TheDayDreamer
Member

I thought that lucid dreaming was something far out of my reach. I thought that being lucid meant having complete and total control of your dreams, your thoughts, manipulating everything down to the deepest most secret wants of your subconscious.

But I read many of the information about the mental processes of Lucid Dreaming, and all the different techniques that are used. I even read a little about people's experiences with daydreams. It came to my astonishment that not only is lucid dreaming much easier than I thought, but I had been doing it all my life. O:

Ever Since I was young I've had a problem with paying attention in class, a curse that has followed me up to this very day. I like to believe that I have some sort of chronic narcolepsy that only occurs when I'm bored, that would make it a lot easier to explain why I always seem to fall asleep in classrooms. Or it could even be some sort of side effect of my over active imagination, ADD and my ADHD. But whatever the case it gave me the curse of sleep, but the gift of dreams.

Let me see if I can explain my crackpot theory on why I believe I go to sleep when I get bored during class. I believe that when I become bored my mind retreats from reality to cure my boredom and begins to daydream, like anyone would, but what I think is different is that my mind somehow triggers a REM cycle despite my being fully awake. Once I'm in a bored state of mind, all it takes is for me to let my mind wander until I begin to daydream and focus on a single theme or story. At first it starts out like any other daydream, I see the images in the back of my head while still listening to the lesson being held, but once the daydream has solidified itself I begin to become extremely tired almost immediately, my vision fades and becomes blurry, my eyelids droop, the noises from reality start to dither off and fade away, and my body begins to feel heavy. My daydream plays itself out the entire time, now taking full control of my attention though, it no longer requires my input at all, events and occurrences play themselves out without any help from me. I would say that I started a LD by crafting the scene and starting objects and custom fitting the dream to be however I want it to be, but then letting it go and just watching it grow. My daydreams usually follow a storyline of some sort and eventually end, allowing me to open my eyes and return to reality, but what I think differs my experience with others is that I am able to create my entire daydream world, and use it as a gate into a lucid dream, then back through the gate into waking. My body never falls asleep and I think I skip a few steps in the process of lucid dreaming. I also don't know if it's normal but I'm also instantly wide awake again after the daydream ends, it's as if I never even dreampt.

But there are some downsides too: I can be brought out of these states very easily, like any daydream but not deep sleep. (which I think is weird because I'm a heavy sleeper so being in the same state of mind I would think it'd be hard to wake me up)
It does not help me feel rested in any way, even though I'm sure that I'm entering a REM cycle and a dream state.
Sleep paralysis does not always activate itself, or it does not hold up throughout the entire dream, I often flail my arms or kick my legs out when returning to reality. (but that could also just be me, although I've never done that when I'm asleep at home.)
Having boredom as my trigger is not very good because I cannot help but to fall asleep, and it takes a lot of mental effort to pull myself back from the brink of sleep, plus it usually only buys me a few more minutes of consciousness before I totally succumb to the feeling.
A lot of times a chance for a LD is missed because if I start to daydream without thinking about anything, I just have a waking dream. (again, might just be me though.)
Since I'm sitting down in an upright position the entire class session without moving I often have achy joints or numbness and sleep paralysis in my legs.

But of course these are only my assumptions about what I think is happening, feel free to shoot down my ideas with facts if you want to.
But I know for a fact that in cases of extreme boredom I am able to Lucid Dream while daydreaming.