Lucid dreaming is the act of knowing that your dreaming, while dreaming. Simple right?
Once you realize you are dreaming, you can do anything you want with no limits. And I mean NO limits.

You could fly to the moon, turn the ground into macaroni and cheese, teleport to Narnia,
Finally hit 10 for 10 stone casts from 30 feet
Or anything fictional like that!!! ;)

In my lucid dreams, I often fly around, eat food, talk to fictional characters, and use superpowers (teleporting, time travel, etc.)

Do you guys have any experience with lucid dreaming?

My dreams can be varied, I wouldn’t say I’m aware I’m dreaming most of the time but I have had small instances where I have, most of the time I wake up soon after I realise it’s a dream.

Weirdest dream I had lately I actually died. Was hit by lightning and felt the life come out of me. I didn’t wake up straight away. Every other dream I ever recall I wake up as I would die, like falling and hitting the ground.

   Just knowing I'm dreaming doesn't always give me control.  My Uncle Rick suggested that if I want to gain control of a dream all I have to do is look at my hands.  This sounded odd and unlikely to me and I didn't think I'd ever remember to do that during a dream.  Within a night or two I was having a dream about a drill sergeant giving me a really hard time.  I remembered what my uncle told me and looked at my hands.  I looked at the drill sergeant and told him that he'd look better in a pink tutu.  Sure enough at that instant he was wearing one. That took the wind out of his sails.  Then I decided to really test it and said that the room would look better with a pink elephant in it.  Marching into the room came the most beautifully bejeweled full sized pink elephant you ever saw. 
    The next time I remembered to look at my hands during a disturbing dream the results were more spotty.  It sort of worked but not exactly.  I find it hard to remember to look at my hands during my dreams these  days. 
    Tough they haven't happened for many years I also am prone to sleep paralysis episodes.  Basically you know you're asleep with your eyes opened and you can't do a damned thing about it.  You can see whatever your eyes are pointing at in the room but you can't move. If you try to move everything starts shaking.  The harder you try to move the more violent the shaking.  At first they were profoundly unpleasant but eventually I learned to tolerate them at least usually.  For a good portion of my life I thought my sleep paralysis was my own special version of insanity and never mentioned to anyone.  They I made contact with a doctor online from California who had done a study on it.  I was very relieved to know that it wasn't just me. 

I have always wanted to lucid dream but have never managed it. I have quite vivid dreams fairly often but I haven't had control of them. I hadn't any truly terrible nightmares since I was a kid until really recently (last week I think) when I dreamt my dad fell down the stairs. It doesn't sound all that horrifying in the light of day but during the nightmare it was absolutely terrible. Woke up hyper-ventilating and everything.

I never had a full on lucid dream but have always wanted to. I did come close one night when I was in the state between dreaming and waking and I felt myself slipping into the dream world but without losing consciousness. I felt a buzzing around me and saw colors that seemed to buzz and beat rhythmically. I began changing it at will which was cool. Then it was over and I never could regain even that much control. Some day I’ll need to look into it more.

Morphy wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2020 at 9:41am:

I never had a full on lucid dream but have always wanted to. I did come close one night when I was in the state between dreaming and waking and I felt myself slipping into the dream world but without losing consciousness. I felt a buzzing around me and saw colors that seemed to buzz and beat rhythmically. I began changing it at will which was cool. Then it was over and I never could regain even that much control. Some day I’ll need to look into it more.

Sounds like a lucid dream if I've ever seen one!
There are some pretty beginner friendly techniques to learn to have lucid dreams more often, too.

Rat Man wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2020 at 2:41am:

For a good portion of my life I thought my sleep paralysis was my own special version of insanity and never mentioned to anyone.  They I made contact with a doctor online from California who had done a study on it.  I was very relieved to know that it wasn't just me.

You can actually stop sleep paralysis by breathing heavily and irregularly  ;D It sends a signal to your body that something is wrong, and it wakes you up

I think I've experienced lucid dreaming on a couple occasions, but after waking up I couldn't remember if I was in control of the dream, or just dreaming that I was.  I also usually don't retain information from dreams for very long.  Once I wake up, pretty much everything is gone after about minute unless I make an effort to keep thinking about something.

@Rat Man - I'll try to remember that 'look at your hands' thing.  That sounds pretty cool if it works.

