Poll: Lucid Dreaming

[wildpeaks]

Wait, do you really have synesthesia? What kind of synesthesia? Because all the teenage hippie talk about lucid dreaming is one thing, but perception is actually a very interesting subject.

I had lucid dreaming only a very few times, but grapheme synesthesia is for as long as I can remember (and sometimes auditory, but for some reason that's more recent, maybe I wasn't paying attention, maybe I grew accustomed to the idea, I'm not sure).

For example, in this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stroop_interference.jpg
the last two lines are so "wrong" it hurts :/

I used to think it was just me until some years ago when a collegue at work pointed me to some online links and it felt like "omg, it's exactly that !"

 

[rokkolpo]

yes and i realised that when you know your dreaming a dream is rather short.

so i went ahead and make it an ''M'' rated dream.

 

[Clantau]

About last week I had a dream about exchanging a normal fallout 3 for fallout 3 goty and when I got it I said in my dream "This is a dream, isn't it?" And then the guy nodded so i tried turning him into kirby but the best I could do is a yellow kirby with a sword >_>

 

[wildpeaks]

Hmm... so is this related to memory only?

I honestly don't know, but the fact many people see "a" as red, me included, seems strange.

Do you actually perceive colours overlapping text or do you associate the memory of letters and numbers to colours?

Voyels and numbers are very strongly colorful (it covers the letters and "bleeds out") while the other letters are more like monochrome (ok not really monochrome, but less intense at least, it doesn't influence the letters (or symbols) around them).

Actually, once I was curious to try to see what would happen with non-latin languages like chinese and thai, and even if the colors are much less intense (maybe because I have no clue what words/symbols woulds mean), I can still sense a pattern: without thinking, there is color there, but I think the sound is a factor to the strength of the color (unrelated [well, not that I noticed at least] to music-induced colors).

On the other hand, I am used to try to repress paying too much attention to it because I spend 99% of my awake time looking at text (programming ftw) [so syntax highlighting colors make more sense profesionnally than my natural colors], though I feel very confortable with pages and pages of black & white code because the colors somehow "make sense" while my collegue go crazy over the walls of text.

Now, a person who has a car accident because a guitar riff paints his vision in bright orange, that's just cool.

Haha

Edit:
One boring evening, I went ahead and made a map of the alphabet: http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs005.snc1/4162_76332802437_828317437_1687531_6189987_n.jpg (facebook photo, I hope the link works nontheless) where plain letters represents colors that bleed out and outlined letter means color that are there but don' influence their neighbourgs. I really should add numbers to that one day however as, unlkoe letter, they all strongly bleed out.

 

[wildpeaks]

Okay so if the feeling of rubber makes me want to bite someone, is that Synesthesia or am i just one fucked up individual?

Probably a bit of both :-D

 

[mannaroth]

Yes, I was very deprived of sleep. Good times good times.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Lucid dreams are awesome.

In my experience, the best way to get a lucid dream is to set your alarm clock early. Like two hours early. Wake up, and don't go right back to sleep. Get up and move around a bit to wake up properly Nothing fancy, just walk up and down the room a few times. Don't eat or drink anything, though. Then, tell yourself to have a lucid dream (no really, just go "I'm now going to have a lucid dream" in your head), and go to sleep. If you wake up again and had a lucid dream (or any dream you can remember), write it down. You can throw the paper away after you've written it down or you can keep a dream log if you want, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you've put your dream into words, forcing your mind to fully process what happened.

I know there are other (and probably better) ways to do it, but this worked for me. The good part is that the more often you do this, the easier it gets. After a while you won't even need any silly rituals like that anymore and can have a lucid dream almost every night.

Personally, I find that lucid dreams are a lot harder to get when I'm extremely tired, and easier to get on holidays when I can sleep longer than normal.

 

[DJude]

practically every dream i have i control in some way

 

[Blakeyboy90]

I have once.
I was a kinda afraid of it at the time though so didn't use it to its potential.

I was just walking down my street but it was repeating constantly. I suddenly realised it wasn't real and could look all around myself. I kept walking down and I started imaging people there. I could touch them and everything it really was an amazing experience.

I haven't had one since but I may try the whole training techniques people talk about.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Once or twice throughout the whole dream, many times I become aware before it ends, and I've tried to keep myself asleep on occasions.

 

[ribonuge]

Lucid dreams are awesome.

In my experience, the best way to get a lucid dream is to set your alarm clock early. Like two hours early. Wake up, and don't go right back to sleep. Get up and move around a bit to wake up properly Nothing fancy, just walk up and down the room a few times. Don't eat or drink anything, though. Then, tell yourself to have a lucid dream (no really, just go "I'm now going to have a lucid dream" in your head), and go to sleep. If you wake up again and had a lucid dream (or any dream you can remember), write it down. You can throw the paper away after you've written it down or you can keep a dream log if you want, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you've put your dream into words, forcing your mind to fully process what happened.

I know there are other (and probably better) ways to do it, but this worked for me. The good part is that the more often you do this, the easier it gets. After a while you won't even need any silly rituals like that anymore and can have a lucid dream almost every night.

Personally, I find that lucid dreams are a lot harder to get when I'm extremely tired, and easier to get on holidays when I can sleep longer than normal.

Yes you are describing the MILD technique. It's proably the most effective. I do everything you do, except I have an audio track by one of the leading researchers in lucid dreaming, Stepthen LaBerge. It's excellent. It makes you picture a purple lotus and a flame in your throat, and you label it as your awareness. Then you concentrate on going back into the dream you just had, but this time you go in lucid. Pretty crazy but it works.

