Thread: Lost the Ability

Hello, everyone! It's good to be here... lucid dreaming is a fun topic.

The real purpose of my post is this: Back when I was a young child, perhaps age 5 - 8, I had terrible nightmares constantly. I had a phobia of growing old and dying, and this was reflected in my dreams. After about a year or two of this, at age 6 or 7, I had mastered a technique to wake myself up. Without any knowledge of the concept or what I could use it for, I had mastered a form of lucid dreaming. About 80% of the time I was having a nightmare, I was able to become lucid partway through. At this point, if I placed my index and middle fingers on my eyes, and opened my eyes very wide (in my dream), I would wake up instantly. This technique was not foolproof, but it worked about 90% of the time.

Anyhow, this now amazes me. The fact that I attained and used lucid dreaming at such a young age without thinking it odd at all is neat. Sadly, I lost this ability after my nightmares went away. I would make an attempt to try lucid dreaming again, but my frequency of dream recall is terrible. I used to have dreams alot, but now I almost never remember any dreams that I've had, even right away when I wake up in the morning. I do not recall 'having' any dreams for at least 3 or 4 months, if not more.

The last dream I remember having was about half a year ago, and it was an incredible dream, indeed. Usually, my dreams take place in somewhere that really exists; occasionally in a small area created by my mind. In this dream, my mind created a whole city and the surrounding suburbs, most of which I visited at some point during the dream. The scenery was incredible and vivid. Sadly, this was not a lucid dream.

Shortly before that, now that I think about it, I had a minorly-lucid dream. There were tortoises rampaging around the forest killing people, and I needed to get a tranquelizer gun to stop them. I had some darts, so I walked to my friend Kevin's house to see if they would fit in his paintball gun. On the way to his house, the dream became lucid. I found myself holding two shirts (one in each hand), so I flapped them like wings and rose into the air. The dream then faded.

So apparently I've had a very occasional lucid dream in the past few years. However, I somehow need to increase my dream frequency and recall to begin attempts at lucid dreaming. Concentrating on subjects before I sleep doesn't seem to help. Any ideas?[/b]