# Lucid Dreaming > Dream Control >  >  Who started "Lucid Dreaming" & "Dream Control" on their own Naturally?

## EricinLA

I'm looking for people like myself that discovered "Lucid Dreaming" and later "Dream Control" on their own naturally.  I don't know when I started to "Lucid Dream" it was so long ago.  Most likely when I was a kid before the age of 10.  But I can remember having good success with "Dream Control" around 12 or 13 years old.  I later found out as an older adult what I was doing was called.  When I would mention about my dreams to other when I was younger and even now they would just look at me like I was nuts.

If you found out how to have LD & DC dreams on your own at a early age tell me your stories please.

Thanks

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## AURON

Well I didn't find out how to induce them, but I did have a couple when I was around Jr. High. I'd have these random flying dreams and realize that I was flying...then the only thing I would do is just try to fly better. I think control came much later in life vs. actually being aware that I was LDing.

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## LolaTheLoner

I've been able to lucid dream from a very early age, before I knew what it was. (Though I did not have them as frequently as you.) 

I remember my first lucid dream occurred when I was around 5. I had asked my mom in real life if it was possible to know that you were dreaming. She said that it wasn't. So a few nights later, I had a dream in which I realized I was dreaming. Then I immediately remembered what my mom had told me. "I must not be dreaming after all," I said to myself. But when I woke up, I realized that my mom had been wrong.

Since then, I often became lucid and could even exert a bit of control over my dreams. I would normally just use the opportunity to fly or to escape nightmares. I even remember creating a list of things that I should do the next time I knew I was dreaming.

I didn't discover the actual term for lucid dreaming until I was about 13 or 14 years old. By then, I was already fairly good at it.

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## Eucid

I've always known when I have been having a nightmare and been able to just stop it. I dream in black and white, so maybe that's easier for me. However I've only had a handful of purposefully lucid/controlled dreams.

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## Sensei

I am a semi natural. Full natural at control. 

When I was like 13 I realized that if I spent too much time thinking about something then it would always be there when I close my eyes. And whatever was there when I closed my eyes would normally be what I dream. So I started incubating dreams. When I was 16 I decided to incubate dream control. I started out pretending that I had "the force" (I love star wars). I would imagine moving things with my mind and imagining it working over and over. After 2 weeks I started having dreams with the force in it. This stayed after my incubating ended. I then did this with pyrokinesis, rasengan, melchee's door. My dreams have been pretty freaking amazing without lucidity. 

I had about 8 LDs before knowing what it was. When I was ages 5-8 I had 4 nightmares that I learned how to wake myself up from. At first I couldn't wake up, but I figured out how within the dream. From then to age 18 I had random dreams where I would realize I was dreaming. Most of the time it was when I would sleep after basketball practice in the morning. 

This is my story.  :smiley:

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## Savsal14

Since I remember myself, I was having lucid dreams in the form of lucid nightmares, which means it's the same as a lucid dream and you have full control but whatever you do you cant escape from the nightmare.

I was having these every night for 7 years when they stopped when I had a lucid dream saying that these nightmares would stop.

So yea, I suppose I am natural.

After years I found this forum and with the second time I managed to have a WILD and from that day I can have WILD anytime I want with 100% success ratio. I also started having occasionally DILD and DEILD.
I have full control and I never needed a dream control tutorial.

If you need me just send me a pm!

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## EricinLA

Fellow Dreamers,

Thanks for those who have responded so far.

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## PlanesWalker

Sounds like more than a few of us have gained our lucid ability in part because of nightmares.  I find it interesting that these traits show up in childhood.  Perhaps all people naturally have an inclination towards lucid dreaming, but only those that choose to make something of it, continue to do so.  It also seems that a person can regain their awareness of it at any time.  I used to try to WILD without knowing it as a child, although I can't remember any successful tries.  I would try to force myself to recognize the point in time that I began Dreaming, by trying to remain aware while I fell asleep.  I became extremely interested in Dreams early on because it struck me as fascinating that they paralleled waking life in many ways, but yet they didn't seem to have any lasting effect.  Then of course the déjà vu was always intriguing.

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## EricinLA

> Sounds like more than a few of us have gained our lucid ability in part because of nightmares.  I find it interesting that these traits show up in childhood.  Perhaps all people naturally have an inclination towards lucid dreaming, but only those that choose to make something of it, continue to do so.  It also seems that a person can regain their awareness of it at any time.  I used to try to WILD without knowing it as a child, although I can't remember any successful tries.  I would try to force myself to recognize the point in time that I began Dreaming, by trying to remain aware while I fell asleep.  I became extremely interested in Dreams early on because it struck me as fascinating that they paralleled waking life in many ways, but yet they didn't seem to have any lasting effect.  Then of course the déjà vu was always intriguing.



Yes, déjà vu or something else.  When I free dream I sometimes see things that happen later on in life.  Coincidence or something else?  Interesting though.

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## Oster

When i was in 3rd grade i kept having the same nightmare. I found my self always waking up to it and being frightened so i kept telling myself it was a dream. Next i know im lucid dreaming and flying. I liked these dreams so much that i somehow kept my self on the verge of consciousness and dreaming and i did this amazing thing. My Dad came in to wake me up for school so i quickly drifted out of the dream and went to reality while somehow holding onto the dream told my dad i was up and went back dreaming. I did this several times but soon enough i stopped having that nightmare and stopped having lucid dreams. I only had a couple since than maybe 5 natural. I am trying to get back into it.

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## transflux

You probably wouldn't find too much early adopters here, these forums cater to a younger crowd. I delayed reading the literature when I started to induce OBEs in the late 90s to keep my expectations low, so I guess I'd fall somewhere inbetween. Looking forward to your posts.

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## Oconnigan

I had 4-5 lucid dreams over the course of about 5 years and after that last one, i decided to research if others did it without knowing what it was called. i was pretty bad at control and had hardly any success at what i attempted to do in them and they were extremely short

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## Ginsan

I did  ::D:   But just like Oconnigan, my control and recall were lame. I only had about 1 amazing lucid a year and the rest was just attempts at sex miserably failed..

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## EricinLA

Thanks for more of you responding.  Any others??

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## Matte87

I had alot of nightmares as a kid and after a while I used them as a dream sign and realized I was dreaming. All I wanted to do back then was to get out of the dream, so I commited suicide by jumping and landing on my neck. It worked great. After a while I started turning those nightmares around and I found that I could be lucid without having a nightmare. I figured out how dream control worked and started learning how to fly, use telekinesis and summon stuff. I didn't get that much practice because most dreams ended after a few minutes at most. When I entered my teens I spent most lucids on summoning girls. After that I started losing my natural ability up until a few years ago when I picked up lucid dreaming as a hobby.

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## Nerq

Similar to what Matt said, I used to have nightmares almost every night throughout childhood.  So I learned lucid dreaming as a mechanism to leave my dreams.  The better I got at it though, the more I wanted to stay in my dreams.  Now it's definitely my most enjoyed hobby.

