Just joined, have question(s) about achieving lucidity.

Hello, i've never really given any thought to the possibility of lucidity while dreaming. It doesn't make much sense to me. What is the difference between simply remembering a dream and remembering a dream in which you were "lucid?" I'll admit the main reason LD piqued my interest is for the possibility of having lucid dreaming sex with women who'd normally be way out of my league, among other things.

Anyway, from what i understand, reality checks are necessary to induce lucidity during a dream, right? - something that'll trigger my mind to say "wait a minute, this a dream." Why does that work? My dreams are always so weird and fantastical, that I can't imagine my mind suddenly thinking "this can't be real" because surely it knows "it's not real" in the first place? Also, just how real does a lucid dream feel? Do you remember it afterwards as well as you remember any other memory that really happened?

Hello Leaverus, welcome to DV!

First of all, there's nothing wrong with your main reason to LD, a lot of people do the same, and almost everyone wastes or wasted a lucid dream having dream sex :cheeky:
Secondly, let's talk about your first question. The fact is that you're not just "recalling" a dream in which you were lucid: you're living it. You're as conscious as you are right now while reading this, and you are - in the present tense. Imagine like you spend 30 minutes eating your favorite dish...it tastes amazing, you can't get full so you eat more and more. And eventually you wake up. You indeed spend that time enjoying the taste of the food, which is all that matters right? The brain doesn't distinguish a real action from a dream action, so lucid dreaming is as real as it gets!

Now, reality checks are indeed necessary to induce lucidity: if you don't ask yourself if you're dreaming, how can you expect to get lucid? There are several ways of gaining lucidity inside a dream (aka DILD, which refers to Dream Initiated Lucid Dream):

- You can pratice your prospective memory to perfom a reality check whenever you see something strange or out of the ordinary, or any future event (this technique is called MILD);
- You can train yourself to recognize certain events (called Dream signs) and trigger lucidity by connecting them to the scenario of you being asleep and dreaming;
- You can practice visualization and intensify your intention of becoming lucid by flooding your brain with queues and self-created experiences of you lucid (Tholey's method is a popular technique).

These are in general the ways to perform a DILD, or in a more simple wording, to become lucid while you are dreaming. In the other hand, you can perfom a WILD (Wake Initiated Lucid Dream) which differs from DILD since you'll be lucid before you enter the dream. You basically do this by letting your body fall asleep while retaining a tiny bit of self-consciousness. There are many techniques in order to reach DILDs or WILDs, and each one of them has a specific way to induce lucidity.

The reason we aren't lucid in every single dream is due we having certain parts of the brain less activated (or almost completely shut down). Parts like certain types of memory, self-reflection, critical thinking, etc. For last, a lucid dream can be as real as this very moment you're at. It's hard to explain the feeling without you experiencing one first, but when you do, you'll understand how real it is. You're not imagining things, you're really living them, with the only difference that all the sensations you experience aren't external, but are made of memories. The brain is so efficient that these memories are pretty much the same as the "waking" sensation. And when you wake up from your lucid, you can still recall it (the better your dream recall is the better naturally) the experience.

Hope this cleared your doubts if you got others just post away :)

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Originally Posted by zoth00

Now, reality checks are indeed necessary to induce lucidity: if you don't ask yourself if you're dreaming, how can you expect to get lucid? There are several ways of gaining lucidity inside a dream

- You can pratice your prospective memory to perfom a reality check whenever you see something strange or out of the ordinary, or any future event

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Appreciate the response. This part you wrote here kinda touches on the main question i was trying to convey. It seems as though my dreams are almost always "strange or out of the ordinary," so why doesn't that automatically trigger my mind to ask "hey, is this a dream" rather than requiring some form of reality check to make the distinction? Other thing i was wondering, how possible is it to acquire or perfect a skill using LD? For example, if i was a good archer and wanted to become an outstanding one - could i do so by "practicing" more within a dream?

Let's pretend you're dreaming and you see a giraffe riding a bicycle. It's not that you are being tricked or something by your brain, it's just that your specific mental schemes aren't giving you the proper information, so in your head at that point, it's perfectly normal that a giraffe can ride a bycicle. You also can't remember that you went to bed some hours ago before much of your retrospective memory is not avaiable, and another way of preventing you to go lucid is to shutdown most processes that lead you to self-reflection, meaning you won't be capable of saying "hey, why am I here? Why is this so weird?".
When you're lucid, what you are doing is basically re-activating these parts of your brain that are receiving lower blood flow. When you self-reflect and gain self-awareness, you unlock more processes, so you might be once again be capable of remembering that you went to bed some hours ago, that you defined you would fly next time you went lucid, and so on. Lucidity is not a fixed state though: it varies in degrees that can distance the difference between "knowing" you are dreaming and "understanding" you are dreaming. Now, at first these may sound the same, but just because you are in a dream doesn't mean you are in full possession of your mental faculties. You can still lack some memories (many people can't correctly guess their age) and you can be still be incapable of performing dream control. This may vary by experience, method used, etc.

As for your "skill" question, yes it's perfectly possible. I would even show you a report on a television news in Brasil, but since it's not translated, you probably wouldn't understand it. It basically refers to the study performed by several lucid dreams in which they engage in throwing coins into a cup, with progressively increased distance, then go asleep, then try again. Those who just slept retained the same level of skill doing the activity, but the lucid dreamers that practiced showed increased skill afterwards. This is not only a proof that muscle memory works inside lucid dreams, but also that it's possible to effectively improve skills inside them. This has also been reported by musicians and we're pretty sure it extends to a very vast array of activities. Hopefully future studies will demonstrate how effective they can be.

ah, that clears things up. thnx! hopefully, i'm on my way to achieving lucidity. i'm a fairly patient person, so if takes months - that's ok.

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Originally Posted by zoth00

Lucidity is not a fixed state though: it varies in degrees that can distance the difference between "knowing" you are dreaming and "understanding" you are dreaming.

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That is a very good and important sentence! So many people mistake one for the other. You can know you are dreaming, and even tell yourself "I'm dreaming!", but understanding what it means is a different thing. I think this is why in some of my dreams, I am still afraid of getting hurt. I am aware that it is a dream, however I do not fully comprehend the ramifications of it.


Anyway, :welcome: to DreamViews, Leaverus!

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Originally Posted by Leaverus

Anyway, from what i understand, reality checks are necessary to induce lucidity during a dream, right? - something that'll trigger my mind to say "wait a minute, this a dream." Why does that work? My dreams are always so weird and fantastical, that I can't imagine my mind suddenly thinking "this can't be real" because surely it knows "it's not real" in the first place? Also, just how real does a lucid dream feel? Do you remember it afterwards as well as you remember any other memory that really happened?

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Welcome to Dreamviews!

When you are in a regular dream, you believe, that it's real. You have no idea that it's a dream.

When you practice awareness and RC with question "wait a minute, is this a dream?" during day, this behavior will start manifest itself in your dreams and in your dream you will ask yourself the same question. Not because you notice something weird, but simple because you are used to asking that. And that will trigger lucidity.

And how it feels to be in a lucid. To me, difference between regular and lucid dream is like difference between you watching a movie and you actually being in the movie. You feel "there'. You can touch, smell, feel, just the same as in waking life. Colors and details can be much more beautifull and focused than in waking life. When you floating up in the air and a 'space bubble' flies by you, you can feel the wind on your face it created. When you falling down from high up, you can have same feeling as the one you get on the roller-coaster.

You can remember or forget a lucid dream same way as with regular one. Only difference is, that only few regular dreams make me happy, but after a LD, I wake up happy every time. Happy dreams:alien: