Skydiver inspired by dreams

There’s a cool article at NewScientist.com:

newscientist.com/opinion/opi … id=ns24261

How did you become so passionate about skydiving?

I used to have this recurring dream, which started when I was 8 years old. I would remember it vividly when I woke up. In the dream, I would step out onto the window sill of my house, and it would be pitch black outside, no moon nor stars nor lights of any kind. Then I would jump off the window sill and it seemed like I was floating on a big cushion of air. I never saw myself in the dream, I just had the feeling of floating or flying. I had that dream about once a month until I was 15, but by the time I was 16 it was coming about once a week.

It bothered me so much that I told my mother I had to do a parachute jump to find out if the sensation in the dream was real. All I wanted to do was the free-fall bit, but I found out you had to do the static-line stuff first. On my first jump the parachute was open almost as soon as I left the plane so there was no free fall to experience. It took another 15 or so jumps before I could see and feel everything, because there is such a sensory overload when you first start jumping. After that, I never had the dream again. It was directly responsible for getting me interested in skydiving.

[read more] newscientist.com/opinion/opi … id=ns24261

Sound familiar?

I’ve had quite a few, total darkness dreams where all I am aware of is a sensation of movement, falling etc… Actually it feels like falling, but I can control the direction so that I fall up, or straight forward or down.

It’s weird though because I can’t make it turn into a regular lucid dream, there is no visual information at all. These dreams can go on for a long time and actually get frustrating because all that is happening is falling (like 20 minutes of falling through darkness). I think it might not be part of the REM sleep cycle. Sometimes if a lucid dream fades out I end up in these dark dreams with only movement to experiment with.

I really want to try skydiving, but I don’t like the idea of all the tandem and fixed cord jumps before you get to freefall.