this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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If anyone is interested, you can train yourself to dream lucidly. There's a bunch of techniques, but they are mostly pretty similar. What worked for me:
Make a habit of (lightly) pinching your nostrils closed, and attempting to breath in through them. Do this whenever you think of it throughout the day. Might take a few weeks before you are consistently doing this habit. If you do it and find that you are able to take a breath, you are dreaming!
The other part is at bed time. While laying in bed, focus on your sense of touch for 10 full breaths, then your sense of hearing for 10 full breaths, then the same for your other senses. Repeat until you fall asleep. This is intended to keep your mind focused on your body as you transition into the dream state.
The best time for actually lucid dreaming is if/when you wake up very early in the morning, and then go back to sleep.
Overall, this is a pretty fucking cool thing that you can do, for free, and you can train yourself to do it regularly. Do whatever you want-- sex, talk with dead loved ones, fly, practice dreaded interactions...
Random reality tests (nose pinching & breathing as described above) through the day works as you might randomly do it in the dream, but what I find works better is finding patterns in your dreams where something isn't right, and do tests against that while awake.
E.g
It can be anything though, maybe you drive your car a lot in your dreams so every time you get into your car you do a check.
You can find the patterns more easily by increasing your dream recall which can be done by keeping a dream journal.
When I was doing frequent checks and keeping a journal, at my peak, I was having lucid dreams 3-4 nights a week, and each night I'd have 3-4 lucid dreams. I've stopped journaling, and only really do reality checks if something really weird happens nowadays, and I'm still lucid dreaming 1-2 times a month now. The length of my lucid dreams are much shorter now as well though.
In one of my first lucid dreams, I was hanging out with a bunch of friends and noticed that they were a hodgepodge of people I knew, but who wouldn't know each other. And suddenly I realized, "this is a dream".
I proceeded to walk out onto the balcony and fly away... because flying was absolutely the first thing I wanted to try. Flew around, checked out some different planets, and then subtly slipped back into dreaming, losing control once again.
Lucid dreaming happens to me occasionally and I love it every time. And I always choose to fly lol, I can't help myself
Flying is pretty awesome. I've never even considered leaving earth, I'll have to try that sometime it I can remember.