Practicing Japanese In Your Dreams. Can It Work?

by

For the last few weeks I’ve been pretty fascinated by the idea of “lucid dreaming.” Basically, this is the ability to know when you’re dreaming, then being able to take control of it to do whatever you want. Of course, after being able to fly and performing dentristry on monkeys, my thoughts drifted to studying Japanese… in my dreams. The more I thought about this, the more I thought it could be possible. So, over the next two or three months, I’m going to run an experiment on myself. I’m going to find out if it’s possible to study Japanese in your sleep and then share how I did it (or how I failed at it) with all of you. I think it’s more than possible, though. Here’s why:

Solving Problems With Dreams

There has been a lot documented on dreaming when it comes to solving tough problems or coming up with great, world changing ideas. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity becaues of a dream. Jack Nicklaus came up with a new golf swing in a dream. Elias Howe came up with the invention for the sewing machine via a dream and figured out how the needle would work. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that dreams can be useful. There are two really important things, though:

  1. You have to be able to remember your dreams (that’s a given, and you can train yourself to remember your dreams more vividly)
  2. You have to dream about the right things

I feel that with a lot of “world changing” dreams, the person dreaming the dream was so obsessed with somethign that it got injected into their dreams. Luckily, they were able to remember it, and then use it to their advantage when they woke up.

But what if you could choose the kinds of things you dream about and control what goes on in the dreams? That’s where the “lucid” part comes in.

Lucid Dreaming Your Way Into Japanese Study

My theory is that it’s totally possible to make yourself dream in such a way that either you’re A) studying Japanese and getting better at it, or B) practicing conversational Japanese. I think that in a dream state, one can do a lot more than they can in real life. For some reason, in dreams, anything really seems possible. In order to do this, though, you have to be able to lucid dream, and lucid dreaming takes quite a bit of practice.

[box]If you seriously want to learn to learn to Lucid Dream, I recommend you check out Lucidipedia.com – this is the resource I’m using, and it seems really great so far. I’ll just be summarizing below, so if you want all the itty bitty specifics, I recommend you check it out[/box]

There are multiple steps to being able to lucid dream, and all of them actually take practice. Believe it or not, lucid dreaming is a skill you devleop over time, and like anything, if you don’t practice you won’t get better at it (or won’t be able to do it at all). Now, I’ve done a lot of reading on lucid dreaming for pleasure (i.e. you can do whatever you want in your dreams… like fly… or hang out with famous people… etc), but I haven’t seen anything on lucid dreaming for educational purposes (i.e. practicing a new language). There’s a bit out there in regards to problem solving, which is great, but Tofugu is a blog about Japanese language learning, so I feel like we should stick with that.

So, my plan is to go through the steps to learn lucid dreaming and then experiment with ways to study Japanese within those lucid dreams. I’ll try different things and report back to you with articles / videos talking about what worked and what didn’t (at least for me). Then, we can figure out a step by step method that will (hopefully) help anyone who wants to lucid dream for educational purposes to do just that.

How To Lucid Dream

There are a few steps achieve lucid dreaming and get good at it. Like I said earlier, if you want the nitty gritty, go check out Lucidipedia.com, they’re great. Down below I’ve injected a few other recommendations people have told me about learning to lucid dream to add to the basic steps that I’m hoping will help. Here’s basically what I’ll be doing (and what I already am doing).