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## EricinLA

> Similar to what Matt said, I used to have nightmares almost every night throughout childhood.  So I learned lucid dreaming as a mechanism to leave my dreams.  The better I got at it though, the more I wanted to stay in my dreams.  Now it's definitely my most enjoyed hobby.



I think I might have used it the beginning when I was very young to protect myself during bad dreams.  Now that can be fun.  When I "Free Dream" sometimes I will dream of things I've seen during the day.  Like watching the T.V. show "The Walking Dead".  It is so much fun killing off Zombies in you dreams when you have all the power.  LOL

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## Alyzarin

I had my first lucid in high school, I want to say when I was 15, or maybe 16 (it was definitely right around my birthday, not sure if it was before or after), and I didn't know that it was possible at the time. I just realized that the dream I was in was too stupid to be real life, and then I became lucid. I also discovered dream control myself, as when that happened I used my wonderful imagination to change the color of the wall in front of me a couple times. Then I woke up.  ::roll::  It didn't interest me enough to look into anymore until a few years later, and I didn't have any more until after that. I was mainly concerned with means of instant gratification at the time.





> I've always known when I have been having a nightmare and been able to just stop it. *I dream in black and white*, so maybe that's easier for me. However I've only had a handful of purposefully lucid/controlled dreams.



I always thought this was the most interesting concept. Is it that literally all of your dreams are like this?

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## moontaint

> I'm looking for people like myself that discovered "Lucid Dreaming" and later "Dream Control" on their own naturally.  I don't know when I started to "Lucid Dream" it was so long ago.  Most likely when I was a kid before the age of 10.  But I can remember having good success with "Dream Control" around 12 or 13 years old.  I later found out as an older adult what I was doing was called.  When I would mention about my dreams to other when I was younger and even now they would just look at me like I was nuts.
> 
> If you found out how to have LD & DC dreams on your own at a early age tell me your stories please.
> 
> Thanks



 I've had lucid dreams for as long as I can remember dreaming, and have had a little control over my dreams for awhile. I could go where I wanted, study, or listen to music. But I would loose control after 10 to 20 minutes.  I've been practiced creating and controlling my thoughts and just recently its been getting a lot better. My record for complete control is two hours. I was able to look over my homework, completely erode city's and beaches (I try doing this because it takes time and I have to keep focus), and look around.  I lose control and get confused when I try to look around, but lately I've been able to regain control. I found this site today looking for ideas.  Maybe someone knows some tricks to make it last longer.

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## EricinLA

> I've had lucid dreams for as long as I can remember dreaming, and have had a little control over my dreams for awhile. I could go where I wanted, study, or listen to music. But I would loose control after 10 to 20 minutes.  I've been practiced creating and controlling my thoughts and just recently its been getting a lot better. My record for complete control is two hours. I was able to look over my homework, completely erode city's and beaches (I try doing this because it takes time and I have to keep focus), and look around.  I lose control and get confused when I try to look around, but lately I've been able to regain control. I found this site today looking for ideas.  Maybe someone knows some tricks to make it last longer.



Here are some tips for control.  Try to make the dream as vivid as you can.  If you dream in black & white or everything seems kind of dark... In your dream use a bright flash light or other light that lights everything to make every clearer and in color.  Eventually you won't have to use the image of the light.

Another thing I've learned that doubt in your mind is the one thing that will hold you back.  The more you practice the better you will get.  The better you get the more confidence and less doubt you will have in controlling your dream.  So it will just keep getting better if you keep it up.

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## Ginsan

> In your dream use a bright flash light or other light that lights everything to make every clearer and in color.



Ooh that's a nice one  ::D:   Tomorrow I don't have to do my paper round so ld time, I'll try to get a flashlight in my dream somehow and then it's clear ld time  :tongue2:

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## frost458

When I was 14 I drowned and when I should have died I could breath underwater. 
It became clear : I was dreaming.

As soon as I realized it, it then seemed obvious that I could do All I want.
I flew, did dragon ball Z stuff, everything a kid would love.

It heppened several times and then went away.
Then I rediscovered it by stulbling upon a lucid dreaming article on the web, 10 years later.

Weirdly I'm struggling to take control of my LD but when I was a kid it came naturally.

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## Alyzarin

> Weirdly I'm struggling to take control of my LD but when I was a kid it came naturally.



That actually seems to be pretty common. Given that dreams are built on expectations that your brain builds up from constantly inspecting and interacting with the world, it makes sense. When you're a kid you're much less "programmed" to understand things and you can much more easily give in to your imagination and just have fun. After ten years, your mind will built up so many more understandings of "X works like this", "Y works like that", "you can't do Z in this setting" that without constant lucid practice you'll have a lot more walls to overcome. It'll come back with experience though, no worries there.

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## TwoCrystalCups

Yes i learned all on my own, i learned my own self in dreams and how it works. It's a spiritual thing.

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## Sageous

Okay, I'll play, even though I'm not quite sure where the OP wants to go with all this...

Because I started this practice decades before the internet made it popular, my first years of discovery and development passed in complete isolation from other LD'ers.  My initial exposure to the fact that others have LD's -- that _anyone_ else could do this --  didn't come until the early '90's, twenty years after I began my explorations, when I found Laberge's EWOLD in a bookstore.  

I don't think "naturally" is quite the right word here, since LD'ing (and Dream Control, if I properly understand your separation of the two, EricinLA) is very much an _unnatural_ event, as it stems from our consciousness defying nature by remaining self-aware in dreams.  But I do think that those who cut their LD'ing teeth on their own, especially us old guys who did it before the age of internet forums, have had a clear advantage.

Why?  Because we were able to find the best way to become lucid that worked for us, with the primary goal of getting back to a place we visited once or twice accidentally (and I firmly believe that most if not all people have been lucid at least once, especially in childhood, even if they don't remember -- it is an accident of sentience that simply cannot be avoided).  We weren't constrained by the current multiple-rule-bound "techniques" so WILDly popular on the forums, we weren't misled by a barrage of misremembered, exaggerated, or just plain specious reports from other dreamers, we weren't lost in the ocean of misinformation clogging the internet, and, above all, we held getting to the dream as the priority, rather than all the unimportant noise, like "SP," (_especially_ SP) that have reached rock star status on these pages.

No, we old farts had the supreme advantage of purity, sans rule or distraction.  Only the dream mattered.  Sure, if I had an understanding mentor I might have progressed a lot faster 35 years ago, but I think if I had the internet I would very likely have dismissed LD'ing as a waste of time -- I wasn't much of a follower, and techniques would have seemed like the questionable shortcut that, well, they are.

