Wrenching Yourself Out of a Dream

[onyxdreamer]

It just occured to me that I never had a discussion with anyone about the ability to wake yourself out of a dream by sheer will. I usually do this when I am having a nightmare or some other uncomfortable dream. Everytime, I've done it, it has felt like I was wrenching mysefl from the dream. It required amazing mental strength. Now that I understand sleep paralysis, I'm thinking that part of what makes it so hard is having to also wake up your body at the same time. Is this an ability that is common? How many of you pull yourself out of undesirable dreams?

[Smashley346]

I can usually wake myself up if I want to, when I'm lucid. I've done it for two different reasons: because the dream was boring, or because the dream was scary. I once dreamed I was walking around at night with a group of my friends and I became lucid, so I wanted to do something fun, but I couldn't get ANYONE else to do anything, they just kept walking around so I was bored and woke myself up. And another time I kept dreaming about getting hit by lightning which was pretty scary. So both times, I just concentrated on leaving the dream and started waving my hands around until I felt my bed underneath me and then I woke up. It was pretty weird the first time I did it. And most of the time it results in sleep paralysis so my mind wakes up from the dream but it takes my body a few minutes to wake up because I guess it wasn't expecting my mind to leave the dream so suddenly. And sleep paralysis is fine it's just really annoying... haha. So yes I have been able to wake myself up. Most of the time I try staying in my dreams, though, by like, spinning around or something like that...

[drewmandan]

I do that sometimes. Actually, before I began studying lucid dreaming, the paralysis that would inevitably result from prematurely exiting a dream scared me immensely. What was really scary, though, was if I got stuck in a false awakening loop. You know, you keep having to wake yourself up, only to fall back into a dream. Now, of course, I wish that would happen more often because it would make lucid dreaming so much easier. False awakenings are by far the easiest way to get into a lucid dream.

[lagunagirl]

After practice, anyone can wake themselves up from a dream. It's just another part of dream control, which everyone can work on to get better at. You just have to keep trying. Once you get your mind awake, you will more easily be able to wake your body up if it still seems to be in SP.

[drewmandan]

I have no problem waking up now. Now my problem is staying in the damn dreams.

[Godl!ke]

Hehe it's funny you say it because other than waking yourself up, why not try and change scenery (since you already know that you're dreaming and you want to "wake up") There are times when you can't always run from your problems, but you can do something to change it's path, or even solve it right away. Change the scene of the dream, for you can use the time left in that dream for yourself, don't forget that you're lucid !!

[onyxdreamer]

I think its because I'm not completely lucid. I know there are at least two posters who came up with a lucidity scale. I can't remember which ones. So I knew I was dreaming, but I wasn't lucid enough to recognize I could change the dream. Hehe it's funny you say it because other than waking yourself up, why not try and change scenery (since you already know that you're dreaming and you want to "wake up")

[snoop]

Waking myself up is too easy for me, unfortunately. It happens basically every time I try to change the scene, which involves me closing my eyes and just making everything stop. At first I thought clearing my head would make it easy for me to switch the scene, but it was just an easy way to end it instead. I've done it a few times now in DILDs where I don't think as much and do it because I think it will work, even though it won't.

[Hukif]

Waking myself is truly easy, excepting those 3 times it felt like there was someone controlling my dreams, in wich case it always finish with a FA with huge SP, tough I always notice and continue to hit family so that they will wake me <.<

[Chameleon]

Hi onyx Occasionally I have to "wrench" myself awake. I'm lucid enough to know I'm dreaming...but not enough to think further than 'I need to wake NOW!' I always try and wake gently, but if it isn't working, then I use drastic measures! These include shaking my head violently and screaming extremely loud. You can imagine what state my physical is in when I finally awake! It's interesting because whenever I do this "wrenching" scenario, I get a whooshing-like sensation. Hard to describe, but it reminds me of when you come round from an operation and as you regain consciousness, it gets faster and faster until WHAM BAM, you are suddenly shockingly back in the physical world. Cham

[Bioshock]

i got htis part down its staying in the dream thats my problem i have had two LDs both not longer than a minuet the first was about three seconds the other was about 45 seconds.

[ray]

i hate having to wrench myself awake and like Chameleon said i get the intense whooshing sensation as i pull myself out of my dream and i feel the SP lift.i only pull myself out when i am in a particularly scary scenario because i find the sensations very uncomfortable.

[Robot_Butler]

I don't like waking myself up forcefully, either. I normally end up in a FA, or some half-dream SP scenario. I wake myself up sometimes from long lucids so I will not forget them. It is always strange and uncomfortable.