  1. Develop the ability to clearly remember my dreams. I couldn’t do this before, but I can pretty well now. Basically, I had to trick my mind into thinking it was important to remember my dreams. I did this by spending a few minutes every morning when I woke up going through my dreams as thoroughly as possible before moving or getting up. I’d also jot down notes on the dreams I had so that later on in the day I could come back to them and re-read them, to see if I still remembered. By doing this every day for the last few weeks, I’ve gotten way better at remembering dreams. I still have a ways to go, but this is the first step. If you don’t remember your lucid dreams, then lucid dreaming is useless.
  2. Remember To Always Question. During the day, I’m trying to get into the habit of asking myself if I’m dreaming. When you’re in a dream, you don’t realize you’re dreaming until you wake up. You never question it. So, if I can get used to questioning whether or not I’m dreaming all the time, hopefully that will carry over to my dreams.
  3. Wake up and Go back to sleep method. Lucidipedia talks about a method that apparently fast-tracks you to lucid dreaming, which involves waking up for an hour, going over what you dreamt about before waking up, then coming up with a “dream plan” on how you want that dream to continue. When you fall back asleep an hour later, the idea is that this planning and thinking of the dream will help you to get back into the dream, but this time you’ll be in control (or at least know you’re dreaming). Within this, I’ll have to learn to recognize dream signs and a bit more. This is where the magic happens.

There’s quite a bit more to this, of course, and a lot of that can be found on Lucidipedia, but those are the basic “big three” steps that I’ll be taking to get there. In theory, if I’m able to lucid dream (and on top of that, plan what I’m going to do in those lucid dreams) I should be able to plan to study Japanese as well. Of course, I can’t lucid dream quite yet, so I’m going to save that for another article when it finally starts to work.

That’s All For Now, Folks…

This is actually a lot more legitimate than it seems at first glance, I think. I’m not saying it will work, for sure, but I feel like it has a lot of potential. 30 minutes of extra study every night along with the power of dreams seems pretty nifty to me (or, at the very least, like a lot of fun). If you’re interested, here’s a video (basically a less specific recap of this article) you can watch.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ez8Sv5EYo']

I know a bunch of you have some experience in lucid dreaming, and I’d love to hear from you. What advice do you have? What has worked / hasn’t worked for you? Share them below to help myself and all the other folks who are interested in lucid dreaming. It should be a fun ride, at the very least.

P.S. I’ve planted the idea into your subconscious that you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. Inception.

← Older Comments
Newer Comments →
  • Joe Phat Muma

    Once i recognized myself in a lucid dream and made myself have a sword but when i swung it and hit something it would bend and not cut no matter how hard I tried to reinforce the steel same results.

  • http://twitter.com/Samufugu Samufugu

    I suppose I should also talk about one I’ve had. For several years starting when I was roughly eight years old, I would always have the same dream. I would be in my house and it was just the same as it was in real life, but nobody was ever there except for me and all of the windows and doors were locked. For as long as I could remember, I knew I was in a dream and tried to do crazy things like fly, go through walls, act like somebody from Dragon Ball Z (Watched that way too much back then =_=) but to no avail. Although, there was one thing I could do; change the color of the lighting just by thinking about. INSANE, RIGHT!? I don’t know why I was so limited in abilities, but I thought it was the coolest thing. For some reason I stopped having those dreams when I was around fourteen, or at least I don’t remember having them.

  • Ariana8898

    So, I can lucid dream (and yes, it did take about ten years to perfect and most of the time I use it to police my dreams rather than control them completely since that’s more fun), and I do actually end up studying languages in my dreams, specifically practicing conversation, though if I have a midterm or final the next day, I can usually manage actual quizzing. Here’s the thing though – without a book or reference to check what you’re doing in your dream against, you could just as easily be studying what you *think* is right, rather than what is actually correct. My brain, for example, used to supply pure gibberish that I thought was French while I was dreaming, but I’d wake up and discover that every word I didn’t know was just gobbledygook. As a result, while I think it helps my confidence with actual speaking, since I can’t verify that what the person quizzing me in the dream or what I’m answering are correct, there’s really not much point in going over it in a dream (though I suppose if I had no time to study while awake, going over it anxiously in my dreams might help in a last minute desperation sort of way. And waking up and discovering that everything you quizzed yourself on was correct is a good ego boost, but you have to have the time to check which means you may as well have studied in the first place.).

  • Corrin

    i have done it a few times, and yes it is something you have to keep doing if you want to be able to do it all the time.

