Thread: What is Your Favourite Sense in Dreams?

I like to think that our emotions are a type of sense, so I'd consider that as my favourite sense in dreams. I just love how intense we can feel emotions, but things like being able to feel a person next to you and know just who they are without having to look at them, or that inner knowing where you are sure what a certain action or thing mean/represent, or false memories...

In the conventional sense of the word , I would say touch is amazing and never fails to surprise me. Whether just walking barefoot in the dream to pushing my hand through objects and feeling it go through, it all feels amazing! But of course the whole dreamworld is amazing, so it's great in every sense

It's a tie between touch and smell. I love how everything feels in dreams, how somethings are incredibly life-like and how the stuff that can't somehow make sense; but I also love how the smells are much more intense and complex!

Touch is funny because it goes between feeling things to feeling experiences, like transforming into a wolf is cuh razy.
Taste/smell is fun because you don't always know what you are going to get.
Sight is wonderful because things are beautiful down there.
Sound is great because you can listen to music that is amazing and intricate and never been made.

I vote for sight for me. Seeing beautiful places and faces, not to mention ageless DCs. They are like watching a beautiful sunset, but a human.

I like all of them so Its hard to pick a favorite. I really like sound and touch but without sight it would be pretty boring. Eating in dreams is nice too but I feel like smell and taste don't matter to me much. As long as I have sight, touch and sound I'm fine. They all make my dream experience better. However, I guess id vote for sight as number one.

Touch and taste are the senses I find most fascinating in vivid dreams, but on the other hand I'd find a dream without sight fairly boring. Sound can provide amazing things in dreams as well. I'd have to say touch and sound are my favourites.

interesting question for me because I would love to get more senses alive in lucids - its one of my goals actualy to be able to take time to not just look around but smell the air feel the textures hear the sounds etc

My experience is mostly with beautifull colourfull sights - the clarity can be awsome

Originally Posted by Rodrodrod

I like to think that our emotions are a type of sense, so I'd consider that as my favourite sense in dreams. I just love how intense we can feel emotions, but things like being able to feel a person next to you and know just who they are without having to look at them, or that inner knowing where you are sure what a certain action or thing mean/represent, or false memories...

In the conventional sense of the word , I would say touch is amazing and never fails to surprise me. Whether just walking barefoot in the dream to pushing my hand through objects and feeling it go through, it all feels amazing! But of course the whole dreamworld is amazing, so it's great in every sense

I definitely feel the same way about emotions, it's the sense I'm exploring the most lately in LDs. I also love that each person has a sort of "energy signature" where I can recognise who they are, even if they don't match their waking life appearance. There are sometimes random DCs that I'll instantly feel a strong connection with - they seem to emanate feelings of kindness, compassion, safety, etc. which is a nice way to spend a dream. I also like just exploring my own emotions and floating/meditating sometimes.

Originally Posted by Patience108

interesting question for me because I would love to get more senses alive in lucids - its one of my goals actualy to be able to take time to not just look around but smell the air feel the textures hear the sounds etc

My experience is mostly with beautifull colourfull sights - the clarity can be awsome

I spent my very first intentional LD doing something that sounds totally boring but was completely awesome to me - running my hands along the carpet in my room. I felt amazed at the vivid texture, and have enjoyed exploring all the different senses since then!

Hearing original dream music is another thing I've been fascinated by lately. I can't believe how intricate and professional it can sound when it's presumably being created on the spot!

sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste

If I can first rank them from most common to least for me personally, that would be: Sight, touch, sound, taste, smell. Last night I was expecting a bad smell in the bathroom I was going into but was pleasantly surprised and with that sense being the least common (that I pay attention to at least), I find it quite interesting. Favorite would have to go to touch, namely the wonderful feeling of skin on skin, especially in lucid sexual experiences which can go on for quite some time. Another favorite is the often realistic feeling of being on a roller coaster, especially when lucid...and how about the emotion of exhilaration or euphoria! So much to experience while lucid in dreaming and waking life!

Great topic!

For me, it'd have to be sight. Dreams can produce such amazing levels of detail, realism, and vividness. This is something I never appreciated until I got into lucid dreaming and started intentionally doing in-dream experiments to try to understand the limits of in-dream sight. (Summary: dream sight can be very, very vivid.) Sight just paints such a picture... even after the LD experience is over, the mental snapshots stay with us for a long, long time.

Sight is also the one sense that (for me at least) has at many times come through more vividly in dreams than in waking life. Sight is where I can witness my mind painting a picture that my senses just can't produce.

It's like seeing... but seeing in a way that's free from the limits of my eyes and what they can focus on in a given moment.

I have to give dream food and dream music their due (they are amazing!), but for me, sight just can't be beat.

I'd say touch, mainly because touching any object in a normal dream seems to help trigger lucidity for me.

But if that wasn't the case, I'd have to say sight of course, because if you couldn't see anything... It'd be a very dull experience.