I don't know if that's what you were looking for in your OP, EricinLA, but that's what I got.  I hope my words are seen less angry and cynical than cautionary:  in other words, newbies ought to do what works for them, make their goals their own, and take what they read on these forums -- especially the grandiose claims, the viability of techniques, and the importance of background noise like HI and SP -- with a grain of salt.

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## MethodAces

I'm new here... The only reason I even opened an account is because of this question.

I've been Lucid Dreaming for years. I'm 29. 

I decided on a whim to find out if anyone else had them regularly like I do. It seemed like everyone who I talked with never had them and didn't quite understand what I was talking about. I pretty much gave up on talking to people about them.

I've never read anything on them beyond finding out what they were called. Methods? I didn't even know there were such things. I just pray once asking to control my dreams when I go off to bed and I do. These days in my dreams I can do whatever comes to mind. If I'm flying I can also telekinetically manipulate anything around me including mountains and cityscapes. Removing skyscrapers and replacing them with different ones is instantaneous, it's fun to create one and fly into it! I really enjoy checking out the architecture that my mind has come out with. Even when I was in my teens I was able to conquer any enemy in any nightmare I was having. As soon as I realized I was dreaming it was game on and it turned what was frightening to pretty damn awesome. I attribute a lot of it to my exposure to video games and fantasy novels. I think because I'd already seen it in a game or imagined well described imagery I could reproduce the same thing. I have even taken some of the dreams that I've had and written them down with an intention, yeah someday heh, to write them out into full stories. There have been some pretty awesome ones that have plot twists that any screen writer would be thrilled to pull off.

In the recent years I'm more partial to knowing the entire time that I'm having a "normal" dream that I can control it at any time. I kind of enjoy not simply powering through everything and seeing what my mind comes up with. It's already been mentioned that Zombie killing can be fun, I get a kick out of those dreams. Advancing hordes are pushed back easily, immolating them as they run forward. Usually I'm protecting a group of people be it family, friends or complete strangers in those dreams. 

After reading this thread I'm really, really happy I never looked up lucid dreaming until now. I think seeing any kind of limitations would totally choke my ability now. I can completely understand why someone would seek out information if they had just started. I guess my general apathy toward the subject left me a window of opportunity to learn it myself.

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## EricinLA

> In the recent years I'm more partial to knowing the entire time that I'm having a "normal" dream that I can control it at any time. I kind of enjoy not simply powering through everything and seeing what my mind comes up with. It's already been mentioned that Zombie killing can be fun, I get a kick out of those dreams. Advancing hordes are pushed back easily, immolating them as they run forward. Usually I'm protecting a group of people be it family, friends or complete strangers in those dreams. 
> 
> After reading this thread I'm really, really happy I never looked up lucid dreaming until now. I think seeing any kind of limitations would totally choke my ability now. I can completely understand why someone would seek out information if they had just started. I guess my general apathy toward the subject left me a window of opportunity to learn it myself.



You sound like me.  I know what you mean about doing the "Free Dreaming".  It gets boring after awhile to control everything.  It is fun to let the the dream takes its course without too much interference.  Welcome aboard.

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## blackbirdrising

I'm 43, and was lucid dreaming and controlling my dreams from as far back as I can remember... years before I knew the terminology.  I used to think everyone could control their dreams, and feel as if they were real, and remember every detail as if you were awake. I was about 12 when I figured this was not the case.

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## DreamHighlander

I'm 38 y.o. I started to have lucid dreams around the age of 12 i guess. I mean, i did not know that it had that name, or techniques to control it, bur everytime i had a bad dream, i knew that i was dreaming and i knew how to wake up: i had to find a way to die or to have a great shock (running into a wall, diving to and ocean to drown, jumping from an higher ground,...). So, i was lucid on these dreams. I thought it was normal. But talking to my brothers, none of them had this. Since then, i've been having more lucid dreams where i could study what was going on (paying attention to details, characters, colors, etc).
Just 1 or 2 years ago, i started to question more about this, what was it called. Now i'm all interested in this, studying techniques, reading books and all that.

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## Jabre

I was able to lucid dream naturally, but I never got good at it until I gained my interest in it.

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## kadie

Old thread but timeless.

I was about 10 also when started lucid dreaming. Started with nightmares. I asked some advice from someone I trusted and they told me to confront my dreams, gave me a few ideas to start with. Its been over 30 years now, but from that first foray into dreams I learned that through meditation, I could AT. At the time I had no idea that there were names for these things, I just kind of learned as I went...same as many others posting here. Been doing dream readings for most of my life too. Newly discovered RV. Also something that I had done once or twice w/o knowing there was a name for it.

Glad to know there are so many that are "older" :Cheeky:  now that were natural as youngsters. I am curious to know why.

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## EricinLA

> Old thread but timeless.
> 
> I was about 10 also when started lucid dreaming. Started with nightmares. I asked some advice from someone I trusted and they told me to confront my dreams, gave me a few ideas to start with. Its been over 30 years now, but from that first foray into dreams I learned that through meditation, I could AT. At the time I had no idea that there were names for these things, I just kind of learned as I went...same as many others posting here. Been doing dream readings for most of my life too. Newly discovered RV. Also something that I had done once or twice w/o knowing there was a name for it.
> 
> Glad to know there are so many that are "older" now that were natural as youngsters. I am curious to know why.



I don't visit this site too much anymore.  After talking to several people I found out there wasn't much the others here could teach me.  It looks like the people that learned naturally at a young age just figured it out on their own.  If you check my posts from the past you can learn more about my experiences.  The one thing I was trying to figure out here was never answered.   I want to try to connect to someone in a dream and pass information that could be verified.  I always wondered if the dream was only in your head or was it something more.  I'm still trying to figure that part out.

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## kadie

I am kind of wondering the same thing now, but only because I came to this site and saw some others posting about shared dreaming. So I guess old dogs can learn some new tricks. I am also skeptical about what and why people LD now. Seems like a lot of video game stuff. Since I could care less about video games, and throwing fireballs and fighting zombies I don't lucid dream much anymore. I still use it if there is a recurring theme or recurring dreamscape to break through and find the reason. Even that is rare. 
At any rate, I'm glad you started this thread. Until now, I have only interacted with one or two natural early LDers.

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## apsinvo

For me, it went hand in hand - I had a few vague lucids and strange dream experiences. Through then researching in that direction out of interest, I begun to have more experiences, and continue to read.

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## Mylynes

> Sounds like more than a few of us have gained our lucid ability in part because of nightmares.  I find it interesting that these traits show up in childhood.  Perhaps all people naturally have an inclination towards lucid dreaming, but only those that choose to make something of it, continue to do so.  It also seems that a person can regain their awareness of it at any time.  I used to try to WILD without knowing it as a child, although I can't remember any successful tries.  I would try to force myself to recognize the point in time that I began Dreaming, by trying to remain aware while I fell asleep.  I became extremely interested in Dreams early on because it struck me as fascinating that they paralleled waking life in many ways, but yet they didn't seem to have any lasting effect.  Then of course the déjà vu was always intriguing.



