Hardest sense to train.

[MRH92]

I think it's safe to assume that everybody has sight and hearing in a dream, lucid or not, but I very rarely experience taste, smell or touch. I know I definitely never experience taste or smell in a regular dream and will only experience touch if that dream is very vivid. On becoming lucid the quality of my sight and hearing greatly improves but I don't experience any other sensations. For example I flew in a lucid dream last night but I had no sensation of wind against my body or no sensation of heat in the air and upon landing on a mountain and sitting down I could not feel the texture of the rock. Normally a dream character has to prompt me in order to become aware of such things for example in one lucid dream a character told me to inhale deeply and focus on the air and in doing so I could feel cold air in my lungs and the air smelled like my old primary school building, this was both surreal and beautiful. So I suppose in order to experience these things it requires a lot of self awareness in the dream. Sight and hearing are naturally there so why do other senses and sensations appear non-existent? Maybe for some of you all your senses occur with little or no effort. What sensation or sense was the hardest to train or experience in a lucid dream for you? Were their certain techniques you carried out in waking life or in a dream in order to experience certain senses with ease whilst lucid?

[MysticalDipshit]

Well I've only achieve one lucid dream (Which didn't last long), but the moment I realized, it was like I got bombarded with senses. I was down my street and I could see the detail on the leaves on the trees, the clear outline of buildings etc, I could feel the cold winter wind blowing against me, I could smell the fresh countryside air, I could feel the ground beneath my feet (I had no shoes on), however I couldn't taste anything. I'm dreams, whenever I have eaten something, I only ever imagined the taste, and it seems like I have never really tasted something in a dream. I know I don't really have any experience in this, but in all of the thousands of normal dreams I have had, I have experienced every sense with ease, except for taste.

[dutchraptor]

I always have touch in dreams so I wouldn't know how that works but I know why hearing, taste and smell are most likely less apparent than balance, sight and touch. If we look at how fast the brain adapts to a certain sense we can see that the worst ones in dreams take the shortest to adjust in real life. Like when you go into someones house and within a few minutes you can no longer smell it. What I concluded is that since your brain adapts to smells and sounds so readily we pay much less attention to them in real life, only once we hear a distinct noise we actually start listening. So therefore in a dream we don't pay attention to them because there are no external random stimuli to produce a sound in our dream so we just assume there is none until we try to hear.

[MRH92]

Sound has always come quite naturally to me in dreams though but touch is very rare. Hmm...I wonder why that is for me? I know that in my real life I zone out a lot to the point where I lose hours of the day and I'm unable to recall doing things that I have done meaning a lot of my senses don't really work unless I put a lot of conscious effort into it. However I have a lot of voices in my head so I suppose in my real life hearing or sound is constantly active, as voices always occupy my mind and the space around my head. I'm aware I've made myself sound a little bit crazy, lol, but perhaps my awareness of senses in my life effects how I perceive them in a dream.

[PlanesWalker]

For me, touch is always something I notice in a Dream. I can't remember the last things I smelled or tasted. What sense would you describe as being the one that lets you feel things in a Dream, emotionally? That's one I get a lot too.

[funymunky]

In my dreams, I seem to always feel pain but I don't know if that counts as touch. For example, in one dream I was being held in the air by someone with telekinetic powers while he threw boulders at me. Every time one hit me it felt like someone had just slapped me really hard in the chest. That was pretty painful. I've never tasted or smelled anything as far as I can remember.

[elucid]

Yeah, I have noticed that senses in a dream are not the same as senses in reality, but I have also noticed that our senses become more realistic as we spend time in our dreams, so maybe that could be the problem, you need to spend a little more time in a dream and see if that makes things more realistic.

[Sageous]

Hardest sense to train? Gotta be common sense. Forget sight, sound, and the tactiles; if you can't remember who you are, or where you really were an hour ago, and you really can't understand that this place you are in is a dreamscape, then you're always going to be missing something. As the OP said, sensation of senses (either per expectation or new surprises) "requires a lot of self awareness in the dream." Period. Sorry; that just came out. In terms of most difficult sense to conjure, I have to go with taste, because it always seems to be wrong. Smell is a close second, but usually works better when you try to remember a smell. I think in both cases it's because you're actually tapping your body's taste and smell sensors in a LD, and often just wind up tasting air, bad breath, or blankets, and smelling bedroom. But, as I said, there's something about smell in that, with a little work, you can conjure smells simply by remembering, or truly imagining, what the object you're testing ought to smell like. This is all for LD's, of course; my senses tend to work just fine in NLD's...or at least my DC "Me" thinks so!

[Kholdstare]

I suppose for me it's smell. Not once have I tried smelling in an LD, though i've done a few odd things like eat socks that tasted like cheeseburgers in LDs.

[Plathix]

If you are having trouble, I would suggest trying to stabilize next time. Touch things, smell things, even taste them. Engage every sense. Not only will it help you with your other senses, it will also help you become more aware and grounded in the dream. Here are a few threads on it. Nina's Stabilization & Clarity TUTORIAL Reflex Stabilization Technique Stabilization Fundamentals

[Marina1992]

I came across this post yesterday and it made me think about the senses I experience in dreams...funnily enough I had a dream where I experienced tasting meat last night after reading it lol; but in general for me I'd say smell is the most elusive one...I can't remember ever having noticed any kind of smell in a regular dream...and I haven't been able to get lucid yet >.<

[MRH92]

Yeah recently my awareness in my LD's has been pretty bad which is probably why a lot of my senses haven't been working. I can get taste to work sometimes and it's usually 100% spot on the real taste. Dutchraptor, I read your DEILD tutorial yesterday and managed to have one this morning and found that I could feel cold air against me when I tried to fly. It could be because this method seemed to give me more awareness or perhaps because I had been thinking a lot about sensations in dreams all day. Either way, thanks for the tutorial.

[dutchraptor]

Well done, it was probably a mixture of both.

[Sensei]

I have all senses in almost all dreams. Probably 99% of the time. I somehow forget hearing the soonest though. I remember what people say, but I can't "visualize" what it actually sounded like. What is it called when you visualize senses other than sight?

[funymunky]

Synesthesia? Or something like that.

[faceonmars]

I definitely have the sense of touch. I was lucid in a train station and felt the walls. I recall being amazed at the lifelike feel of the walls. I have studied and felt leaves and tree bark in a LD. I think my hardest sense to achieve is the sense of smell. For others, this might come as naturally as the sense of touch comes to me.

[Scionox]

I suppose hardest sense for me would be smell, i don't think i ever experienced smell in non-lucid dreams and even IWL it's my weakest sense. Easiest for me is touch, even HH/HI are almost always followed by tactile sensations for me. And i think it's possible to train senses in lucid dreams, for example it might be possible to train the sense of smell by transforming into something with strong sense of smell(That's on my todo list ).

[sanctispiritus]

Smelling is the sense that I rarely experiment dreams. The other one is taste.

[sisyphus]

I think to some extent TV and movies have an influence on our expectations of what dreams as "supposed" to be like. Besides our own dreams, what other points of reference do we have for dreams? Those lame "dream sequences" in TV shows where the scene dissolves into wavy lines and then the picture turns a blurry and people speak with an echo. (I'm thinking of Saved By The Bell, though that reference obviously dates me). That idea can get engrained in our brain and might affect our actual dreams. Since TV only offers video and audio, we expect our dreams to be the same, limiting our sensory experience.

[Ninjaa]

I find that whenever I fully stabilize my dream, all my senses work better than in real life.

[TranquilityTrip]

I'd imagine taste would be the hardest sense to "train". I've experienced every sense, sight, hearing, touch, but I've never never experienced taste. I'd love to try it out one day though, could make for an interesting experience.

[Siul]

In one of my dreams I felt the water of a pool,it was very refreshing and nice,I think it was the stronger touch feeling I had in a dream. In other I felt the taste of metal,I was eating some sort of metal stick,and by the third one I realized how disgusting it was,the taste was so strong I almost threw up,and remembering that dream also made me feel nauseous the next day.