External stimulus connecting to the unconscious mind

[justme]

So you know in like TV shows and movies it would have a person in a dream and then in the dream they would start hearing someone call their name or an alarm going off and then they wake up and their alarm is going off or someone is calling their name? I was wondering if any or y'all had something that happened like this, not just sound stimuli either. For example a couple nights ago I had a dream about this guy giving me a shot in the arm that made my left arm go numb, (since I don't like shots they appear in my dreams quite frequently :-/). I woke up in the middle of the night and I was sleeping on my left arm and it was numb. I also had dreams where I would be in a dream and hear my mom coming up the stairs. I heard the the sense of smell is the first sense to go when you go asleep (which is why you need fire alarms) it would be interesting is someone had a smell in their dream and woke up and then had the smell in their room or something. I'm not sure how a taste would get into your dreams, but a light turning on and then in your dream there's a flash or something would make sense. So any of y'all had experiences like this? Sorry if there's a post like this somewhere... not sure what it would be called.

[Darkmatters]

Ha! Oh yes.... fondly do I recall those dreams where I'm running around trying to find where the too-loud music is coming from as it's driving me crazy! Often I"ll find a radio and turn it off, but that doesn't work, so I unplug it... nope, still loud music... so I smash it to pieces.... That's usually when I wake up. Once when I was a teenager I slept over at a friend's house and he had the radio on pretty loud. I was having a dream where I was in an office and this mysterious, evil-seeming administrator dude was talking to me about Oxy-10. Heh... you'd probably have to be about my age (47) to really remember that guy with the super-deep voice who did those commercials. I kept hearing him drone on as I dreamed up this wild spy scenario... I remember climbing in the lighting trusses over a theater being chased by silent ninja type killers while a show was going on and we all had to be super-quiet so as not to disturb the audience! Really wild dream!

[youssarian]

You've been here a while, justme, so you may know this already (you've been here more than twice as long as I have!). There's an lucid dreaming induction technique based around this: EILD. I'm tempted to try it by setting my cell phone to vibrate during my 4:30 and 6:00 REM cycles.

[justme]

You've been here a while, justme, so you may know this already Nope, still pretty stupid about the whole dream things (especially the ILD's stuff, never really looked into that). "When your device signals you, it will be incorporated into your dream somehow. The mind has to improvise to disguise the signal so that it is logical, but because of this, the signal is usually obvious for those who are average to good at recognizing dream signs." "Another problem is that the brain is very good at disguising these signals and incorporating them into your dream. For instance, if the Nova Dreamer is set up to flash lights, your dream may place a police cruiser on the street." So the mind can somehow make the external stimulus make sense? Is there any indepth information on how it can do this? I would expect your dream to just start flashing, but by having a police cruiser appear it would mean your mind is either knowing that a flash is going to come sooner or lately or thinking like 4 steps ahead. Also more experiances on external stimuli and how they "incorporate" in your dreams would be really cool.

[Darkmatters]

Hey Justme, have you read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming yet? All this stuff is explained really well in there. Heh... from what I;ve read in here about lucid devices, a lot of people go lucid when they see the first flash from the Novadreamer but apparently the second flash knocks them right out of it... usually makes them wake up Seems kinda weird... maybe it should just flash the one time?

[justme]

Hey Justme, have you read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming yet? All this stuff is explained really well in there. Heh... from what I;ve read in here about lucid devices, a lot of people go lucid when they see the first flash from the Novadreamer but apparently the second flash knocks them right out of it... usually makes them wake up Seems kinda weird... maybe it should just flash the one time? Haven't read any books on lucid dreaming yet. :-/ They have a Laberge book at my college library but someone checked it out and never returned it. It was due last semester. Hmmm haven't heard much about the Novadreamer, but the 2nd flash thing is interesting...

[justme]

Hate to double post or well "bump", buts theres another interesting thing that happened in a dream yesternight that relates to this. I went to bed with a headache and I figured I would sleep it off (I don't like taking medicine alot). I had a dream where the headache leaked into. Then in the dream since this headache was a lot worse than the one I went to bed with I took some medicine in my dreams. What WOULD have been cool is if the headache went away (of course then I would have attributed that to sleeping it off anyway). But anyway what happened instead was I woke up with a worse headache lots of pain and vomit yadda yadda. I guess I also thought the idea that taking a pill in my dream, kind of like a placebo effect, didn't work when well it should have. A lot of people say my migraines are all in my head and I'm like duh thats where it hurts. Do any of y'all have any experience with this dream placebo effect working or not working?