Yes that is very interesting. I used to also have constant horrible and often demonic nightmares. I also had a few nice lds starting way back since age 4 (am now 25). I also used to practice working on controlling my vision every day in a game i used to play. http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...-tutorial.html

This also led to daymares which when not just full on schizophrenia type hallucinations would often lead to my death in a way that seemed completely real, i would live it out, then experience car crash, falling, getting shot, and pain, then death, and then i would snap back to reality as if it never happened. Kind of like the premonition in the beginning of final destination movies cept these never came true.

I was raised a Methodist, and back then i used to think this was demons messing with me, and often called out to God for help, which never did any good, then usually ended up running away from the dream and waking myself up to escape. This persisted until i became the scariest thing in my night and daymares and began fighting back.

In most of my dreams back then i was an adult, i guess because i wanted to be older. Some of my dreams were even power ranger or dbz themed lol. I very early on i got pretty good with teleportation, flight, and general manipulation through my vision control system thanks to the mind games i would play every night before bed.

I got into psionics in around my early-mid teens, which drastically increased what i could do in my dreams through creation and programming of thoughtforms, and some other stuff. I didn't know what an LD was until around my mid teens as well. I didn't know how our why things worked, i just knew that they did, and so i tried expand on what i was capable of and see how far i could push things.

Most of the reason i didn't find out about LDs until so late is because like others, every time i tried to mention things to a family member or friend, they would think i was crazy, and i usually tried to mention just the tame stuff, leaving the daymares, ect, out of it. So for the longest time i didn't talk about any of this. I think i learned a bit about dreams in the psion community. I mentioned some things to some of my friends there mostly because they seemed like much more open minded people.

Thank you for making this thread, I'm interested in reading more about other natural LDers.

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## JadeGreen

Between the ages of about 9 and 12 I had about 8 or 10 lucid dreams. (Heck a few of them are in my Dream Journal, when I got bored, I entered some of them in.) Most of them were pretty short, and I didn't really know what lucid dreaming was or that it could be induced. But what was strange about them was that my dream control was _really_ powerful.

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## Mylynes

Just curious, but any of you older natural LDers ever successfully mess around with shared dreaming or manipulating the perceived flow of time within dreams so that a single dream feels like a very long time?

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## EricinLA

> Just curious, but any of you older natural LDers ever successfully mess around with shared dreaming or manipulating the perceived flow of time within dreams so that a single dream feels like a very long time?



I've tried to connect to another person during a dream.  To verify I was trying to pass some piece of information to the other person during the dream.  I was never successful.  I was just trying to figure out if dreams our only in your mind or something more.  I've heard of others here that said they have done it and do it all the time.  But by reading their comments I doubt it.  There are tons of people that brag of all the things they can do in the dream world on this site.  A lot of them of just full of it.  It seems like the best Dream Controllers are the ones that learned on their own at a young age.

Time in a dream always seems much longer than in real life.  I've tested this.  I have the ability to wake myself up anytime during a dream.  I have a clock that projects the time on the ceiling.   I would look at the clock before the dream and have a pretty long dream.   Then force myself awake.  It showed only a few minutes have passed in reality.  But in my dream it seemed like hours or even days sometimes.  I just figured your mind can think much faster when the body wasn't involved.  At least that is my theory.  What is your experience?

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## StephL

Will answer a bit more - fantastic thread - there are many posts I want to answer to and ask questions.
Myself - I had LDs as a young child - must be somewhere from 4 to 7 years of age.
But the only thing I remember is opening the kitchen window - they started from my bed - don't know if I had OBEs (as in "experience" - not AP).
Then I jumped out - imagined a resistance in the air, against which I could "swim" - and went exploring.

I think, I lost them because of the many removals following that time - my mother changing job and/or stepfather.

Only with 20 and reading Castaneda did I get back there.
First time having such an intense experience - and together with superstitions, also from the books - I had enough of it for 10 years.
And later in the beginning of my thirties again. But only a handful on both occasions combined.
And now - with (almost) 40.

Since I lost it again - also as a child - I do not have great dream-control now - but some things seem surprisingly easy to me.
For example upgrading my flying manoeuvres - I tried out almost all techniques for it I came across now - and they worked out instantly and perfectly - incl. extremely fast flight - which unfortunately scared me, since I took off at an angle which would have led me into space.
Could hit myself for not going there.

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## kadie

@EricinLA...you might check out the Beyond Dreaming section. Member WakingNomad has a shared dreaming thing going on. He has a lot of experience with it. Ill get on here later and give you a few links or PM me if you like.

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## Conspiracy

I've had lucid dreams ever since I was a child. I didn't know what they were and thought they were a lot more common. I will just sometimes realise something odd is happening and I'm dreaming. I just don't normally have _a lot_ of control. I dreamed a few weeks ago I was at my old school and it caught fire. I realised I was dreaming but instead of flying or whatever I made the fire stop. I can control it but I'm not thinking rationally enough to do anything fun.

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## EricinLA

> @EricinLA...you might check out the Beyond Dreaming section. Member WakingNomad has a shared dreaming thing going on. He has a lot of experience with it. Ill get on here later and give you a few links or PM me if you like.



I've messaged WakingNomad in the past.  After going back and forth with him, I have a lot of doubts on what he saying he has accomplished.  This is based on my own experience over the last 35 years of LD & DC.  Don't believe everything you read on here.  Many tend to brag about things.  I only know 100% on what I can do in a dream.  Take things with a grain of salt.  I just decided to keep growing on my own and maybe help others here now and then.

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## AnotherDreamer

The only shared dreaming experience that I had which I would consider somewhat successful was back in High School. I was in a long-distance relationship with this girl that was extremely open-minded about things like lucid dreaming and she also happened to be brilliant. I decided one night to try to visit her in my dreams. I didn't tell her about it either, to keep the experiment solid. That night I meditated in my dreams and I focused on the image of her and felt the energy that came from that image. Then I looked for that unique energy signature in the world around me. I eventually found her in this one direction and she was laying down in her bed, so I got in with her and held her/cuddled for awhile. The next day she called me and we were talking and she suddenly asked me, "So...was that you in my bed last night, giving me a hug?" I was like " O.O wtf, really?" She then said, "I knew it, I was just wondering who it was". I was shocked about how blasé she acted, I guess this was something that she had experience with. I don't know what this whole experience was about because it wasn't similar at all to how people on this forum describe astral travel or out of body experiences, it was just like a regular dream in which I was in control but I used my intent to visit someone.

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## EricinLA

anotherdreamer,

Thanks for sharing.  I've yet to accomplish shared dreaming with any verifiable proof that meets my simple standard.  Passing some information to the other person that they can tell me the next day.  I've thought sometimes I did it.  But the person can't tell me the message the next day.  Maybe it can't be done.