NimNom wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2020 at 9:56am:

Rat Man wrote on Jul 23rd, 2020 at 2:41am:   For a good portion of my life I thought my sleep paralysis was my own special version of insanity and never mentioned to anyone.  They I made contact with a doctor online from California who had done a study on it.  I was very relieved to know that it wasn't just me.  You can actually stop sleep paralysis by breathing heavily and irregularly  ;D It sends a signal to your body that something is wrong, and it wakes you up

   I'll have to try that.  I discovered on my own another method of waking myself up... wiggling my toes.  The only problem is that from the sleep paralysis state it's difficult to tell if I'm actually wiggling my toes or dreaming of doing it.  If I'm  dreaming I'm doing it then of course it doesn't work but quite often it does. 
    On another tangent, I've read that the shaking one experiences when  trying to move while in a sleep paralysis state is actually the beginning of an out of body experience.  If you can force yourself beyond the extremely unpleasant shaking you'll supposedly become an astral projection of yourself. I've read about this in several sources but I think that before I believe it completely I'll have to experience it for myself.   

Always wanted to, but i have ptsd that happened 11 years ago,( nothing to do with my military service) and i dont dream very often. Very rarely do i dream, but when i do its usually nightmares. 

Somehow I remembered to look at my hands and it worked :D For a tiny bit anyway. I had had a beer earlier and alcohol always, without fail, messes with my dreams and my sleep so I'm not sure if it helped me or was the reason it was so short. I didn't really get a chance to do anything before my mind wandered back into dreaming regularly.

   The first time I had a sleep paralysis episode after being married I almost scared my poor late wife Marie to death.  This was a profoundly unpleasant episode and I wanted out of it.  While still sound asleep and after some ghastly moaning I managed to tell Marie to "Wake me up!"  Of course being asleep it came out all mumbly and zombie-like.  She was holding my hands and I remember her almost crushing them in her terror.  But at least she did wake me up.  She told me that she thought it was her father who had recently died trying to reach her.  There were a handful of other times I asked her to wake me up from the sleep paralysis state.  Though she never really got used to it, after the first time it ceased to terrify her.  I asked daughter Kate to wake me up once too.  She's strange an thought it was cool. It's probably been at least twenty years since I've had a sleep paralysis spell.  I don't really miss them at all. 
    One thing I did notice over the years.  Sleep paralysis is much more likely to happen if you're fatigued or burned out when you go to bed. 

   The few times I've experienced lucid dreaming it was very pleasant.  I wish I could do it more often.

Ya it's usually about things I have to face. It's not usually very fun.

I read a little about lucid dreaming once and one of the things they were saying to do was get into the habit of every 15 minutes reach out and touch a wall. If it feels solid you aren’t dreaming. The idea was after doing this for days or weeks you eventually begin to do it in your dream and realize it’s not solid and wake up in the dream. A similar idea was read something. If you can understand what’s said you know you are awake.

NimNom, seeing as you have experience with this sort of thing I have a question that might appear a little silly (I’m not sure it isn’t but hey).

So .... has there been any cases of two lucid dreamers meeting up in the lucid dream with each other together? Or possibly having lucid dreams about the future. I ask this last one because I swear I’ve had some pretty spot on dreams about future events as have some people I know and this concept intrigues me.

I sometimes wonder if maybe linear time in the dream state goes a little wonky and we get glimpses of things to come...?

   Although some doubt this, premonition dreams are very real. I've had a few. After having one you are quite certain it wasn't a regular dream.

For whatever reason I’ve had these throughout my life. Most recent being one about a virus outbreak in China about 4 months before even the faintest whisper about Covid. Don’t expect anyone to believe me but it happens. Not totally sure why or how but eh.

I remember my dreams quite often, because I sleep terribly at night and wake up probably a dozen times.  I used to have the wackiest dreams that were almost like watching a thriller/action/scifi movie. Now I dream mostly about mundane stuff like work. I miss my crazy-ass dreams.

Rat Man wrote on Jul 27^th, 2020 at 8:13pm:

Although some doubt this, premonition dreams are very real. I've had a few. After having one you are quite certain it wasn't a regular dream.

I had this premonition dream once.
I was digging for clay, but all i was finding was low quality mud stuff. Later that night, I dreamt that I dug 6 inches deeper and found a large clay deposit. Sure enough the next morning, I dug 6 inches deeper and the clay was there!

Well I had three nightmares in succession last night and barely slept at all. I had a slight amount of control but everything I did made them worse :D I was trying to work out the reason when I remembered I had had a beer yesterday evening.

Kick wrote on Jul 25^th, 2020 at 2:13am:

I had had a beer earlier and alcohol always, without fail, messes with my dreams and my sleep so I'm not sure if it helped me or was the reason it was so short.

My brain does not like alcohol.

