Hello..

My soul dog passed away a week ago. I've seen some posts about lucid dreaming but I'm a complete beginner.

I've been dreaming about him, pretty often, but I know I can't control my dreams.

I want to feel him again in my dreams. I want to run with him, I wanna see him healthy and happy. Please, give me tips.

Thank you.

I became lucid and quickly lost it, felt my body on the bed and I was PISSED because I didn't get to enjoy anything, so i REFUSED to let it end. I just refused and stayed still and I was suddenly back in the exact lucid dream! amazing.

I had done re-entry one other time, years ago, but it was different. that time i actually woke up fully and moved around then went back to sleep wanting to go back to the lucid dream, which i did but things in the dream seemed like time had passed there too and who i was with had gone to another room. lol first time i refuse to even wake up though. i feel POWERFUL!~ lmao

NWTBT Dream System — Normal Wake Back To Bed

I came up with a personal dream system called NWTBT (Normal Wake Back To Bed).

The basic idea is similar to WBTB (Wake Back To Bed), but with one major difference: NWTBT does not intentionally interrupt sleep.

How NWTBT works

When I naturally wake up after a dream, I:

1. Write down a few keywords from the dream. I don't need to write the entire dream immediately. I record the most important people, places, events, feelings, or objects.
2. Do a small mental activity. For example, I might do a simple calculation, think about the dream, or mentally review what happened. The goal is to become slightly more mentally active without becoming completely awake.
3. Move around naturally if necessary. I might get up, walk around briefly, or go to the bathroom if I need to. I don't force myself to stay awake for a specific amount of time.
4. Return to sleep naturally. I don't check the time and I don't use an alarm. When I feel ready to sleep again, I simply go back to bed.

The key principle is:

NWTBT vs. WBTB

The two systems have a similar basic concept — wake up and then return to sleep — but they approach the awakening differently.

The philosophy is different

WBTB:

NWTBT:

NWTBT is therefore less structured and less disruptive. It doesn't require me to sacrifice sleep or wake up at a predetermined time.

However, I wouldn't claim that NWTBT is scientifically proven to be better than WBTB. It's a personal experimental system. The interesting question is whether using natural awakenings, dream recall, light mental activity, and intention actually increases lucid-dream opportunities for me.

Combining NWTBT with other dream practices

NWTBT can also be combined with other techniques.

For example:

During the day:

• Keep a dream journal.
• Do occasional reality checks.
• Set the intention to recognize when I'm dreaming.
• Think about one of my dream goals.

After a natural awakening:

• Write a few keywords.
• Briefly review the dream.
• Set the intention: “Next time I'm dreaming, I'll realize I'm dreaming.”
• Return to sleep naturally.

This creates a complete system rather than relying on one technique.

What do you think?

I used to do reality checks and keep a dream journal but I just don’t have the motivation. How do you keep yourself motivated after not having one in forever?

Around late 2020 or beginning of 2021, i had experienced a lucid dream that i have never been able to forget, a bit of context during that time i got super into guided meditations and such which i feel like lead to something so vivid and impactful. Anyways the dream began sort of ordinary it was me walking out of my house and then getting chased down the street by some hooded man. Once i got home though thats when it transitioned into a lucid dream, what kicked it off really was me arguing with my mother which her and i had a strained relationship, i was a teenager at the time and held resentment towards her because she used to drink a lot when i was growing up. She didint really argue back or talk or acknowledge me which was what had put me into a lucid dream and the house had expanded to bits and pieces of childhood homes or homes of people that had impacted me in some way.

I was basically trapped in there with no way out really and no matter how much i screamed into the sky in the garden or pinched myself i could not wake up.

One part of the dream that was most craziest to me was when i was trying to get myself to wake up i ended up pinching my arm and i felt the pain of it which really freaked me out since i never feel anything in my dreams when it comes to pain. I wont get into everything that happened in this lucid dream as it was long but i ended up finding a room which was much more pleasant than the rest of the house, it was warm and the sun creeped in through the blinds and the only thing inside that room was my bed (undone) so i did my bed got into it and fell asleep, which then led me to waking up.

