What's your sleep cycle like? Do you tend to fall asleep out of utter exhaustion, or do you tend to give yourself a reasonable bedtime and wind down period. I've found that I dream lucidly a lot less when I've let my sleep hygene go to crap.
As an aside, because of being a naturally lucid dreamer, nightmares confuse me and on the rare event I have them -- once or twice a decade -- they freak me out a lot more. That absolute loss of control of one's subconscious mind is near unfathomable to me. I can remember being six or seven and my sister telling me about a nightmare she had and me being absolutely confused about them; the thoughts of being injured in a dream was just something that happened in movies.
Interesting .. I tend to "become" lucid in the middle of a non-lucid dream (nightmare or otherwise). Rarely will I be lucid from the get go.
So when I gain "control", the initial scenario is set. Sometimes, it's quite a fascinating "twist" on recent real-life events. Other times it's Alice and the Wonderland style craziness.
Often I think I'm in a partially Lucid dream. I know I'm dreaming, I can mostly do what I want (including completely changing the scenario) but I am also not in control of everything that happens, particularly what characters appear or what they say/do in response to me. It's a bit like living in an alternative universe.
The strangest aspect is how realistic the characters are, particularly the real-life people. I'll be talking to a friend, and get a conversation that is so like that person that I'll often forget that it was said in a dream. This has led to some strange real-life conversations, lol.
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What's your sleep cycle like? Do you tend to fall asleep out of utter exhaustion, or do you tend to give yourself a reasonable bedtime and wind down period. I've found that I dream lucidly a lot less when I've let my sleep hygene go to crap.
As an aside, because of being a naturally lucid dreamer, nightmares confuse me and on the rare event I have them -- once or twice a decade -- they freak me out a lot more. That absolute loss of control of one's subconscious mind is near unfathomable to me. I can remember being six or seven and my sister telling me about a nightmare she had and me being absolutely confused about them; the thoughts of being injured in a dream was just something that happened in movies.
Interesting .. I tend to "become" lucid in the middle of a non-lucid dream (nightmare or otherwise). Rarely will I be lucid from the get go.
So when I gain "control", the initial scenario is set. Sometimes, it's quite a fascinating "twist" on recent real-life events. Other times it's Alice and the Wonderland style craziness.
Often I think I'm in a partially Lucid dream. I know I'm dreaming, I can mostly do what I want (including completely changing the scenario) but I am also not in control of everything that happens, particularly what characters appear or what they say/do in response to me. It's a bit like living in an alternative universe.
The strangest aspect is how realistic the characters are, particularly the real-life people. I'll be talking to a friend, and get a conversation that is so like that person that I'll often forget that it was said in a dream. This has led to some strange real-life conversations, lol.
Opposite experience here. The only times I've experienced lucid dreaming was when I was exhausted in a noisy/sunny environment.