Lucid Dreams and Sleep Paralysis

[kitchdog]

Hi Greg and everyone - I am pretty fascinated by sleep and when you think about some of the things that can happen while we sleep, it really is kind of crazy.

I’m 33 now (yes I know what a number!) but when I was 20 I had a period of about a week when I was having lucid dreams every night. I remember flying around the buildings in Adelaide and driving my car through the city parks - well just because it was a dream and I could do it! it actually got to the point where after the first few nights, I would tell myself before going to sleep what I wanted to dream about and that would materialise as a lucid dream. It was crazy, but ultimately stopped and I haven’t had a lucid dream since.

I have also experienced sleep paralysis on a number of occasions and it’s very unnerving. Being consciously awake without being able to move and then seeing a figure approaching you is very creepy. This has probably happened to me 5 or 6 times and I still occasionally have what I call ‘semi sleep paralysis’ where I am awake and am yelling out but can’t see anything.

More recently my six year old son went through a bad period of night terrors where he would get out of bed screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing at me like I was a monster. He wasn’t really awake so all you could do was try and calm him without scaring him more and guide him back to bed. Apparently this happens in about 5% of children and is considered ‘normal’. He would have absolutely no memory of this in the morning.

Is sleep our daily connection to the consciousness mainframe that we need to exist? Is it an in between state where we tap into the overall consciousness of all things? Pretty interesting when you think about it all. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts - think it could be a fun and interesting discussion.

Thanks

 

[darkstar9997]

Hi Greg and everyone - I am pretty fascinated by sleep and when you think about some of the things that can happen while we sleep, it really is kind of crazy.

I’m 33 now (yes I know what a number!) but when I was 20 I had a period of about a week when I was having lucid dreams every night. I remember flying around the buildings in Adelaide and driving my car through the city parks - well just because it was a dream and I could do it! it actually got to the point where after the first few nights, I would tell myself before going to sleep what I wanted to dream about and that would materialise as a lucid dream. It was crazy, but ultimately stopped and I haven’t had a lucid dream since.

I have also experienced sleep paralysis on a number of occasions and it’s very unnerving. Being consciously awake without being able to move and then seeing a figure approaching you is very creepy. This has probably happened to me 5 or 6 times and I still occasionally have what I call ‘semi sleep paralysis’ where I am awake and am yelling out but can’t see anything.

More recently my six year old son went through a bad period of night terrors where he would get out of bed screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing at me like I was a monster. He wasn’t really awake so all you could do was try and calm him without scaring him more and guide him back to bed. Apparently this happens in about 5% of children and is considered ‘normal’. He would have absolutely no memory of this in the morning.

Is sleep our daily connection to the consciousness mainframe that we need to exist? Is it an in between state where we tap into the overall consciousness of all things? Pretty interesting when you think about it all. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts - think it could be a fun and interesting discussion.

Thanks

I too was able to lucid dream in my 20s. So much so, that I was able to effortlessly glide into a lucid dream at any time of day weather tired or not. Not sure why, but it's been about 10 years since I've been able to to do this. I remember swinging around the Roman Colosseum like spiderman, and then bam changing the environment to a field of cherry trees, where the trees were all in blossom and pedals floated everywhere in the air. As a kid I also had night terrors. I vividly remember seeing shadow people. Actually my earliest memory was when I was 2 yrs old. I remember seeing the same figure every night as I laid in bed trying to sleep. The figure had large eyes, wide grin, and pale skin. I remember watching a documentary on night terrors, where the figure animated in the doc, that so many who experience night terrors saw, and as identical to what I saw.

 

[nickzeptepi]

Your child has insight - you are a monster in their eyes.

YOu probably have some deep shadow of past trauma that you can ignore but is picked up by the child, if you don't do some soul searching your child will carry and possibly act out your shadow in adult life.

 

[kitchdog]

Your child has insight - you are a monster in their eyes.

YOu probably have some deep shadow of past trauma that you can ignore but is picked up by the child, if you don't do some soul searching your child will carry and possibly act out your shadow in adult life.

Wow that’s a bit full on and I don’t agree with you there at all mate. When children have night terrors they generally see figures very similar to the ones seen during sleep paralysis, just sometimes when you try and intervene in a night terror they then see you as one of those figures and get confused. I had them as a child as well and have managed fine.

 

[nickzeptepi]

Wow that’s a bit full on and I don’t agree with you there at all mate. When children have night terrors they generally see figures very similar to the ones seen during sleep paralysis, just sometimes when you try and intervene in a night terror they then see you as one of those figures and get confused. I had them as a child as well and have managed fine.

sorry for the drama -

 

[juuuuice]

I have been able to lucid dream as along as I can remember. I first experienced sleep paralysis in 2013 and it was the most terrifying experience of my life. I thought I was being abducted by aliens or demons. Now I can "feel" a night where I will have sleep paralysis and shift myself in bed and can avoid it. It's very weird, but I just get this deep feeling. Sometimes I am interested and purposefully allow sleep paralysis to occur. But I always wimp out and try to leave the sleep paralysis state immediately. I have read that if you can make it through sleep paralysis you can control it and become lucid or even astral project. I have no interest in doing that, but still interesting.

Funny enough, I gave a speech in a college class on lucid dreaming. It is relatively simple if you are disciplined and consistent. You need to keep a dream journal and write down everything you remember from a dream immediately after waking up. Throughout the day, you need to train your brain to ask itself if you are awake or in a dream state. One way to do this is to check a digital clock at least 10 times a day, look away and say the time out loud or in your head, then look again and verify it is the same time. You do this because the clocks in dreams are never the same time. Another way to train your brain is to look at your hands and consciously tell yourself you are awake because your hands look normal. Do this at least 10 times a day. The reasoning is because your hands will never look normal in a dream. I one last little tip; if you find yourself lucid in a dream, especially because you realized due to training your brain (clocks, hands) you will start to get excited. This raises your heart rate and will cause you to wake up. To counter this, you need to spin in counter clockwise circles in your dream; no idea why but this works to keep you grounded in the lucid state. Once lucid you can do whatever you want, but you have to truly believe you are capable of doing it. If you do not truly believe you can fly, shoot lasers out of your eyes, or whatever you won't be able to do it.

I have no idea what our dream state is; I think it's some sort of subconscious phenomenon that we can train to be a conscious phenomenon while lucid dreaming. Who knows, but it's fun.