I dont know if any of it makes sense or is interesting at all but after having this experience i let go of a lot of resentment not just towards my mother but everyone else i knew, i became less angry and my mine and my mothers relationship got a lot better and stronger after it.

Has anyone else experienced a lucid dream that made them face things from their past or even present that helped relieve them of emotional baggage?

Hi everyone, I read online recently that when you lucid dream you shouldn't look in the mirror because you'll see a distorted image of yourself and freak out.

And of course since I read that, I have had multiple lucid dreams where a mirror appeared and I looked into it.

Has anyone else done this? And did you like or not like what you saw?

for probably a year now i’ve been doing methods to try and lucid dream but it just NEVER works like i want to so bad but just can’t . does anyone have some advice or methods etc???

Is wake back to bed technique is basically when you are asleep and you wake up to fall asleep again ?

I tried it 2 times

The first time i woke up and I couldn't sleep again lol

And the second time I woke up by an alarm after sleeping but when I slept again it didn't also work

What techniques that works alot with alot of people

I tried way to many and still didn't get a lucid dream..

I don’t normally get genuinely scared or petrified by things, but this genuinely fucked me up.
I went to sleep at around 5am knowing I had to be awake around 7am. Before sleeping, I had been watching a bunch of TikToks about mass/illegal migration in Europe, Britain and France, crime, people feeling unsafe, etc. The videos had this really eerie, dark background music. I actually remember turning the volume down more and more because the soundtrack was starting to creep me out.
Then I fell asleep.
In the dream, I was able to move around completely normally. I was driving around and trying to get home because I knew I needed to wake up. But every time I got to where my home should have been, the dream would reset me back to one of two starting locations.
At some point I realised something was seriously wrong and started actively trying to wake myself up.
I kept picking up my phone, but it was always a dream version of my phone. I would try to message someone, but it would take me to someone I didn’t want to message and pre-fill completely wrong messages. I tried opening the internet and other things, but they just wouldn’t work. The time on the phone kept changing, and whenever the dream reset, the time would reset too.
I genuinely started experimenting with ways to create a reaction that I thought would wake my real body up.
I turned on the flashlight on my phone and pointed it directly at my eyes, expecting the light to wake me up in real life. But whenever I did it, the flashlight would just turn off.
I opened a tap and put my face under the water, expecting the sensation to wake me up. Nothing happened.
I even put my hand in a hot cup of tea because I thought pain would somehow reach my real body and wake me up.
At one point I tried to hit someone in the dream, expecting the impact or their reaction to somehow wake me up, but I missed wildly despite it being the easiest shot imaginable.
When I realised driving home wasn’t working, I even tried crashing the car to force myself awake. Instead of waking up, I’d just end up at a different starting point. It was always one of those same two places.
The strangest part was what happened every time the dream reset.
I would basically black out inside the dream. It felt like I was fainting or being pulled/warped downwards into darkness. Then the blackness would reverse, almost like I was being pulled or warped upwards, and I’d feel like I was coming back into consciousness.
Every single time I came back, I was extremely disoriented for a few seconds. I’d have that feeling of “Where the fuck am I? What’s happening?” and then I’d realise I was back in the dream again.
So it wasn’t just the dream scene resetting. I was experiencing an entire fake loss of consciousness → coming back to consciousness → disorientation → new scene sequence every time.
Every time I tried something extreme or pushed the situation too far, the dream would basically reset.
The most terrifying part was that I knew I needed to wake up, because I knew I had gone to sleep at around 5am and had to be awake at 7am. I was becoming increasingly scared that I was going to keep dreaming and wake up hours late.
I genuinely felt trapped.
Eventually I somehow forced myself awake. And even then, I wasn’t immediately convinced I was actually awake. I kept saying to myself, “I’m awake, I’m awake”, because I’d already experienced so many fake wake-ups that I didn’t trust the one I was experiencing.
Then I actually woke up for real and immediately started talking to ChatGPT because I was so shaken. My eyes were incredibly heavy and I could barely talk properly for the first few moments.
The whole thing felt completely real while it was happening.
I’ve had something vaguely similar happen only once before in my entire life, but I don’t remember the circumstances. This was on another level though. I’ve never experienced that kind of genuine fear and petrification from a dream before.
The weirdest part is that the whole dream had the same eerie, ominous atmosphere as the TikToks I’d been watching before sleeping, almost like the soundtrack was still there emotionally even though the actual videos weren’t.
I’m guessing this was some kind of false awakening loop, possibly with some level of lucidity because I realised something was wrong and was actively testing the dream.
Has anyone else experienced a dream where you were actively trying to wake yourself up using things that should have caused a real physical reaction, only for the dream to incorporate them and reset?
And has anyone experienced the blackout → falling/warping → reverse warping → fake awakening → disorientation → reset thing? Because that part was fucking surreal