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## Cheysdreamer

Almost 22 and have had clear, vivid, lucid dreams that I most of the time can control when I so choose. I remember my dream most nights, though I will occasionally go several weeks without remembering, typically due to stress..... actually seemed to be easier before I came to this site and tried some of the things. So now I mostly write down in the dream journal and occasionally ask possible meanings (yep I'm that weirdy). I'm thankful for this site as I've learned a lot of new things. 

I on command switch into my animal forms that I am so named after in my dreams. I fly on a whim. Have a dream guy (though that has gotten a tad awkward lately). Pretty much if I actually want it to happen it will, but I still enjoy following along with what my mind lays out... sure someday it may not have anything new but for now I can enjoy it. I love dreaming for sure.

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## LouaiB

I have had 2 LDs as a child. IN the first one, I was performing dream control very well(teleportation, summoning), but was a short one. The second was a longer and weirder one, but I didn't really do anything, just walk there and observe how the edge of the dream was nothing, wight.

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## StephL

> You sound like me.  I know what you mean about doing the "Free Dreaming".  It gets boring after awhile to control everything.  It is fun to let the the dream takes its course without too much interference.  Welcome aboard.



I have a nagging feeling, that my LDs now are comparatively plain - maybe because of the expectation to have to produce everything consciously.
I sometimes wonder, if I read too much about stuff - also on here - which now hinders me in developing dreams.
The most beautiful experience in terms of a complete world full of wonders and details and seeming independence of me - really almost heart-breakingly beautiful - was a semi-lucid. 
I knew, I was dreaming - but wasn't aware of having dream-control.
And a real lucid around that time too - having control - but it was taking place in a fully rendered and wondrous world of it's own, too.
These were in my last little dip into it - with 30 and without having read about dream-control and difficulties and the like.

I have plans for my LDing, which are plain practical - like practising darts - but I wish, I had more of my natural dream-generation when lucid now.
Seems I do not tap the full wealth of imagination automatically these days - and not having the capacity to create something as marvellous directly (yet?).

Hm, hm. What to do?





> I am kind of wondering the same thing now, but only because I came to this site and saw some others posting about shared dreaming. So I guess old dogs can learn some new tricks. I am also skeptical about what and why people LD now. Seems like a lot of video game stuff. Since I could care less about video games, and throwing fireballs and fighting zombies I don't lucid dream much anymore. I still use it if there is a recurring theme or recurring dreamscape to break through and find the reason. Even that is rare. 
> At any rate, I'm glad you started this thread. Until now, I have only interacted with one or two natural early LDers.



I guess, this is a state, I would want to have one day as well - having a background lucidity to go after recurring themes and try to decipher them and the like. But mostly just follow my dreams semi-consciously without messing about with them overly much. That seems to me more interesting.
But only after I got the hang of all the possibilities to do the interfering in the first place and feel really proficient with it.
That besides using LD for defined purposes connected to real life.






> ..  The one thing I was trying to figure out here was never answered.   I want to try to connect to someone in a dream and pass information that could be verified.  I always wondered if the dream was only in your head or was it something more.  I'm still trying to figure that part out.







> I've messaged WakingNomad in the past.  After going back and forth with him, I have a lot of doubts on what he saying he has accomplished.  This is based on my own experience over the last 35 years of LD & DC.  Don't believe everything you read on here.  Many tend to brag about things.  I only know 100% on what I can do in a dream.  Take things with a grain of salt.  I just decided to keep growing on my own and maybe help others here now and then.







> anotherdreamer,
> 
> Thanks for sharing.  I've yet to accomplish shared dreaming with any verifiable proof that meets my simple standard.  Passing some information to the other person that they can tell me the next day.  I've thought sometimes I did it.  But the person can't tell me the message the next day.  Maybe it can't be done.




How come, you expect shared dreaming to be possible in the first place?

Looks like you put time and energy into the project without having found success at all.
This is hard to understand for me - for me to throw overboard all counter-arguments towards the possibility in general - would require me to at least have several occurrences of my own, which defy my rational understanding, if I took them at face value.
I would go further in contemplating, that all experience could be my mind deceiving itself anyway - but something overwhelmingly strange would have to occur to myself for me to be interested so much.

I am totally unimpressed by what I read on sd-experiences on here, too. Mostly without doubting the honesty of the reports - just they lend themselves super-easily to other interpretation. Yeah - and people bragging, too of course - and biasing reports/recall from so much wanting to believe.

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## Shantak

I think I fell just short of starting naturally, I always felt very...connected...to dreams. One day I was reading around random things (as I do) and read up something on dream control/lucid dreaming. I had no particular focus on trying it, I simply found the subject interesting and had approached it with an open mind, then I had an LD that very night.

This was a long time ago and even when I had phases where I'd lost interest and was putting no effort into it I would get an LD once every few weeks. I think reading the sentence "to take control of a dream you have to know that you're dreaming" made it all click for me.

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## kadie

Here is a quick link to a SD site as well as other dream info.
Dream Related Sites on the Net - International Association for the Study of Dreams

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## kadie

Origionally posted by StephL



> This is hard to understand for me - for me to throw overboard all counter-arguments towards the possibility in general - would require me to at least have several occurrences of my own, which defy my rational understanding, if I took them at face value.
> I would go further in contemplating, that all experience could be my mind deceiving itself anyway - but something overwhelmingly strange would have to occur to myself for me to be interested so much



I feel the same as you on this, but shortly after coming here and reading about shared dreaming, I had a very strange experience. See my post "Is it rude" for the example.
I have never had that feeling before, but I am not yet willing to say it was anything other that my overactive subconscious.

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## EricinLA

> How come, you expect shared dreaming to be possible in the first place?
> 
> Looks like you put time and energy into the project without having found success at all.
> This is hard to understand for me - for me to throw overboard all counter-arguments towards the possibility in general - would require me to at least have several occurrences of my own, which defy my rational understanding, if I took them at face value.
> I would go further in contemplating, that all experience could be my mind deceiving itself anyway - but something overwhelmingly strange would have to occur to myself for me to be interested so much.
> 
> I am totally unimpressed by what I read on sd-experiences on here, too. Mostly without doubting the honesty of the reports - just they lend themselves super-easily to other interpretation. Yeah - and people bragging, too of course - and biasing reports/recall from so much wanting to believe.



To answer your question.  I was attempting shared dreaming and trying to pass on some verifiable information as proof...  Because I had done about everything else you could in a dream.  Total Dream Control became second nature to me a long time ago.  I just wanted to see if there was something more.  I read about others connecting in dreams.  So I figure it was possible.  But now I have my doubts. 

The ones that say can connect during a dream don't seem reliable based on how they describe their ability to control a dream.  This is based on my own years of experience.  Seems like they are just making things up or are delusional and fooling themselves. 

