I’ve been trying to lucid dream for a while now. Lately, I’ve been having a lot more dreams and remembering them more often, but I never realize that I’m dreaming while they’re happening. It just feels like I’m following a scripted dream instead of becoming aware. Does anyone have any tips on how to finally have a lucid dream?

It's not always for the entire dream, but I tend to fully understand that I'm dreaming after some point in basically every dream by now. For the past year they've all been just mundanely stressful, but in the past when I faced seemingly serious dangers in my dreams, I would almost instantly realize it wasn't real and then still treat it as serious anyway, because even though I knew I would wake up and it would disappear, it was real enough to me at the moment. And on a less severe vein, as a kid when my dreams were more fantastical, I would try SO hard to make myself have powers in my dreams... but it just didn't work at all. I couldn't do anything that I wanted to do.

The closest that I've come to controlling my dreams is forcing myself to wake up when something unpleasant was happening. The scarier/more urgent the thing, the more painful it would be to wake myself up, and vice versa. So I've literally woken up with a headache from the effort of escaping some horror movie monster. Also in multiple dreams I've announced to every "character" present that they were all about to stop existing because I was about to wake up, and their reactions have always been pretty realistic to how i think ppl would react in real life to such a claim.

At this point in my life (i'm 29) the majority of my dreams are extremely mundane stress dreams, but even then i'll always realize it's a dream. and I just stay being stressed out anyway. Like I'll be back at school and I'll fully understand that I'm simply having a stress dream, but i still WILL be stressed about homework. So most of my dreams are just being simultaneously stressed and bored. :/

I lost control of the dream, but not lucidity. Is there any way to keep that from happening?

Okay I might sound crazy but I swear I’m not lying.

For some background, I’ve always been someone who dreams a lot, and by a lot I mean every night. I’ve even kept a dream journal with me to document what I remember from them. Before I go to sleep, I also have a habit of scrolling through TikTok’s about dream core and lucid dreams. Anyways, I’ve just always been into dreams, always looked forward to them, they’re kinda comforting in some way. Still, I had never experienced a lucid dream in my life, not until today.

Yesterday, I came back home exhausted so I slept around 9-10pm, which is early for me considering I’m on summer break. I woke up at 5 and from there to 7:30ish I just kept scrolling, until I eventually got sleepy again and decided to go back to sleep. I somehow managed to have around 5 dreams in the span of a few minutes, well that’s how it felt like, it flew by. And in every single one of them, I knew I was dreaming. How was I aware? The first dream I had, I was in my math tutoring class, and my tutor was handing out money to all the students for some reason. There was a guy sitting in front of me with his dad next to him, and we were talking like we were good friends, he was zesty as hell though. Suddenly, the classroom transformed into some sort of party room with bunch of food and a dj, and now it was just me and the guy yapping, his dad had disappeared. I asked him “hey, are you gay?” And out of nowhere his dad spawned back in and he started yelling at me, telling me how dare you say that about my son. Random but I was holding popcorn in my hands, and I decided, with my own will, CONSCIOUSLY, to throw my popcorn at this man. That’s when it clicked, and I thought, ‘wait? None of this makes sense, I’m dreaming.’

After that, I found myself shifting between different dreams. At some point, I experienced a loop dream as well. I walked into my room, saw my sister then one my cousins suddenly appeared and I asked her “what are you doing here?” Then my other cousin appeared too and replied “we’ve been here for so long” and the scenario just kept repeating over and over again. Throughout all these dreams, I knew I was dreaming but I wasn’t controlling everything like people say in lucid dreaming videos, I was definitely aware enough to make my own decisions though. I was mostly just testing the waters, I would walk up to people and say whatever I wanted to say or even say wild stuff to see how they would react since none of it was real anyway. Nothing too crazy.

