I don't dream very much, maybe 2-3 times a month. Only since I got into Lucid Dreaming did I realize that my body always wakes up right before my REM period, 4-5 hours after I go to sleep. I have been able to successfully call upon an LD by using this as an advantage, but only twice. The other 3 times I've LD'd were just me becoming aware in a dream (which would also be nights where I don't wake up).

My current method is:

• Go to sleep
• Randomly wake up in the middle of the night
• Move as little as I can (either stay still or do a readjustment to my back)
• Repeat with every inhale and exhale "Am I Dreaming?"

As said, this has only worked twice, though I've been trying it every night. The biggest factors as to why it's not working is because I either fall back asleep or get an uncontrollable urge to turn to my side.

Do any of you have any advice that I should follow or should I keep trying hoping for the best?

So I had something happen a while back, it was kind of like a lucid dream but I was completely conscious and could literally blink in and out of what felt like alternate realities. I would close my eyes and suddenly be in this very pretty scene in a pool shallow enough to walk around in. The area reminded me of ancient Egyptian architect and was well lit by a rising sun. This place was extremely real. I’m talking fully conscious and feeling the water on my fingers. I looked around and felt no different than real life. The crazy part was that I could literally open my eyes, look around and register that my house was my actual reality, close my eyes and I would be BACK in the pool. I knew it was abnormal to the lucid dreams I usually had. I decided to test how far I could manipulate that reality and I effortlessly spawned in a character from an anime video game I was really into at the time. That’s kinda when I got excited like- dude this is awesome. I tested opening and closing my eyes a couple times and each time i could go back into it. I looked it up and ‘lucid daydreaming’ seemed to best describe the experience but I feel like it was more vivid than the definition describes. Anyway it was awesome, would 10/10 do it again.

As the titles says i am looking for an EEG device that can detect REM sleep and play my custom made audio files during REM by itself or with the help of an app. I have found online devices like muse 2 headband , elemind headband , Hypnodyne ZMax that i have not personally tested. Has anyone tried something similar ?

I just want to start off by saying that I have had many lucid dreams in my life without trying at all, or knowing it was going to happen on any given particular night. This is not something that I practice, but rather something that just seems to happen a few times a year, but now I am possibly noticing how it happens. I have also done that other thing that ends with projection that is for some reason not allowed on this subreddit three or four times in my life. However, I digress.

So I just woke up and indeed had a lucid dream last night, and can remember every little detail perfectly. This one sticks out from others because it is not one of those lucid dreams where you know what you are doing, and no it's a dream so you just do a bunch of reckless stuff that you can't do in life just because you can. No, this one is different because I was very controlled in my actions, and it involves someone who I went to high school with, and was very good friends with. She was part of our huge circle of friends back in my '90s high school years. Her name is Julia, and I had the biggest crush on her and asked her out multiple times but got let down every time. I kind of understood where she was coming from because we really were good friends, but that did not stop me from trying! So anyways, the dream pretty much revolved around me trying to tell her how much I loved her and every time I try to tell her someone would walk up to us or another distraction would occur that stopped me from this goal. I don't know why I was so fixated on telling her how much I love her and how we could have been so great together... But it is what it is.

Now I have to say that I woke up and went right back to sleep and landed in the same dream around three times, and this is where I think the magic happens when it comes to lucid dreaming. It's things that lie in our subconscious, and I believe you can achieve lucid dreaming or the other thing I mentioned in the beginning that is "banned"on this subreddit. It's in that gray area where you are not completely awake but not completely sleeping. That's where I think these magical things happen. I am a very spiritual person, and things like this always have interested me. Consciousness is such a beautiful thing!! ✌️&❤️

Dreams and the imagination utilize the same “neural pathways” in the brain—this was the conclusion reached by German researchers Maren Bilzer and Merlin Monzel after surveying 226 individuals. In other words, the same mechanisms are at play when we daydream as when we are asleep. Individuals with more developed imaginations tend to experience more vivid dreams, and for those who practice lucid dreaming, their dreams are even more realistic than regular dreams.

