You can learn lucid dreaming pretty easily. You just have to accustom yourself to "check" if you're dreaming a few times a day (when you're awake). There are details in our world that just won't work in dreams. A few examples:

1. When you read something in a dream, you're not really reading words and letters. It's just letter-like signs that don't even keep their shape. When you accustom yourself to check written text for words and letters (focus on every single letter and see if it still is a readable word), you'll soon start to do the same thing in your dreams. And if you can't read shit, you know that you're dreaming. It doesn't "kick in" like "Oh, I'm dreaming!" It's more like a slowly coming awareness that something's wrong. Like... "What the heck is this? That word doesn't make sense... Nothing here makes any sense at all... How did I just read this?" And then you realize that you're dreaming.

This one works best for me. I stopped training for lucid dreams a looooong time ago, but I still find myself checking words and letters in my dreams.

2. Count your fingers. Have a good look at your hand and count your fingers. Not just with a quick look, but every single finger. Focus on your hand. You already counted three fingers but there a still three fingers to go (or there's only one left)? Welcome to the world of dreaming.

3. Keep an eye on your nose! We always see our own nose. All day long. We don't notice it anymore, because it's just something blurred out at the lower edges of our field of view. In a dream you won't see your nose at all, even if you try to.

Try these three "reality checks" as often as possible. Sooner or later you'll carry over your new habbits into your dreams. As soon as you know that you're dreaming, you can start to control your dreams.

Yes, realizing that you're dreaming will probably wake you up the first few times, because getting a lucid dream can be quite exciting. But after a while you'll learn to stay asleep. If you're sleeping very tight, you can do a lot in your dreams without waking up. If you're in a light sleep, you'll wake up immediately. And then there's dreams somewhere on the border inbetween. You can "watch" them, but when you try to take a (too) active role, you'll probably wake up.




Sleep paralysis... I once had that when I still was a kid (8 or 9 years old). Something was lying under my bed and held me down, while a second ... "creature" stood in the room and watched me. When I was able to stand up I ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

When I learned lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis became something normal. Sometimes when I'm having a lucid dream I start to think about real world stuff (things I got to do the next day). My brain works as if I was awake - just that I'm not... When I want to get up (to see how late it is or to write down something I just thought), I have to force my body to open its eyes (opening the eyes is the easiest for me). Can easily take a few seconds before it works. But since I know this phenomenon pretty well by now, it's nothing that would cause a panic (or even makes you think there's someone holding you down).

I never had sleep paralysis thankfully, late 30's myself. I get dreams every other night?, seems like ordinary bland dreams and easily forgettable. Very rarely I get a memorable dream.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/i_had_a_strange_dream/post24
I woke up after that highly amused and amazed, running through the dream again and trying to remember every detail. I vaguely recall shifting sleeping positions several times during the dream.

Had a dream last night about you, my friend
Had a dream--I wanted to sleep next to plastic
Had a dream--I wanted to lick your knees
Had a dream--it was about nothing

Take the skinheads bowling
Take them bowling

Wow, thanks for putting a name on this kind of dream. I had one of those about 12 years ago and I will never forget it.

I'm a fairly old lady (57 as of this post), but since I was an adolescent I've had several precognative dreams, always waking up and knowing that I need to do something right away. These usually have to do with protecting a loved one - the first one I remember was waking up knowing my pet hamster was lost and jumping out of bed, running downstairs and finding his cage empty. (I found him.) I had a couple of really surprising dreams like this about my daughters as well. I've also have precognition dreams of this kind about my job. This probably comes down to intuition - somewhere in my unconcious mind I have reasons to know these things but the sleep process brings the pieces together. Another explanation if you want to get a little mystical about it is having strong psychic connections with people or beings that you are close to personally - so sort of receiving messages from them when your mind is open.

...

Hmmm, was it.... doing... anything? NSFW

https://www.oglaf.com/8legs/

I'd need therapy if I woke up to that. Just crawled back and forth across my chest with me thinking 'go away, go away' over and over.

If you think that was scary, imagine having sleep paralysis as a child. Twice. The second time was okay but the first was absolutely horrifying. My mind was blank with fear. The only plus was that there was no monster, not really, the paralysis itself is what scared me. And that was after a fun bit of projection into the kitchen.

I did lucid dreaming in college, wasn't fun for me. And the more I did it it actually became scary... scary enough that I stopped altogether.

It had been at least 10 years without remembering any of my dreams and I was miserable. It took me a breakdown to restart things. Now I dream every night and am considering the possibility of a dream diary. As I have been expressing a small amount of control in them.

I had a few sleep paralysis episodes in my life and it was frightening. Thank goodness i haven't seen or heard anything or i would certainly gone crazy. All episodes were the same: i opened my eyes, tried to rise up and then realized that i can't move because my whole body is paralyzed especially my chest like some force is pushing me down and there was that sudden realization of the "ancient evil presence" in my room looking at me from somewhere above, one time i had a vivid image of alien-female creature with evil looking eyes in my head for some reason, but still i haven't seen anything in my dark lit room.
But after i read an article about sleep paralysis and good methods of treatment for it like not sleeping on back every so ofter and even if sleep paralysis occurs you may still move slightly your toes and say to yourself "now i will move my hand up", i stop having any experience of sleep paralysis since then. My friend's mother had the same issues and when i suggested to read and article on how to fight it she also cured of that nasty thing.

If you're thinking about dream diary or something like that, I urge you to think about them and to try to connect them with you everyday life, with your emotions, thoughts etc. Try to learn more about yourself through them, like a good psychoanalyst :D Try to find some kind of meaning in them. Can't go wrong with that.

Those are some great tips, lucid dreaming really is just a matter of recognizing that you're dreaming. I'll add what worked for me:

I kept a dream journal and put a break in my sleep cycle. For me, sleeping six hours, getting up for an hour or so to read and/or write in the journal, then sleep for another couple hours.

For those who are interested in getting into lucid dreaming, I'd suggest watching Waking Life It does a good job introducing the subject and you get the bonus of seeing Alex Jones before he was full on nutter!