I have experienced lucid dreaming on and off during the years. It isn’t unusual for me to be able to seize control of my dream and make it do what I want it to.

Most recently, I have dream learned about riding a motorcycles with a manual tranny.

Thanks for the advice. The technique you describe for recognizing that you’re dreaming is slightly different from ones I’ve read before, so maybe it will work better for me. The only problem is I don’t think my dreams have a common theme… but I guess I’ll have to write them down first to know for sure. I don’t have too much trouble remembering my dreams, normally.

I’ll probably be talking to you about this more in the future. You can be my dream coach!

I’m sure you’re having several dreams a night; pretty much everyone does. Not being able to remember your dreams is a pretty basic roadblock to learning how to have lucid dreams, though. I was able to remember my dreams just by deciding I would and telling myself I would each night before I went to sleep. I was a lot younger, though. For one reason or another, men tend to remember fewer dreams than women, and adults remember fewer than adolescents, who in turn remember fewer than children do.

I’m sure you can do it, though. If you’re interested, pick of a copy of the book. I really recommend it.

Also, when I was young and having bad dreams about monsters and Darth Vader and what not, I remember getting fed up and deciding to take over my dreams. I figured it was crazy that I was creating the dream and I was getting scared. Then when I was having a bad dream, I forced myself to solve the problem. Probably by using a gun or something. I can’t recall too clearly now. I do, however, recall that it worked!

Let’s say you notice that you frequently dream of going to coffee shops. Then, make a habit of checking to see if you’re dreaming every time you’re in a coffee shop. The easiest way to do that is by asking yourself if you’re dreaming while looking closely at a digital watch, or reading and focusing on individual words. If you’re dreaming, you won’t be able to do it. Once you make a habit of doing these dream checks, it’s only a matter of time before you’re in a coffee shop, do a dream check, and find that you really are dreaming.

I really recommend that book I mentioned in the post, too.

If you learn how to dream lucidly you’ll be able to control your dreams. You won’t have any bad lucid dreams, unless you choose to actively go out and “look for trouble” in them. I haven’t really had any NDEs except maybe one close call with hypothermia from swimming across a lake that was too cold. I didn’t have an out of body experience or anything like that, just whole body shivers followed by a long long sleep once I made it back.