Lucid dreaming and dreamwork

Has anyone ever played with this? I got interested in it a few years ago but never really made any progress with it.

Since I have been using the Psychology of Violence CDs I have been doing the visualisations at various times of the day and have found that the muscle twitches are much stronger if I do these in bed before I go to sleep when I am half-awake.

It made me wonder if there is any carry over to dream states. When I used to read up on lucid dreaming a lot of the literature referred to being able to tackle fears/phobias or enhance learning when in a lucid state.

forgive me...haven't gotten the dvd's yet. i'm only commenting on the
lucid stuff. i had a problem with someone about a decade ago. and didn't realize how much he was on my mind. this was a case of not knowing how seriously to take someone's death threats behind my back. to make it short, his threats were just piss on a rusted fan. my emotions threw me because he had physical hurt someone close to me and he knew i might be providing the response if something happened when i was around (blah blah blah, etc). i had a very lucid dream about literally being in a life threatening situation, feeling overwhelming fear, and to overcompensate (in the dream) after getting him on the ground (AGAIN: LUCID DREAM; didn't really happen...didn't really happen--in case anyone is half reading this...ha ha) stomped his head in like a rotted pumpkin. i woke quite jarred, the dream was quite real to me, i felt sick to my stomach. what i got out of it was, 'stay the fuck away from him...you can handle this...the
stakes are too high...time to move on'. the repulsion was quite real. almost wanted to lose my last night's dinner over it.

Traceur wrote:

Has anyone ever played with this? I got interested in it a few years ago but never really made any progress with it.

Since I have been using the Psychology of Violence CDs I have been doing the visualisations at various times of the day and have found that the muscle twitches are much stronger if I do these in bed before I go to sleep when I am half-awake.

It made me wonder if there is any carry over to dream states. When I used to read up on lucid dreaming a lot of the literature referred to being able to tackle fears/phobias or enhance learning when in a lucid state.

Yeah Ive done quite a bit with lucid dreaming over the years and am very interested in dream analysis... not the "if you dream of a spider your mother in law will spike you with a fork on a tuesday" old wives tale bollocks... proper stuff by good psychologists like Tony Crisp (google him if you will)

Um, Tracuer... how many visualisations are you doing a day? Do you do them every night whilst dropping off? Dont do it too much mate, its not good for you


Think of kittens, sunshine and pretty ladies before bedtime + +

Its a VERY powerful time to be programming yourself, we want to prepare you for violence not induce the event!

I tend to the visualisations every other day or so. Things have been busy recently though so it seems when I am going to sleep is a good time to mix them since I am trying to relax anyway! Don't worry I balance the MDK stuff with something less extreme - restraint, verbal defusion etc.

I always think of kittens, sunshine and pretty ladies at bedtime (apart from the first two of course.)

Can you recommend any resources on lucid dreaming?

I don't dream lucidly. There is one dream I remember though. Maybe a few months back. I was fighting this green wobbly headed guy in the woods. (looked sort of like this guy ) Real annoying as his head wouldn't get "knocked" like a normal heads but would just wobble back and come rigth back up again. At first I struggled a bit with fighting properly, but soon got the hang of it and gave the freak a good beating, not that it had much effect though. I think my plan was to jump out to sea with a pair of springy boots and dump him in a pile of broken glass next to some kind of oil platform. I woke up from the sound of my fist hitting the wall next to my bed.

I must move around a lot. There have been times I nearly had to swim out of bed I was so drenched in sweat. (maybe from trying in vain for eight hours to KO that green guy ) I wonder if I talk too. And every night the neighbours are woken up by me jumling around rambling some incoherent nonsense, and nobody's told me because they think I'm stark raving mad. sure hope not, that would just be wierd.

Traceur wrote:

I tend to the visualisations every other day or so. Things have been busy recently though so it seems when I am going to sleep is a good time to mix them since I am trying to relax anyway! Don't worry I balance the MDK stuff with something less extreme - restraint, verbal defusion etc.

I always think of kittens, sunshine and pretty ladies at bedtime (apart from the first two of course.)

Can you recommend any resources on lucid dreaming?

Hahaaha! its an excellent way to prepare for sleep, releases endorphins and such...

Quote :

Can you recommend any resources on lucid dreaming?

not really mate, the best advice I ever got was from a counsellor when I was 18 who got me into dream analysis: pay attention!