I try to connect in a dream now and then just for the fun of it.  But so far nothing verifiable.  I'm just trying to continue to grow on my own and help others with Dream Control if they ask.

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## DreamyBear

EricinLA, I think it sound awesome that you try to make shared dreaming work. And as you already said, since lucid dreaming is second nature to you since a long time ago. So yeah why not trying some experiments in it. It's a good thing that there is people who never give up on "impossible" things. Just look at Thomas Edison, he had been doing over 10 000!! experiments, to make the light bulb. I think we should be VERY happy with that there was and are "crazy" people who dosn't give up on things they believe in. I love it! 

Hey EricinLA, this is to go off topic here. And maybe my whole post are off topic now I just realized xD But! Have you ever trying to make music in a dream??  I made music from a light blue neon-hologram by stroking my fingers thru it. It was giving away some kind of dubstep-sound. And this tookplace at a parkinglot with some other people. Well I really dont expect a answear to this since this is totally off-topic as said, but... yeah :tongue2:

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## EricinLA

> Hey EricinLA, this is to go off topic here. And maybe my whole post are off topic now I just realized xD But! Have you ever trying to make music in a dream??  I made music from a light blue neon-hologram by stroking my fingers thru it. It was giving away some kind of dubstep-sound. And this tookplace at a parkinglot with some other people. Well I really dont expect a answear to this since this is totally off-topic as said, but... yeah



I have never tried to write/create a song.  But I know in the past I have been able to play any instrument I want.  I wish I could carry that ability back into the real world.

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## LouaiB

> This is hard to understand for me - for me to throw overboard all counter-arguments towards the possibility in general - would require me to at least have several occurrences of my own, which defy my rational understanding, if I took them at face value.
> I would go further in contemplating, that all experience could be my mind deceiving itself anyway - but something overwhelmingly strange would have to occur to myself for me to be interested so much.
> 
> I am totally unimpressed by what I read on sd-experiences on here, too. Mostly without doubting the honesty of the reports - just they lend themselves super-easily to other interpretation. Yeah - and people bragging, too of course - and biasing reports/recall from so much wanting to believe.



Exactly! If there is shared dreaming, then there should be a communication device between humans for dreaming, as well as signals send and received. But that is not the case. Telepathy?...? Really? Something that we created for our own amusement, like a fairy tail.

I think that that placebo effect is common Steph ::roll:: . I know I'm not saying anything helpful, but everyone conquers it, because it _is_ placebo after all. The dream world is from your creation, and it tends to be what you expect, so making it more glamorous  is like dream control, and I think you can use affirmations for that. Hope I helped even if just a tiny bit.

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## kadie

> Exactly! If there is shared dreaming, then there should be a communication device between humans for dreaming, as well as signals send and received. But that is not the case. Telepathy?...? Really? Something that we created for our own amusement, like a fairy tail.
> 
> I think that that placebo effect is common Steph. I know I'm not saying anything helpful, but everyone conquers it, because it _is_ placebo after all. The dream world is from your creation, and it tends to be what you expect, so making it more glamorous  is like dream control, and I think you can use affirmations for that. Hope I helped even if just a tiny bit.



I don't know about that LouaiB. I have woken up from a dream and just known something was wrong with my son who was in the hospital at the time. I went to his room and picked up his pillow and just cried. Somehow, in my sleep I knew something was wrong and that knowing woke me up. A few minutes after I went to his room, the phone rang. It was the hospital nurse and she told me that he was having side effects from the medication and that he would not stop crying for me.There is plenty of documented instances of things like what I described, and it has happened to me more than once, also with other family members. If I could sense that from a dream state, why couldn't two dreamers be able to connect in a dream? I think you are being closed minded here although I agree with you on other things. 
I also think the placebo effect is a concern and that true dream experiments regarding DS need  to have many controls, but not everything is explainable, still it does not mean that people don't experience things differently than you. Everyone's perception of what is tends to be different, so would the perception of two people sharing the same dream or dream fragment.

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## LouaiB

> I don't know about that LouaiB. I have woken up from a dream and just known something was wrong with my son who was in the hospital at the time. I went to his room and picked up his pillow and just cried. Somehow, in my sleep I knew something was wrong and that knowing woke me up. A few minutes after I went to his room, the phone rang. It was the hospital nurse and she told me that he was having side effects from the medication and that he would not stop crying for me.There is plenty of documented instances of things like what I described, and it has happened to me more than once, also with other family members. If I could sense that from a dream state, why couldn't two dreamers be able to connect in a dream? I think you are being closed minded here although I agree with you on other things. 
> I also think the placebo effect is a concern and that true dream experiments regarding to to have many controls, but not everything is explainable, still it does not mean that people don't experience things differently than you.



Sorry about your son :Sad: 

Well, I don't completely throw shared dreaming out of the window. It's that, with all the shared dreaming experiences, you'd think that by now it would be detected and proven, or it would have a certain mechanism, but sadly no. So I think that these are only "delusions from the mind" or dreaming about shared dreaming. As for telepathy or sixth sense or any similar spiritual thing, I don't believe in them. I mean, if they have impact on us, they have to be detected, because they are being translated to what we can perceive. If we can perceive shared dreaming(it must be something that your brain can understand for it to experience it), then we can use that to lead us to what shared dreaming is, because if our brain is effected by it, then it is an activity that we can measure and trace its origin.

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## kadie

> Sorry about your son
> 
> Well, I don't completely throw shared dreaming out of the window. It's that, with all the shared dreaming experiences, you'd think that by now it would be detected and proven, or it would have a certain mechanism, but sadly no. So I think that these are only "delusions from the mind" or dreaming about shared dreaming. As for telepathy or sixth sense or any similar spiritual thing, I don't believe in them. I mean, if they have impact on us, they have to be detected, because they are being translated to what we can perceive. If we can perceive shared dreaming(it must be something that your brain can understand for it to experience it), then we can use that to lead us to what shared dreaming is, because if our brain is effected by it, then it is an activity that we can measure and trace its origin.



There are studies being done. Google it, do some research. Just because you have not heard of it does not mean that studies arent being done and just because you don't believe it's anything but a mind game does not make it so. I used to be more skeptical, but some recent things have changed my mind a little. I'm still a skeptic, but not willing to throw out the possibility. There are some people on this site that are highly intuitive and practice lucid dreaming, AT, RV, MT a lot. With so many people giving energy to these things and gathering here to relate and relay experiences, I would not be at all surprised if shared dreaming occurred.
Have you ever walked down a street or in a restaurant had the feeling that someone is looking at you? You turn around to find someone doing just that...staring or checking you out? That's energy. No one touched, just a look and that energy is palatable. Everyone has experienced it. Have you ever walked into a room after someone has had a heated argument negative vibe, even though you did not witness the argument? That's energy. Everything is energy. So why is psychic type of energy so hard for you to grasp?

