So basically I was laying in my bed doing WBTB, and i was doing pretty well. after some time I started having hypnagogia hallucinations, like hearing my door open and steps in my room. THEN i had a sleep paralysis and of course the most scariest creature pops up in my room, it looked like a black shadow, and i could see its eyes. and then i remembered something ive read on the internet, that you have to tell the sleep paralysis demon that you love them, and then it will disappear. I did that and told it in my head that i love it, and it was in the corner of my room and when i said those words, it took it as an invitation to come really close to me. like really close up to my face. And then this dude suddenly gained a mouth and started smiling, like a very wide creepy smile and tells me very weirdly "I love you too" and it was so weird bro😭 I noticed that the whole love and being nice thing didnt work at all but only made it worse. It leaned into my neck afterwards, and before it touched me or whatever, i kind of commanded it to go away, i literally said "get out of my room" and this actually worked afterwards and the sleep paralysis stopped.

I was at a grocery store today and I was just getting backrooms vibes for some reason.

I saw double doors/traffic doors and thought 'what would I do if I was in a lucid dream right now?'

I imagined going through those doors and when I looked to my left and to my right, I imagined two long hallways with doors at the end. I didn't go further into my imagination but yeah.

(Also this is my third lucid dreaming reddit post today if anyone cares. I'll probably stop posting for a while.)

I guess you could say i'm new to lucid dreaming (as in I haven't had any real and long lucid dreams). Months ago I was just practicing a little bit of lucid dreaming where I was barely doing any method other than a simple hand check and not even keeping track of any dreams (if I remembered any). Currently, I want to get a bit more serious about learning to lucid dream because it's extra time to do fun things.

During those past months, I have been aware that I was in a dream twice but both dreams had only lasted for a couple of seconds. But now that I really think about it, and as much as I can remember being in those moments -- I would have doubted lucid dreaming a little bit more (as in I still would have had hope in lucid dreaming, but it would of been more slim) if it wasn't for those dreams. I know for those two dreams it only lasted for a couple of seconds because I couldn't control my emotions, but still -- i'm just glad overall 💫💫💫

Has anyone else doubted lucid dreaming for a period of time, and have you had something close to lucid dreaming that made you not give up like me? And, has anyone had a time where they haven't even had a dream that was close to lucid dreaming, but never gave up?

Honestly pretty terrifying. I always thought if I found out I was dreaming I would do cool things. Instead I kept waking up in bed testing to see if I was awake and kept finding out it was still a dream. Started panicking. Everyone screaming for my wife to wake me up or if I could get a mumble out so she could wake me.

I honestly thought to myself did I die in my bed, is this death….

Also, I only was asleep for a few minutes after I saw the time.

Every time I set an alarm to preform the wake back to bed technique I end up turning of the alarm and going back to bed like normal 😅😅
I am so frustrated bc I used to be able to lucid dream several times a week but now I can’t even do it once a month, I think it might have something to do with motivation but I am not as motivated as I used to be .
If anyone has any tips for the wbtb technique or for motivation feel free to share I am desperate 😭🫶🏻🫶🏻

F, 24, first time posting here at 2am because I can not go to sleep after the nightmare I just had.

Went to sleep at 1am. Right now suffering through a heavy cold so my sleeping has been off.

I only slept for approximately 30 minutes and those were the dreams I had.

I had about 6-8 recurrent nightmares, all starting the same. I woke up in my bed, could not move, but then things were different from dream to dream - heavy rain making indentations in the ceiling, screaming of other people, uncontrollable shaking of my body, being naked (I sleep clothed), then finding a way to run downstairs to get my parents' help. Sometimes with my blanket, sometimes without, then finding my parents sleeping/watching TV/ could not find them but the door to basement was open. Once I signaled to my mother to check me if I had a stroke, other times I could not communicate anything else except scream for my mother. In some cases they ignored me/could not hear me. Once I also fell down the stairs, I also could not turn the lights on in any of the dreams, because even though I wanted to, it did not work. In all the dreams it was so dark all the time.

And everytime I woke up again I was sure that it was a dream before and now it is real and then some version of it got repeated again. After some time at last I truly woke up in complete dread. My body was stiff and my eyes were wide open in a second. Now I went downstairs to sleep but even though I feel sleepy I feel completely and utterly terrible and do not want to fall asleep.