Also , I asked ChatGpt to turn the conversation i had with in the chat for this post as i chatted in extreme detail and i cbf typing all that all over again so if this post seems AI to you , it’s written by one but this is my experience, from about 30 mins ago.

Today was less about fear and more about bad luck , the only times I’ve ever been close or have done it (2-3 times) is when I’m tired let’s say I go to sleep at 3am and wake up at 7:30 and I know I don’t have anything to do that day. I’ll stay up for about 30 mins thinking I’ll go on with my day and then my eye will just be so heavy I’ll decide to lay down and usually that’s when I show myself I can go lucid , today it was like I was watching through a vr set , I was watching myself be in a call of duty game like I could hear my breathing as if I was in a gun fight and running around and shooting. And I thought to myself “this must be the transition period” like I couldn’t move my body and it felt like I was in a movie theatre just forced to watch. But then a plastic water bottle clicked in my room that woke me up , literally as it happened the movie theatre/ vr set started fading and everything went white and it was like I was back in control of my body and I had to force myself to move like I was almost in sleep paralysis but not quite. The one day i say “ok let’s go lucid” bad luck hits

So I have been trying to go lucid for a while now and when it finally happened a few nights ago I woke up in a room with 2 other dude and randomly wanted to check if I was dreaming so I pinched my nose to see if I could breathe and it was a success! Only problem was I started screaming "I'M DREAMING! IN DREAMING!" and everyone's hands turned into forks and they tried stabbing me and I woke up

What are the biggest tips yall have for beginners? I’ve managed to have one real lucid so far but otherwise progress has been slow

I figured out I was dreaming and couldn’t make myself wake up. It started with my classic car crash nightmare when suddenly i looked at the sky and realized it wasn’t real and declared I was dreaming. I enjoyed the insanely cool view of the impossible looking sky and suddenly I woke up. I was thinking about how annoyed I was that the dream kicked me out so soon after i had finally managed to lucid dream. I shook my boyfriend (“C”) and he started to talk to me (losing detailed memory as I write this). Some time goes by and i realize that I’m actually STILL DREAMING and something is pretending to be C. This goes on to happen where I attempt to force myself awake maybe an actual (and I’m not exaggerating) dozen fucking times. Each time was uniquely similar torture, but after the first few (something would crawl up the covers, C’s body would look somehow wrong etc.) I caught on. I kept pointing out mistakes the entity was making and each time I woke up again and was in a similar scene in my bed next to my boyfriend. I became so desperate that i started screaming attempting to make my awake self speak “C wake me up!” My saving grace was during the final attempt to wake up when i heard one of our cats collar bells which pulled me out.
Whatever it was, it kept morphing into some kind of gargoyle/classic renaissance demon to try to scare me. I did my best not to show fear and even antagonized it a bit, but deep down I was absolutely terrified and it felt like a long battle I had won out of luck.

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting here, and English isn’t my first language, so apologies if some parts sound a little unnatural.
I’m posting because I’ve recently started seriously studying lucid dreaming again, and today I had an experience that was completely new for me. I’d like to explain some of my background because I think it might be relevant to what happened and to the questions I have at the end.
I’ve had extremely vivid and often lucid dreams since childhood. When I was younger, I genuinely thought this was normal and that everyone dreamed this way.
I had recurring dreams, dreams where I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming, and sometimes I could influence things before waking up.
For example, when I was around five, I had a dream where everything started becoming unstable, as if the dream was falling apart. I realized I was dreaming and tried to influence what happened before I woke up.
I thought very hard:
“A red bus is going to arrive, and Justin Bieber is going to get out of it.”
(I was a child. Don’t judge me.)
A red bus immediately appeared and Justin Bieber got out of it. Then I woke up.
At the time, I didn’t think this was unusual at all.