I would say emotions is my favourite sense, especially if the dream is really vivid, that is one of the best senses because if it is a good dream it will make you feel calm and just great. After emotions I would say sight.

Originally Posted by ~Dreamer~

I definitely feel the same way about emotions, it's the sense I'm exploring the most lately in LDs. I also love that each person has a sort of "energy signature" where I can recognise who they are, even if they don't match their waking life appearance. There are sometimes random DCs that I'll instantly feel a strong connection with - they seem to emanate feelings of kindness, compassion, safety, etc. which is a nice way to spend a dream. I also like just exploring my own emotions and floating/meditating sometimes.

Oh I just love character and dreams like those. I always wake refreshed from those experiences. On the other hand though, because emotions are so intense, it can get quite scary too. But I like being able to look back on it later. I've somewhat explored my emotions too and tried meditation when I first started lucid dreaming. So this is a great reminder for me. I actually only ever experienced my first ever hyper-realistic lucid dreaming by meditating in the dream, but since then moved onto other things because my dreams became more vivid with practice. But the brief attempts I had were enough for me to experience great peace and energy. So it's time to focus on this again!

My Dream this morning had some great stuff that reminded me of this thread - skating along Lucid jumping large bodies of water and jumping up on benches to grind along in my skates - it felt amazingly exhilarating like my mind was wide open and free

Then I started to awaken into a FA ~ at first I was still half lucid as I felt my dog licking me all over my face, so very happy to see me, as I squeezed my lips shut! Still a bit Lucid the actual feeling of this was incredibly real ... Like I can feel it now ... The rough wet tongue all over my face so funny and yucky!!!

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Last night I was expecting a bad smell in the bathroom I was going into but was pleasantly surprised and with that sense being the least common (that I pay attention to at least), I find it quite interesting.

I was actually thinking about dream smells when I made this thread, and realised it's my least vivid (or maybe just least remembered) dream sense by far.
I wonder if that's just because I pay less attention to smells in waking life, because unless it's something amazing or something putrid, smell seems like more of a background/ambient experience.
I suppose smell is connected with taste though, so maybe I don't give smell enough credit in my lucid food eating dreams.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has noticed a strong sense of smell in dreams...

Originally Posted by ~Dreamer~

I was actually thinking about dream smells when I made this thread, and realised it's my least vivid (or maybe just least remembered) dream sense by far.
I wonder if that's just because I pay less attention to smells in waking life, because unless it's something amazing or something putrid, smell seems like more of a background/ambient experience.
I suppose smell is connected with taste though, so maybe I don't give smell enough credit in my lucid food eating dreams.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has noticed a strong sense of smell in dreams...

Smell is also the least vivid sense for me in dreams too, despite me actually paying reasonable attention to it in waking life lately. Interestingly though, as I was working on a character I wished to create in the dreamworld, I decided she would have the smell of Violet flowers and since then I have had a few dreams where I see the flowers and have been able to smell them despite no conscious waking life memory of knowing how it smells. It was really faint in the dream but I was able to increase that sense a little by stabilising the dream and focusing on it.

Originally Posted by ~Dreamer~

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has noticed a strong sense of smell in dreams...

Another one that comes to mind was the smell of sweat I smelled on my brother in a dream. When I woke I thought it was an interesting and somewhat rare occurrence to have a smell in a dream and I thought I might have smelled my own sweat during the night since it happened to be a warm night and my dream folded it in. That reminds me of someone who was doing experiments with using aromas to induce lucid dreams. Since they seem fairly rare for most people this could be an excellent dream sign especially if you know what scent you are to look for and you have some device to time release the smell during the night.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Another one that comes to mind was the smell of sweat I smelled on my brother in a dream. When I woke I thought it was an interesting and somewhat rare occurrence to have a smell in a dream and I thought I might have smelled my own sweat during the night since it happened to be a warm night and my dream folded it in. That reminds me of someone who was doing experiments with using aromas to induce lucid dreams. Since they seem fairly rare for most people this could be an excellent dream sign especially if you know what scent you are to look for and you have some device to time release the smell during the night.

That is a pretty good idea. I feel like it is similar to sound, but sound usually wakes me up since your ears are the last to sleep, and they don't go completely to sleep. Smell might be something really powerful and good, or powerful and bad. Something that elicits an emotion out of you. You should try this and let us know what happens!

I have smell in dreams about as much as in waking, it is just a sense I ignore unless something strong hits it. Last night, driving scissors into peoples heads (zombie apocalypse) had a lot of unwanted smells.

I love the idea of emotion being a sense. Emotions in dreams feels so passionate and raw.

I also love sound in my dreams. In waking life, I do not have the ability to create music, but somehow I am a virtuoso in my sleep.

Mine is touch and sound. Mostly because I find it pretty cool that I can feel a piece of fabric that's warm and fuzzy that's not actually real. And sound because my mind always seems to make up really cool remixes of songs I could never really come up with while awake.