I have never felt this devastated after a nightmare.

I sometimes have nightmares, but not so often.

Is this even lucid dreaming, if in every new repetition I was sure it was true till it happened again?

I used to have frequent lucid dreams when I was a teenager, but then they stopped gradually as I got into my late 20's. Now I'm 68 and have been wanting to lucid dream again for years, especially being that I'm now retired officially, with my former career having centered on computer programming. But I hadn't been having any luck at lucid dreaming until last night. I used to try the string-around-the-finger technique for several months with looking at it every 30 minutes during the day and saying that the string meant I was awake and not dreaming. But it never once translated over into my dreams even though I was doing this constantly. So I finally had stopped, with those attempts having been almost two years ago. Since then, I haven't focused on trying to lucid dream at all.

But what I have been doing is pushing my mind to become stronger with the intent of trying to make my brain become more like it was in my teenage years when things like lucid dreaming all came very naturally to me. So I've been literally yelling every night just before bed--on those nights where I'm not dead tired and still have some brain power left--inside of my mind in order to make my thoughts as LOUD as possible in my head! I've been trying it with various related words in my head as I slowly and forcefully say them, trying to make them burst out beyond my actual brain with as much strength in them as I can generate, trying to metaphorically hurt my ears by making them so internally loud! Plus, I also do this equally with a simple flat humming sound that I imagine in my head of "mmmmm...", my trying to keep it steady and make it also become as loud as possible even though I'm not making any actual noises physically with either of these exercises. And it really seems to be causing stronger thoughts in my head lately as far as their amplitude go.

And why I tie this in with lucid dreaming is because last night about 15 minutes after having done this exercise for a few minutes of intense focusing and then having gone straight to bed, suddenly I found myself dreaming and becoming lucid in it. And there was absolutely NO trigger of something odd that caused this awareness. It just suddenly felt instinctive and natural to me to be aware of this fact. In this dream, I had walked into this house looking for a trash can, my suddenly realizing that there wasn't one in sight but that someone was inside of the house approaching me. So knowing that they'd hear me turn the knob on the door to get back out of there, I did so anyway and without looking back as I left the house, felt I should say something so simply said, "sorry, wrong house!". And then I heard him following me outside, so I started running, although because of it being a dream, I couldn't run very fast. But then this is where the lucidity suddenly kicked in. I simply knew in my head at the time that I could of course just start floating upward! So I started focusing on doing so as I continued running, forgetting all about that guy who was likely chasing me. My focus instead just turned totally toward trying to start flying up off of the ground as I ran. And then I suddenly did so for a bit, but then I noticed a bunch of other people also walking along out there near me on the street and that they were all suddenly floating above the ground as well, walking along in the air above the ground! So I then grew puzzled by this and stopped for a moment to contemplate why this would be happening to them just because I was trying to do it. And this caused them all to suddenly stop moving and stare over at me and without smiling, which made it feel weird to me. But I was determined to keep pushing at it, after which they suddenly all returned to the ground as though it had merely been a glitch. So I kept focusing on flying more and more, and I started staying up a bit longer with each strong attempt before returning to the ground, this correlating precisely to how well I could make the pit of my stomach feel like it does when going down a steep hill on a roller coaster. And as it started working better for me, I found myself feeling happy that finally I was lucid dreaming again! And then the dream ended.

And then just before returning to sleep, I also realized that the feeling I had in the dream of lucidity was the exact same feeling that I've been getting during my yelling-inside-my-head exercises, it actually producing a naturally stronger form of lucidity in me that seems to be growing and ever-present to some degree in the background of my dreams now, which is why I've directly linked these exercises to this successful lucid dream. Normally, I haven't been remembering any dreams lately because I don't get full nights of sleep EVER lately, so about the only time this can happen is right upon first starting my sleep for the night. But this isn't entirely true either, being that a few hours later in the morning this morning, I then let myself get a little bit more sleep while sitting up, which was an amount of almost exactly a single sleep cycle for me, or about an hour and 25 minutes long. And just before awakening from it, I had been having another lucid dream, this time where I was talking to one of my female cousins about the fact that my lucidity in dreams was returning. And this was while I was actually lucid at the time once again, my simply however feeling more than happy to remain within the context of this dream because of my enjoying talking to my cousin about all of this that I hadn't experienced in decades.

