Lucid dreams?

[GuessWho]

This sort of confused me, do you mean like a deep meditation? I can do that but it sounds like you're saying I need to dream but without falling asleep.

^ This is a personal thing. Just like tulpaforcing. Everyone has their own method that works for them.

That is just what works for me - your results may vary.

 

To me, it initially feels much feels like meditation where I'm not truly sleeping - just relaxing, but then I sort of transparently transition into proper sleep without really realizing it.

The realization only really hits me when I fully wake up again that: "hey, I was actually sleeping there."

I guess if I "forget" about my body by keeping it still while maintaining active thought or daydreaming, my body eventually goes to sleep without my mind realizing it.

At some point, my brain releasees awareness of my body as I transition into full-on dream mode. I don't have memories of exactly when the transition happened when I wake up: to be aware enough to notice it would mean being too aware to sleep.

 

The part of taking "an afternoon nap when I'm not too tired." is the most important for me.

(I've tried it at night when I'm tired, but I always fall into deep sleep before I can transition.)

By going to sleep when I don't really need sleep, my brain skips the deep sleep phase and transitions my active consciousness directly into REM.

 

It's a light sleep where I can easily be woken up and brought back to reality by someone simply calling my name - unlike my normal nightly sleep where I'm as good as dead.

 

Basically, it's a way of transitioning from daydreaming to regular sleep lucid dreaming.

The transition is what I experience as being "half-asleep" where I've moved far enough into the dream to experience it vividly and illogical things happen as they do in regular dreams, while I still haven't drifted off completely yet.

If I can maintain my consciousness just past this halfway point and bring it back at will, I will remain lucid throughout the dream and remember all of it.

If I allow myself to slip away further into my slumber, then I'll eventually transition into another phase of sleep (and sometimes back) and end up waking up either without memories of my dream, or with jumbled memories that leave me confused.

 

My perception of time is also messed up when I'm dreaming (asleep, not daydreaming):

Sometimes I'll nap for just a minute and have a dream that felt like it took several hours and sometimes I'll sleep for two hours and have a dream that felt like only a few minutes have passed.

 

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I guess my mastery of this method it partly due to the practice I got in balancing my level of awareness while sleeping in class when I was at school.

To pull that off successfully you need to be able to tune out all the noise of the classroom while still remaining conscious enough to wake up when hearing your name or the lesson end bell.

Usually I'd wake up when hearing my name and be able to pull just a few seconds of what happened around me before I was called from memory to at least respond in a coherent way.

I did slip up on a few rare occasions though and wake up clueless or sleep through a trigger.