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## LouaiB

Not energy. our brains are highly capable of using any input available to form a picture. You know that when you meet someone new, you automatically form an idea of him unconsciously in the first 10 seconds. That is human psychology and unconsciousness, nothing spiritual. If we have a sixth sense, then it has to have a mechanism to detect input so it can interpret, but no such mechanism is present(if the mechanism is present, then it has to have a partial presence in this "realm", but there is no such presence(by presence in this realm, I mean a physical presence)). About that eye thing, our brain interprets what we see with the side of our eyes that we don't focus on, and it has a schema that there is something wrong about someone staring at you, so you "feel that someone is staring at you.
Also, I am skeptic, but not the idea out the window. I am giving peaces of information and debate for us to get closer to a conclusion maybe, or something useful, or correct a false belief.

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## kadie

Are you really saying that energy is not measurable?

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## LouaiB

The one that you are speaking of? Has anyone measured it before?

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## EricinLA

In the last few years I've noticed something when I "Free Dream" which means I just let the dream go where it wants with little or no interference from me.  More and more I've noticed I dream about things that come true later.  (I don't believe in ESP type phenomena) but it is weird.   I have started telling my wife about those type of dreams in the morning and we kind of trip out when it comes true.  Makes me wonder if you can dream into the future in some way or is it all just coincidence.  I just find too many specific things I've dreams about happening within a few hours, days or weeks away.   Any of you have these experiences?  I've only had them when I "Free Dream".  Too bad I can't get the lottery #'s.

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## KonsciousOne1

Your LD experiences motivate me to do this for the rest of my life. thank you for your insight

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## Vitouliss

I discovered it by myself as well, however I have not remembered having a lucid dream ever since then. I remember I couldn't believe what I said happened for just a short moment since it was just a section of the dream. 

I believe the reason why I have stopped having such intense, creative, half-lucid dreams is because reality has had a more stronger effect on my mind then my imaginary side, hence I can't remember them or they are less fun then my old ones.

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## dowminator

I've had 5 or so Lucid Dreams. And from the very first one I was in control. I could choose where I went, do impossible things and controll the environment to some degree.
altough the first 2 dreams were not very stable and clear. but from the third one I've had very clear and stable LD's. They more I LD the better I get at it, just like any other skill I guess.

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## Starlightpaw

I would have lucid dreams randomly when I was about 12, and after having a few, I taught myself how to control my dreams when I was lucid.  I never taught myself _how_ to have a lucid dream, though, I just controlled the dream whenever it happened and didn't really know you could trigger lucid dreams by doing things throughout the day.  I stopped being interested in lucid dreaming for about a year sometime between me being 13 and 14, but I got back into just last year when I turned 15.  Since then, I've been having lucid dreams an average of once a week, twice if I'm lucky.  Since the beginning of this year, I've been doing a lot more to become lucid more frequently and it's definitely payed off.

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## Tygar

> If you found out how to have LD & DC dreams on your own at a early age tell me your stories please.



I wish!  I had my first spontaneous, very brief, lucid dream when I was 34.  I also find it to be significant work just to have a couple of LDs per month.

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## SpliceStirling

I was naturally a self-aware kid.  And I had nightmares.  Those triggered lucidity for me.  Whenever something bad happened in a dream, I'd always be thinking, "Please... this better not be real... oh wait.  It isn't. MINDBLOWN."  And so I got into the habit of it. : )

So thanks, nightmares!

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## Ginsan

Actually I "started naturally", I used it mainly for sex  ::lol::   But it was extremely short. I could re-enter dreams and have a tiny bit of control. I would get lucid about once a month, but it was really nothing special. I first read about it on world of lucid dreaming but I was and am just too lazy to really get good at it. I should really change that part of me...

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## DreamCrusader

> I was naturally a self-aware kid.  And I had nightmares.  Those triggered lucidity for me.  Whenever something bad happened in a dream, I'd always be thinking, "Please... this better not be real... oh wait.  It isn't. MINDBLOWN."  And so I got into the habit of it. : )
> 
> So thanks, nightmares!




Tha'ts pretty much how i began lucid dreaming as a kid.   Nightmares and (FA')s "False Awakenings"   Through  focusing on the Nightmare itself and realizing it is a nightmare, i began  to will myself out of them.    Although still i'm unable to manifest lucid dreaming on my own.  I've begun to acquire some dream control through (DILD) "Dream Induced Lucid Dreaming".  I have no control of the dreams themselves,  but i  can control  myself and what i do in my dreams at best.

I feel like i'm drifting  or wandering every time i do this.

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## AstroFlyer

When i was younger, I had bad dreams about being chased and unable to get away. I dealt with it by waking myself up, but I never realized that most people couldnt do this. As time went on, I had actually developed a power of some sorts over the situation. For example say someone is about to harm me in some way. I would say to the person  or monster " you cant not hurt me because i can just wake up". Most of the time the situation would dissolve in some sort of wierd way or if need be, i would force myself to wake up. Having said that, this was before i knew anything about lucid dreaming. Also growing up, in my dreams I would aquire things of value and hide them somewhere like upder my pillow. The thinking was that when I woke up, the things would be there. So there had to be a level of awareness, but I just accepted it as normal.

Growing up ( im an old fart now ) I have always had a very good dream recall and always been able to fly. I never question what this was alll about until a little over a year ago when I had a weird dream. It went like this;

I woke up beside my wife in bed totaly unaware that this was a false awakening. I felt strange and things didnt look right. I ask my wife if i was awake and she said "yes of course you are awake, you are talking to me now". I replied that i didnt think i was awake and was dreaming. So I tried to convince her it was a dream by standing up and levitating . I said that look at this, I couldnt do this if i were awake. She accepted it as reality and was unimpressed. Then I looked into the mirror and to my horror, my head was upside down on my shoulders with a horrible disfigured appearance. I said " look at that ". Again, she was unimpressed and considered it as normal. I then awoke for real and my wife was still asleep. The next morning knowing this was not normal, i googled the hell out of "being aware that that you are dreaming" ( didnt even know what it was called ). Well, that was a little over a year ago and after researching and practicing, I started having LDs about once every few weeks to now having them 2-3 nights a week with a majority of them multiple LDs and FAs. I have recently learned to reconize the FAs which as increased my frequency.

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## Tukanih

I have, as long as I can remember. When I was really small, between lucid dreaming and OBEs, I had a difficult time knowing what was where...what was physical, or non-physical. It took a long time to understand that other people might not really see what I saw, or understand.

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## arcticfennec

I have a friend who said when she was a kid she saw an episode of Blues Clues that said "you can change your dreams!" And she believed it so much that she started changing her dreams, and has had lucidity and dream control ever since.

