We are our dreams

[robinbloke]

I had a really wierd set of dreams last night, I kept waking up for a few moments and then falling asleep again in between sections of the dream, resulting in the whole experience being a kind of 'chapters' style format. What was even niftier was that each time I woke up I could influence the next section of the dream by thinking what I wanted to happen.
Anyone else had something similar to this before?

Comments

[mattp.livejournal.com]

Being able to influence one's dreams is called "lucid dreaming". It's generally assumed to be a less deeper sleep, whereby the person is aware that they're dreaming so has some conscious control but it relaxed enough to remain asleep.

Often though, when the person realises they're asleep but can control their dreams, the excitement wakes them up.

The repeated waking up is probably associated with the milder sleep, though I've not experienced it myself.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

It was a first time experience too, very nice one :)

[mattp.livejournal.com]

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.dreams/msg/d2c3355ce47a004a was the relevant portion of the FAQ I read a few years ago. (Having now re-read it, I've slightly misremembered - the lucid part pertains to being aware that one is dreaming, rather than being able to control it, but naturally the two are connected)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Spookily enough one of the featured LJ groups listed today is about interpreting dreams.

Life eh?

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

...or could you have dreamed that you were awake and infulencing your dreams? Could you be dreaming this now?

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Thankfully I've never dreamed about work or LJ.

[mattp.livejournal.com]

I have. I even solved a bug in my sleep, and when I awoke I investigated it and the fix turned out to work. Tragic that I knew the code-base that well.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

That is definately a sign of working too hard! :)

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

I used to dream about cooking burgers - now it's delivering beer barrels. D'oh!

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

At least you're not covered in Lard^tm afterwards.

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

At least stale beer is easier to wash off

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I have, but I always know it's a dream, because when I get to work there are clean mugs and I can find the bread knife.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

You know, evil minds at this point might just plot to clean mugs up and put the bread knife on a big holder at your workplace ;)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

A big holder that looks uncannily like my desk.

[twentypence.livejournal.com]

I haven't had any lucid dreams for many a year, although I used to have them quite a lot during my teenage years, they're great and resulted in things like me flying and having a rather enjoyable sword fight with my dad.

On a slightly related note, these days I occassionally have dreams based where there's some kind of fight that I'm involved in, and I never actually hit someone, but call out damage instead, and everyone in the fight ignores me. Damn RP. :o)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Heh, ah the curse of STing.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I often have lucid dreams. I usually spend time examining the scenery to check the rendering detail provided by my brain :-) Sometimes I can't decide whether it's a dream or reality, so I perform experiments to try to work it out. Sometimes I just fly around the place. I've discovered that different people seem to fly in different ways in their dreams; personally, I fly standing upright, arms motionless by my sides, and just sort of will myself into the air - but other people may flap their arms or glide horizontally etc.