Hi everybody!

My name is Cherie, and I was browsing the internet on all sorts of sleeping disorders, i.e. Sleep Paralysis, which I use to get regularly. Upon reading about it, I discovered a link on "Lucid Dreaming", having no idea that what I have been experiencing ever since I was a young child actually had a title! I remember in pre-school I dreamt I was sitting in a buggy with other children, riding up and down a rainbow roller-coaster and I realised it was a dream. I turned to the others and said, "We're dreaming!" and the others agreed, and we kept saying it over and over.

All my life I have had the ability to do so much in my dream, I feel so connected with my dreams and feel it is not just something that happens of a night, but rather a big part of my life. I look forward to going to sleep of a night, quite keen to see where I will take myself!

Of a week, I will control and navigate about five nights of any particular dreams (even though I dream however many I do a night, not all do I "lucid dream"). I am very aware that I am dreaming and tell those in my dream what is happening. I can be in a negative scenario and squeeze my eyes closed and transit through to another dimension, so to speak, aware I am exiting a nightmare. I can make myself change who I am or how I look (which is fun!), change my environment, lead others about, turn nightmares into nice dreams, etc. My best (and which happens more often) is making all the negative in a dream (which is usually black and grey based colours) into a colourful and positive dream. I really have control of them and find it so very exciting, however I didn't realise its worth and potential, considering this is every bit normal to me.

Sometimes in the morning once I have woken, and I can hear kids outside playing or my mum washing the dishes, I can stay in a lazy "freshly woken" state, but lay with my eyes closed and if I am doing this whilst laying on my stomach, I can still be very aware of being awake and fall into a dream this way again. I can hear and be very aware of what is happening in reality, and I hear all these "whooshing" noises, my body tingle, and all of a sudden I feel sucked into or "pressed" into a dream (I can feel my real body disappear into its dream body), and just like a movie, I am aware of what's happened and I can direct every instant in that dream.

Just on another part, sometimes with nightmares I am never really in them for long. I don't know if it's normal, but luckily I am able to squeeze my eyes tight and if I want to wake up, I simply say in the dream, "I'm going to wake up", and next thing I'm laying in bed awake and overwhelmed by the dream.

To be honest, I thought that being aware you are dreaming was very normal (I still have to read up on it, as I'm not 100% sure of that!), because of how often it happens to me.

Now that I'm on a roll, I may as well say, I think I am very much in sync with my dreams. I remember 9/10 dreams and almost every detail, and my poor mum has to listen to me say, almost daily, "Mum! Guess what I dreamt last night?", and it's usually rather an interesting sequence of stories similar to that of Alice in Wonderland!

Those dreams that I do not remember on occasion, funnily enough, are remembered as soon as I hit my pillow the following night. I will lay to go to sleep and a rush or "fast-forwarded" version of the previous night's dreams will flash before my eyes, and I think, "Ahhh, that's right!". Even more interesting, if I jump on my bed to play with my cat or to relax, if my head is near where it was the night before, I instantly remember the dream if I didn't recall it upon awakening.

Unfortunately, I do have a downside to all of this. I have suffered from Sleep Paralysis (which was what I originally searched for on the web, prior to landing upon lucid dreaming) for 13 years. These experiences were very terrifying for the most part. One experience I had in particular was when I was lying next to a friend whilst staying at her house, and her very young daughter came into the room crying and asked to sleep with her mother. I knew - just knew - one was going to hit me very soon. Her mother asked me to sleep in her daughter's room and I hesitated, but did. When I got there, each time I went to fall asleep I heard a devilish scream and the more fearful I became, the harder it would scream and then it began laughing at me, and every time I closed my eyes, a million circles flashing before my eyes which I later found to be The Star of David, would appear, and I physically felt invaded.

With Sleep Paralysis, I've had people stomping on my chest, verbal abuse, laughing, children giggling, my hands being pulled, people laying right next to me and looking at me, horrible visions, etc., etc. The worst I know of - luckily not my experience, was my brother. He went to sleep and woke with something devilish upon him, trying to seduce him. He said it was so scary and it gave him the biggest fright, and his girlfriend woke him and then it left him alone, and he rolled into his girlfriends arms who held him saying, "It's okay, I'm here. Everything will be okay." When he awoke the following morning, he realised his girlfriend was at home the entire time, not with him at all.

Anyway, I just thought I would share my experiences, being that I've always been a person in touch with dreams, very aware of my own power in them. And we all have that, and that's what's so exciting!

Thanks for reading,

Cherrydreams