Can't Speak / Hard to Breathe / Can't See?

[SpliceStirling]

I need some help. I'm usually pretty good at dream control, I'm fine with lucidity and WBTB and WILD. So this doesn't have anything to do with lucid induction. Rather, something REALLY annoying that happens DURING lucidity. And this only happens when I'm lucid. CAN'T SEE IN LUCID DREAMS Sometimes I can't see. It's not totally black but a part of my vision is either blocked or very blurred out. Sometimes I can't roll my eyes upward, because I feel like my lids are being dragged down. I don't know what causes this, whether it is external stimuli or purely due to dream schemas. One thing you should know is that I have myopia... that is, I'm near-sighted, and have depended on glasses to see for the longest time. However, when I was wearing glasses IRL, this never happened in LDs. But then I switched to night-time contact lenses (you wear them, go to sleep, take them off in the morning and your vision is fine for the day). They're kind of annoying because you feel like there's something in your eye... but I've gotten used to it. However, I'm starting to wonder if they're the reason why I've been getting these vision problems in dreams. I know that your IRL eyes move during dreams along with your dream eyes... could it be that the contact lenses are moving around in my eyes during sleep, which makes it hard for me in the LD to look up because I feel like it's blocked up there? This explanation might work if it happened during nLDs too, but the thing is, it doesn't. It only happens during LDs! So now I'm starting to think it's just a schema thing. I used to be very very paranoid about those contact lense things, and that might have created bad schemas in my head. I've managed to solve this problem somewhat... I just ignore vision and when the dream scene kind of changes and I forget about vision I can see again as normal. Most of the time. Here is the new problem that I really really need help with though... HARD TO BREATHE / CAN'T TALK Recently, I've been sleeping in an air-conditioned room. It may have to do with that. Idk. But I've had at least three LDs within a pretty short period of time in which I found it really hard to breathe. I was afraid it might be sleep apnea or something but when I wake up my breathing is FINE. In the LD, my nose feels stuffed and I can breathe, but only very slowly (nose plug RC always works for me and still works). I've never not been able to breathe, it's just slow and hard. It's so annoying though. I tried to get rid of it by controlling the dream, and I can do everything but that. Later on in the dream though, when I "forgot" about it and the dream kinda changed, I was fine again. Which really confuses me... physical problem, or schema? Or both? Could it be my sleeping position (I always sleep on my side). Or maybe it's the airconditioned room, cuz... I got a sore throat too. It doesn't hurt, but it's incredibly hard to talk. The first few words come out then the rest are raspy and then I can't talk at all. I've even resorted to using mental telepathy with DCs because I can't finish my sentences. And when I wake up... sometimes I'm fine, sometimes my throat really does feel dry. But not bad enough that I can't talk. Maybe it's the air conditioner. Any personal advice/experiences?? This does happen to any of you?? Again. All this only happens when LUCID.

[serialdreamer]

One time not very long ago when i had like a natural LD i had the same experience. Me and a friend was in a fight with a guy who in the middle of the night was going around in the stairways in my old apartment and was trying to look and listen trough the thing where the postmen drops the mail on you door so it ends up on your floor(i dont know how many countries than sweden that has those). He looked very mysterius and kind of dangerous so after trying to block the thing he was watching trough on the door and failed that i told my friend "okey, you open the door and i will runt out and go for hit and knock him out". Said and done and i was swinging wildy and the mysterius guy starts to run for the door to get outside. Me and my friend follow him, screaming and stuff. The guy runs into some bushes and we stop running and started looking for him. Now i started to feel very exhausted, like i couldnt breath no more and my vision started blurred, like white lights blending me. I tell my friend "i cant breath i cant breath, whats happening" in panic and the next second i wake up in my bed with a SP so i cant move and the first seconds i have that feeling of not being able to breath. This disappeared after i calmed down and realising what it all was about. I had no AC or anything of that in my room, maybe you noticed your real physical body having a SP in your LD because you was close to waking up or something? Did something exciting or something that would make you have emotions of panic happend in your LD that might caused you to be close to waking up?

[arcticfennec]

This may be useless information, because I don't have lucid dreams, but here are my data points: - I have problems with my eyes, nose, mouth, throat (and even my epidermis in general) getting dry, and an air conditioned draft (or ceiling fan) makes things far worse. Sometimes even in ideal conditions I wake up in the night feeling like my throat is stuck shut and I have to drink some water, but things are far worse with air drafts. - The only time I recall having trouble breathing in a dream is when I suddenly realize that I shouldn't be able to breathe. Like, "Hey, I'm underwater. I've been underwater for the past seventeen minutes. This stuff isn't normally breathable, is it?" At which point I promptly suffocate and drown. Maybe you could try going back to glasses (or daytime contacts) for a while to see if you continue to have problems seeing in your dreams. (Or maybe you should conjure up an optometrist in your dreams and get that dream-eye problem taken care of!)