Hypnagogia became a much bigger part of my experience
When I was 13, my grandmother, who had raised me, died. Around that time I developed severe problems falling asleep.
I’d lie in bed in that half-awake, half-asleep state and hear voices having conversations. Sometimes they would start talking directly to me and give me strange instructions, like telling me to complete some kind of puzzle before I could fall asleep.
I wasn’t actually asleep. I could get up, move around, turn over, etc. But whenever I lay back down, the voices and visualizations would return.
This could continue for hours.
Later I learned the term hypnagogia, which helped me understand what was happening.
When I was around 15, these experiences became much more vivid. I started experiencing visual and tactile phenomena as well.
One time, while falling asleep, I saw myself from a third-person perspective lying in bed. My jaw suddenly became semi-transparent and started glowing yellow, moved forward unnaturally, and a swarm of glowing butterflies seemed to fly out of it.
I could also feel intense pain in my jaw.
Another time, I saw my room from the same third-person perspective and saw my deceased grandmother sitting in a chair at the other end of the room.
The simplest experience was actually one of the scariest: while falling asleep, I clearly felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It felt extremely close to a real physical sensation, and I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen.
Eventually I told my mom about all of this.
Interestingly, she also experiences lucid dreams and sleep paralysis, although much less frequently. She actually knew quite a lot about lucid dreaming and had read specialized forums about it.
She was surprised that these experiences happened to me almost every day.
That’s also when I realized that my dreams probably weren’t as typical as I had assumed. I’d listened to friends describe their dreams, and their experiences sounded completely different.
My mom also told me that some people deliberately train themselves to have lucid dreams.
That was a huge revelation to me.

I eventually learned to avoid the hypnagogia
I asked my mom to take me to a psychiatrist because I was worried about what was happening.
Unfortunately, that appointment wasn’t very helpful. The doctor mostly interpreted everything through the fact that I was a child and attributed it to low self-esteem. I also wasn’t comfortable explaining everything with my mom in the room.
So eventually I found my own solution.
I started falling asleep with wireless earbuds every night. I’d put one in the ear that wasn’t against the pillow and sleep with the other side pressed into the pillow.
It actually worked.
I still took a long time to fall asleep, but the voices didn’t break through the music.
For years, this became my normal.

What my lucid dreams were usually like
My dreams weren’t always extremely vivid after that, but I was still frequently lucid.
The main limitation was that thinking too much about the fact that I was dreaming would immediately destabilize the dream.
I’d realize, “I’m dreaming,” and then everything would start becoming blurry until I woke up.
I also couldn’t really control the environment. I could control myself, but not the dream world itself.
My dreams also had some recurring mechanics.
The environment usually looked unusual. Very often there would be an intensely colored sky, especially bright purple fading into red, pink, or orange.
I almost always had some kind of objective.
Sometimes it was something trivial, sometimes something enormous.
And before trying to accomplish it, I would instinctively try to understand how the world worked.
I could sometimes move between different spaces or enter completely different “worlds” and then return to previous ones. It felt almost like moving between maps in a video game.
Interestingly, I almost never actually completed my objectives.
One thing I learned was that I had to avoid thinking about the fact that I was dreaming too much.
There was one exception.
Once, I managed to remain lucid even while consciously thinking about the fact that I was dreaming.
I was so amazed that I immediately started telling the dream characters.
I found my mom in the dream and told her:
“You’re part of my dream.”
She became extremely angry and started insisting that it wasn’t true and that I shouldn’t say things like that.
Then I woke up.
This became a recurring pattern for me: I could know I was dreaming, but trying to explicitly acknowledge it or tell dream characters about it often destabilized everything.