    What I did is while im in bed trying to fall asleep keep yourself focused on what you want to dream about, and try put it in to a story.

    keep the stories short at the beginning and slowly expand them because if you want to remember them in the morning, and it was a really long dream you probably would of forgotten most of it.

    Hope that kinda helps,

    Corrin

    :D

  • Pandapaperclip

    Well what I did once because I was experimenting with controlling my dreams was I made/trained myself to wake up after my dreams. We typically have around.. 7 dreams or more at night. So remembering all of the would be extremely difficult to do. I’ve only been able to remember around 3-4. Once. And have only been able to control a dream once. My point with this is, If you are able to study Japanese, or anything really, in your dream you might not remember it, or you might not have enough time in one dream to study much of it. I don’t train my self to do that any more so, I’m not an expert or anything. thats as much as I know.
    Good luck! I am super excited to see how this turns out!

  • Guest

    I also have a friend who has those dreams almost every night. But the doctors her parents take her to say she’s a “special kid”/crazy. Also the medication they gave her last time triggered some thing in her brain. I dont know all the details but it does happen. More to some than others. If at all.

  • Jace

    if she’s “special” / crazy isnt it possible she is making it up, as ‘those people’ are so prone to do

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/titan9331 Lyokowarirtitan

    Hmm, I have never looked up instructions on how to lucid dream(because I already do it on occasion), but I already do 1 and 3 lol.

  • Chris

    This is actually pretty funny as I just started getting into lucid dreaming 4 months or so ago. Since then I’ve had around 17 lucid dreams and let me tell you it’s pretty spectacular. It’s incredible just how real the world your mind creates can feel; I’m amazing by it every time. I think though the most important thing is keeping a dream journal of all your dreams, as I’ve yet to have a lucid dream during a period of time when I was slacking on my dream journal. Also check out the forums on dreamviews.com, they have a ton of tutorials on different methods and discussion and stuff. Anyway, good luck man, let us know how it goes.

  • http://www.blazingadventuresmagazine.com OmenSpirits

    I’ve lucid dream 75% of the times that I dream. The thing w/me is my imagination and conscious mind are always active. There’s never a time my mind isn’t thinking (does become tiring sometimes) but if your focus on your given pursuit, it mixes with your subconscious and lucid dream might become more controllable to make happen. JMO

  • Skye

    Since you’ve already use so many hours it wouldn’t hurt you to take a few seconds to head over to http://mortalmist.com/forum/ and look at all the people who have 3+ a week.
    But I know you won’t bother, you’re already bent on calling us liars.
    But there’s the sauce for everyone else who’s interested.

  • Skye

    Lol “those people.”

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/merci_/ merci

    its all about thinking your desires into existence. if you want to remember your dreams at night, take the time to tell yourself “tonight, i will remember my dreams” periodically throughout the day.. i usually repeat the phrase three times in a row at three or four different points in the day and i make sure to believe what i’m saying each time. you should start to remember more and more of your dreams as time goes on.

  • http://twitter.com/chobiflight Kaori

    I usually dream when I constantly thinking about it during I am awake, especially till the last minute I fall asleep. It sounds awesome that we can keep leaning language while asleep, but my only concern is, will you feel rested enough when this happens?? lol I don’t. I always feel tired whenever I have a lucid dream. 結果を楽しみにしています♪

  • Sirilias

    I think this is a pretty neat idea. I’ve had a few occasions were I have had lucid dreams, but like you mentioned they do not last long before I become conscious again. I find it’s really like walking across a tightrope. In your dream you have to be well in control of it, because you’ll either wake up or fall back into believing your dream is actually happening.
    Maybe I will resume trying to lucid dream as well, and certainly best of luck to you!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ewa-Najowicz/100000175293443 Ewa Najowicz

    I had my first lucid dream one week ago and it was a-ma-zing.

