?"

if you're in a lucid dream, how do you take full control? how do you avoid any doubts

and how do you avoid waking up by constantly reminding yourself that you're dreaming and what you're in is not a reality? or maybe that's just a problem of mine.

 

[KevanG]

I usually just notice that I'm dreaming and then I give myself a force of will to take control or not. If it's interesting I'll just let it play out and see what happens if it's boring or annoying than I usually change it or wake up to get out of it.

I learned how to do it as a kid because I love horror movies but I used to get a lot of nightmares. After awhile it just became second nature to modify my dreams.

The easiest way to modify and without waking up is to give it subtle nudges without trying to force anything. It takes practice but once you figure it out it's a lot of fun.

 

[NewYorkSpider]

I've read that if you write down the dreams you have and read them over every once in awhile, you'll trigger something in your dream that will make you realize that you're dreaming. Sometimes this could take up to months for it to happen. Most time when you realize you're dreaming, you'll wake up suddenly. Others could last for several minutes.

 

[Victarion]

Lucid dreaming is the key to power. I travelled the world when it was young while Lucid dreaming. My travels took me to the earth, fire, water, and air peoples' lands. I fought the scaled apes and killed their dragons. Then I became their sorcerer-king.

 

[DarknessOfDeath]

Maybe I should start writing my dreams down cause seriously, they can help further along on my stories that I write. Dreams can go a long ways. Sometimes I wonder to myself, why do I dream about such things knowing they'll never going to happen for reals?

 

[DarkSentinel]

Some of my dreams are ****ing weird. I'd like to achieve lucidity at least once.

 

[Sawyer]

I think I've had a lucid dream once or twice. I don't remember the actual content because the memory of the dreams faded after a certain amount of time, but it was weird as s***.

 

[Duke]

I think I've had a lucid dream once or twice. I don't remember the actual content because the memory of the dreams faded after a certain amount of time, but it was weird as s***.

Lemme guess.....something to do with Cavill.

 

[DarkSentinel]

Was it the one where you reenacted the bondage scene from Pulp Fiction with Henry Cavill?

 

[Sawyer]

Lemme guess.....something to do with Cavill.

Was it the one where you reenacted the bondage scene from Pulp Fiction with Henry Cavill?

You two don't know me!!!

 

[DarkSentinel]

We know you better than you know yourself.


Francis.

 

[Jesse]

I don't think I started dreaming lucidly until I was telling a friend of mine about a nightmare I had where someone shot me. He told me if something like that happens again to just rewind time because you can literally do anything you want in your dreams.

Which reminded me of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream" where everyone in NYC fall asleep and what their dreaming becomes reality. At the end Janine dreams she's a Ghostbuster and stops the villain.

Since then I've had very few nightmares and I can always tell when I'm dreaming because I have the abilities to fly, rewind time, super strength and my pockets are always full of cash.

 

[KevanG]

Some of my dreams are ****ing weird. I'd like to achieve lucidity at least once.

A lot of my dreams are weird. Eventually I just say enough is enough I'm taking control. It's less forcing it to change since that usually wakes you up and more guiding it. After a while you get a good idea how much you can push before it breaks.

 

[Wildcard]

I think I've had a lucid dream once or twice. I don't remember the actual content because the memory of the dreams faded after a certain amount of time, but it was weird as s***.

This pretty much sums it up for me as well.

 

[jmc]

I've been aware that I'm in a dream a couple of times, I do remember it feeling real, mostly because I was dreaming of my bedroom, sadly no Inception like physics were involved lol. Better than sleep paralysis though which I get far more often. That ain't fun.

 

[DarkSentinel]

I don't think I've ever had sleep paralysis.

 

[jmc]

Try and imagine yourself being mentally awake but your body not responding in any way.

 

[PacificBoy]

I usually just notice that I'm dreaming and then I give myself a force of will to take control or not. If it's interesting I'll just let it play out and see what happens if it's boring or annoying than I usually change it or wake up to get out of it.

That's how it is for me. I'm almost always flying when I'm lucid-dreaming. It's probably my most frequently activated physics-bending dreamscape ability (my subconscious is probably telling me something heh). Tends to be of the lighter, ethereal variety though -- leaping into the air, hovering, gliding, falling on a breeze. Truly dream-like.

Try and imagine yourself being mentally awake but your body not responding in any way.

Had it once, and I got the classic old hag one. Frickin' terrifying.

 

[jmc]

I will say I have on at least two occasions worked I was dreaming and it's because there were supernatural events taking place, someone was yanking at my leg and arm, like a 'ghost' or 'spirit' or something, and it felt genuinely real. However my inner skeptic was like 'this is weird, oh I'm dreaming, time to wake up jmc'. Sure enough I woke up and everything was as it should have been. I can actually understand why people think they are visited by supernatural things because the mind is very powerful in creating stuff like that.

 

[Alien Anal]

I often have quite long and vivid dreams most nights. one method that i have tried a few times when dreaming and becoming aware of it is to status focusing on the thing i can see in the dream and try think about them ie what color it is and where it sits within the dream.

This may not work for you but you can try

 

[Victarion]

I've had the sleep paralysis thing. No hags, but I had the shadow person at the edge of my vision. Anyone ever have a sensation of falling while laying in bed, and then jerking or starting all of a sudden?

 

[Godzilla2000]

I remember a dream I had where I was being chased by Jason and I lucidly decided to whip out a hairbrush to defend myself. Oddly enough that scared him away.

 

[Mee]

if you're in a lucid dream, how do you take full control? how do you avoid any doubts

and how do you avoid waking up by constantly reminding yourself that you're dreaming and what you're in is not a reality? or maybe that's just a problem of mine.

TRAINING, is nothing.


WILL, is everythnig.

 

[DarkSentinel]

I've had the sleep paralysis thing. No hags, but I had the shadow person at the edge of my vision. Anyone ever have a sensation of falling while laying in bed, and then jerking or starting all of a sudden?

Oh that's happened to me plenty of times. Freaks me the hell out any time.

 

[KevanG]

TRAINING, is nothing.


WILL, is everythnig.

Pretty much. It's more a matter of understanding how your dreams work and how to navigate them than it is trying to make certain things happen. I've had nightmares that were actually really cool and I egged on my mind to make it scarier. You need to know how your mind usually handles dreams in order to make it do anything with them. If you try to make it do things it doesn't naturally do then you're more likely to wake yourself up than make anything neat happen.

Take it slow at first. Try to recognize when you're dreaming and try to do little things like turning your head to look around a bit. Explore the dream bit by bit, see if you can do things that wouldn't make a lot of sense. I've had a number of recurring dreams where I'm floating down the sidewalk slowly, literally at a walking pace, sitting cross legged in the air but I only have a vague control over it so I'll drift into the street and cars would swerve to avoid me. I've caught myself thinking "Can I just go faster?" but I don't. I've never really been able to control that dream or nudge it.