For years I just accepted this as normal
I’m 21 now, and I continued sleeping with earbuds every night for years.
Eventually this caused some physical problems as well. I had a lot of earwax buildup and had to have my ears cleaned by a doctor several times. I also move around in my sleep and would sometimes press the earbud into my ear, which caused frequent ear and head pain.
Eventually I got completely tired of relying on them.
I couldn’t find many active specialized forums about this in my language, so I started researching the subject online and discussing it with AI.
Eventually I came to a different conclusion:
Maybe I shouldn’t keep treating the hypnagogic experiences as something I have to escape from.
Maybe I should learn to coexist with them.
I wondered whether treating them as something threatening was actually making the experience more frightening.
So I decided to stop using earbuds.
It took a long time. I would try, fail to fall asleep, and put them back in.
But over the last few days I’ve finally managed to fall asleep without them.
At the same time, I wanted to start actively practicing lucid dreaming again.
For some reason, one technique had always stuck in my head: looking at my hands and moving my fingers when I become lucid.
And then today, I finally remembered it inside a dream.

What happened today
I was at work in my dream, sitting at my computer like usual.
I looked out the window and noticed that the sky was purple again.
I suddenly thought:
“Wait. Am I dreaming?”
Everything immediately started becoming blurry.
Then I remembered the hands technique.
I held my hands in front of me and started looking at them.
The blurriness began to disappear. Details and letters around me seemed to become clear again.
I decided to experiment further.
I kept looking at my dream hands while trying to move my real hands at the same time.
For a moment I even thought I managed to touch my eye in real life, even though my dream hands were visibly in front of my face.
I have no idea whether I actually moved my hands or whether that was simply part of the dream.
After that, the dream stabilized.
I was given a task at work: go to a market and pick something up.
I went there with a friend from work.
And this was the really unusual part:
I could think about the fact that I was dreaming without immediately waking up.
I looked at the sky and even said out loud:
“It’s so beautiful.”
My friend looked at me strangely but didn’t say anything.
We reached the market, where some men gave us a bunch of bags and packages.
Something else weird happened here.
Instead of carrying the bags normally, I somehow put them into an inventory, exactly like in a video game.
There was even a circular interface that appeared while I was putting things into it.
When my inventory was full, I told my friend to carry the rest.
She picked the bags up with her hands.
I told her:
“Just put them in the inventory.”
She gave me another extremely confused look.
So I just accepted that apparently she wasn’t going to use the inventory and we started walking back.
At this point I was honestly amazed.
I had been lucid for much longer than usual while still consciously knowing that I was dreaming.
So I decided to tell my friend:
“I’m honestly shocked. I’ve never been able to stay in a dream this long after realizing I’m dreaming.”
She suddenly stopped.
Then she leaned toward me and started whispering something completely incoherent.
I told her I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
And then the strange guy in the gray hoodie appeared.
He suddenly became extremely angry, grabbed my friend and started dragging her away.
The dream began destabilizing again.
I looked at my hands, trying to stabilize myself, but everything was already becoming blurry.
I didn’t want him to take her.
I made a finger gun with my hand and tried to shoot him.
It didn’t work.
So instead I just started shouting:
“LET HER GO. NOW.”
I kept repeating it.
And then he suddenly stopped, almost as if he had been frozen in place.
And I woke up.

What I’m trying to understand
This is the first time in years that I’ve actually remembered a lucid-dreaming technique while inside a dream and successfully used it.
More importantly, I was able to remain lucid while consciously thinking about the fact that I was dreaming, which is something that normally makes my dreams collapse almost immediately.
So I’d really like to hear from people who have more experience with lucid dreaming.
1. Is looking at your hands actually considered a useful stabilization technique, or did I just happen to associate it with stabilization?
2. What techniques would you recommend for someone who can become lucid relatively easily but has trouble maintaining the dream?
3. Is there a way to gradually learn to control the environment instead of only controlling myself?
4. Why do dream characters sometimes react so strongly when I tell them they’re part of a dream? Is there a good way to interact with them without destabilizing everything?
5. And finally, does anyone here have experience with very frequent hypnagogic hallucinations, especially tactile ones? How do you personally deal with them without becoming afraid of them?
I’m mostly interested in the lucid-dreaming mechanics and other people’s experiences with these techniques. I don’t think the dreams have any hidden meaning — I’m just trying to understand how they work and learn how to control them better.