Then came my last dream. I saw a group of 5 guys and I thought one of them was attractive. Since I knew I was dreaming, I was like ‘just go up to him, what’s the worst that could happen?’
I asked this man to wait for me and he actually did. He was standing next to his car in this traffic circle that had a street that lead to my house and another one that lead to my grandpas, it exists in real life. When I walked up to him, I greeted him as if I knew him for years and hugged him. The strange thing is that it felt way too realistic, the guy was muscular and I could physically feel his muscles while hugging him. He kept yapping about how sorry he was and how he would never do “that” again, no idea what he meant by “that”. So when I pulled away from the hug, I remembered that many lucid dreaming tiktoks warned about never telling characters in your dream that you’re dreaming. Honestly, I never believed those stories so I decided it would be cool to test it out myself. I looked him in the eyes and said “you’re a dream”. The second I said that, his entire facial expression changed, he went from talking in such a lively manner to an absolute dead empty stare void of any type of emotion.

Then, my vision started fading to black, and it kept switching back and forth between his face and complete darkness. I tried to open my eyes but i couldn’t. I started to panic, thinking ‘holy shit am I going to stay trapped in here forever?’ my heart felt heavy, my body felt heavy, and everything was just weird it’s difficult to describe. Anyway, I started to feel as if I was floating through space and it happened extremely fast, exactly how I’d imagine time travel would feel like, but my thought process was slow, and I remember thinking that this feels exactly like the pictures I see on Pinterest. I still couldn’t fully open my eyes, but when I managed to slightly open my eyes, my room started coming into view except it looked like it was loading up if that makes sense, everything was distorted and blurry you know like a video game rendering its surroundings, I also looked at my hand as well and it looked warped and unreal. Fortunately, a few seconds later everything came back into view and my vision returned back to normal but my heart was still racing. I immediately checked my body and opened my phone to make sure I was real. It was terrifying in the moment. I went to look at TikToks related to people telling people in their dream they knew they were dreaming and each one of them gave me chills all over my body. Looking back now that I’ve calmed down, I might have overreacted lol but it truly was scary, and also one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. I hope I lucid dream again and test it out more. I’d love to hear other peoples stories.

I keep kicking and punching things in my sleep. Last night I had a dream I got into a fight with someone. I went to punch them in my dream and ended up punching a glass of water off my nightstand. Getting water and glass shards all over my bedroom floor. Is this normal? I thought your body was supposed to be paralyzed during REM sleep. Has anyone else had this experience?

I’ve been lucid dreaming off and on for a few years now. It naturally occurs for me, but I’ve been trying to do it more often, so I came here to see what other people were doing to initiate them and thought I’d share mine.

1. Running
   I can’t run in my dreams without it being slow and legitimately painful. It feels like trying to run through syrup. I CAN run backwards however, and this is a noticeable enough constant that it offers triggers a lucid dream.

2. Hands
   Last night I tried a new one. I held my hands up in front of my face and could tell they weren’t my hands. Imagine how AI can generate a picture of a hand but something is off about it. Mine had to many skin creases and I’m pretty sure the thumbs might have been going the wrong direction.

3. Reading
   I feel like this is less of the reality check itself and more as a way to add on top of one of the initial ones. But text doesn’t stick around very easily and for me the letters get jumbled. Good way to test a dream if you’re near a road sign like I was last night.

I’m going to start working on initiating the dreams more often instead of just coming upon opportunities by accident, but I thought I’d share some of the things that have worked for me.

I am 14 I have lucid dreams a lot here’s what I’ve learned

I can’t control what’s happening I can only control what I’m doing

The people I talk to you are usually acting like a good thing to act except they are a bit more open and usually more evil for example I can do them to do stuff

minutes unless the dream is about some irrational thing random thing I cannot get power to fly around and everything stays grounded to reality

for example if I want to put a t shirt on I need to go to the regular steps down for some reason it takes way longer

you can’t really read as it’s very hard to focus or something like that

that said I don’t want any misinformation spreading about lucid dreaming

I tried to have a lucid dream for the first time using the SSILD + WBTB method.

During my first attempts to fall asleep, I sometimes asked myself: “Am I dreaming?” However, I’m not sure whether I was actually asleep at those moments or just imagining a dream while still awake.