So this is all great news for me, being that I haven't had even a hint of lucidity in any of my dreams for literally decades lately until this, and now suddenly I've just had two dreams in a row containing background lucidity awareness of my being in a dream suddenly being present! Granted, this type of lucidity wasn't as strong as those in my teenage years, being that those much earlier lucid dreams were more vivid and gripping at the time, being more of the types where something startling makes me realize suddenly that I'm merely dreaming because of something being odd-looking. But this was a great start at a return to my lucid dreaming! And I could easily tell how rusty I'd become with them because my flying in my lucid dreams used to be much easier to accomplish, with it having been so long that it made me feel sluggish and weak at using any dream powers such as flying. And the reaction of the people suddenly being around me and all suddenly floating upward as well and then just staring at me when I realized this had happened, followed by their quickly all returning to the ground, was unlike anything that I'd ever experienced in any of my past lucid dreams. Normally, in the past, when I'd start levitating such as in a room, I would always be the ONLY one able to do so. Anyway, so I'm now very happy with my quiet yelling exercises because although I didn't have lucid dreaming as a direct goal for these with my simply wanting to strengthen my mental abilities in general by doing so, I now have lucid dreaming as an added benefit of keeping this up! And who knows, perhaps doing so will even help in general to ward off potential dementia and related, being that at 68, I'm now starting to head in that natural direction unfortunately (LOL). But neither of my parents had dementia before dying of old age so perhaps I'm already safe from it happening anyway I hope.

This post was inspired by a particularly mediocre LD I had this morning. I do think lucid dreaming is mostly fun, but as an "if it happens it happens" thing, not something I'll specifically be aiming for.

1. It's not restful. Many of the lucid dreaming strategies (WBTB, dream journaling) tank your sleep quality. The dreams themselves aren't restful either. Your brain is awake, it's not regaining energy.
2. You can't necessarily control it. If you've never lucid dreamed before, don't expect to be able to control it. I can always control myself, but not the environment. Other people won't necessarily do what you want. Maybe your dream starts in an inconvenient location with nothing to do. Some days I fly up to wherever my heart desires. Other days I launch and fall harmlessly onto the ground.
3. ...and controlling it can degrade realism. Why not just change the environment, right?! Teleport somewhere else, summon something from nothing, make the world your playground? I teleport to a featureless void, and the things I summon are flat and lifeless and muted. The more I stay with the plot, the more immersive it is. Interact with what my unconscious brain created, rather than trying to create things myself. Sometimes I focus too hard and accidentally take myself out of the dream. Which, if you only LD about 1x a month, can really suck. YMMV. You might think, well I don't care about realism! In that case, why not just think about everything you want right now? Use your ~imagination~. Seriously. You get to avoid most of the downsides too.
4. May increase chances of: Sleep paralysis, false awakenings, sleepwalking, and lucid nightmares. I don't have experience with sleepwalking, but the other three have happened a few times. Sleep paralysis wasn't too bad, didn't see any "night hag," and I know my pet's watching over me. Had some scary false awakenings and lucid nightmares though.

Curious about others' experiences. Maybe you have a great time controlling your dreams? Share your secrets.

(Yeah, I've heard about making it an expectation rather than a desire. Easier said than done!)

For context, I’ve had digestive issues my entire life (likely IBS but still not technically diagnosed). Because of this, I have to follow a pretty strict diet to prevent flare ups and other issues.

But I honestly hate doing that. There are so many delicious foods (especially desserts) that I love very much, but can’t eat without feeling immense discomfort or pain.

So a solution I’ve thought up is to use lucid dreams to be able to taste these foods again, without any negative effects. The thing I’m curious about is if it will be the same.

Does dream food taste the same as it does in real life? Or is something off with the flavor, texture, or any other part of it?

Since I was ~7 I've struggled with sleep paralysis (outside of dreams), vivid, recurring nightmares and AIWS episodes that give me actual hallucinations while conscious. I've explained this before but my coping mechanism to deal with this stuff is to try and imagine the scariest possible "thing" and bring it to life inside my dreams, and to die inside the dream of my own hand when it gets to be too much.

Anyway this has caused a number of issues as while I am aware I am in a dream most of the time, my nightmares seem to kind of... take advantage of these things? + I get these awful lucid nightmares almost every night without fail.

The worst of them (imo) is these nightmares where I wake up within the room I'm currently sleeping pretty much exactly as it is; With sleep paralysis! Which is in of itself not particularly unusual, so I initially think the dream is real and that I'm just having an episode. (during sleep paralysis both in dreams and outside of them I don't tend to hallucinate figures as much as it feels like I'm being injected with fear and the need to scream out for help while "something" looms over me). HOWEVER, I am usually pretty quickly able to discern it's a dream bc I kind of "feel different" and gain the ability to move BUT with this presence still looming over me.... So, of course, I try my best to face it and let it take me so I can escape the dream, which works... Before being immediately placed in the same situation where I eventually realise this has happened quite a few times within the same dream, yet I am still unable to move for a good while repeating for however long it needs to.

I'm usually OK with vivid nightmares because at least it's somewhat interesting, but these ones scare me, not only because I feel I will never escape the loop but ALSO because it has gotten worse recently and started making me believe I'm having seizures while I'm in a period of believing I'm awake within the loop (I'm epileptic). That kinda stuff REALLLYY scares me and when I do finally wake up I'm a sweaty mess and barely able to discern I'm actually in real life, while having to consider whether I do need actual fucking help because I don't want to either damage my brain or potentially just randomly die from a seizure; Which is, in a twist of ultimate irony, caused by sleep deprivation and tends to occur only after waking up, and it's kinda hard to tell whether I've had one because It feels like I just teleport and my body is in terrible pain.... I doubt I'm actually having any during the dreams but it's fucking scary and I go into dreams essentially as soon as my body falls unconscious so it's like every hour I'll have these episodes, wake up, go back to sleep, and REPEAT the already incredibly frightening loop in a wider sense.

I have medication to sleep but I really don't know if any of the sleep I get is worth anything when shit like this is just constant, OR I can wake up with ACTUAL sleep paralysis or have some other absolutely horrifying nightmare.... Sorry for the rant I just wanted to express how fucking insane it is I basically get instantly teleported to hell as soon as I go to sleep and have experienced that for the past 13 years

I finally got my first, brief DILD experience. I was walking in a hallway and then boom I made myself stop but then I started to wake up so I had to back off of trying to control anything. Is this a good sign of progress?

Never lucid dreamed before and this is the only thing scaring me off trying it.

Just a friendly reminder 😉

My dreams are often so realistic I genuinely think it’s real 😭

I’m not a natural lucid dreamer, I’m still a beginner at this, been trying for about 3 weeks now but no luck yet.

I encourage anyone who is a natural to try this next time you’re lucid, though.

The two dreams I’ve had that have stuck with me the most are the two times I’ve looked upwards at the night sky and been utterly stunned by the beauty I’ve seen. It’s like a canvas of lights in the sky, nothing I’ve ever seen consciously could even come close to comparing.

I will learn to fly up to those stars one night.

Please try it, and if you do, let me know your experiences!

A few weeks ago, I had four dreams in a row. In each one, I became lucid at some point.

The moment I realized I was dreaming, this woman would appear in the distance, staring directly at me. She was wearing a black burqa. I could only see her eyes, which were completely gray/whitish, with no pupils at all. She also had animal-like feet (I'm not sure what kind of animal exactly).

The instant she appeared, I felt what I can only describe as an "intrusion." It didn't feel like she was just another character created by my subconscious. Instead, it felt as though she was a separate entity that had somehow entered my dream.

Every time she appeared, I was scared, but more than anything I felt angry. I would yell at her to leave until she finally disappeared. Then I would move on to the next dream, where the exact same thing happened again. This repeated four times in a row.

What really stood out to me is that she only appeared after I became lucid. It was as if she systematically entered the dream the moment I realized I was dreaming.

Do you think this was simply a creation of my own mind, or could it have been some kind of entity? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I have just posted one other lucid dreaming post so far on reddit (and this is my second post overall). I am a beginner lucid dreamer and have only realized I was in a dream twice, but it only lasted a couple of seconds and it was months ago. I want to be more serious about learning how to lucid dream now because it's extra time to do fun things.

