dream fragment

A lot of what I see people complaining about on this forum is the fact that their lucid dreams don't last longer than 6-8 seconds, or that they find that they instantly wake up after becoming lucid. This is the brain's natural reaction to the dreamer waking up- as lucid dreaming is the product of your conscious mind is waking up.

As a child, I had no idea what lucid dreaming was, but I found that in moments of extreme discomfort or panic within a dream- such as when I was having a nightmare or such- I was able to wake myself up by turning to face the monster and shouting "I don't want to have this dream anymore!" This was the "Nightmare escape button, if you will.

The act of realising that you are within a dream is often what causes you to wake up- as the main function of a dream is to keep the brain and body in a hibernated state so that it can heal itself etc. In other words, The sole purpose of a dream is to keep the dreamer from waking up.

Even when, within the dream, I make some idle comment such as "I'm dreaming, aren't I?" or "Is this a dream?", I will often shake it off. Another time, I realised that

As an adult, I find that my nightmares rarely revolve around anything as obvious as monsters- so it is, in general, much harder to work out that I am dreaming. However, things that have been known to trigger this realisation are:

- The inability to read. While I have succeeded in reading towards the beginning and end of dreams- i.e., when I was about to wake up, or I was only just falling asleep- the rest of the time, the part of the brain that processes writing is fast asleep. In many cases, the inability to read has been what caused me to realise that I was dreaming.

- Strange clock faces Once in a dream, I looked at my clock and was shocked to realise that it was all blurry. i couldn't tell the time at all. This was what lead me to realise I was dreaming.

- The ability to fly This is a tricky one. While there are plenty of times in which I have happily accepted my new superpower as fact within the dream, there have been a few times in which I looked down at my crossed legs and realised it was an "unnatural" flying position, or looked down at my bent and misshapen legs and realised that I was dreaming. Other times, I have experienced the whooping sensation of falling in the pit of my stomach- a sensation I thoroughly hate- and have found that I ended up closing my eyes and willing myself to slow the fall. It is there, suspended in midair, that I realise I am dreaming. Then, suddenly, lucid dreaming allows me to fly as fast as I like, but without any of the unpleasant side effects that come from speeding.