New to this forum not to Lucid Dreaming

[Tom1981]

Hi, I’m Tom. I’m very interested in dreams and decided to register on this site after a very weird night! When I was very young I used to lucid dream regularly. Being young I naturally assumed that everyone did this and it was normal (I certainly never knew there was a word for what I was doing). I mainly used to take control of dreams if they turned into nightmares. My mum would come to me in the dream and tell me that I was dreaming. She would tell me that I could choose to wake up or change what was happening. If the dream was bad I would usually choose to wake up (although I would often go straight back into the same dream when I fell asleep again). While I was still quite young I grew out of the ability to control my dreams. I would still sometimes become aware that I was dreaming but I would only be able to wake up or very occasionally make conscious decisions within the dream (but never consciously able to change the environment of the dream itself). - I am 25 now. For the last few years I have had a stranger relationship with sleep. - I intermittently (and seemingly at random) go through periods of insomnia. - I sometimes sleepwalk. This usually happened when I am stressed about the next days events. For example: often, if I have a meeting to attend the next day, I will sleepwalk around the house and collect items I need for the meeting (shirt, tie, shoes, etc) and bring them back to the bed with me. I don’t usually wake up until the next day, when I find lots of strange things in the bed! I once sleep walked out of a hotel room in just my underwear. This was embarrassing because I was locked out! Once I woke up to find I was in the middle of a conversation with a friend on the phone! I have no recollection of the conversation but when I woke up the first thing I remember was my friend saying “what are you talking about, I phoned you!”. I just told him I had to go and hung up. I was very confused and a bit freaked out. As far as I know I don’t normally sleep talk. - I sometimes wake up paralyzed, unable to move anything except my eyes. I have found out that this is a condition called Sleep Paralysis. The only way I can regain control is to relax. This is difficult because the paralysis is scary and very stressful. Even so, it usually just lasts for a few seconds. Last night was my worst experience, I estimate this time it lasted for 10-15 seconds. Still some people seem to get it much worse than me. I became aware of lucid dreaming through the film vanilla sky. After seeing the film I looked it up and found out a bit about it. I realised this is what I had been naturally able to do as a child. Since then I have thought about learning to Lucid Dream again. But I never actually got round to doing anything about it. Last night I also had an extremely vivid lucid dream. I am in the middle of a period of insomnia at the moment so none of the sleep I get is particularly “deep”. I had a dream (which I don’t actually remember now) where I became conscious. This is not uncommon for me. I woke up and got out of bed, but whilst standing in my room I became aware that something was not quite right. I realised I had woken up from the dream straight into another dream. I hate it when this happens. Sometimes it goes on for ages and I become very frustrated and confused about what is real and what is dream. This time I decided not to wake up but to just go with the dream. Nothing happened, so I decided to try to take control. I thought it would be good to fly. I decided to fly through the window and see what I could find outside (I assumed that because it was my dream I could fly straight through windows if I wanted to!). The flying didn’t work out quite how I had hoped. Instead of flying like superman, I slowly floated to the ceiling. When I hit the ceiling it gave way (like a trampoline, but slowly) and I, gently, bounced down to the floor. I bounced around the room like this for a bit but I didn’t seem to be able to change anything else so I woke up. Even though I didn’t quite manage what I was initially going for I still think of this as a pretty positive start. I now intend to do a bit more research (through this site, etc) and try to perfect the ability to Lucid Dream at will. Tom

[Tornado Joe]

Hi Tom, Great to have you join us and Looks like you'll be bringing with you a nice batch of personal experiences with your previous dreams, lucids, SPs, sleepwaking, insomnia and who knows what other disorders Looking forward to seeing you around on the boards and hearing more about your future experiences. I think you'll find a great mix of other dreamers and oneironauts here who are eager to help and willing to learn.

[Gwendolyn]

Welcome to Dream Views, Tom. It's awesome to have someone else with experience. I know someone such as yourself will have a lot to contribute to our forum.

[Tom1981]

I've just been spending my lunch break finding out a bit more about LD and some of the terms people are using on the forums. I looked up WILD and realised I do this regularly by accident. I would say it happens to me at least a few times a month almost exactly as described in the tutorial on this site (except I wasn't trying!). I always thought of it as an annoying aspect of a tendency towards insomnia. Now I’m going to look on it as an opportunity to LD. I often wake up several times a night. When I go back to sleep I regularly experience "false awakenings". These normally involve me getting out of bed and going and doing something (usually mundane) and then at sometime realising that I am still dreaming. I have never (until the other night as described at the start of this thread) tried changing things or doing things you can't do in reality. I'm really quite excited about all of this. So much of what I have always thought of as “problems sleeping” are things all of you people are trying to do! Last night I was a bit nervous as I went to sleep (I don't like the sleep paralysis I sometimes get - I was amazed to see people on this forum TRYING to achieve it!). Tonight I think I will be more relaxed. I'm going to start keeping a diary of my dreams and next time I realise I have had a false awakening and I am still in the dream, I’m going to try to remember to enjoy it rather than just wake up (which has always been my instinct!) So glad I found this web site! Thank you all!

[Gwendolyn]

There's a silver lining to every cloud, and if you were doing this regularly and it was annoying before, there's your silver lining! I hope you take every opportunity you get to try and LD. We at Dream Views love to hear your successful LDs.