Thread: new to Dream Views

Hello all. I'm new the forum, but not new to lucid dreaming as the member ratings would have you believe (like this is the only place that exists about lucidity, right?).

Anyways, I have been lucid dreaming off and on for about 3 or 4 years. For as long as I can remember, I could not remember ever dreaming, except maybe once or twice a year. Then when I started having lucid dreams, I could remember those quite well, but still not remember normal dreams. Then this summer I decided to start a dream journal. I had to wait about a week though for a lucid dream to get it "kick started." I have been keeping it going with the number of entries varying from a couple per week to many per week, and usually on days there are entries they consist of at least 2 dreams.

Not as good as remembering 2 dreams a night, but at least I am remembering some dreams, which feels pretty good after 18 years of not remember dreaming at all, save maybe once per year. And I don't mean I know I dreamt but just forgot what it was about, I mean from the instant on waking up not having a single memory, feeling, or knowledge of dreaming. I was one of those people that would say I didn't dream, because quite literally dreams did not exist for me.

In contrast, now with my journal, on days that I don't write an entry because I can't remember the dream, I do get the feeling and intuition that I did dream; I just can't remember it. So when I see people talking about people who claim they "don't dream" as people who just don't remember it, and keeping a journal they would, etc; I get a little upset as it's apparent they know not what they speak of. (I can't speak for all of us [people who claim not to dream], but I certainly can better speak for us than someone who can't begin to image what it is like): Being a person who claimed not to dream, I can say there is an ultimate fallacy in that theory, because normally I think people have the intuition that they dreamed, or some feeling that they dreamed, but just have a hard time remembering the dream itself. For others, this intuition and this feeling does not exist; dreaming quite literally does not exist for people like this. So saying they just need to remember their dreams, is a fallacy, because for all practical purposes, dreams do not exist for these people. This is one area I think could use more research.

How then did I go from a literal non-dreamer to a dreamer who occasionally becomes lucid?

By pure accident, of coarse 8)

About 3 (or 4) years ago, while taking a nap I discovered that sleeping on my left hand, putting it under the pillow and laying my head on it, produced vivid dreams, or what I thought to be vivid since I never dreamed. But more importantly, it enabled me to actually remember dreaming. Sometimes it [remembering] was quite hazy or just fragments and sometimes it did not exist, but the feeling and intuition that I had in fact had a dream did exist in these situations. This was key; never before did I have that feeling.

So at night still no dreams, no feeling of dreaming, no intuition that I had a dream (I can't sleep on my stomach at night). But, during naps I would often lay the same way putting my hand under my pillow. This would cause it to fall asleep. What the connection is between a numb hand and remembering dreams is, I'm not sure.

Soon, it naturally progressed, and I found that sometimes I would become lucid for short times.

A little later it progressed further and a few times at night I would lucid dream.

Now 3 years later using this same technique (in combination with telling myself I will become lucid), I got a dream journal "kick started" and I am remembering nonlucid dreams as well.

The technique has seemed to naturally progress as well from a DILD to an almost WILD recently. That is I am able to sometimes transition directly from laying there thinking about having a lucid dream (numbing my hand) directly into the dream. It is quite odd to be trying to take a nap and experience an immediate shit in consciousness to hearing your sisters/mothers/brothers/etc voice(s) standing beside you or talking downstairs, etc when they are in reality over 600 miles away (some recent experiences).

Well I think I've written enough, and probably too much.