Thread: Pain in Lucid Dreams?

I've become interested in researching into a new side of LDing. That is, experienceing pain. I don't want to sound emo but it is an interesting concept. Say if you picked up a knife in the dream world and stabbed it into your leg. Does your mind produce the sensation of pain? If so, does lucidity make it realistic? If so, does your brain produce this pain in your physical leg?

Surely like everything else in a true Lucid Dream, experiencing the sensation of pain would be as realistic as the real world. Or does this have to do with your amount of dream control? This brings me to another interesting point. If pain is acheivable, could death be a possibility? Although experiencing pain is something everyone has done in their waking life, could it be possible to die in a lucid dream?

In 'The Matrix' movie, if you die there, you die in the real world. If you died in a lucid dream, would your brain still function in the real world? Without the mind, the body should cease to function. Just some things I'd like to bring up, maybe it can spark some theoretical conversation into the world of Lucid Dreaming.

I asked this on a different forum, and I was told that usually pain is just uncomfortable, not painful.

And if you die, usually the dream ends and you appear somewhere else, or wake up.

Originally Posted by BraveryOnions

I asked this on a different forum, and I was told that usually pain is just uncomfortable, not painful.

And if you die, usually the dream ends and you appear somewhere else, or wake up.

I have died before in a dream and I was in a ghostly form.

I have got pain in dreams.
I don't remember why i got this pain in the dream, but it hurted so much in my stomach that i woke up. ok, it was in the morning so i guess i was going to wake up any second but it was felling pretty bad in the dream.

And yeah, you can die in a dream.
That can end up severals of ways, False Awakening, OOBE, becoming a ghost, beeing able to rewind the dream and so on.

You don't die in real work if you die in a dream. even if matrix seem to be LD related eveything ain't like Lucid dream, but not a bad thought anyway. Quite logic.

Pain is different, unless if you're having a cramp and dreaming through it or something; in my experience.

For me it absolutely varies. I've felt the worst pain in non-lucids, and it felt just as real as it would in RL. In lucids it can hurt a lot or not at all. I had one dream where I was being shot, and getting hit by the bullets, but it sort of just felt like bouncy balls hitting me. That's what cued me in to lucidity. I've had others where I have felt pain. I think that, and death in LDs, are based on the same thing... what you expect of the dream. If you expect things to hurt, they will. And if you expect to be a ghost, or wake up, or have a false awakening, then you will. But I've never died in a lucid dream, I'm just stretching my experience from other aspects of LDing.

For me there is no reason for your physical body to die just because you died in a dream. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense. What would cause your heart to stop beating and your organs to stop their various tasks? It seems more likely that if anything, you would end up a vegetable while your body continued to live than vice versa. And even then there is no reason for that to happen. Haven't you ever died in a non-lucid? I always just wake up. I'm going to try to kill myself and see what happens in my next lucid, though, because now I'm curious too. It'd be fun to be a ghost, I've phased through objects before and it was awesome

It is possible to feel pain in dreams, or at least construct the feeling of being in pain, even if it;'s not the actual physical process. I've been stabbed before, in the chest, and it freaking hurt. Woke up as I died, though, but it would make sense that if, in a dream, you thought you were dead but knew you were still alive enough that your body didn;t bother waking up do a "mortalito check," you could probably spend some time in a dream similar to whatever you consider an afterlife.

But yeah, it is possible to experience something indistinguishable from pain in dreams, even if you may not actually, physically feel it.

I've experience a lot of kinds of pain in my LDs. Some of it was worse than any pain I've ever had in waking life. But a lot of it was dull and just uncomfortable. A while ago I was eaten to death by a pack of wolves / coyotes (I did it to face a fear) but the pain was pretty much nonexistant. When I died I just woke up.

heh,heh, you people are pretty lucky then......i don't want to freak people out but i have woken up with wounds in the same place as i got hurt in my dream.although every time it is a lot less in the real world than it is in the dream.i have a couple scars from my dreams they weren't very deep but they scarred.there is one on my left arm from a dream where i was getting attacked from a tiger and it bit me.i woke up and i had blood on my arm...it freaked me out because for a second i thought there was a tiger in my room. but yeah one of my friends gets hurt from her dreams too so i know it's not just me.pain can be anything for me in dreams from barely knowing whats happening to excruciatingly real.

im sure people have said this i just didnt feel like reading everything in the thread.

It is possible to die in a lucid dream, many people have had them, however it is not possible to actually die from doing so in a dream.

I have definitely been shot in my dreams and it feels like a pinch. Im sure if you were lucid and wanted it to be more painful you could make it happen, but it would leave with the dream.