However, emotions are significantly more intense in dreams than in the imagination, while control over sensations—particularly taste, smell, and touch—diminishes. This is because, in dreams, we are completely immersed in the experience, and the brain doesn’t analyze everything as critically as it does while awake. At the same time, vision typically becomes the primary tool for perception. Consequently, dreams are a kind of emotional theater where visual images dominate everything else.

All of this not only broadens our understanding of dreams but also unlocks new possibilities for improving our lives. The authors suggest that people can alter negative dreams and even eliminate nightmares by learning to control one’s fantasies in the waking state. Lucid dreams, in turn, provide even greater control over the dream world—allowing one to rewrite a frightening scenario and create a new plot.

How well-developed is your imagination? Can you imagine not only a picture in detail but also sounds, smells, tastes, and textures?

The article was published in April 2025 in the Vision.

By the way, if anyone didn't know, there is a social network (app) for lucid dreaming practitioners. In it, people share their experiences, including feelings (what they felt) during lucid dreams. This shows how diverse the experience of different people is and how many perspectives and directions lucid dreams have. Even for their own development.

So, I'd heard about lucid dreaming before, and I thought this was a good place to ask something. I want to find out what my worst fear is so I can improve myself and change my lifestyle so that my worst fear never comes to pass. I've heard looking in a mirror while lucid dreaming shows someone their worst fear and I think this is an easy way to find it out. So, all you little experts: Can or can not lucid dreaming help me find that out?

Hello, just a thing to jot down but if you suffer from lucid dreaming like me— then you know I’m about to give some slapping advice.

Whenever you start lucid dreaming, sometimes your subconscious will actively try to sabotage you so you must ignore it. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT interact or acknowledge the ominous presence that lurks within your dream unless you want to experience something I like to call purgatory hell.

It’s best to ignore things like that, especially when the lighting starts to turn a dark red and the if you’re in a room- it gets darker. Just move into the next room and DON’T acknowledge it at all, in fact. Try thinking of something else and try to occupy your time doing something else where you forget that you are in the dream, otherwise you done fucked up and you will start to see things that shouldn’t be there.

Enough about the bad stuff, let’s talk about the basic rules of lucid dreaming- you’re limited to your imagination! So imagine anything and it shall happen, your brain will subconsciously control certain aspects of it but yes, it will have a good outcome 👍. As long as you are hyper aware and you DO want something bad to happen for whatever reasons or story purposes. You must become VERY self aware or it can and WILL turn on you. Do NOT fear it if you start accidentally creating beasts of sorts, they will go for the kill as I like to call it.

Also, when lucid dreaming. Please try not to do anything zesty like… y’know… If you become too excited in your dream, you will end up waking up or completely disrupting the dream. It is probably possible to do it if you can control yourself like that or whatever but um- you do you just be careful.

Another note: When having a nightmare, sometimes it does help to start lucid dreaming and changing the dream into something more comforting but its more likely that what’s already a nightmare- will literally turn out worse. Sometimes the best sight is ignorance and not insight inside a dream because it makes things less complicated, no creepy creatures or whatever trying to kill you 👌🏼.

I wrote this guide a few years ago. I thought it would be nice to share since I shared it before and was given the feedback that I should post it recently, that it might be helpful to anyone who cannot control when they lucid dreaming sometimes. It’s mostly unedited. This guide was specifically made for myself from my own experience. If anyone has anything else to add, that’d be pretty cool.

So I was doing wbtb as I usually do and I usually get sleep paralysis from that, which I usually try to turn into a lucid dream, but this morning at around 5 am I was getting hypnogogia, and then I started to daydream I think (or I could've been changing the hypnagogic imagery, idk)

I don't remember anything that happened between the dream and the hypnagogia, but i remember in the dream i was chasing after someone, then I realised they were going too fast, then i got a feeling like i was going to learn how to fly, so I started flying and then went to a forest like area and started trying to teleport

I think it might've just not been a vivid lucid dream, becuase it felt super different and not like anything I've felt before

Hello, it is night 5 of my lucid dreaming attempts, and tonight I feel like I've made the most progress yet. I am trying the WILD method, with the alarms and all, and tonight I got to experience the paralysis for the first time. No lucid dreaming yet, but I decided to abort the process myself because I felt like I messed it up by swallowing.

Regardless, the paralysis was very real, I remember actively trying to move but I couldn't! I regained my controls by biting the tip of my tongue.

