Lucid dreaming!

Down with Umbrella said:

Do you guys know anything about Astral projection?
My friend told me yesterday she experienced this NOT intentionally when she was between awake and sleep. I told her I thought she was just lucid dreaming.
Hmm

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I had a similar feeling one time, I was half slept and I was able to see my body under where I was. It lastes a few seconds and after I felt short flahsbacks and an out time sensation. I'm very skeptical about supernatural things but is awesome how our brain is able to make us feel weird things

I've wondered this same question too, how do you know the difference between the two. Often, what some consider astral travel may indeed be lucid dreaming. I'm not an astral traveler myself to be able to give a first hand opinion, therefore what ever I might say has little value, but I did have a dream about 20 years ago which seemed more real than waking reality to me. Some might say that was astral travel, but opinions don't really make it so, or not.

I was considering starting Project Lucidity last year. The project was there to see how efficient you can get at lucid dreaming after 3 months of training. It was basic really, log every dream that you remember into a diary. After a month of logging, you would try to find something common in your dream. From there, each time you see that object/person; you would either pinch your arm or look at your hands. As you know, you don't feel pain in dreams that well and looking at your hands in lucid dreams looks fuzzy and you cannot focus. That way, you realize you are in a lucid dream.

However, I never did bother to begin Project Lucidity as I had other things to do; and forgot completely about it.

I might build myself one of these to make my life easier, I can judge the efficiency of the device from a simple calculation so it gives me the incentive to restart Project Lucidity.

We will see in the future! :beer:

So where does real science end and pseudoscience begin?
Interesting experiment dreadnought, maybe it will be worth a try in the future when you can dedicate the time.
In reading about astral traveling I read about a psychologist that tried this experiment.
A person went into astral projection. In the room next door there were cards with numbers.
When the person travel returned they were supposed to tell the psychologist what numbers were on the cards. The results were inconclusive. Maybe it is just lucid dreaming.

They(people who practice this) say astral travel is safe. To me it seems it is not safe to mentally detach your self from your body. Hmm

Her story as follows, Portuguese is her first language so this is what I summarized from what she told me yesterday.
She went to bed after praying. Sometime in between awake and sleep her subconscious/spirit choose to step into a different plane.
She was aware she was not sleeping.
She saw her mother in her house older with a different dog. When she reached out to her she did not react.
She tried to return but could not.
Eventually she did "wake" and was very very frightened.

I personally believe this is a nightmare/ lucid dreaming but she swears it was astral travel.
Hm

Nearly 20 years ago I had an experience which might be considered astral travel but I don't have any kind of proof. The experience wasn't an earthly one, there was no earth in view, just a void with a bright sun in the center of it I was communicating with through thoughts. For proof whether we can do something like that, I'd need to go somewhere I could later visit and see something I could verify as being real or not. I have watched a youtube video with a man who had an experience where he was later able to verify what he saw, but of course that is no proof either, anyone can say anything in these matters and you can't know if they were being accurate or truthful. These kinds of things are best explored individually to see for yourself.

Im a little late on this but oh boy do I have some doozies of a dream. I noticed some meds ive taken make a difference or lack of or to much sleep make for some weird dreaming. I know we all have some really bazzar like the one I recently had about washing my cat and then ironing her and folding her. Mabey I played with her more than usual that day. The dreams I hate are the ones where you know your sleeping and your trying to wake up but your frozen and cant move and when you finally do after an agonizing effort your not where you think you are. I also have heard some myths about dreaming. I dont have a strong vocabulary but in some dreams I talk like im a proffessor at Harvard."ok little corny" Am I talking smart and my brain is using more than its 10% or is it blabbering? If your dreaming that your falling off a building and you actually fall of the bed at the same time do you die when you hit the floor? They say a dream that seems it takes hours is only a few seconds, that I find it hard to believe? Ive heard if you want to remember your dream, wake up and write it down but I saw that on an episode of Sienfeld when he dreamt a joke and was cracking up but when he saw it the next morning it made no sense. I dont think I had any dreams that im flying though, mabey as a child

From what I've been able to gather, dream time and real time are the same, I've heard this question asked of a professional who studies them and this was his answer. I've been very active dreaming my entire life, perhaps I should say, remembering them all my life. I've read that we all dream, but not everyone remembers them.

I was sleep talking when I was 20 years old which shocked my girl friend because I was talking in a different language, best that she could tell, Welsh. Now how did that happen? I didn't speak anything but English at the time and had never tried studying any other languages.

Alaskan said:

From what I've been able to gather, dream time and real time are the same, I've heard this question asked of a professional who studies them and this was his answer. I've been very active dreaming my entire life, perhaps I should say, remembering them all my life. I've read that we all dream, but not everyone remembers them.

I was sleep talking when I was 20 years old which shocked my girl friend because I was talking in a different language, best that she could tell, Welsh. Now how did that happen? I didn't speak anything but English at the time and had never tried studying any other languages.

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Could she tell if it was actually welsh? Did she speak it or know a few words because I still believe I was talking "smart" in my dream and I reached that part of the brain that we dont use. They say when you sleep talk you dont give away dark secrets I kinda dont believe that? I do also remember almost doing a sleep walking thing. I was asleep and turned and stood up then woke up but was well aware of it as it was happening. When say you take a catnap on the couch and the TV is on how many times have your dreams gone in sequence to the words you are hearing. Im trying to say that your dreams are in perfect harmony with the script thats on the TV, how can that be? do we have a 5 sec delay in our dreaming process. If we could record are dreams and put it on the screen that would be something:thinking:

What happens in dreams is in my experience pretty much what you make of it in the morning. In a dream you can appear to be fluent in some language you have never spoken before. The question remains if you actually were or just imagined to be. After waking up chances are small you can remember enough of it to find even which language it was.

