Lack of sensation in a lucid dream?

Quest for Lucidity
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Hello, all, this is my first post! I’ve been lurking here for a while following various bits of advice and I just have a couple of questions, if anyone can answer them…

Lack of Sensation
This was a while ago, but anyways, may as well ask: after about a couple months or so of practice I finally had a “true” lucid dream–as in, I did a reality check, recognized I was dreaming, and took control of the dream. The thing about it was, I’ve always heard that once you become lucid your sensory input will skyrocket and it will feel just like real life.
That didn’t happen.
The dream went as follows: I was standing on my grandmother’s street and I realized there weren’t any cars or birds or people or anything and everything was in like a monochrome yellow-gray, so I thought “I must be dreaming.” I looked around and did a reality check and confirmed that I was dreaming, but everything was still monochrome gray. I had no sense of sound or touch and could only see about a hundred feet before everything was really blurry. I ran down the street and then remembered that I’d planned what I’d do if I ever became lucid: look at Earth from space. So I jumped into the air and flew up above the planet, but there was still no sound and very little touch other than a slight sensation of coolness. I looked down at Earth and all the continents were messed up and everything was still just grayscale. And then I woke up.
So my question is: is it normal for beginners to have very vague lucid dreams? Everything felt washed-out and unreal, even less real than my normal dreams. That’s sort of the opposite of everything I’ve read.
(The first time I ever did a reality check and realized I was dreaming, I woke up almost instantly, but that time, I could hear/see/touch everything just fine.)

Then, my other question (sorry this is a long post) is about:
Extremely Vivid False Lucids and Normal Dreams
Approximately twice or three times a month I will have a super-vivid dream. I guess this is a by-product of all of my reading and keeping a dream journal, which is good, because it didn’t use to happen. They will either be normal dreams or false lucids where I have control of the dream but don’t realize I’m dreaming–or they’ll be the reverse, sort of Not-Quite-Lucids, where I’ll realize I’m dreaming but not have any control over myself or the world around me.
I know this is a good sign, I’d just like to know: what can I do for that extra “push” to realize I’m dreaming? I can’t do a reality check if it doesn’t occur to me to do so or if I don’t have control over my body, and I can’t use some of the more dedicated methods like WBTB because I’m in a dorm and have a roommate and have to get up super-early four days out of the week. MILD seems to work okay-ish, and FILD works great if I can remember to lay still and move my fingers when I wake up during the night (which isn’t that often).

Any advice?
Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long-winded post~

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First of all, welcome to the forum! :welcome:

The lack of sensation

You said that in your first few lucid dream (which you didn’t consider real for some reason) you had no problems with sensation etc. For me, my 6th lucid dream was my first “real” lucid dream but it was INCREDIBLY vivid. The other 5 were just very short (like 10 seconds or less).

For many novice lucid dreamers control is an issue. Heck, I’ve had around 150 lucid dreams (lost count) and in many of those (especially more recent ones) my control and even the vividness were lacking. Some of the common advice here is to increase your lucidity in the dream. Various ways to do it.

  • shouts (“Increase lucidity times 1,000!” etc)
  • lucid pill (taking a pill from your pocket that will make you more lucid)
  • putting on your glasses (if you wear them IRL - this may change the color etc of the dream and could work for you even if you don’t wear any normally)

Alternatively, it could just have been a fluke. Lucid dreaming is a learning process and there’s always stuff to discover after your first lucid dream. The journey doesn’t end there. In fact, you’ll find that you are probably going to become lucid more often from now on after this first true experience. Things usually improve with practice, but there’s a Dream Control Training Course in the Article Space on this forum if you want to read up on it.

Very vivid FLD’s or ND’s

As I said before, LD counter is over 150 now I think. But I have had only a handful of lucid dreams that could even come CLOSE to some of the normal dreams and false lucid dreams I’ve had.

Many of my most vivid dreams have been normal dreams. That first “real” lucid dream of mine was probably an exception. I’ve had a few other very vivid ones, but the best normal dreams still outnumber the best lucid ones. Perhaps that’s just because my overall number of normal dreams outnumbers my amount of lucid ones by a significant margin.