    Do you want to know what was helpful for me? I’ve been sleeping for about 4 hours and then I woke up to study for an exam I had the following day. It took me 50-60 minutes. After that, while lying in my bed, I’ve been trying to remember NOT to remember to realise that I’m dreaming. Sounds silly, huh? But it helped me and I spent a really long time in Wonderland.
    It’s also a form of inception. Read this:

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201007/inception-the-science-creating-dreams

    Good luck! ^^

  • Keloura

    Apparently, I’ve been lucid dreaming for a couple of years now. I’m a very story oriented person so when I dream and its not making sense I tend to take over the dream and nudge it in a different direction. The moment I realize where the plots going to is the moment I realize I’m dreaming. One of the things that usually tells me when I’m dreaming is this light uplifting feeling I get. It’s usually followed by me trying to hover higher and higher and eventually, I’m flying like a natural. That’s not always the cause though. Most of the times I just don’t like the plot so I change it. I don’t like controlling the details of the dream. I just focus on how the plot flows. I’ll experiment and see if I can change the language the characters are talking in to Japanese next time.

    I think it would be a good idea to analyze what you think dreams are to you before you try taking control of them. For instance, I think mine are just stories my mind comes up with to entertain me. Therefore, I approach my dreams as a story. If you think dreams are your mind trying to process the information you receive through the day then maybe you could approach it like organizing your computer files or whatever method you prefer to organize your information.

  • Jonadab

    I suspect the most intractable limitation you will run into with this approach is that you won’t have any reliable way to check yourself (for accuracy) until you wake up. You can try to remember stuff in the dream (so you can do some review), but any source you consult (reference materials, native speakers, the internet, etc) will be merely the product of your imagination and may not give you the correct answer. So you probably won’t be able to learn much of anything new (except perhaps by observing the occasional previously-unnoticed pattern in the stuff you already know).

    That, and you’ll be expending quite a bit of time and effort in order to harness relatively small amounts of time, but this objection can be easily dismissed by saying “but it’ll be fun”.

  • Jonadab

    Amber, I don’t think those limitations are universal. I’ve never had any trouble looking at my hands or feet in dreams. They look like hands and feet. I don’t remember ever looking at a clock or mirror in a dream, but I barely ever look at them in real life, so.

    Another myth you will sometimes hear is that you can’t die in a dream, or if you do die in a dream the shock will kill you in real life. I suppose that might be true for some people (e.g., if they’re so afraid of dying that the shock of thinking they’ve died gives them a heart attack or something), but it’s not universal: I died in a dream once, and the shock of it merely caused me to get out of bed and go sleep on the couch for the rest of the night. (Specifically, I was eaten by the diminutive pet blue alligator that my parents had warned me not to try to pet, but I didn’t listen. It ate me in two quick bites, and I realized immediately that I had died, but the dream continued for several seconds afterward before I woke up, long enough for my disembodied spirit to approach my mother and ask her to bury me. I’m not sure how I thought she was going to bury me when my body had been entirely consumed by the alligator, or how I thought she would hear me when I was a disembodied spirit, or why I thought burial was so important, but we don’t always think very logically in dreams. Anyway, I woke up immediately after expressing the request for burial.)

    My point is, dreams are a product of the mind, and different people’s minds create different limitations.

  • Jonadab

    Getting words from different languages that you’ve studied confused with one another is a normal phenomenon that can happen to anyone who studies multiple foreign languages. I consistently get 具する and ἀκολουθέω confused even though they sound nothing alike, just because they both can mean “accompany”. I’ve never dreamed about either of them, but I get confused about which one also means “possess” and which one means “follow”, and I have to stop and think about a mnemonic to straighten it out. Also, when forming a Japanese sentence I sometimes inadvertently use words from Hebrew or Spanish (both of which I don’t know very well, so I guess they seem almost “foreign enough” to be Japanese, or something). I don’t always realize that I’ve done so (unless I’m trying to type the sentence, in which case it becomes obvious).