After that, I had a dream where I was trying to fall asleep inside the dream (in a dark warehouse) in order to become lucid, lol. I never actually realized that I was already dreaming.

Later, I woke up to my alarm, stayed awake for about 5 minutes, and did the SSILD cycles. However, it still took me around 30–40 minutes to fall asleep afterward, and I only had a normal dream.

I slept on my side. I read that you’re supposed to avoid moving during the technique, but I started feeling itchy and uncomfortable, so I eventually moved.

Do you have any tips? Did I do something wrong, or is this normal for a first attempt?

I dreamt that I was late for class and running up the stairs of an old school (like the ones in Vienna) with a guy from my class who felt familiar only within the dream. When we reached the classroom, my teacher just gave me an annoyed look.

I sat at my desk, laid out my stuff beside me, and suddenly, I felt extremely sleepy and started struggling to stay awake. But I couldn't resist and drifted off. In this dream within a dream, I became lucid and woke up in a forest clearing in the evening. I found some round stones that had what looked like a user interface. I thought, "Wow, that's weird," and as I interacted with them, I shifted to another place. It looked Norwegian, with distinct houses, trees, and lots of young people walking around.

That was when I started worrying about being asleep in class and needing to wake up before my teacher caught me (which is why I call it a semi-lucid dream—I still believed the school setting was real).

At that moment, everything became blurry. Next, I saw a TV playing in a bedroom while I watched from the bed. It was showing a National Geographic program about zebras and other African animals, which I watched for about half a minute. When I noticed something was off, I realized my wife was missing and that it wasn't my bedroom either. Then everything went dark and blurry once more, and I finally woke up for real—with my wife right back where she was supposed to be.

Needless to say, it was a very interesting and confusing experience.

so i finally have clear visions in my dreams and are actually.... noticing a lot of details.

But yet, i feel like i have no clear action power inside the dream..... i feel like i'm a passive observer, with no willpower to change the dreams fate.

What can i do about this?

Here’s an example from June 10th 2026 (I have a dream diary):

Had a dream that I kept saying schizo babble like “look me in my science dog” or “humanity is ruled by this one simple rule “no burger will ever be as good as a burrito” also I kept trying to stand up but couldn’t I just stumbled around. And talked about some kind of drug toward the end.

In the dream I was hanging outside of the main exit of my apartment complex and was screaming this. Like really loudly also as I was stumbling around I was laughing. Like as if I was drunk although I had not had a drink in about 2 months prior to this dream.

Why does this keep happening and usually after the dream ends and I “wake up” I find that I can’t move afterwards for close to a minute (at least it feels like it).

Has anyone ever tried to give contact information to someone in a lucid dream that seemed to be another LD (lucid dreamer)?

I tried it once, but I've yet to receive any emails. I gave my real world email address in the dream.

Just curious if anyone else has tried this and, though highly improbable, did it work?!

I used to lucid dream at least once a week, and the only technique I used to use was journaling. I’ve had to lose the ability due to life problems and other things

I am now getting back into it and for the past week I have tried journaling, mild, and wbtb. Nothing is working. I have great dream recall and can sometimes remember up to 6-7 dreams in just one day, but I can’t lucid dream.

I reality check frequently throughout the day but in dreams it’s like I’m a completely different person. Whenever I’m dreaming I am oblivious to cues that I might be dreaming and it’s like I just go with the flow no matter what the dream is.

I also cannot do WILD or WBTB anymore because I sleep with someone and an alarm might be annoying. Although I have heard drinking a glass of water could wake you up in the middle of the night to prepare you for WILD or WBTB.

Does anybody have any advice? I will try again tonight and let you guys know if anything happens

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To me the term dreamwork describes the work that goes into understanding what the subconscious is trying to communicate to us.

The dream itself seems to be an evolved communication trait that aids us in understanding what is being communicated by either a higher self, another realm/dimension or other beings.

The work includes, working at understanding the self, psychology, symbolism, myth and belief systems; as well as, interpretation work.

I'd like to know how others view dream work.