[L_Dreamer]

I can wake myself up from dreams, sometimes its easy, sometimes its hard. I usually have to do something that scares or jolts me, like jumping off a cliff or getting stabbed or shot or something. Not fun.

[Siddhartha]

When i was little i often had nightmares. One way which almost always worked for me was to kill myself in the dream. Usually that meant jumping from high ground or diving into the mouth of the monster. This was a long time ago and I don't know if it would work on lucid dreams, im still new to this. Trying to simply focus on awakening used to be very hard for me. Trying to force me to open my eyes, howering just between the dreamworld and the waking world often to fall back to sleep. With training however theres no reason why you should not be able to just learn to do it with ur will imo. Waking yourself up intentionally might also be an opportunity to examine SP. If your aware the moment when ur howering between sleep and waking life it would seem logical that u should be able to experience the last elusive moments of SP.

[Videogamer 4 Life]

When I was little, I used to be fascinated (and horrified) by tornados. I used to always dream about them, and when I did, I realized it wasn't possible, since I lived in Jersey. So I would briefly become lucid, then proceed to close my eyes and will myself awake. It worked all but once, as far as I can remember.

[supreme]

oh ya i know what you mean. Sometimes its very hard to wake up from a dream and i remember times actually struggling through paralysis to get out. I could probably switch to a LD during these feelings of paralysis, but only thing on my mind at the time is to get out! That paralysis always pisses me off!

[Lucid Warrior]

I never try to wake myself up in a lucid dream, but occasionally in a regular dream it becomes uncomfortable to a point where I wake myself up, intentionally almost. and a sign this is about to happen is when my teeth fall out in the dream O_o

[archdreamer]

I have been able to pull myself out of unpleasant (nonlucid) dreams since I was very young. If my dreamself feels that the dream is going to take a bad turn, often the usual dim knowledge that a dream is occuring will come to the surface, and I will awaken semi-deliberately.

[Pip]

I remember once, a long time ago, having a nightmare. There was this evil creature/man/presence and I desperately wanted to get away because I could sense the evil in him and was terrified. So I wake myself up and am relieved for awhile and then it comes back! I am not really awake! I did this several times before I really woke up and I was exhausted.

[The Cusp]

I do it all the time. I don't really consider it wrenching my myself out of the dream, but I can certainly relate to that analogy. Only once have I not been able to wake myself, no matter how hard I tried. I was trapped in the dream. Luckily the only reason I wanted to wake up was to take notes because the lucid had been going on for so long.

[Abra]

Yesterday, I became lucid during a false awakening, and went into the woods with Elkoon. We start walking, and then I remember "Wait... If I'm dreaming, that means I fell back asleep. I was supposed to stay awake! Crap!" And I then woke up (still on time). Otherwise, I'd never forcefully wake myself. Why would I want to, when nothing can hurt me? In the one uncomfortable dream instance (crashing/high speeds), I find that continuing the dream gives way better results than trying to wake up.

[Graech]

I explored waking up from dreams in great detail between the ages of 3 and 6 when, out of necessity, I perfected it (though interestingly enough, I could not LD, and I didn't even know what an LD was). Occasionally, I would wake myself up by sheer force of will, but that is by far the most unnecessarily hard way to do it. It's just like any other Lucid power: while you can do it by sheer force of will, it's better to have a trigger that enables you to perform that power. In the case of waking up, I found the best way to wake up to either yell as loud as you can (least effective, and sometimes impossible if you're having a nightmare and have convinced yourself that you cant scream), hitting yourself (slightly more effective, but still sometimes impossible), and by killing yourself. Killing yourself is the best way, but, of course, you have to be absolutely, 100% sure that you are dreaming, and to be a bit more safe, it is best to let your nightmare kill you rather than killing yourself (i.e. with a knife). For instance, one time when I was about 6 or 7 I had the weirdest dream that I was in my friend's house which had magically become a trailer, and there was a lion (a very big one) that had eaten my friend's mom. I quickly realized that it was a dream (though I didn't realize at the time how much control I could have or that it was a lucid dream), and consequently walked right up to the lion and jumped into its mouth. After a little time (that I ascribe to my body waking up, a strange end-dream that always occured when I woke up), I woke up.

[Lunalight]

I learned how to do this when I was pretty young. (Like 7 or 8) Usually I just scream, wake up! really loud, or close and then open my eyes really fast. Then I open my real eyes and I'm awake! More often, now though I just fight or run form whatever's scaring me.

[heumy]

When I was young, I had nightmares, and I would wake myself up from them by screaming as loud as I could. I wasn't fully lucid, mainly because I didn't know about LDing. It worked very well. I felt a spiral of gaining consciousness, and it was like coming to the surface of a swimming pool. When I broke through, I was awake.