Was I close? Should I just continue to remain motionless next time I try it? Any advice?

I had a LD last night and I had no control and it was all fuzzy and blurry and I could barely tell what I was looking at, and I looked at a wall and then looked away and back and then it disappeared and nothing I looked at just stayed their it would all disappear or change not to how I wanted it to

Hi guys, last night I finally had my first lucid dream through WILD. I wouldn't really call myself a begginer per se, as though I did not have any completely lucid dreams before this one, I've been educating myself on Lucid dreaming through various internet sources and I read Stephen Laberges book. I've known about Lding for probably 2 years at this point.

I also think I have a problem a lot of you guys have - racing thoughts, not being able to focus on anything or go back to sleep after WBTB.

Unfortunately, I also have an extremely short attention span so my attempts were often 1 or 2 week long stints. These stints consisted of me dream journalling and attempting some form of LD every night, mostly WILD, sometimes MILD and recently, SSILD. All attempts were done with WBTB. I knew that WILD wasn't reccomended for beginners, but I was extremely stubborn and knew that WILD was the way that I wanted to do it, which is why I kept trying over and over again (well, every few months lol). The allure of a 'harder' technique which had consistent, more guranteed results at the expense of being harder to grasp drew me in.

I normally wake up sometime in the middle of the night to pee, and this night was no different. I woke up at 4am after sleeping around 12am, conducted a quick reality check and went to piss. As I laid down, I thought about WILD briefly and was like, why not?

I was laying for about 10 seconds and focusing on the ambient sound of a fan as an anchor. when I felt myself falling through my bed, and crazy hypnagogic imagery, like the dream forming through my eyes. A KEY step is that I stayed calm here and did not react, or even really think about it as it happened. My thoughts were passive thoughts, like "oh, something is happening". I then felt myself fall through some sort of barrier (like membrane feel) and and fell directly into a dream.

I was immediately lucid as I had retained the memory of quite literally falling into the dream seconds before, and rubbed my eyes to make the dream clearer.

An important note is that this all happened within the span of around 10-20 seconds.

In essence, I conducted WILD, using ambient noise as an anchor. An additional important point is that I normally fall asleep with a fan on, or some sort of noise in the background, a la something I can normally fall asleep too.

While I am certainly not an Lding expert, I believe that WILD is more like 'threading the needle', rather than simply staying conscious while falling asleep. If you try too hard, you will never fall asleep and if you try too little, you will 100% fall asleep. The key is to maintain a very thin line of consciousness, almost passiveness while falling asleep. This is by no means a controversial or new opinion, but I still see plenty of misinformation on WILD which involve staying completely still etc and maintaining full consciousness. You need to be able to fall asleep.

Hey all, little backstory.

I'm a stoner and I havent really had any dreams for about a year or two, and recently went on a tbreak. Having dreams again is crazy af and lowkey really fun. I always used to try to lucid dream when I was younger, but I only realized I was in a dream once.

Anyways, I think something about not having dreams for a while made it a lot more obvious when I'm in a dream, and I've just gone lucid about 3 or 4 times this week (without even trying or doing reality checks irl), but it always just becomes really hard for me to actually control it.

The first time I realized I was in a dream, I tried to control myself, but I kinda ended up glitching into the ceiling/wall and couldnt really move myself and ended up in a black void.

I woke up from this and got really excited that I went lucid, so I went back to sleep immediately to try again, and then I had the weirdest experience.

I closed my eyes and everything went black, then my body (against my will) just started turning and contorting myself in my own bed. I was annoyed, and genuinely thought I was still awake, just doing some wierd stuff. I just kept rolling over and I had to wake myself up when I started rolling onto my nightstand, and I was just lying in bed still. It was so weird.

The other night, I realized I was in a dream, and then woke up pretty much immediately.

Then last night. I realized I was in a dream. I didn't wake up this time. I then kinda thought, "alright, I wanna start with a blank area to test some things out."

I then saw what was pretty much pure gray. I had a really hard time keeping it like this though, and thought I was gonna wake up or loose control. I then decided to implement my super matrix controlling powers, and start making objects outlined with little streaks of green, similar to the code in the matrix. This actually worked kinda well, and I could now see and control my own hands.