Kick wrote on Aug 12^th, 2020 at 2:04am:

Well I had three nightmares in succession last night and barely slept at all. I had a slight amount of control but everything I did made them worse :D I was trying to work out the reason when I remembered I had had a beer yesterday evening. Kick wrote on Jul 25th, 2020 at 2:13am: I had had a beer earlier and alcohol always, without fail, messes with my dreams and my sleep so I'm not sure if it helped me or was the reason it was so short. My brain does not like alcohol.

   Eating spicy food too late in the evening will also have that effect on me.  I've had some really  crazy arsed dreams because of that. 

Few people I think can point out one dream over all their others that was the weirdest dream they’ve ever had. I can believe it or not. I still remember it and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I was dating a chicken. And, no, that’s not some type of post-modern metaphor for the complicated nature of our relationships, she was a chicken and she worked at a radio station as a receptionist or producer for a radio show.

I called her up at work and saw a split screen of me and her talking on the phone as you often see on tv. I’ve forgotten what we talked about. Then later I was walking her home. I was holding onto her wing and walking beside her as we talked. I can’t remember the rest. The weirdest thing was nothing else was abnormal in this dream. And everyone treated the chicken like it was totally normal she was talking and dating a human.

Her name was Sophia in the dream if I remember correctly which has its origins as a Greek word for Wisdom. I can assure you there was no wisdom involved with this dream. Nor, surprisingly, drugs, a mental breakdown or spicy food. Just a man, his chicken and a poultry love affair for the ages. 

   My weirdest dream ever, of many, many VERY weird dreams,  was absolutely drug induced or I should say lack of a drug induced.  When my Lyme Disease was raging I was on many meds.  Too many to mention.  One of them was Neurontin.  It was for nerve pain.  One day I ran out.  Even though it said in the directions that you should never suddenly stop taking this drug, in that it isn't a narcotic I thought I'd be OK for one night.  Wrong!
    I went to sleep and had the most intense, psychedelic, hallucinogeinc dream of my life.  It was very Lovecraft-ish.  I was on top of this sort of temporal whirlpool looking down at the history of all life on earth.  I could see every creature that ever lived through every stage of their evolution, from the first simple single cell  creature through every human that had ever been.  At one glance I could see every aspect of all of these lives.  It wasn't like I was just looking at a picture.  I actually had all of their memories all at once.  We're talking trillions of creatures through hundreds of millions of years of evolution. It was like all of time had been squashed into a single instant.  I woke up with smoke coming out of my ears.  I was afraid to go back to sleep after that though I was eventually able to.  That was absolutely the last time I ignored the instructions on the Neurontin bottle. 

So on yours you attained universal oneness and omniscience.

I dated a chicken. *sigh*

My weirdest dream was that I had just killed someone and hidden the body and then gone home and went to bed.  When I got up the next morning, I couldn't tell if that was a dream or a memory of the day before. 

I had to go check where I supposedly hid the body to make sure.

That was chemically induced, I was given, unknown to me, an anti malaria drug, that was still experimental.  US military used it from '93 til '03.  Literally millions of military and former military were given that drug.  Now it's black boxed. 

Still have weird dreams and a permanent ringing in my ears due to that.  And it was 25 years ago when I was given the drugs.

Bill Skinner wrote on Aug 16^th, 2020 at 11:20am:

My weirdest dream was that I had just killed someone and hidden the body and then gone home and went to bed.  When I got up the next morning, I couldn't tell if that was a dream or a memory of the day before.  I had to go check where I supposedly hid the body to make sure. That was chemically induced, I was given, unknown to me, an anti malaria drug, that was still experimental.  US military used it from '93 til '03.  Literally millions of military and former military were given that drug.  Now it's black boxed.  Still have weird dreams and a permanent ringing in my ears due to that.  And it was 25 years ago when I was given the drugs.

Have you talked with the VA about that, Bill?  You might be due some cash. A buddy of mine, Walt, was a Vietnam War vet.  After the war he bounced from job to job and relationship to relationship.  He was sort of a drunken screw-up.  I hadn't known him before Nam so I thought he always was that way. When he was about fifty he saw a VA counselor. I forget why.  One thing led to another and they ended up testing him.  They determined that he had PTSD and that's what made him the train wreck he was.  They paid him retro all the way back from his leaving Nam.  He was a very rich man.  He moved to Kentucky and I lost contact with him but I imagine he probably spent all of his money on booze, broads, and drugs.  He died a few years afterward.  My point is that if you haven't discussed your issue with the VA yet you probably should.  You never know.