[Darkmatters]

The symptoms you describe are actually fairly common to a certain type of lucid dream experience. A lot of people will have lucid dreams of waking up in their bed unable to move and having difficulty breathing. This is actually a phenomenon that goes back in history - look up old hag syndrome (maybe take off syndrome if you don't get any hits). I've experienced it myself several times when taking Galantamine for lucidity, and the theory that I think makes the most sense is that you're getting real world signals as you're sleeping. Breathing is very shallow during REM sleep (your body is paralyzed, something called REM Atonia if you want to look that up). So it makes sense that if you are getting real world signals when you're not supposed to (normally during REM atonia all signals from the senses are shut off) then you'd notice you're not breathing very deeply and are unable to. My suspicion is that the contacts in your eyes are providing a little irritation that makes you think about your body and that sort of opens the channel so you can start to get some real-world signals in your dreams. When I experience it I often find myself feeling severely retarded or like I'm drunk or drugged in the dream - unable to think clearly, unable to walk properly, and having a lot of difficulty moving at all. Plus (and this is what makes me think it's real world signals getting in) I can often feel fabric against my skin (sheets) and the pressure of the bed against me. In dreams this often presents as I'm wearing weird clothing all over, including gloves or mittens. A lot of people report the same problems when trying WILDs or just when lucid dreaming (though it usually seems associated with WILDs). Here's a good article about it: http://paranormal.about.com/od/human...g-Syndrome.htm What you're experiencing isn't full sleep paralysis, but only some partial aspect of it. One way you can reduce chances of it happening is by not sleeping on your back.

[Erik112]

