Timothy Paradox

Techniques

I'm listing some techniques I've tried throughout the years, what has worked and what hasn't.

Thruster hands

Basically, you imagine you're Iron Man, and your hands are jet or rocket engines. This involves holding your hands down by your sides, like Iron Man, or it won't work. That's an unfortunate limitation. It's worked for me once or twice, but it's not instinctive as I like having my arms in front of me in the Superman-pose.

Verbal commands

Much like how some LD'ers shout "increase clarity" to improve the stability of their dreams, I've found other dream abilities are equally susceptible to verbal commands. While flying, I shout "faster!", and I actually feel a burst of acceleration propelling me faster. And it works almost every time, up to ludicrous speeds.

'Reaching' forward

Pretty such the Superman pose. I find that by "reaching out" in front of you, it's kind of like a mental cue that you want to head towards this thing you're reaching out to, helping "mental propulsion".

Problems

Gaining altitude/transitioning

After all this time, I still have trouble gaining altitude vertically, maintaining altitude when flying horizontally, and especially transitioning from vertical flight (straight up) to horizontal flight forwards.

Perhaps I could try verbal commands to make it easier? Like "higher!" to climb, "forwards!" to go from vertical to horizontal.

Or avoid this problem entirely by not going straight up, but by taking a running start and climbing gradually. It's a lot easier.

Maneuvering in the air

I find it hard to make maneuvers, for example to dodge a building or other obstacle, while flying horizontally at speed. It's almost like real-life laws like inertia and aerodynamics apply to me. Turning feels hard, and I have to really physically turn my body and then apply intense concentration to make my body actually fly in that new direction (or inertia would just make me continue drifting in the previous direction).

Other

Speed. My flight speed feels very variable, and changes from dream to dream. Sometimes I reach speeds that feel like barely 200 mp/h. Sometimes closer a 800 mp/h, or even speeds that are completely impossible to real-world standards, like Europe-USA in 10 seconds. Not sure what causes these variations. Sometimes I just can't go beyond a certain speed, no matter how hard I try.