  • joe

    i’ve had lucid dreams many times, i don’t know if these times were lucid dreams, but i remember i was speaking japanese in most of the dreams i can remember

  • sholum

    Because lucid dreaming is a delicate balance of awaking enough of your logical mind without actually waking it is important to learn your own limitations. For example, I can’t bend the worlds shape or mess to much with the physics that I am used to without causing the dream to become unstable (the closest to flight I have ever been is a large jump and temporary levitation). You can learn to exceed your limitations, but that takes practice.
    One big thing to look out for is fear. Strange things occur that seem perfectly normal when it is a dream but in the partially awakened state of a lucid dream they can cause a tiny seed of fear. That tiny seed has the potential to throw you into a nightmare.
    I personally have never had trouble with my hands, but I have heard of it before. I also haven’t looked in a mirror in a dream before, but the way I heard it was that mirrors in dreams will either show you nothing, a distorted image, or what you think of yourself. the way I see it is, if it will startle you don’t look or change it.
    Apparently the older you get the harder it is to learn to lucid dream but that is more likely because many people don’t get very much sleep when they have a job. Also, stress is very bad for it, if you are focusing on too many things at once it will be harder to lucid dream (I think that this is because you are less likely to recognize a lot of small rapid thoughts when they manifest in a dream than a single intense thought. The intense thought has more links in your mind and that wakes you up enough to start lucid dreaming)
    To close this out, I, personally, am more likely to lucid dream if I am sleeping with the television on. However, if you do this it needs to be something you are interested in but you don’t have to watch, for example the astronomy shows on the science channel, you don’t have to look at it to know what is being said since most of the visuals are either graphics, satellite images, or people talking. This is to keep you from drifting to sleep without realizing it while still getting the distraction from the television. You can try this with the radio but I don’t think it will help as much without the changing lights.
    Sorry for the long comment, but I have a tendency to type as much as I can when I post something.

  • Tawlar98

    What’s weird is in my dream, everything makes perfect and absolute sense. I’ve dreamt the CRAZIST THINGS!!! But I can only remember my dream topic, or a teeny bit of my dream in the morning, and suddenly one of my dreams will hit me in the middle of the day and I will realize it made absolutely no sense.

  • DrVoltage

    I was experimenting with dreams back when I was still taking psychology. What has helped me the most is keeping the “dream journal” that you write in every morning you dream. That not only made me more aware of my dreams, but it also seemed to extend them and make me more able to control them. For me, there was always a point where I would just stop whatever I was doing and tell my self, “Wait…im dreaming. I can do whatever the **** I want”.
    I suggested the journal to a friend who was having a recurring nightmare, and they were actually able to get out of it quickly!

    I like your idea of studying while dreaming, but I think it may be flawed if you aren’t already learned in the language. The problem would be that you might be learning things wrong because you “think” its right. If you have a photographic memory that would probably not be the case, but I sure don’t :D.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=514155349 Christina Ricketts

    This is actually quite a cool concept. Whether you believe in this kind of object can affect you or not doesn’t necessarily affect its outcome. Some people will believe it will work, it doesn’t, some people believe it won’t work, it does, and some people believe in said outcome and it happens. Regardless of the object, if our mind interprets the given meaning/value others have placed on it and accepts this meaning (consciously or subconsciously) then it appears that this ‘divine/mystical’ object will work. The power of the mind is quite fascinating sometimes. I am not disputing the fact that this works, it does in some cases, I am just saying that it could be a rock of anything and still work (or not depending on the person). I could use a picture, cross, statue etc and if my brain connects this object to my conscious and subconscious thoughts I would like it to (vivid dreaming, remembering dreams etc) it is more likely to happen since I’ve made the association. These objects are pretty handy to a lot of people though, so I think they are pretty important! :)

  • Anonymous

    ——— http://www.yessoso.com

    http://www.yessoso.com We accept pyapal payment. You do not miss it. We need your support and trust!!! free shipping （Jordan wholesale） Dear customers, thank you for your support of our company. Here, there’s good news to tell you: The company recently launched a number of new fashion items! ! Fashionableand welcome everyone to come buy. （Jordan wholesale） http://www.yessoso.com —————