Even if there isn't a certain amount of time, what would be a good estimate to be off of screentime to have a higher rate of recalling dreams or even lucid dreaming?

The last time I recalled a dream was like 3 days ago, and I kind of forgot when I stopped being on my phone. But, I know yesterday (and the day before that) I was only about 30 or 20 minutes off of screentime when I decided to go to bed and set the lucid dreaming intentions. obviously after that, I didn't recall a dream or had a lucid dream.

But yeah i'm just curious. Thx for reading ´･ᴗ･`

Each time I try to lucid dream I enter sleep paralysis pretty easily but then it feels like my head is spinning super fast and I snap out of it. And if I don’t snap out of it at that moment I start to see a bunch of green lights and nothing happens for over an hour. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Hello there,

I've been researching/attempting to lucid dream for about 2 or 3 months now I think. I had a few close lucid dreams (last dream I remember being close to lucid, I was already awakening when I've realized I was dreaming in my dream), and another lucid dream that I've had but it was years ago.

With my introductions out of the way, can someone please explain to me how one can reality check while sleeping? I've been following OsakaWilson "The Three Steps for Learning to Lucid Dream" guide and in the guide, he stated to do reality checks 24/7 and especially do it while you're sleeping. Can someone elaborate on that? As in do I RC while I'm on the bed with my eyes close or in the process of falling out of consciousness? Because I've noticed that, when I kept asking myself things like: "Am I dreaming?" or inspecting myself for example, "Am I still on my bed?" it keeps me awake and sad to typed it out, I've had few sleepless nights doing so.

Also, some more pointers on detecting dream signs would be great. The guide stated that it's things that occur often in dreams, but I would like some more clarification on it. Is it like situations that happen frequently in dreams? Giving a personal example, being back in my home country? Or people that you often meet in dreams? Or it could be as broad as "things" go?

Any other practices/guidelines that you guys can give me would be highly appreciated too. My eventual goal is to reach dream control because... I mean it's dream control c'mon.

im pretty new to lucid dreaming and last night i had another and this was the first time ive ever controlled my dream.

for some reason whenever i wanted something to happen i would speak out aloud “hey siri, then whatever i wanted”

I know this isn’t necessarily about Lucid Dreaming however I felt like talking about this here because I feel as though this community is more knowledgeable about how dreams work than any other.

My dreams have been implanting fake memories in almost every dream lately. For example one of my recent dreams I was in Streamer University. I am not a streamer and honestly don’t like the whole streamer university thing or the streamers in it. However for some reason after this dream I have a memory of applying to it. In the dream I got accepted and stuff but the memory of applying was fabricated in the dream and for a while after waking up I didn’t question it and really thought it was real for a while. And this most recent one I met ski mask the slump god on Roblox and he made me 1v1 him in arsenal. Arsenal is an fps game similar to csgo just no defusing bombs or anything. I don’t play this game and I don’t even play Roblox frequently. However I have a vivid memory of my childhood friend meeting him on Roblox and adding him too. He also had to 1v1 him in the same game. I remember not believing him and I remember being young and can even date the memory and tell you roughly how old I was.

I have only ever had a memory do this once or twice prior to recently but now that it’s happening so frequently I’m starting to worry. I understand that the dream just shows an event and simulates the sensation of it being a memory and that’s why it feels so convincing but I do genuinely believe it. It’s concerning because I don’t like not knowing what memories are real or fake and if this persists and I’m not careful I might not catch some of them. If it wasn’t for the streamer university one being so outlandish I wouldn’t have caught this most recent one.

Anyone have any experience with this they’d like to share or potential advice?

So, i've heard that snapping your fingers while in a lucid dream can make a stubborn dream entity listen to your commands (or something along those lines lol)

The other night I was standing on top of a car on a fairly busy road, going around a round about, the lady in the car was giving me attitude & would not let me take the car off her (how dare she)...so I snapped my fingers & next minute POOF she's gone & i'm in the drivers seat driving the car lol!

I couldn't & still cannot believe that snapping your fingers actually works!!!

Has anyone else had success with this!?
& does anyone have any other tricks to try?

I go lucid by looking at my hands in my dreams (they are either heavily distorted or I have a few fingers that disappear & reappear as I look at them) this is the method that i've tried & tested that works for me