Ask HN: Do you practice lucid dreaming?

18 points by raunometsa 1 year ago | 26 comments

Hey!

I know this is a question we're not usually discussing here on HN but I'm sure some of you have at least once in their life experienced lucid dreaming if not practicing regularly.

Would be fun to hear about your experiences. I'm not actively practicing now but should pick it up again (it was a lot of fun).

What I always emphasise when talking about LD's this: it's REAL. It's a full virtual reality experience not only with visuals and sounds but with taste, touch, and emotions, too.

I'm putting together a small report called The State of Lucid Dreaming 2025. Here are 9 questions if you'd like to participate: https://dreamvr.co/stats/questions

And here are the preliminary results: https://dreamvr.co/stats

wruza 1 year ago |

It's a full virtual reality experience not only with visuals and sounds but with taste, touch, and emotions, too.

The commonly experienced downside is lack of real control. Once you get really involved, you just wake up. Nice if you can avoid that, but doesn’t work for me. I have to stay in the mid-zone that is similar to when you wake up but decide to sleep further.

After some success around ten years ago, I found that it’s not much better than just dreaming and gave up on it. Together with 5-HTP, normal dreaming is like a blockbuster compared to dull prose you can write yourself in LD. I don’t think that I could solve a “5 bullets vs 6 monsters on the block while on a jump stick” problem in LD. (The answer is to find an armed monster and kill it first to get more bullets). Or taking the knife out of perps hand and carving crosses on his knees. How can you come up with that in LD without waking up from laughing?

faizmokh 1 year ago | |

> Once you get really involved, you just wake up

or worse, you got sleep paralysis.

anon743448 1 year ago | | |

or you can learn to project your consciousness out of your body during sleep paralysis and experience out of body sensations.

satvikpendem 1 year ago | |

> Once you get really involved, you just wake up

No, that does not happen with enough practice. I can have crazy, long-running dreams with complete control.

raunometsa 1 year ago | |

Yes! Control is the issue for many and also the level of awareness?

Gooblebrai 1 year ago | |

How do you take 5-HTP?

wruza 1 year ago | | |

250-300mg before sleep.

Edit: It's not safe together with SSRIs, afaik, and all standard precautions/disclaimers apply.

Quinzel 1 year ago |

I do practice lucid dreaming but haven’t really done so lately.

I figured out how to easily induce lucid dreaming for myself basically by letting myself become sleep deprived and then drinking copious amounts of caffeine before letting myself nap. Somehow, that almost always results in a lucid dream state.

Then in my lucid dreams, I often choose to dream about things that I wish were a reality in my real life, but that are not. Often relating to desired connections and relationships with people i’d like to have relationships with in real life, but can’t for whatever reason. Maybe it’s partly due to my anxious-avoidant attachment style, but I struggle to have healthy romantic relationships or even to maintain friendships for very long. The other reason I use lucid dreams (less often) is for exam preparation. I lucid dream that I am studying my course material etc usually the night before. Somehow it helps with recalling facts etc during exams the next day.

guzik 1 year ago |

LD is becoming popular again? I feel like I’m seeing more and more threads about it lately. Even my friends are getting back into practicing LD after abandoning it because of how hard it was to achieve. I think I’ve had a lucid dream twice in my life-each lasting about 4–5 seconds - and honestly, those were some of the most exciting seconds I’ve ever experienced. It’s like being a god, even if just for a moment. The problem? To get there, I had to grind for almost a year—writing down my dreams, doing reality checks etc. Too much effort.

raunometsa 1 year ago | |

I think it is getting more popular.

Yes, the problem is getting there but with practice it’s doable for everyone.

Have you seen Prophetic AI? VC funded startup building a headset for inducing LD-s.

raaron773 1 year ago |

I actually have tried it but i dont practice it. Performing realty check is really important but at the same time you have to make sure that your check fails in dream. Once, made a mistake that my reality check passed in a dream and i went on about it without thinking much.

I never realized how exhausting it can be once you wake up.

elmerfud 1 year ago |

This is something that has always come naturally to me even when I was a child. I remember when I first learned about a lucid dreaming in my teenage years and I was surprised that this wasn't normal for everyone. Except for very rare situations I have always been aware that I am dreaming and once I am aware of the dream I can exert complete control over it.

thenthenthen 1 year ago | |

Same, not sure how to trigger it though...Nowadays it happens more in the early morning, being half-awake, although as a kid I had it more when falling asleep at night

francocalvo 1 year ago | | |

This happens to me too. Sometimes I even setup many alarms every 15min or so like 40min before I want to wake up. This gets me to this state, and when I snooze the alarm I can go right back where I was

raunometsa 1 year ago | | |

There are different techniques to trigger LD, like Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD) but I think we need something else to make it more mainstream.

raunometsa 1 year ago | |

Are you happy that it comes naturally for you or is it a burden? Can you get a full rest?

elmerfud 1 year ago | | |

Yes my sleep is very restful. It's not really disturbing at all and oftentimes when I wake up I want to go back to sleep and resume the dream. Even in dreams that start out stressful it stops being stressful and more challenging and interactive. Almost like a game because I know that it's a dream I know that I have the cheat codes for that game. So I'm never worried about losing I'm never terrified of life or death situations. It does offer interesting opportunities to explore for lack of a better way to describe it.

sejje 1 year ago | |

What do you get up to?

raunometsa 1 year ago | | |

This reminds me E. S. Fein's comment when someone asked him "Is reality disappointing now?"

"Not in the slightest. Reality still carries with it the endless enigma of unknowing. When I dream, I know I'm in dream. I know it is just a simulation created by my mind. But reality? I have no idea what reality -- waking life -- actually is. I have nothing to compare it to except for dreams, which stem from waking life. I love my reality, but I have also worked hard to build a reality I am very fond of."

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mrgep9/my_name_is_e_s...

ANighRaisin 1 year ago |

I've been attempting WILD every few days whenever it's convenient. No luck so far, but it's not something I'm taking particularly seriously. For that reason, I'm still not sure whether it'd be worth doing a dream journal or risk disrupting more of my sleep.

raunometsa 1 year ago | |

WILD can be quite hard to achieve, I think. Doing MILD with dream journal works for me very well if I give it a bit time (not on the first night after a pause.)

ANighRaisin 1 year ago | | |

Hmm... I'll give it a go.

pizza 1 year ago |

For years I tried and never got it. Though these days, I only remember, or have, a dream once every few months.

scrapcode 1 year ago | |

I very rarely over the past 15+ years have had/remembered having a dream, and oddly that seems to have started being the case after trying to practice lucid dreaming. Most of the dreams I do have seem to be when I nap on the couch during the day (which I can probably count on one hand how many times I have done in 15 years).

Is that good/bad/neither?