    The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All thepr oducts are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the pay pal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time.

    free shipping accept the pay pal

    SOCCER JERSEY 16

    nike sh ox $36

    Christan Audigier bikini $16

    Air jordan(1-24)shoes $36

    Sunglasses Oakey,coach,gucci $16

    Handbags(Coach gucci juicy lv) $33

    Tshirts (ed hardy,lacoste) $13

    Jean(True Religion,ed hardy,coogi) $35

    Bikini (Ed hardy,polo) $18

  • Hagvall

    I’ve never heard of this before, but I have a lucid dream once every few months. Thanks for giving me a name to describe it! =D Every time I have a lucid dream I can always fly, jump very high and use the force (like in Star Wars); it’s really fun! ^^

    I usually have a hard time changing the environment and my surroundings, but I can always change myself any way I want (like abilities and appearance) and I can pick up just about anything from my pockets (even though the object is too big – it’s like in cartoons). However, if I’m lucky enough to have the lucid dream in a room with a door, I can often decide what’s going to be on the other side (like all the girls you like, naked.) =D
    It usually last for about 15 minutes… or at least it feels like that in the dream.

    I can remember most of my normal dreams almost every night, so maybe I’m lucky. ^^

  • Anonymous

    Dear friends, do you want to have some different things? Whether you want to give your relatives and friends, take a few different exotic gifts? Whether you want to buy some cheap benefits of thing? So please, let us begin now!

    Click on our website

    (=== http://www.2kuu.com =====)

    Will bring you different surprise

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

    === http://www.2kuu.com =====

  • Anonymous

    Dear customers, thank you for your support of our company.
    Here, there’s good news to tell you: The company recently
    launched a number of new fashion items! ! Fashionable
    and welcome everyone to come buy. If necessary, please
    plut: welcome to :
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======
    === http://www.2kuu.com ======

  • Williamskeoni

    INCEPTION!

  • Lizatnbca5

    Didn’t know lucid dreaming was a study I have livied like this just about all my life. The one thing that I have been training myself for though is using more and more of my brain; more than estimated ten percent and to my surprise other gifts are in operation expecially since I became redeemed and filled with Holy Spirit. Iactuality have experienced the manisfestation of my house keys one day when I could not find them; It was a stimulating experience where I was so determine to make them manifest through my spiritual beliefs along with the words that caused them to appear in the palm of my hands. This experience has not happened since with the keys but I am paying attention to my brain and how it is manifesting the other uses that may be in hidden in the other ninety percent of our/my brain. You may not believe it but it is realy true!

  • ゲスト
  • Murasaki_Shou

    hey man i recently subscribed to you on youtube, been studying japanese off and on since early 2006 and i recently been studying continously, but yeah, since i was young i was able to control my dreams it. was my escape from the problems of the world that i had faced. I find my self lucid dreaming when i first close my eyes and then when im in rim sleep in the morning, i lucid dream. but i never thought of reviewing what i had leared while in rim lucid dreaming.

  • http://www.chimericfire.com Nathaniel

    I keep thinking more about this and I think I’ve got an idea. Subliminal messages put to you while you sleep don’t do that great. Although, I have used them to hilarious effect before. They can work, I’ve seen them work, and I’ve made them work. The trick would be structuring the message just right and possibly even waking them up every so often. There are timers out there that are set up to wake you with a loud beep at a set number of minutes. The trick is to keep you asleep… but not too much. You end up having a ton of vivid lucid dreams. The only problem is that it DOES NOT produce restful sleep… that is, it will wipe you out. As such, it wouldn’t be a bad idea of have it wait a good 6-8 hours before starting the sequence.

  • Michael

    Great idea. Good luck.