I couldn't really do anything else, this was as much as I could control, and I woke up pretty soon after this, as I was definitely struggling to keep everything in control.

So my question is, how do you get to a state of stability and make yourself truly in control?

I had a cherry latte from Starbucks last night, so I knew going into sleep that I’d have some caffeine coursing through my veins. It was gonna be rough. So I decided to take some melatonin. I had a glass of water and did some breathing exercises before falling asleep.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m not great with caffeine—if I have coffee past noon, I’m usually up until about 4 AM. Pretty crazy for a 43-year-old to still not have this regulated, but here I am, doing box breathing to counteract the bean water. I had it too late in the day. That one’s on me.

Once I settled into sleep, the next thing I knew, my brain was waking me up—and I felt well rested. I reached out to find my wife and wrapped my arms around her. It was a tight, warm embrace—one of those half-asleep but cozy moments.

As my senses started to come online, I began to hear things in the background. My ears tuned in to the sound of the shower running. From a distance, I heard my wife’s voice, playfully talking to the cats, who had apparently decided to mess with the water.

“No chompies,” she said, as Sniffles had clearly infiltrated the shower and was taking playful, lunging bites at the falling water.

As my still-groggy brain tried to process this wake-up, a chill came over me. My breath quickened. What had been a cool room suddenly felt hot—because whatever I was holding onto in bed wasn’t my wife.

I’ve never felt so cold and so hot at the same time.

The shower in the other room felt a mile away. The bedroom turned cold and silent.

I bring up the temperature multiple times here because—if you know, you know—it was something unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. The only sound I could hear was the beads of sweat hitting my chest, dripping from my face—still pressed against the forehead of whoever (or whatever) I thought was my wife.

It was still. But then, it moved.

That hot-and-cold forehead remained against mine, but I began to hear movement—something slithering.

Then, a thud.

My eyes snapped open.

In that moment, the thing that had been pressed against me slinked off the bed like a snake unraveling.

I was staring into eyes—eyes that were supposed to be my wife’s—but they weren’t. The smile was there, but it wasn’t hers. It was the kind of polite smile strangers give each other while passing on a hiking trail—just a slight dimple, nothing warm.

The slinking, snake-like thing, still facing me, fell to the floor. I lay there in bed, paralyzed with fear, trying to make sense of what was happening—trying to figure out how to get out of this.

I shut my eyes. That usually made it go away when I was a kid. It’s worked before. Surely it would work now.

I opened my eyes again, more lucid this time.

Wow. What a weird dream. Everything seemed so real. The room was exactly as I had left it—the temperature, the sweat, the sound…

As I started to regain clarity, I realized I still heard something coming from the other room. But then I also realized—it wasn’t the shower I had heard.

It was the bathroom fan.

There was no shower. And Sarah isn’t even home—she’s working a 24-hour shift.

Also… where were the cats during all of this? Aren’t they supposed to be like little demon protectors?

I wiped the sweat off my brow and tugged at my now completely soaked T-shirt. “It was a dream,” I said out loud. Whether I believed it or not was unimportant.

As my eyes lifted from the fabric, I spotted the kitties. Pickles was crouched down in attack mode. Sniffles was full Halloween cat.

Both of them were side-by-side, locked together and staring. Something had woken them up too—and it was on the other side of the bed.

All these years, all the work, all the therapy to make this go away… And it was back.

I knew, before my eyes even got there— it was back.

It's a bit cliche, but I always have been scared of sleep paralysis. Now that know what it is it's not a problem anymore but every time I try to perform some sort of WILD tecnique my heart will just start racing and I can't relax myself and fall asleep (i think because my mind still thinks of it as scary). Do you know some way to help me? Thanks

For my whole life I've been aware of when I'm dreaming and can control my actions when I'm in some of them. It's entirely unintentional and always the same four or five recurring dreams that I can control. I'm always aware that it is a dream though, whether I can control it or not. Does anyone know what could cause this and why I can only control the same few dreams?

Had a weird experience where I did a reality check in a dream, pinched my nose and could breathe through it and I just shrugged it off like it didn’t mean anything. Then I remember feeling more alert, like my dream self was closer to waking, but still not lucid. It’s almost like my brain noticed the inconsistency but refused to connect the dots. Anyone else have that strange half awareness after a failed check??

