Hey there everyone!!
I was just curious about something. Don’t laugh at me for asking this but you know how in the movie Inception time is longer in a dream? I was wondering if this might be possible in some way. I mean because I have looked into dreaming quite a bit over the years and I have found that usually we dream in ten second periods when it usually seems like hours. Have any of you tried to prolong lucid dreams like this in any way? Thanks!
Moved from Quest for Lucidity. 
I think the Lucidity Institute has done some research about that. You might want to look it up.
I had an LD this morning, which seemed to last for about 20 minutes, something which turned out to be quite accurate once I awoke and looked at my clock. Might be different for different people, though.
Hello DreamerZero ! 
Well, it’s a movie first of all. Time isn’t longer in adream - it only seems longer.
You know those ND’s which you think they lasted for weeks ? In a dream, time isn’t longer. Our brains cut lots of parts out making it seem longer.
What do I mean by this ? Well, a day in a dream is really short if you think about it. Inside the dream you think it is as long as IRL, but once you wake up and think about it, you’ll realize you only did one (or a few more) things/actions in it. Which means, our brains cut out the other parts of the day, limiting it to the event we are dreaming about. IRL in a day you do hundreds of things: eating, walking to work/school, learning, watching TV, appointments, meeting new persons etc. In a dream you only remember “I was chased my someone”. Thats only one event - in RL you’ll do a lot more than that. And when you wake up, you realize how little you’ve done (here there are exceptions).
So - the conclusion ? Dreaming time isn’t longer - it only seems longer (like I just said).
Hope you understood all this, I tried to explain it as well as I could …
I looked it up and I have found that most studies show that the time is the same. I did however find someone reviewing this topic and a Lucid Dream Journal entry that someone had made on one of the forums this person was reading. Apparently this person has mastered a technique to prolong their Lucid dreams. He supposedly slept for nine hours that night and prolonged the time in his dream for two weeks. WOW! However, sometimes you cant trust what you hear, but anything is possible in a dream right?
I just read about a guy that claims that he was in a Lucid Dream for 100 years! Of course don’t take me wrong i am talking about changing your perception of time not time itself. haha just wanted to clarify that
I made a post on this subject back in 2003, under a different name in a different forum possibly (it’s been a long time).
I had an entire week of time dilation LDing. Not as in a week of dream time, but every single night with dilation going on. My mental state at the time was not good. Multiple recent deaths of very close family members, school not going well, everything seemingly falling apart around me. I had been playing with LD for several years prior and during the period was using LD as an escape as well as supplementing with nootropics to enhance the dreams.
Now that you know my mental state, what I can best advise is that if you are depressed, if real life seems to just be kicking you in the balls… DO NOT mess around with dream time manipulation if you are playing around with LDs as a means of escape from it all. Anyways, with that in mind, here’s a rehash.
Each of these dreams involved a false wakening, and me going about my day as normal. The problem was that they just didn’t end with some RC scenario. Brains are smart, RCs don’t always work and when you find yourself doing one and the dream passes for reality it kinda sorta becomes the last thing on your mind. By “didn’t end”, I mean the time dilation was years, everything vivid but not discounting the possibility of false memories to compensate for gaps… it gets tricky eventually, you don’t recall everything in real life and just sort of accept that for what it is. These dreams were more like an entire lifetime, each getting longer. Getting married, going to work, growing old, having children, doctors appointments, dental fillings, the works. As I was in a state of some rather serious depression, I was sleeping odd hours and waking up in a state of full recall. This is honestly not very fun, especially when it feels like everything has been suddenly ripped away from you and leaving you questioning reality.
It gets even less fun when it starts to happen on a daily basis, intensifying most likely due to the fact that you spend all waking day even more depressed than before and subconsciously wanting more.
I stopped the nootropics in the end, started exercising more to add in muscle aches as a new RC and went to full black for anything lucid (think of it like setting your screen saver to blank screen and unplugging the mouse and keyboard). This crap has stuck with me till even now as it was actually rather traumatic. I can still LD, but most of the time now I choose not to and to “go with the flow”… rather than try out RCs which I have had fail on me before when I get that mental trigger that used to prompt me to check.
The only reason I am bothering to mention this now the current state of reality ain’t all that pleasing to many and inception and a few other movies have brought lucid dreaming to more of a mainstream audience.
In short, been there, done that, have a few lifetimes under my belt to show for it, don’t get carried away with it if you value sanity (or at least being able to fake sanity).