  • http://www.facebook.com/LukeHero Luke Hero

    I used to be really into Lucid Dreaming a few months ago, i used Youtube videos for resources on what to do. I have a tattoo on my arm of a Koi so that was always the thing I checked in my dream, it sometimes wouldn’t even be on my arm, then id know its a dream!

    Also looking in a mirror isnt always a good idea in a dream, it freaks some people out as it can look scarey (and wake you), I did it but I just looked normal thankfully so all was well lol.

    I think studying in your dreams is absolutly possible.

  • http://twitter.com/LieutenantKaiya T’keyah Daley

    I have been studying japanese completely on my own (with the use of textbooks and online sources) since I was in 10th grade. I’m actually pretty good at it and I have only just recently noticed that I use a lot of japanese in my dreams. Especially if something in the dream makes me upset or angry, I usually find myself blurting out questions. Sometimes I find myself in japan and I try to ask simple questions like “Where are you from” or “Can I have this?”
    As for the lucid dreaming, I’ve been doing it since I was very young. I never thought anything of it. Some times it happens. I’ll be standing around and then I’m like “Oh, this is a dream.” Then I go about my business. I try to fly or have some super power, but it hardly ever works. It may only work 2 times out of 5 or something. When people are talking about learning how to have a lucid dream, it makes me laugh. Sometimes it just happens. I don’t think its something you have to continually try to learn. It’ll happen when it happens, and when it does you’ll just know. In my dreams I have also noticed a sort of inability to read and look in the mirror. (And sometimes run. ESPECIALLY when something is chasing you….oddly enough no matter how slow you’re running they never get you….odd….) But that’s just me. But I definitely hate dreams in which I am sleeping…or when I wake up multiple times…but I am still in a dream :( (I think that only happens when you are extremely tired.)

  • Lindsay

    I wonder if this would work: Now and again throughout the day, taking a piece of paper and writing “I am awake”. After actually making sure you ARE awake of course.

    Maybe if you start to do it while you dream, you won’t be able to find paper or none of the pens work or similar things. I’m sure if you went to do it in a dream, you wouldn’t be able to do it as normally as in real life and maybe realise you’re dreaming.

    I’ll try this.

  • Lindsay

    I remember realising I was dreaming last week during a conversation with someone inside the dream. I did the eye rolling thing unconsciously without even realising.

    But then afterwards, the dream went back from being lucid to just a normal dream. I forgot I was dreaming until I woke up.

  • Lindsay

    I really hate how I can never turn the light on in dreams. You actually just reminded me of a dream I had last night though…

    It was like some kind of RPG or a story, it was very long and very detailed… But I won’t go into that here.

    But it ended with me finally being able to keep the goomberry by eating it and becoming immortal and my friend, I don’t actually know who that was but apparently we were friends…
    She also had a goomberry. Goomberries are extremely rare and are worth 65,000,000 gold apparently (lmao) if you have one (eat one so nobody else can get it) you are immortal and rich. (lol)

    But we were in my house which was pretty damaged from earlier events…
    It was about to blow up or something, it was too dark to see so I switched on the light (it worked) but I still couldn’t see certain things (like my ‘friends’ face) It was weird.

    Incase anyone’s actually interested: I had to take something outside so it survived the explosion (my laptop…?) then I went back inside with my friend, house blew up, we lived went outside to reunite with my family and lived happily ever after.

    It really was a story. o_o

  • Andy

    Can answer this — yes it’s possible. I had a dream several weeks ago which I remember quite well. It did turn lucid but that’s because I found it so unbelievable. I was actually dreaming I was in Japan and conversing with people fluently, like way above my current level. This immediately alerted me to the fact I was dreaming because I know i’m a) not in Japan and b) no WAY that good at Japanese.

    So this ended up rather than having me subconsciously spout ‘fluent’ Japanese to actually thinking and forming sentences. It was a bit like having a language exchange with myself, how weird is that?

    However, I’ve not had such a dream since then, so being able to entice or incite such a situation? I don’t think that’s easily achievable.

