Tip for flying

Hey guys I just had my first LD in a very long time and while doing it I had to learn how to fly again! The first time I learned it I just jumped in the air a lot and each time I would go higher and higher until I got so high I could just cruise around. That wasn’t working so well this time because I kept falling down no matter how high I got. Luckily I had an idea. When you jump up, pretend your on the moon and there’s almost no gravity. This way you won’t only get higher in the air which each jump but you’ll stay there longer. Once the gravity has gone down it becomes a lot easier to just swim thru the air and once you can do that your good to go!

Reminds me a lot of a method that Carl Sagan described in chapter 16 of his book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Here’s what he wrote:

“When I was a child, my most exultant dreams were about flying—not in some machine, but all by myself. I would be skipping or hopping, and slowly I could pull my trajectory higher. It would take longer to fall back to the ground. Soon I would be on such a high arc that I wouldn’t come down at all. I would alight like a gargoyle in a niche near the pinnacle of a skyscraper, or gently settle down on a cloud. In the dream—which I must have had in its many variations at least a hundred times—achieving flight required a certain cast of mind. It’s impossible to describe it in words, but I can remember what it was like to this day. You did something inside your head and at the pit of your stomach, and then you could lift yourself up by an effort of will alone, your limbs hanging limply. Off you’d soar.”

I haven’t been in any LDs long enough to achieve flight, but from what I’ve read, many people seem to agree that the “jumping” method works pretty well, if not just as a way to take off. I think it’s because gravity tends to behave strangely in dreams. I actually use jumping up and down as one of my RCs for that reason.