I'm sure maybe alot of people have got it wrong. I personally (emphasis on personally) don't believe that your dreams can affect the physical, however what happens whilst you are sleeping can affect your dreams as most of us know.

Surely this is just what's happening when you wake up and your wounds have supposedly formed from the dream, instead something could have happened during the night that translated into the dream.

I just had a dream where I had an abnormally long group of several hairs, at least 5 inches longer than the rest of my hair. But when I tried to pull it out, it really hurt. It was a very real pain, like trying to pull out a fist full of hair in waking life. As for lucid dreams, I'm not sure if you'd experience pain or not. But for regular dreams, I definitely experience pain.

Hey all,
I just recently found this website and this thread as I was googleing the very question "pain in lucid dreams?". I have been able to have lucid dreams for around a year now, but more recently (last 4 dreams) I have experienced greater sensations including pain and I was curious if anyone else felt this as well. To be specific the most realistic pain I'm referring to was someone stabbing me in the leg with a syringe several times. lol, imagine my surprise in the dream when I actually felt pain (and it did feel like a real syringe), I then tried to end the dream by "escaping", instead of just waking up. I have felt several other sensation before, i.e, scraping, falling, touch, even flying, however those all tended to be due to my 'choices/actions' in a dream, i.e. not necessarily imposed on me (with a few exceptions). In conclusion, I believe that what you expect of a dream is what you're gonna get. If you enter a dream state where everything is realistic then it will feel like it, however if you enter a more fictionalized dream state (where you believe yo can fly for example) the realism may be reduced and you can avoid feeling pain.

Havn't LD'd yet, but I definately know pain in a dream. Always something biting me, ugh, I hate those. I know real pain fromt he outside is felt in dreams but I really doubt dream pain translates to your actual body.

One particularly annoying sensation is having to pee in dreams. Of course, you dream you went and then because you actually didn't, you keep getting the same sensation over and over again. I've peed a dozen times in my dream and then finally woke up with a full bladder that was killing me.

The only pain I have in dreams:

NIGHTMARES. Usually someone/something is chasing after me in complete blackness, suddenly he/she/it gets me on the edge of a cliff, I jump off, hit the ground feel a sharp pain in my back, and finally wake up and realize I'm on the floor. XD

I never have pain only warmth for dull pain and cold for sharp pain.

I think its because the hot nerve and the dull pain nurv are next to each other and the cold and sharp respectavly.

I dont seem to feel at all. EG if i touch an object then I cant feel it. This would be a normal dream though, ive never tried in a lucid.

Originally Posted by capoopy

I dont seem to feel at all. EG if i touch an object then I cant feel it. This would be a normal dream though, ive never tried in a lucid.

The strange thing aobut dreams is that emotions and senses can be dulled and intesified. Luicid or not. How these mechanics work are up to question however. Perhaps its what we give attention to and what we ignore in a dream.

Once in a non-lucid dream, I shot myself (I had a good reason to do so) in the neck- there was no pain, I managed to get out a few words, felt the blood on my hands, and everything faded over white. I then "respawned" inside a grand house with my friend, who agreed that it had been the coolest thing she had ever seen. It was though I had been dreaming and woken up, but the dream had still happened. But I disgress, it wasn't painful at all (even though it should have been).

Originally Posted by Dimetrodon

I then "respawned"

That happens to me too most of the time when I die. Either that, or I wake up.

In a non-LD last night I was in a fight for my life and the pain was more a dull, gnawing discomfort. But the night before (also in a non-lucid) I passed out from heat stroke in a dream and boy could I feel that heat!

I remember in one dream, I was trying to jump rooftop to rooftop.
I ended up hitting the edges of the building and hearing my bones cracking and feeling like rubber. But no pain.
Then I slapped my myself thinking,"This is so cool!" but then I woke up. My cheek was buzzing. I mean, it didn't hurt. But it certainly felt like something happened.

I find that when I'm LDing. I feel a slight pain when I get hurt, Its very slight but it still hurts.
When I'm LDing and its cold in my room I'll feel the cold in the awake world but at the same time ill feel everything in the Dream World. (Mostly its all temperature or emotion wise)

I also notice that when my alarm clock goes off while I'm LDing the sound will come into my dreams and it'll effect my dreams.

Originally Posted by S.Marten

I also notice that when my alarm clock goes off while I'm LDing the sound will come into my dreams and it'll effect my dreams.

Lucky, the majority of my lucids have ended that way!!

hi!
Before I joined DV, to experiment into my lucids, I used to do things which would lead me to death in real life. one of those things was to jump from heights. Every new attempt I did in the next LD, I was feeling it more and more real, then I started to feel pain. I stopped doing that because I thought my mind was starting to reproduce pain, may be, wondering about how could it feel.