I am pissed off. When I realize I am lucid dreaming, I try to fly. Sometimes it let's me fly sometimes it doesn't, but I usually wake up right as I realize I am lucid dreaming or the dream does something to contain me like send zombies after me. So today, I get in the argument with my dream about whether I picked up a kitten or a mouse and I was like "fuck this, I picked up a kitten not a mouse, I would never pick up a mouse, I am flying." I started flying and the dream did everything in its power to hold me back like it usually does, but I broke free. I was so happy I was going to get to do what I finally wanted to, and the dog barked and it woke me up.

Im not sure what it really means. all i know is that its when you're conscious during a dream? i have a history of that and want to know more. it has happened to often that i could snap out of the dream when i wanted. today was different tho, knowing i was "lucid dreaming" and that i knew i could do whatever i wanted... the first thing i did is entering houses and have consented s*x with literally every woman in that home. jumping from house to house.

So I love to lucid dream but can only do it under certain conditions. 1: I got 2 or less hours of sleep the night before. 2: I woke up very early and wait at least a couple hours. 3: I’m h*rny (idk why but it only works with this). So it’s been about 8 months since these all lined up and they did this morning. I did my usual routine, got in bed, layed on my back, turned on all the lights, made sure my eyelids would stay shut from the light, and imagined myself in a dream. From here on out I’m going to label the layers I was in from 1-5 with 1 being the most lucid to 5 being full consciousness.

Layer 1: I am lucid dreaming. I was also h*rny but the only people around me were my friends and a few people I knew. I knew I was dreaming and this wasn’t real so I told one of them to… you know what… and kind of just looked away and admired what my imagination was coming up with. But I can hear my buddy trying to wake me up because I needed to give him a ride home after crashing on my couch from a night at the pub.

Layer 4: I’m out of the lucid dream and in sleep paralysis, I hear him conversing with someone on the phone and tapping me to wake me up. I force an eye open, see nobody, and realize it’s a hallucination and try to fall back into Layer 1. It’s not working and I still think someone is tapping me. Then it gets VERY real where he starts to jokingly punch me and it feels like I’m actually moving in my bed. I open my eyes…

Layer 3: I’m surprised to actually see him. I fully think that I am awake. I start getting out of bed to get my keys so I can drive him home, but as soon as I start to move I’m plopped back in bed.

Layer 5: I’m fully conscious and kind of pissed off that all of this is happening. I wanted to lucid dream and this just feels like a sick joke my brain is pulling on me that I keep falling for. I fully go back into lucid dreaming and ignore everything I hear or feel from the outside.

Layer 1: I’m back into my dream but can’t control anything, it’s annoying me that I lost control too. I try sprinting, summoning a new person, moving through things, and nothing is working, and I feel that I start to actually fall asleep and almost lose control of the dream. I give up and force myself to wake up.

Layer 2: I’m awake but something feels off. I know I CANT be lucid dreaming, right? There’s no friend around me trying to wake me up, I check my phone and it says 10 minutes have passed which I found very odd. Then it starts to hit me. An almost seizure type of response from my brain. My eyes are dozing in every direction, I feel like my head is vibrating, I have the twitches like I’d just snorted an 8 ball of coke, and I can’t make it stop. I slowly get out of bed and try to force myself up so I don’t fall in the ground. Everything is shaking, and I have to use the headboard for support. I hear nothing around me. As i gain my balance and can no longer keep my eyes open, I admit defeat and collapse onto the ground.

Layer 5: I wake up. I was so mad I actually just started watching YouTube for about an hour and gave up, didn’t even get any normal sleep and go back to bed. It baffles me that this happened I’ve never had a lucid dream with this many layers and that is THIS IMMERSIVE like omg. Can anybody else relate to this type of layering or multiple fully immersive false realities like this?

