Thread: My lucid dreaming experience (my first post)

I have been interested in lucid dreaming for several years. I learned how to do it by becoming more “aware” about my dreams. I have always been able to remember my dreams, but I spent a while every time I woke up to recall my dreams in as much detail as possible. I tried to do some of the common techniques to induce lucid dreams such as asking yourself if you are dreaming throughout the day in hopes that you will ask yourself the question while dreaming. I tried a few other techniques as well and none of them seemed to work well. The overall outcome of spending all of this time and energy around dreaming was what got me to be able to lucid dream. I guess I just “willed” my way into lucid dreaming.

My first lucid dream happened a few years ago and it was incredibly symbolic. In the dream I was at my grandparent's old house. In the dream I wanted something in one of the rooms upstairs so I started climbing the steps. When I was about halfway up I had a vague notion that I might be dreaming. With each step I took up I became more and more aware I was dreaming. When I reached the top step I was 100% lucid. It was like I ascended into a higher consciousness!

Over the years, I have found that the following scenario works best for me. I need to be quite exhausted to begin with. Then I need to set aside a few hours to sleep. This works best when it is NOT around my normal bed time (e.g., during the day). Then I start the process of falling asleep with the notion that I want to lucid dream. I sleep for a little while and then I will wake up for a minute or so. Since I have already been sleeping my body is “primed” to fall back asleep quickly. So as I slip back into unconsciousness I will myself to have a lucid dream.

This process has been pretty reliable, although nowhere near 100%. Over the last couple weeks I have been experimenting with a variable in this technique. When my body is in that “primed” state I visualize what I want to dream about. For example, I love to fly in my dreams so I picture myself standing on a mountain. As I fall back into unconsciousness I focus in on filling in as much detail as possible (add trees, birds, clouds, rocks, snow...) It's really amazing because the scene goes from being like looking at a child's drawing, to watching a black and white photograph, to watching a color TV in high definition and then finally to actually flying.