I don’t know of any one way to become lucid more easily in very vivid dreams or how to give you that extra push to remind you to become aware in your dreams. It may just be a matter of becoming better at lucid dreaming in general, which will happen with time. Although…

Maybe if, when you do your reality checks, you focus a bit on how REAL the world around you seems in waking life. Then say that despite that incredible vividness, you could still technically be dreaming. Say to yourself that despite all the wonderful detail you see around you (and you may want to touch things and peak your senses for added effect) you may still actually be dreaming. THEN perform the check.

Personally I’ve come to appreciate the really vivid normal dreams as much as the lucid ones, just because in my case they’re VERY detailed and weird on multiple levels (had one such last night that I’ll post in my dream journal later during the day).

I stopped doing reality checks in the last two years or so (no particular reason, just trying different stuff), so I hope someone with more experience and success in this area can advise you on this.

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I’ve had around 20 or so, and the first few were quite fuzzy, but after I hit somewhere between 5 and 10 they’ve all been just as vivid as real life. Did you try the spinning technique? Try it with your eyes open first and if that doesn’t work, try it with them closed. Rubbing your hands together works a little too, if the spinning tends to wake you up. Actually, when I think about it, my LDs started to become more vivid after the one in which I decided to taste/touch/smell as much as I could, so maybe give that a shot next time. Try that Lucid Living technique too, for something discreet that works quite well. I’ve started to use that since I don’t have ANY common dream signs to prompt me to RC.

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Thanks, guys! :smiley:
Svenshinhan–
Wow, you were super helpful! And the ones I don’t consider “real” lucid dreams are ones where I either can’t control my actions even if I realize I’m dreaming (of which I have a surprising number) or ones where I can sorta control my actions but do not realize I’m dreaming. They’re still fun though!
I’ve read about the lucid pill, etc., but never had the chance to try them–I always seem to forget!–though I thoroughly intend to. My main concern was whether I was doing something wrong to have so little control and vividness, since my normal dreams aren’t like that, but you said that’s common-ish for beginners? So thanks!
…I’ll admit that since I started school I haven’t been keeping up my dream journal quite as much so some of the detail of my normal dreams has faded (the ones I mentioned were over the summer), but now that I’m back in the swing of things I will definitely resume where I left off, even if it means I have to remake some progress. Thanks for the suggestion, I will try it!

Ardosk–
Thanks! Okay, so I’ll keep trying and make a concerted effort to spin/rub my hands/grab hold of something/any other technique people say works. The problem is that when I have enough control to remember what to do, I usually wake up. The only LD I’ve had that’s lasted longer than maybe 10 seconds is the one I just described, where I couldn’t really remember most of my reading.
So I’ll concentrate on experiencing everything when I get to the point that I can stay lucid for more than a couple of seconds. Thanks for your advice!
And I’m glad I’m not the only one without a common dream sign :wink: my dreams are usually really strange and don’t make sense at all… they could be about my friends or the movie I just watched or being turned into a depressed Egyptian god… you never know.

Anyways, thanks to both of you, you were very helpful, and I shall definitely follow your advice!

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I’ve noticed that I didn’t had any lucid dream so much vivid as few “special” normal dreams. I don’t really know why but I have this theory about that.

Robert Waggoner [in his book Lucid Dreaming Gateway to the Inner Self- ] has theory that when we are lucid we don’t control the whole dream but only the “part” of the dream[the part of the dream that we are focused on] whether that is scenery or feeling or object or person, etc. Yet the other aspects of the dream is controlled by our subconscious, for example the color of the grass, the shape of the building the DC and everything else on what we don’t focus/control.

So my theory which is supported by his theory is: even though we may control the part of the dream that part must be product of our knowledge about lucid dreams, and product of our practice and control that we have or don’t have in lucid dreams.
That said I think that’s why we don’t sometimes have the vividness like in NLD. Because our subconscious must be more powerful then just our part of the conscious mind that is in action while we’re lucid. So in this theory better lucid skills should provide us more vividness and realistic feelings, not too mention control. This isn’t something knew but might explain the less vivid dreams, or blurry or pale dreams…

Hope this helps, if this all has any sense at all! :grin: