Thread: Hello

Hello everyone. I don't remember exactly how I got here, but I am very glad that I did. It is great see and be part of such an active and well-maintained lucid dreaming community.

I have had three lucid dreams before, the first time with some control. After attempting to do it a second time aiming for more control, I had even less and the dream started to "destabilize" as I attempted to conjure something that I have seen on animated television. The third time, I tried to imagine up a woman I have deep feelings for with no success. I just found out (here) that lucid dreaming and control are related but independent subjects. I have had two or three non-lucid dreams including the aforementioned woman, and those are just the ones I can remember. After many failed attempts to lucid dream with control, I lost interest and stopped trying.

In recent months, I have had some strange experiences when trying to go to sleep. I, from this community, just recently discovered the concept sleep paralysis. Previously, I jolted myself out of the (in my opinion violent) feeling (which was actually SP) by trying moving my toes or inducing shock to wake myself up. Another issue was scared incomplete images and/or sounds directly after falling asleep, which I shock myself out of. I found here that this is the "hypnagogic hallucination" phase.

Three or so months ago I went to the gym at 5AM, worked out, and returned at 6:30AM. I would usually dream every time I went straight from the gym and into bed; I could not and still do not understand this. Is this my REM cycle?

I would really like to learn how to lucid dream again and have control over it. The experiences I am reading about here are very inspirational and they make me want to fall asleep!