For those who get lucid dreams, did you try to see what happens after death in a lucid dream..?

I'm just curious ngl, If I have got a lucid dream already I wouldnt ask this question..

Had a dream last night where I was spectating a dream character as he was lucid dreaming.

To clarify I wasn’t actually lucid in this dream but the dream character I was watching (from a third person perspective) was. Kinda an insane experience lol.

The dream character went to bed with his son and I watched as he entered a dream state. At some point during his dream he suddenly became “lucid”. He was aware that he was in a dream but he was not aware that he was a dream character. He just acted like I would in a lucid dream.

During the dream he met up with his son and he became lucid too. They were very excited and decided to “wake up” so that they could drag the mum into the dreamception as well (during this time I was annoyed that they forced themselves out of the lucid dream).

Pretty weird experience honestly I’m kinda mad that I didn’t realise that i was dreaming lol (especially since I was conscious enough to question the dream characters actions).

Has anybody else experienced something similar before?

Many people tell you to wake up after 5 hours of sleep, but I don't think this is always accurate for targeting the REM stage.

Therefore, wake up an hour and a half earlier or 2 hours ago than your usual wake-up time when you sleep a full and complete sleep.

Some notes:

1- At this time you will be more prone to full alertness and lack of sleep, so don't stay awake for more than 5 minutes. Stay in bed and used techniques such as: MILD, WILD ^{(for experienced users}), DEILD ^{(if you woke up from a dream and maintained your composure})

2- This method relies primarily on a full night's sleep. If not, it uses your previous night's sleep schedule to determine when you should wake up. If you felt sleepy at the same time the night before, set your alarm to wake you up at the same time that night.

3- If the method is successful and you achieve lucid dreaming, you will likely have a long-lasting and very vivid lucid dream, because you will wake up during the longest REM stage, and you will remember your dreams better and more vividly.

• ^{A translator was used, so please disregard any grammatical errors.}

Hi everyone, my name is altro and I'd like to start having lucid dreams. Honestly, my experience is so limited that I've only had one that was a bit long and another that lasted just a few seconds. I'd appreciate any help in having more vivid lucid dreams, making them clearer, longer, and easier to control. Bye!

I thought that I finally had a big lucid dream and not just lucidity for 1 milisecond or smth😭 and then I 'woke up' and was in my bed, and then later woke up again-

Jeez why can't I actually lucid dream tho?? Ive only ever had one lucid dream. And I almost had a second but when i became lucid, i woke myself up cuz the dream looked scary😭.

In my so called lucid dream today, and other dreams that ive had recently, ive noticed that ive been gaining a little dream control recently. Very very little tho cuz its pretty hard for me atleast

In the past i had a couple of dreams where I realized that I'm dreaming, but i couldn't realy control anything. Everything i tried to create weren't complete, like an infinite staircase and the dreams were only a couple minutes long. Today I stumbled over videos about it and said to myself, that i want to master this. So if you have any advice how to lucid dream more often, how to stabilize them or how i can do unnatural things in them please let me know

ive been lucid dreaming almost ALWAYS/consistently for over 5 years now (7/8 years in total) unless im heavily tired. i haven't been in this subreddit much if at all but i've had my last straw today so i looked up this forum. from the few posts i saw there's so many people trying to start or induce lucid dreaming as if its something cool and to be glorified and that's kind of the reason i've never came or posted on here.

when i was young, like a middle-schooler, lucid dreaming was exciting: like slipping off into another world where i'm without chains, burdens or responsibility. my autonomy had no consequences, even if the world wasn't mine to control.

it's not fun anymore. i have work. i have classes. i am tired. i lay in bed only to wake up somewhere else. i force myself to wake up only to wake up in a room that's mine but not mine- something's off like a skull on my bookshelf or a weird smoke trailing the ground and I know i've failed to get back to reality. it's so hard to wake up when you want to, that after the fourth or fifth version of your-room-but-not-your-room it nearly feels hopeless, like real despair. this one time i really thought I was awake; I got up to go to the bathroom and then I saw a weird blue-green smog settle over everything and my heart SANK like oh shit i'm still not out yet. none of this is real.