I've never used any technology or technique to induce lucid dreaming, but it has happened to me from time to time and i find it enjoyable.

The downside of it is that i wake up from them if there is a big disconnect with what is physically possible. This could be something like leaping from a 10 story building and landing on the ground safely. As soon as i realize that just happened it usually is over - the illusion is broken and i wake up.

In some rare instances i've had nested dreams, which is actually pretty cool. This has gone to about 3 layers of dreaming within a dream, leaving me puzzled what reality actually was for a moment. Then again i've woken up to what must have been a nightmare but actually was reality some times too

Lucid dreams are very cool, far more so than a video game and you know how addicted some can become to those, someday I expect we will have a technology to induce lucid dreaming, at first uncontrolled which could turn into a night mare if you could'nt turn it off.... much life real life, but we can on this side if things get too bad.

I've had some lucid flying dreams where I am standing on a tall cliff or mountain, right at the edge, and have to jump off and fall fast enough to the ground before I could get enough lift, to soar. I'm a pilot, so that's probably why, if you stall an airplane, you have to let it nose down to pick up enough speed before it will start flying again. I've had a few nested dreams where I woke up from one to find myself in another and then again waking up to find myself in another, or so I thought.

Very cool topic.

I just had a lucid dream last night. Sadly I don't remember much of it, but I remember being on a train, and it was moving inside some weird electronic complex, kind of what you might see in a Sci-Fi movie.

I knew it was a dream, and I though "cool, might as well enjoy it 'till it lasts".

"Astral Projection" is basically just lucid dreaming, but freaks people out that don't understand what's going on.

Particularly when I have been sick with the flu, I've had a couple of incidents where I feel like my entire body got pushed off my bed to the floor, like something tossed me there. It doesn't feel malevolent or anything, almost like a strong wind.

I fully wake up and I am still in bed though lol, but I could swear for a second that I think I am on the floor (For the record I've never actually fallen off for real as far as I remember).

I did try a while back to lucid dream, and I find for me, it used to work best in the morning, a few hours before you get up. You have to wake up after a few mins of lucidness, and it's hard to stay dreaming once you realize it's a dream.

But man, one of my best flying sequences I still remember, the wind felt so real as I was zipping around buildings almost at the speed of sound

It helps to have real life experiences for your brain to use as building blocks. In my case, I've been riding motorcycles for a while, and I'm sure the "wind in my face" aspects are from riding with a half helmet, and feeling the wind in my face lol

On sleep paralysis, I've never been afraid of it, at least not in a supernatural sense. I know it's nothing more than my brain playing tricks. I can tell you sometimes the "sleep paralysis" is nothing more than a lucid dream though.

The experience that made me realize that a few years ago: I woke up. I had my blanket covering my face, and I was completely paralyzed, except for blinking. I could see, but the only thing I saw was the blanket covering my eyes.

I had a small fear about getting stuck like that forever. I was thinking "crap, if I get stuck like this, for the rest of my life all I'll be able to see in front of me is a damn blanket!" But I didn't panic, and figured I'd just let it pass. So eventually it did, and to my surprise, when I was fully awake, I realized I had no blanket at all! It was one of those hot summer days, and I don't sleep with a blanket in those periods.

I must have dreamt/hallucinated the blanket, because there wasn't one.

Two sources that I found to help lucid dreaming.

The first being this: How To Stay Lucid: 8 Ways to Prolong Your Lucid Dreams which gives techniques into prologing lucid dreaming.

The second: Can You Spend Years in a Lucid Dream? talks about perception of time in lucid dreams and how you can slow it down, for example: using Calea Zacatechichi to slow down perception of time. Review of Calea Zacatechichi: My Review of Calea Zacatechichi (Calea Z): The Dream Herb

We definitely need to test these and see if they actually work. I am most curious on Calea Z so it would be good if someone tested Calea Z and report its effects.

I've tried Calea Zacatechichi every night for several days in a row, it made me dream easier and they were far more colorful dreams, I mean COLOR! But, I didn't become lucid, for that I would use very small amounts of a rare species of Salvia plant. I know Calea is called the dream herb, but with Salvia, if you don't get too much, it's the real dream herb, as you can have dreams pour out right in front of your eyes, if you keep them closed, open them for a moment, at least for me, they would fade away every time. Only one problem, that was 15 years ago I did that, today, in some states they have taken to regulate the plant like pot, but not in Alaska, fortunately, if I ever wanted to do so again. Salvia has a bad rap in the media due to stupid kids getting ahold of it and acting like idiots, I never had problems with it.

Ricker said:

Ahh, another very favorite hobby of mine!! I love it! I once got sleep paralysis from trying though, scared me for months from trying again, but I got back on the horse! Does this really work?! I use binaural beats to try an achieve lucid dreaming, which works about 25% of the time. I am very interested into wondering what this increases the percentage to for some individuals.

-Nate

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You should link us to those binaural beats

Dreadnought said:

You should link us to those binaural beats

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Do a search on YouTube for "binaural beats" the list is very long.

Alan

I believe lucid dreaming is age related as I used to be able to do it a lot, but now that I am much older it is a very rare occurrence. I've had many flying dreams, and I too, love those the most. I haven't really studied it at all, though.