I love this thread if only because the kid in the OP's video is just hilariously surreal. I love his professor-like monotone while he sits on his bed holding a cheap camera on his hand. I love his long hair and his constant reassurances that he's an important guy and even had a girlfriend once. It's just brilliant.

I also dream in color.

+1, and I can read texts in dreams (which I found out at school at the time I wasn't supposed to be able to bcause reading is done by the other side of the brain than dreaming, or something).

Synesthesia ftw, gotta love seeing text or hearing sounds in colors

Wait, do you really have synesthesia? What kind of synesthesia? Because all the teenage hippie talk about lucid dreaming is one thing, but perception is actually a very interesting subject.

Synaesthesia is when your senses are mixed up right? So you perceive, for example, sight as sound. I read a Sci-fi novel called The Stars My Destination and towards the end

Spoiler

the protagonist teleports an extremely far distance, and it messes him up giving him full blown synaesthesia. The author described it really well, using words in strange patterns on the page. It's an excellent book.

 

[Ryuk2]

Snip

Oh, yeah, i messed up what lucid dreams with OBEs.

 

[Beartrucci]

I dream all the time, but I am not sure sure if some of them are lucid. Like I can control everything I do, but am unaware it was a dream. It happened to me the other night, I was at a huge metal festival, right at the front, Wintersun were about to come on stage. I was so excited, then I get woken up by my phone ringing and my sister banging on my bedroom door to wake me up at the same time.

Spoiler: My Ringtone, I laugh every time I watch this video

Although I do remember one time when I actually realised I was dreaming, so I went around flying in the sky. It was badass. And for a couple nights in a row, I kept dreaming that I was in a massive wizard duel against Voldemort, and I could control what I was doing.

I have also dreamed of a JRPG once, it had it's own story and gameplay mechanics and everything. And I once dreamed of a Halo/Red Faction: Guerrilla hybrid, it was a first person sword fighting game on the Wii in my dream which made things even weirder.

 

[Video Gone]

If you can train yourself properly, it's possible to make dreams last for what feels like years upon years. I went through (AND NO JOKE HERE, ACTUALLY HAPPENED) my subconcious mind's rendition of Modern Warfare 2. On the bit where

Spoiler

Gary and Ghost died

the music track for the scene was even playing in the background. It was then I realised. "Hang on, I'm dreaming. I have to be. Music playing... Sheperd, he looks familiar from somewhere else." (Bear in mind this was me breaking out of Gary's personality, I was IN the game, not just playing it.) Then...

Spoiler: STORY TWIST?!

I got up, killed most of Shadow Company, Sheperd escaped, and with my last few minutes, for I was not completely me yet, although I had become lucid, but Roach was still dying, I brought Ghost back to life and trasferred my personality to him. As Ghost, I got up, cried out in rage and desperation, and kicked major ass.

I've completed my own personal lucidity "training" (watching Waking Life and doing the techniques on wikihow and stuff, like "LOOK AT YOUR HANDS") now, and can make stuff last for pretty much as long as I want. Tonight I'm doing the Halo series, if I can.

 

[Julianking93]

Yes a few times.

They were all sex dreams though.

 

[Adzma]

Well perhaps through pure coincidence after reading in this thread that it's a good idea to repeat "I'm going to have a Lucid dream" in your head, I decided to give it a bash, figured I had nothing to loose. Lo and behold I had my first Lucid dream where I didn't wake up immediately afterwards. Suffice it to say, it was pretty amazing.

 

[Cosplay Horatio]

Of all the Lucid Dreams I've had I'll talk about two of them...my most favortie and my most recent.

The first is my most recent. I once had a dream this past Wednesday before getting up and going to work. More like a dream that turned into a nightmare. Dee Wallace was in this dream. It in a spacious dark room. There was Dee Wallace to my right and some innocent person to my left. I say innocent because what happens next blew my mind after I woke up and remembered it. Dee Wallace looks at this innocent person and says "YES" in a similar way to how people react as if they've been waiting along time for certain moments to happen. Then Dee Wallace reaches out to the person and while the person stays still the innocent person begins to shudder with fear because Dee Wallace is transforming into a demonic creature. Her head gets gigantic and her teeth change to that of sharks teeth then tentacles reach out for the innocent person. Then I blacked out and woke up.

My most favorite one is the one I call the Dragonball Z dream. My brother, his friends, and myself are in my backyard and were staring down a group of people who were our enemies. We turn around, run, then jump off the fence right back towards them and start punching and kicking them down. I looked up and saw an enemy jumping down towards me so I raised my hand and blasted him out of the sky. Then three enemies grab me and force me to the ground. I use a force push on them but it doesn't work. At that point I couldn't hold onto the dream and woke up without completely fighting off the enemies that forced me to the ground. That's about it.

 

[Queen Michael]

Once. But my brother is really into it, he often jokes that once he's gotten out of bed he can't wait to get back in.

 

[devilmore]

I actually have them relatively often. While most of the time i can't remember my dreams, the ones i do remmeber are mostly lucid ones. Though it's really weird to try and do something in them - it's like not having proper controle.

 

[Ironsouled]

yeah, I've had a couple. I simply touched someone with my index finger and ate/disintegrated/something'd them. Then I realized I was dreaming. before that I thought I was just having a wierd day. and then I went on a rampage that ended with me getting killed after becoming so much of a menace the government summoned up the National Guard. Right as they all leveled M16's I woke up.