Thread: A Trade-Off between Lucidity and Vividity

I have only had one or two lucid dreams in the past 11 months I've been keeping a DJ. This is not a complaint thread, by the way. I do, however, have vivid dreams; so vivid, in fact, that any RC I might try fails.

Are other people aware of this? As in, do people who have vivid dreams, have noticeably fewer lucid dreams? And do people have a high LD count, have frequently dull dreams?

Lucid dreams are extremely vivid for the record.

Of the few lucid moments I've had, none of them have been particularly vivid, or at least not so much as my 'vivid' dreams. Is that a no then, spartinpastic, you have not noticed a trade-off between lucidity and vividity?

Some of my lucids don't feel as realistic, and I can't really get a good feeling for the space around me and whatever is going on in the background. But most of them are more vivid than regular dreams, especially in terms of touch. My sense of touch has never failed me before in a lucid, while my sight has a few times. For me it's a good mix of both; I usually have more vivid dreams which don't decrease in vividness when I become lucid.

Vividness in LDing is my weak point, and I've had 15(probably more) LDs in 6 months, so maybe your theory is right, but needs more proof to back it up.

Vividness is somewhat related to lucidity according to some oneironauts. Their argument is that the more aware you are of the dream world, the more detailed and vivid things will look to you, because you can shift awareness and engage your senses more deeply into perceiving your surrounding.

But TheSkies may have a point, loads of times you'll get more vividness out an ordinary dream rather than a lucid (at least for non-expert people I'd say :p)

I have a satisfying number of LDs (usually if I just commit to enough sleep, it does the trick). But I admit less than half of them are either too short, not very vivid, or I have some kind of handicap. Over the years I have had to develop techniques to help me with this, and I have had some success. I believe it will be an ongoing challenge for me, but it's worth it. When I work at it, I'm more successful, so I'll just keep on pushing.

Interesting poll. I wonder what the results will be once a bunch of members have voted.

PS. Oh and, TheSkies: I've don't ever recall having really vivid dreams that were not lucid; the times my dreams were really vivid was usually after I had already become lucid. So I can see how frustrating that would be to have all those RCs fail. You might have to get a little more creative with them

I have really vivid dreams and it took me 8 years to induce my first lucid, dunno if thats relevant. After I figured a way to become lucid though, can enjoy both the vividity and lucidity.

Either way it doesn't matter to me. It's the content of the dream that matters most of the time. I can think of two examples. One was very vivid and the dream scene was an exact replica of a part of the city I live in but at a random point I just knew that I was at home in bed sleeping. On the other side of the coin I was in quite a dull dream but I felt really, really self confident in the dream and I thought, 'Im not this confident I must be dreaming'.

Oh wow, so far I'm the only one with high LD, low vividness

Therefore, we must work that into high LD, high vividness, right?

When I realize I'm dreaming, the dream world instantly sharpens around me. It's breathtaking and expansive feeling. It's only when I start to wake or lose lucidity that the vividness fades.

I often have very vivid non-lucid dreams as well, but also a great many foggy and muddled non-lucid dreams. The foggy and muddled dreams tend to happen more earlier in the night for me.