I have this one happening a lot but I never hear about it. Basically I just go through part of a dream, repeat that part with different results then move on. These are normal dreams by the way.
What’s the deal?
Sometimes there is a glitch in the Matrix and things repeat 
This phenomenon in dreams appears only for some people. And they tend to have it fairly often.
George Parrish wrote a novel called Lucid Dreaming where he describes several examples of dreams like this. He talks about ‘rewinding’ his dreams to replay part. (He has some epic dreams, but none of them appear truly lucid.)
I’ve used repeating parts of some dreams to become lucid. You may be able to as well.[/i]
Cool! Thanks for the info. So I’m a minority, eh?
I had a dream like that. It started out as a false awakening… I would do a reality check, and it was a dream. But every few minutes it would fade out, and I would wake up in a false awakening the exact same way. After a few times like this, I eventually figured out what was happening, and tried to stop the loop. Although, I didn’t have any control even though it was a lucid dream(Not that I would want to exert any control if I had something like it now, though.).
I’ve often had looping dreams. For some reason, it’s almost always three times, each with the same story. It leaves me wondering whether I really dreamed it three times, or whether I dreamed I dreamed it three times.
Asclepias,
That’s an interesting idea about using loops to become lucid. I’m not sure how to make that work, though.
When my dreams loop I usually get this strong feeling of déjà vu after so many times while in the dream. When I think about what happened in the other loops, I realize I’m in a dream because the events (usually) aren’t logical. RCs help out a lot in this situation.
It occured to me once that in some (non-lucid) dreams you try out different solutions to problems that are bothering you. I have had some dreams about nuclear bombs exploding close by (some miles away), at least one of them very realistic, and I learned a bit from them. The interesting bit is, they were not nightmares, as I didn’t feel afraid. AFAIK, Fear blocks the learning process.
So maybe loops in dreams give you the possiblity to experiment with a difficult situation, and learn strategies to deal with them.
I use MILD mostly. Part of my induction is telling myself that if something unusual is happening it maybe because I’m dreaming. Also using suggestion “next time I am dreaming, I will recognize that I am dreaming”.
In one loop I had a dream I was on a train with my family. Then I had a dream where I was with some strangers. In second dream I remembered I just had a dream about trains. Then I realized this was a dream.
Similar experience where I dreamed twice in a row that I was watching a specific tv show.
This also makes some sense. Many people believe dreams have to do with learning and working out how to do things.
edit Aug 11
Last night I had a looping dream. I was in the middle of an open air mall. I was trying to find the way out. I went through a number of stores. Then I was back in the middle. This time I decided I would climb up the walls of the buildings and over the roofs and exit this way. As I was climbing a wall I became lucid. Didn’t seem like I recognized the loop in the dream, just the strange experience of climbing up a building on the outside made me lucid. 