Hello, all! I used to be a big fan of sleeping long hours when I was in college and I would keep pretty detailed dream logs since I found my dreams very interesting. I would experience lucid dreams from time to time, but it was not until recently that I discovered that I could induce them by waking up after five or more hours of sleep, staying awake for some time (approximately an hour), and falling asleep once again. I had read about this wake-back-to-bed technique (WBTB) in Wikipedia at some point (I think in 2005), but I didn't try attempting the technique right away. I ended up invoking lucid dreams accidentally a few times when I woke up, stayed awake, and fell back asleep, then I remembered the article I had read and realized that I had been lucid each time due to inadvertently following the WBTB method.
On early Tuesday morning, I woke up from a non-lucid nightmare where I was on a city street and small asteroids were crashing into the pavement all around me. There was a giant screen on an elevated structure where I could see a demon launching the asteroids down to the planet, then I would see them crash all around me. When I woke up, I decided to go online to see if there were any news stories about mass destruction anywhere, but I didn't find any, so I decided to stay awake watching TV for about an hour to invoke lucid dreams.
I experienced lucid dreaming when I went back to sleep. Like almost all of my lucid dreams, when I realized I was dreaming, I started exploring my environment. Normally, I look around at the details of the dream world I'm in, fascinated by the vividness of my environment and how my mind can create such details or recreate with such precision places I'm familiar with. This time, I tried to figure out how to reduce the surge of goosebumps that occurs when I realize I'm in a dream since that often wakes me up from it.
In the dream, I was on my bed in my condo, typing on my laptop (as I'm doing now). I was having an IM chat with a coworker who lives in another state. I noticed that whenever I started to decide what my dream body should do in the dream, I would feel the surge, but when I just let the dream occur without trying to move my dream body, I wouldn't feel it. Suddenly, I saw a TV turned on in my peripheral vision, but I didn't turn to look at it since I thought that might induce the surge and wake me up. I wondered if the surge was my mind creating new neural pathways to help me control my dream body.
I kept typing, then I thought that the typing sound coming from the laptop was very realistic so I wondered if I was actually typing into my laptop in the real world too. At that point, the typing sound ceased even though I was still typing, I experienced an awakening (I don't know if it was a real one or a false one since I tend to have multiple false awakenings when I'm lucid dreaming), and I noticed that my hand wasn't on my laptop but simply dangling off the side of the bed.
My initial questions for lucid dreamers are the following:
1) What's the deal with the surge I feel when lucid dreaming? After reading the Wikipedia article, I thought it could be sleep paralysis, but after reading some posts here, I think it might actually be something else since I don't feel motionless or a clenching sensation in my chest. It just feels like a more intense version of goosebumps - which it very well could be, since I get excited when I realize I'm dreaming or my dream self does something that causes an adrenaline rush when I'm dreaming. Does the surge have a name people use on this forum? In one post I read, someone called it "vibrations". Do many people here experience the surge? Does it normally stop happening when one becomes more proficient at keeping one's cool while lucid dreaming? If you experience it, do you enjoy it or do you dislike it? I don't like that I usually wake up when I start to feel it. Is there a way to get it to stop other than by staying still when you realize that you are dreaming?
2) Have you experienced strong smells in your dreams? During one lucid dream, I was at a store and I smelled a scented candle while I was exploring the environment (I think it was a blueberry-scented candle). The smell was very realistic, and I was fascinated that my mind could re-create the scent from memory in my dream. I've since figured that if my mind could reproduce the scent from memory while I'm asleep, I should be able to have the ability to recall smells while I'm awake, but I've never done that.
3) When I'm not practicing the WBTB method, I have become lucid when encountering the deceased in my dreams. I know they are not alive, so I figure out that I'm in a dream. Instead of talking to the dream character since I presume the character is just a figment of my imagination, I start exploring the environment instead, looking at the details of the dream. Has this happened to you?
4) I have often hovered in my non-lucid dreams by jumping up and repeatedly kicking the air in a manner similar to the way a frog swims through water. Invariably, I'm surprised that no one has figured out how to stay aloft by doing this before. Has anyone here experienced dream flight that involves kicking your legs to float in the air?
5) Have you ever had your dream crash like a computer when you realize it's a dream and start performing actions that go against the flow of the dream? One of the earliest lucid dreams I remember having is one where I was driving down the street on my way home from high school at 10:01 AM (that was the time on the car's clock). Suddenly, I noticed that the homes I saw in my peripheral vision were repeating (like the background in an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon). I realized I was dreaming, and I turned my head to the right to look at the houses I was passing. The entire passenger side of the car was translucent and started being constructed out of scratch, as through the dream wasn't expecting me to look in that direction and thus didn't generate that part of the car. At that moment, I started hearing a noise that sounded like a rotor coming to a stop and when the noise finally stopped, I woke up. It was as if the dream crashed on me for trying to do something it wasn't expecting me to do.
Those are my initial questions for lucid dreamers. I'm sure I will have others, but those are the ones I'm currently interested in (especially the questions regarding the surge of goosebumps).
I'm glad I found this place. I've read some posts and I'm interested in reading more. I normally sleep for about six hours each night on weekdays, and I would love to be able to experience lucid dreams more often since I feel like the time I spend sleeping is being wasted when I'm not aware of it and since I feel much more energized when I have lucid dreams than when I have a full night's sleep featuring regular dreams that I easily forget.
-Rob
