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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

Most of my dreams aren't lucid, but I've had a few lucid dreams, so I can compare.

Typically in my dreams it feels like normal life, except that for some reason I'm gullible to dream logic. If something strange happens and I try to make sense of it, a bad explanation--one that I wouldn't accept in real life--will perfectly satisfy my dreaming brain.

However, occasionally dream logic totally breaks down and I realize it's a dream. In that instant I gain full control. But it doesn't take long before the control slips away, forgetting the revelation that happened moments ago.

What about you? Are all of your dreams always lucid?

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For me it's more like it's all just a memory I suddenly have when I wake up, there does not really seems to be a "now" in the dreams.

Sometimes there is some sort of realization of being in a dream but it's always at the moment I'm waking up.

I'm pretty jealous of people with lucid dreams, it must be fantastic.

This describes exactly how it is for me, and I've never been able to put it in to words until now.

> It's all just a memory I suddenly have when I wake up

Same here, very well worded. That's the case for me in maybe 3/4 dreams. The more emotionally intense ones have that "now" feeling though.

Search online for some practices to help induce lucid dreams. There are things that could help. For example, creating a habit throughout the day to check if you're dreaming. e.g. look in the mirror and ask if it's a dream, or look at a clock and ask if its a dream.

If you create this habit in normal life, the idea is that it will carry over to your dreams. Just realizing a dream is a dream should propel you into lucidity. Dreams rarely seem to get reflections and clocks right.

I've learned to induce lucid dreams somewhat reliably. For this I need to be physically tired but mentally awake. This usually works 30 min after waking up in the morning or when taking a nap in the afternoon. I then try to stay mentally awake while I realize that my body falls asleep. At some point my mind slips into a dream like mode, but I'm not dreaming of anything. At this point if I move myself, only my dream body moves, not my real body. This is when I "stabalise" the lucid dream by spinning my dream body around quickly. I think this kind of gives my mind the time to make up a dream in which I can move around. Otherwise I will wake up or lose control over the dream.

It's crucial that in the time your body falls asleep, you don't make any voluntary movements (just as if you were to fall asleep normally). I've also read about a trick that you can help you stay mentally awake. You have to pretend as if you were tapping with your index and middle finger, but only just so that they don't actually move. This also helps you realize when your body falls asleep. I'd say WBTB (Wake back to bed) is the most reliable method for lucid dreams.

Wow it's the first time I heard of this type of dreaming. It's intriguing that people dreams in so many different ways, I wonder what causes that.

I only remember one lucid dream, when I was a kid, and it was fantastic.

I researched a little and found this book, may be you find it interesting, so here it is:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming

Oh, wow, this is exactly how I dream as well. I could never have expressed this, though! Thank you for that post.

I always wonder how "real" do dreams feel for people who dream lucidly, but then I realize that it wouldn't matter for me. The level of realism, details, the feelings - are irrelevant, since it would only be a memory, at no point in time I would ever be experiencing it. It would be just a faint, happy, memory of something that didn't happen.

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