I need some help. I'm usually pretty good at dream control, I'm fine with lucidity and WBTB and WILD. So this doesn't have anything to do with lucid induction. Rather, something REALLY annoying that happens DURING lucidity. And this only happens when I'm lucid. CAN'T SEE IN LUCID DREAMS Sometimes I can't see. It's not totally black but a part of my vision is either blocked or very blurred out. Sometimes I can't roll my eyes upward, because I feel like my lids are being dragged down. I don't know what causes this, whether it is external stimuli or purely due to dream schemas. One thing you should know is that I have myopia... that is, I'm near-sighted, and have depended on glasses to see for the longest time. However, when I was wearing glasses IRL, this never happened in LDs. But then I switched to night-time contact lenses (you wear them, go to sleep, take them off in the morning and your vision is fine for the day). They're kind of annoying because you feel like there's something in your eye... but I've gotten used to it. However, I'm starting to wonder if they're the reason why I've been getting these vision problems in dreams. I know that your IRL eyes move during dreams along with your dream eyes... could it be that the contact lenses are moving around in my eyes during sleep, which makes it hard for me in the LD to look up because I feel like it's blocked up there? This explanation might work if it happened during nLDs too, but the thing is, it doesn't. It only happens during LDs! So now I'm starting to think it's just a schema thing. I used to be very very paranoid about those contact lense things, and that might have created bad schemas in my head. I've managed to solve this problem somewhat... I just ignore vision and when the dream scene kind of changes and I forget about vision I can see again as normal. Most of the time. Here is the new problem that I really really need help with though... HARD TO BREATHE / CAN'T TALK Recently, I've been sleeping in an air-conditioned room. It may have to do with that. Idk. But I've had at least three LDs within a pretty short period of time in which I found it really hard to breathe. I was afraid it might be sleep apnea or something but when I wake up my breathing is FINE. In the LD, my nose feels stuffed and I can breathe, but only very slowly (nose plug RC always works for me and still works). I've never not been able to breathe, it's just slow and hard. It's so annoying though. I tried to get rid of it by controlling the dream, and I can do everything but that. Later on in the dream though, when I "forgot" about it and the dream kinda changed, I was fine again. Which really confuses me... physical problem, or schema? Or both? Could it be my sleeping position (I always sleep on my side). Or maybe it's the airconditioned room, cuz... I got a sore throat too. It doesn't hurt, but it's incredibly hard to talk. The first few words come out then the rest are raspy and then I can't talk at all. I've even resorted to using mental telepathy with DCs because I can't finish my sentences. And when I wake up... sometimes I'm fine, sometimes my throat really does feel dry. But not bad enough that I can't talk. Maybe it's the air conditioner. Any personal advice/experiences?? This does happen to any of you?? Again. All this only happens when LUCID. This is pretty fairly common if I understand correctly. Let me explain. 1. You can't see I have never experienced this in a Lucid Dream, however I did experience similar things. For instance (this might be one of the common dreams that people get, especially men) I had a dream (non-lucid at that point) in which I was fighting someone. However, I couldn't hit him hard. Everytime I tried to hit him - it was like my arm weighted 2500 kilograms. However that was most of the times my lucidity trigger - I realized that something's wrong and then I realized this is because I am most of the time sleeping on my right arm. As soon as I realized that - I became Lucid, so I tried fighting with my left arm and voila - the fight was over soon. Then I realized that I can, in fact, control my right harm, however I cannot rely on strength. So instead of, for example, trying to hit something as hard as possible, I just hit it softly but, in my mind, expected that hit to be the hardest hit ever. And it was, anything I did softly with the arm turned out to be so much stronger and faster rather than trying to use the force. So, my advice might sound a little bit like it is from the Matrix 8-) : Do not try to see. At least not with your eyes. Try to just... know. Try to imagine, not to see. In a dream, you could imagine taking off the contact lenses - or something similar, perhaps washing your eyes in a healing water that you manifest. Something like that. Help yourself, be creative. Maybe my second advice will help you understand better what I'm trying to say. You cannot breathe/speak To be honest, I never actually focused in SPEAKING in a Lucid Dream. I don't know why, but always when I wanted to ask a question or talk to a dream character - I just said it in my mind. I never actually talked, I just thought of the question and most of the time the character answered immediately. This was and is natural to me in a LD - I know that whatever I think, the characters hear it as they are inside my mind. However, if you really want to talk.. The problem might be with the air conditioner - similar to when I slept on my arm, I couldn't move it by force, only through sheer power of will. I'll give you two examples that might help you solve your problem - but note that you need to find the solution yourself, as the problem is within your mind and you only, and none of us can give you the exact step-by-step solution or something similar. We can only show you the door, you are the one who has to walk through it. Example #1 I once had a dream in which I was swimming underwater. I soon noticed that I am able to breathe - and that was my instant trigger of lucidity. So I became lucid and tried breathing - and it was kinda strange. At first, I wasn't actually able to breath easily, as when I tried to breathe in, I started to choke. I wasn't lucid IMMEDIATELY - I was somehow on a layer 3, trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I only knew that I can breathe - somehow - if I focus. So, I focused on breathing - and started very, very slowly, focusing on not letting the water to go into my nostrils, but instead imagined there is fresh air around my nose, like an air bubble that is always fresh and full of oxygen. That worked and that's when I became Lucid - and suddenly I had no trouble breathing at all underwater. So I started swimming and enjoyed the rest of the underwater dream, which was quite amazing.. Example #2 Flying. Sometimes in a Lucid Dream (and this used to happen alot when I was a beginner) when I realized I'm dreaming, naturally first thing I wanted to do was to fly. Somehow, I never was creative with this - and simply tried to fly by pure force of will, just trying to get myself up. This was kind of strange - the harder I focused and tried to lift myself off, the faster I was actually going down and falling. At that time, I noticed that I'm focusing so hard that if this would be real life, my head would probably explode As I realized that, it allowed me to do the exact opposite - don't try at all. Again, this might sound like from the Matrix, but: "Don't think you can. KNOW you can." As soon as I stopped trying to actually get the fck off the ground, I just thought - let's fly, and I just.... started flying without any effort at all. I wasn't focusing on flying and getting off the ground - I was focusing on the fact that I'm already flying and it is the easiest thing possible. I just camled down, RELAXED (this is very important in anything you do in a dream) and just simply... flew off. Summary: The sore throat problem could be (and imho is) because of the air conditioning and mainly because you sleep with your mouth open. Even if you can do something about that when awake, (=adjusting your position and so on) you probably cannot adjust your position when dreaming. So - I suggest you simply forget about the fact you cannot talk/breathe, and simply focus on other things. You probably still have some connection with your physical body, so just try to maintain lucidity and simply focus on other things for a few seconds/minutes. Then, you will find out that you can talk / breathe very easily. Another way is, if you find it difficult to focus on anything else - just use the power of your will. Dream-logic can be annoying sometimes, but you can adjust it - just focus on it , but be gentle and relaxed. Don't focus too hard. Try to think of it as you think of getting dressed tomorrow - you never focus on getting dressed too much, because you know that you will, naturally, put some clothes on you. (Or you might be some weirdo that runs around naked but that's probably not the case.. ) Don't think you can. Know you can. Hopefully I helped at least a bit