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## adragonzombie

I posted some of my dreams in my dj. I have been able to ld since I was about 6 and control about 12. I started off with flying and making doors to blank slats to start new whenever I had a nightmare. Later I started messing around with just toying with the dreams that where already generated IE changing the thing that is chasing you into something funny or just change everything around you. I refer the first method as blank slate or partial control and the second example as total control. Partial control just removes you from the scenario so you can control things better where total control lets you control any aspect at any time no matter what it is. If a dream starts heading in a direction that I don't like I will assert a little bit of total control to shift the direction a little. I have been able to use partial control since about 12 and total control since about 16.

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## EricinLA

Any new people care to share on this subject?

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## Hukif

Sure thing.

I had some freaky FAs. Which lead to being afraid of normal dreams.
Upon my first nightmare at 5, in which I became lucid started to pursue "a difference" in dreams/reality in order to control dreams.
From that time onwards, apart from nightmares I couldn't induce a single lucid for the next 8 years, which is when I "entered a dream before falling asleep" and found out about gravity, which would later on become my gravity RC.

Been having several lucids/day ever since, and I don't regret it. Its an awesome journey.

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## faith2014

Hi all,

(: Just jumping in to post haha. I've scanned over the previous posts in here. Shared dreaming would be absolutely amazing, however I've never achieved it. I'm a natural lucid dreamer and have been as long as I can remember (I'm 18, so its atleast ten years of doing it) I believe mine started around the time I began reading fiction books such as Harry Potter, Darren Shan. .etc. I think my heightened, over-active imagination caused me to begin to lucid dream.

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## Verre

Another old-timer here -- at least by Internet standards! Like so many of you, my first lucid episode happened during a childhood nightmare. I was only four or five, but the nightmare was so vivid I never forgot it. Just when I thought I was on the verge of being killed by an enormous dinosaur, absolutely terrified, I suddenly realized that I was dreaming and instinctively woke myself up. But then things got even scarier in a way, because although I knew I was awake in my bed, try as I might I couldn't open my eyes! I struggled with my eyelids for what seemed like ages (though it was probably just a few seconds) before getting them open. 

Since then I always had a smattering of lucids and semi-lucids spontaneously throughout my life. As a kid I was obsessed with trying to bring dream objects back into waking life, which always seemed like a plausible idea during the dream itself, but never worked of course. When I realized I was on the verge of waking, I would clutch some dream treasure tightly in my hand, vowing not to let it go... and then woke up empty-handed. I was always so disappointed, but I kept trying. 

All this time I had never heard of lucid dreaming -- this was before the Internet -- so I just took it for granted that some dreams were different, and it never occurred to me that lucidity could be intentionally induced. On the occasions that I realized I was dreaming, I would usually fly for fun or simply admire the vivid details of the environment, but I didn't have any kind of experimental ambitions. Again, I didn't even realize lucidity was a "thing." In that respect, you kids growing up in the Internet age have at least one advantage! Too much information may be stultifying and over-program our expectations, but too _little_ information can also trap us within a limited set of assumptions and lead to a lot of missed opportunities, as I can sadly attest.

My parents had books on astral projection, so for a while in my teens I got obsessed with trying to make that happen. Then one time it actually worked! I was so delighted with my success... I floated all around the house and yard observing everything... but then I woke up and realized it had really been a dream. I guess after this experience I concluded that most astral projection was probably just dreaming. I felt so cheated that I turned my back on it. 

It was only many years later, probably after encountering LaBerge's book, that I looked back and realized that what I had interpreted as a failed astral projection had actually been a successful WILD! It made me want to go back in time and repeatedly kick my teenage self in the shins for having such a backwards perspective. This was the consequence of a bad paradigm based on too little information. Had I been trying to "lucid dream" instead of "astral project" -- had I even _heard_ of "lucid dreaming" at the time -- I would have been pleased with my success and been motivated to continue. On the other hand, even if I had been a bit more credulous and let myself be convinced that I had astral projected for "real," I might have continued down that path and made progress with lucid dreaming as well. Instead, I ended up doing neither. 

In my twenties, after I came across LaBerge's book, I finally had a name for all those really cool dreams. I was excited by the prospect that they could be induced, but I dabbled with the techniques a bit and didn't have much luck. Eventually I got distracted with waking life and forgot about it again for a while. I would still have the rare spontaneous lucid, but not frequently enough to supply much motivation for a deliberate practice. 

It was only in my late thirties that everything changed suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue. It was a period of great uncertainty in my life, as I had just finished a very long stint in grad school and was now on the job market. One night while lying awake in bed with a touch of insomnia, I suddenly felt my body seized as though by some outside force, whirl through the air in a violent figure-eight, and then I was flung into the most extraordinary, vivid, fully lucid dream I had ever had by that point, in which I found myself navigating a labyrinth. After I woke up the next day, I was like, "Holy shit! Lucid dreaming! I remember that! I need to look into this!!"

That was only a few years ago, so of course the Internet was in full swing, and I had an Amazon account, and information was abundant both online and in print. So I bought LaBerge's book again (not sure whatever happened to my old copy) and a bunch of others, read up about it online, even formed an account on here (which I then promptly forgot about for a few years) and started practicing in earnest. I've been pleased with the results, but I still always naggingly wonder what it would have been like if I'd had the good sense to make this a bigger part of my life when I was younger.  

So I'm not exactly a "natural" like some people on here, who were clever enough to figure out how to get there on their own. But it's always been a minor part of my life on some level, until suddenly a few years ago it abruptly became a major part of my life, and has been ever since.

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## Stramanova

My first couple of lucid dreams (a few years ago) were accidental. I accidentally became lucid the first time and did some action that turned my dream into a nightmare. However, because of this, there was a long vacation where I had about 1 or 2 lucid dreams every week. Somewhere before or after that (don't remember) I found another lucid dreaming forum.

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## Cookino

Well, I guess I kinda did find out about it by myself. There was this time when I became kinda obsessed with dreams, I think I was about 12 years old or something. They were so cool to me, I always wondered what dream the next night had in store for me. And sometimes I would be aware that I am dreaming. I usually would try to float in some way, I remember that most of the time I would try doing a "triple jump" like Mario does ni Super Mario 64 to fly with the wing cap.
A lot of times I would go to bed excited to be aware that I was dreaming. I would think "Okay, this time I'm gonna remember to notice I'm dreaming" and wake up like "D'oh, I forgot again!". Sometimes I would have success but it was quite rare. Them I read in a magazine about it and was like "Oh, it's the thing I do!". The article spoke about classes people took to have lucid dreams and talked about how they could do anything. I didn't want to take classes tough. I felt like that was something I could learn on my own (by the way I don't think I still knew it was called lucid dreaming).
Then some years later I read about LDs on a forum. Someone on the thread linked to dreamviews. I came here and learned a lot. I still have much to learn but have way more knowledge/experience about LDs than I used to have then. I just gotta learn how to use it better.
For dream control I didn't know much before coming here. As I said I would mostly try to fly by jumping. Now I know lot's of techniques but usually end up asking the DCs for help as that usually seens to work.

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