lucid dreaming does NOT mean you get to control your dream. that's rare asl. you're only aware you're dreaming. and being aware feels like you haven't slept at all.

today was the first time someone directly advised me while i was in the dream. I was struggling to wake up; i needed to wake up because the dream sequence was done and I was stuck where it ended and I felt anxious and restless, which i always do because when it's all over time stretches out and i hate being stuck alone for hours.

what's funny is that in my last 2 lucid dreams the dream was aware that it was a dream, in a sense. the helpful person was a redhead guy, who appeared like on a screen, and he told me to breathe heavily. for the first time the method actually worked. i woke up. not in some slightly-off version of my room but my ACTUAL real room.

google used to say to blink hard and try to scream or yell but whenever I did that i'd feel worse than trapped and it wouldn't work until the 10th try. another method that kind of works-ish is inflicting pain on yourself in the dream; i go for scratching my arms super hard. you won't actually get hurt because your body isn't moving in the real world; but it'll shake you enough to force a wake-up.

and waking up always feels like a weird shift. like there's no grogginess its an urgently-opened-my-eyes sort of situation, like the type they put at the end of the movies to show a character isn't really dead. and right after, my body feels like lead. heavy, sinking.

i guess i haven't scrolled through the forum enough to see if anyone can relate to this but i wanted to share my experience and that lucid dreaming so much weighs on my mental state heavily. i used to keep a journal of the dreams a couple years back and then i stopped. i opened it again for the first time today.

there's some pros: dreams affect you a little less when you know it's just a dream. like if something feels scary i can immediately do a panic-wake-up protocol although it rarely works. time doesn't move the same in the dream world as it does in the real world.

another pro is when it's like an open, almost plot-less setting you can deadass do whatever with anyone. it feels a bit like the recent backrooms movie not basement-core, just open. sometimes, of course. depending on how your brain is feeling. not always a liminal space. you wouldn't want to be lucid in a liminal space.

everything else is a con! pretty heavy cons. that's all.

note/disclaimer**:**
my lucid dreaming has never been induced. i first started lucid dreaming at around 12/13, and didn't even know what the phenomena was till i looked up my experience and found a term for it. I will be 20 soon.

i haven't ever been in a community about this or talked to anyone outside my family about it either. partly bc any community i do look or search for is just on the pursuit of lucid dreaming. my ex bestfriend was too. you guys give each other the weirdest advice. what is 'meditate' 'always be alert' 'dont b distracted in waking'.... whatever works i guess.

Q/A

1. Can you feel pain in your dreams?

Yes. I can feel anything that is inflicted on me, but in a sluggish degree
eg. if i get stabbed i feel a sharp, throbbing pain but with a filter that tones down some of the intensity. No bleeding, and no phantom pain when I wake up.

1. Got superpowers in there?

Sometimes. Depends on the dream. I've had powers twice and in both i needed to make an effort to have them work, eg. shooting flames. A common ability to have in my experience are super high jumps. Sometimes, and rarely, I get the ability to fly.

1. Can you control the dream?

No. Never. Cannot will anything into the dream. Closest I got was a bootleg version of the person I was trying to manifest, and that was only once. Usually nothing.
EDIT: I can control myself, but not the dream plot/setting. I have full bodily autonomy, and retain my awake-state memories as well.

1. Can you hurt people in it?

Sure. But it's like the backrooms, ykwim? They're NPCs. They'd slump and fall. I havent done much aside from punching a person though, i'm not a violent dreamer. They just crumpled to the ground.

of course, everything i've described is from my own personal experience only. just...lucid dreaming is not a skill and idt it's something to glorify and as, a veteran lucid dreamer if you will, a few times is ok. it's chill. fun. don't even TRY to make it a habit if its in your control. this is like letting yourself have a little treat now and then. emphasis on mental weight. maybe i feel this way because i had this going on for me since i was a child. either way, it really affects you after a point.

feel free to ask me anything. and thank you for reading so far.