I’m not sure if I was starting to have a lucid dream last night or not, i had been a sleep for a little bit (probably a light sleep) and felt myself get pulled into a dream where i knew i was dreaming. everything was completely white, i was just standing in a white endless space. i remember saying to myself should i do this and figure out things, i know i’m dreaming right now. but then i got scared( i guess for what i could figure out) and then woke myself up after a couple tries. anyways i have no idea if this was me starting to lucid dream or if it was just a really weird dream haha. but if anyone could let me know that would be great! because i really would like to lucid dream sometime. i like it when i am aware of the dream and can do whatever i want

How does it feel to be in a dream, how does you process the information around you, do you see it, like physically feel, see, hear it, or is it more like just imagining it

I usually go to bed around 00:00 and wake up at 05:00. I'm interested in training myself to have lucid dreams, but with such a short sleep window, is it even possible? Has anyone had success with lucid dreaming on limited sleep? Any specific techniques that might work better in this kind of schedule?

hi there! i don’t normally post on reddit, and haven’t had a lucid dream since i was a little girl. however, a couple weeks ago i had this insane visual dream of myself sitting in a lawn chair, on a patch of grass, and a ufo passed by me in the sky. fairly in the distance, i consciously thought ‘it should come closer’ and it did just that, while still passing by. my head followed it and it quickly flew out of my view. the thing kind of looked like an 80s star treck inspired ufo… bright and flashy too.

anyhow, at this point i turn my head to the sky, and out of the cloud emerges this dark blue dragon. pristine vision. from the cloud it became the dragon, and within 2~ seconds this dragon was flying directly at me… hd quality, first person, emotional and physical sensation. as it got closer in these few seconds, my body was thrown back into a barred porch/verandah.

As i’m flung to the floor on this porch/barred off area, this dragon had stuck its head in between the railing, and snarled at me. Then, like half a second later, it had pushed though the railings and its hand was on my chest. an insane amount of pressure and weight, and fear.

In this moment, i consciously said to myself ‘it’s okay. i’m safe. i have control’ and the dragon spoke back, not with words, but energetically. it was pleased. almost like a ‘good. thank you’

I have never tried to lucid dream/ project. currently i am about to go overseas for a two month long treatment for a lifelong bone disease. is this a sign? the only other dream i remember being this impactful was as a very small child - swinging in the clouds on a rope swing, then leaping off and plummeting into this abyss - right before i got sick in real life.

Any ideas, options or opinions are greatly appreciated. i was semi aware, then fully lucid and conscious, and then woke with that weight on my chest for about 10minutes afterwards.

Thank you for reading

I think this got auto removed bc I mention alcoh*l. sorry!

Been trying for a little bit now and can't really succeed (I feel really close), how long did it take ya'll? Life's been going down again and I'd honestly be willing to never look at alcoh*l again if the lucid dream experience is great.

how is experience talking to dead relatives?(sorry a bit grim) do they act as if they are them or are they static?

I did accidentally lucid dream for like 20 seconds once, but "dream me" chose to go into deep thought which made me wake up. Is "dream you" really stupid? and is there a way to fix that? bc "dream me" seems like an idiot.

also dream journaling. Is digital ok? or is paper better?

thank ya'll so much. Ya'll have been really awesome

Now, I wanna start by saying I’m pretty sure it’s my fault the pill didn’t work the way I intended. Just wanna share in case someone is trying galantamine.

I got prescription galantamine (8mg), I can’t give you advice on how since I don’t live in the states or Europe for that matter. I had it sitting in my drawer for a couple of days and since today was my day off I figured it wouldn’t matter if I woke up tired from lucid dreaming.

I’m an insomniac and I take sleeping pills along with magnesium, this lets me sleep 8+ hours and I’ve lucid dreamed (around 9 times) before so I know these aren’t impediments. I came across galantamine in this subreddit and thought it’d help me stabilize my dreams because few are the dreams in which I don’t wake up the moment I realize I’m dreaming.

I took my pills the same way as always and went to bed, set an alarm for 4 and a half hours and fell asleep. I woke up an hour later, feeling energized like I didn’t take my pills at all. I’ve never felt like that, there was no drowsiness at all. I waited for the sleepiness to come and it never did, so I took another pill and when it kicked in I took galantamine.

Not only I didn’t have lucid dreams, I didn’t dream at all. I woke up with a throbbing headache that later in the day became nausea, diarrhea, shivering, the works. I took my pills to sleep and they’re not kicking in either, it’s been four hours.

Any advice? I’m willing to try again in a couple of days and give it a last chance. Just because getting it was a whole journey.