Thread: New to site

Hey all, I used to be into lucid dreaming a while back just getting back into it now. This site seems very interesting, I never realised that so many people were into lucid dreaming, but then again I could also say I cant understand why so many people are not!

I had my first "proper" (intentional) lucid dream about two years ago. I also had a few when I was a child, but I never thought much of them, they were mostly associated with recurring dreams which I had at the time. My first recent lucid experience was rather unnerving due to the circumstances at the time. A family member had died and in many of my dreams afterwards, whenever I saw this person I would immediatly think that that person should be dead and I would realise that I was dreaming. Sometimes I would be able to control some of the dream, however what usually followed would be seemingly endless false awakings.

After doing some reading I realised that I was having lucid dreams, and after some practice learned to control it more. It is an amazing experience when it works. It also explained some experiences which I had had before which I could not explain such as those associated with sleep paralysis.

What mainly concerns me, and one of the reasons why I stopped, are potential health problems. Surely the process must have some negative effects, after all you are messing around with sleep patterns. I would actually feel extremely refreshed and invigorated after having a night of lucid dreams, even if was just 5 hours or less! I would usually get this amount of sleep anyway. I understand that some forms of meditation use lucid dreams to replace normal sleep patterns.

Also, I was always worried about the possibility of believing I was in a dream when in fact I was awake (I know it sounds stupid, do reality checks every time, I know).