  • Rascal

    Now astral projection sounds like a much better way to study Japanese to me than lucid dreaming does. Lucid dreaming lets you study what you already learned; astral projection gives you a full Japanese immersion environment with new words coming in. Is there really a better way to learn real Japanese than listening to to people conversing in a public hot bath, or to famous Japanese people conversing over lunch?

    Astral projection may be a dream, but I think the rewards would be far greater if it were possible.

  • Jiajun

    This is very interesting to me as I thought of the idea of using lucid dreaming to help with language study as well and have recently started doing the work to get the skill myself. I am working with materials by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, since a psychology professor recommended him. In particular I am working with A Course in Lucid Dreaming by Lynne Levitan & Stephen LaBerge and Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold. As a university student it can be sometimes difficult to get a good sleeping schedule for this, but I need the practice to better my time management skills anyway.

  • Tnot18

    I didn’t know it was called lucid dreaming, but I’ve taken control of my dreams all the time. I do it only after I realize something doesn’t seem real, and I can only do it near waking.

  • Mari

    I almost always remember my dreams and when I saw your YouTube video on this I was really interested, but didn’t really do anything about it. There are quite a few times when I have figured out that I was dreaming but I never really considered taking control. Recently I had a dream and I knew that it wasn’t real. All I thought was ‘I WANA FLOAT!!’, I could feel myself rising but I dreamt that I woke up before my feet actually left the ground and after that I didn’t realise I was still dreaming until I woke up. It was kind of a bummer but I’m excited that I got so close. Thanks for putting up all this info!

  • Jadore_violet

    I have had several experiances of lucid dreams. the first i think started of as the common “neverending fall” after a while of falling i thought to my self how can i be falling for so long then i thought i must be dreaming the midle bits of this dream are hazy but somewere along the line i decided why should i be falling ? why shouldnt i fly instead and so i ended up controling my dream before sudenly waking up feeling lke i had sudenly been droped on my bed from a hight. I have also dictated my dreams by thinking about them before i sleep. for example in order to get a flying or swiming dream I would move my pillow and lie with my front flat on my bed, my face to one side and my arms flat at my sides or around my head. i would close my eyes and breath deap and slow and think about the feeling i wanted to acheave e.g. my body in the water. before i knew it i was asleep and dreaming what i had imagined although i didnot always realise it straight away also they werenot always exact for example instead of flying once i ended up trampalining very high. another time instead of swimming beneath the sea i ended up in a dream where everything looked sort of watery. lucid dreams can also be scary or well i guess thees arnt exactly lucid dreams. sometimes i am having a dream which i can control to a sertan extent but then somthing hapens like i am drowning and i know its a dream yet i cant change it or wake up or i am back in that falling dream and i know i am dreaming yet the panic is still there and i just cant stop it. eventually and sudenly in these scary dreams i am able to pull my self awake but they usually end with the same feeling that i have just droped into my bed from above.

  • Jadore_violet

    lol this reminds me of a similar dream i had I think it was set in japan and i saw some kanji and i thought it was the kanji for katakana 片仮名　i asked the japanese people i was with if it was katakana (i meant did it read as katakana) and they laughed because they thought i did not know it was kanji. i think i was spaking english but they were speaking japanese and i could understand them (my level af japanese is quite low) it was also not realistic as one of the people i met was really tall but all the japanese people i have seen have been small and even some of my short friends tell me how small japanese people are therefore my subconcious seemed to be creating the oposit of my concious view

  • Gabs

    Maybe you mean Dexter’s method for Dexter’s Laboratory. He did it and changed the world!

  • Dreamlanddr

    I beg to differ, lucid dreaming actually happens DURING REM sleep, because that is when we dream. And a Lucid Dream is a Dream. In that case it is exactly like a regular dream, only with the ability to do anything we want.

  • http://twitter.com/VXLbeast VXLbeast

    Awesome! Best of luck!

← Older Comments
Newer Comments →