Notice when you are dropping off, can you control what you dream of? notice your dreams and analyse them, think about them and after a month or so you will have the first lucid "ah-ha" which is thinking "I am now having a dream" and then stretching your muslces and controlling them a bit... I tend not to get too involved with controlling them as I think my unconscious is trying to tell me something and I should just listen

RichardB was that a real dream? It means you dont really feel fully prepared for lifes challenges and just about muddle through
Sweating is actually an indication of lack of movement when sleeping( are you going to bed exhausted from training and then waking up sweating?), speaking in sleep is either an overactive mind (you do love a good think dont you?) or an overactive body (caffeiene or eating late?) or a feeling like you cant express yourself honestly in your daily life

Thrashing about is just vindictive emotions for your partner finding unconscious expression... my girlfriend has headbutted, kneed, elbowed and ,flashily ,even backfisted me during sleep... the little witch!

It was a real dream. Not feeling ready and just muddling through? That's about as spot on as it gets. I don't really seem to have any direction. Don't have a clue where I want to go or what I want to do. Every day is more or less the same. Very comfortable, but very boring. Feels a bit like this place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HBUGTNxyQ&feature=related

I don't usually train before gong to bed, at least not enough to get exhausted but nearly everything I drink contains caffeine to some degree. (Earl grey, yellow label and coca cola mostly) And despite having attended culinary school a few years ago I do not cook, ever. These days I just grab a crisp roll out of a bag and stick it in a tub of butter whenever hunger calls. So caffeine and eating late (although just a few crisp rolls at a time). And of course there's always some idea being played with, but the snooze state seems to be well anchored to the bed as there is usually no problem falling asleep. I don't think I talk in my sleep, but I do tend to think aloud a lot, so I was thinking the habit might carry over

Normally I just go to bed, fall asleep, spend a few hours in a comfy black space of nothing and wake up when the alarm goes off and begin the day. Although I remember a dream every now and then. BTW Russel Sage's post reminded me of one I wrote down. It's from back in 2004 I think. Let's just call it "the armchair warrior" I'll just copy paste it.


Some kind of unspecified "murderer" was stalking me through a kind of hospital. At first I ran, as it seemed to be the customary thing to do when murderers are chasing you. I looked for a place to hide. Didn't really find much so I ran into the men's room. It suddenly occurred to me that I could attack too. So I positioned myself behind a door in a toilet stall where I thought he'd come in. And he did. I grabbed onto his gun and wrestled the gun toward him and emptied the revolver into his body, after which I twisted the gun from his hand - I remember breaking his trigger finger doing this - and continued to beat him in the head with it ferociously. His whole head was covered in blood. An eye popped out of it's socket, and I kept bashing him in the head with the gun until he dropped to the floor like a sack. At this point I picked up an armchair - I kid you not, a big comfy armchair - and I bashed the thing against his downed head until the chair broke completely apart. At the end of the dream I was hammering the pulp of what used to be a man, into the floorboards with a chair-leg.

I too fled an assailant into a toilet cubicle in a hospital, but he was a werewolf (wolves just represent primal fear in much the same way that a generic "murderer would") and he managed to smash through the door where I beat him fearfully around the snout with the pommel of a broadsword that was too big for the cubicle (feeling constrained by the thin balsa wood of societal rules whilst trying to fight off my perceived "enemies"? maybe)

hiding from and then facing threats in the toilets... very Freudian

unless you work in a Hospital, dreaming of them indicates a desire towards healing, if the threat may give a clue as to whether the healing needs to be physical or psychological... toilets indicate an unconscious drive towards eradicating "toxins".... possibly toxic or self harming thoughts or patterns of behaviour RichardB? In my case I think it was just plain old fearfulness.

I know that my dream was directly related to SP training and to using the Psychology of Violence CDs at the time the dream occurred. Its also to do with how I handle the clash in my self identity: in the dream I had a tracksuit on but was carrying a broadsword (someone once described what I teach as "Scally Budo") and at one point in the dream I was dreaming I was chivalrously inviting the "monsters" to do battle with me- but in reality (waking reality) I actually woke my girlfriend up shouting "come on you fucking bellends lets 'ave ya!" like a parody of a brit hooligan.

Interesting that both of you, R.S. and R.B., dreamed of mashing someones skull all the way in... I have no idea what this means, other than that you may be quite, quite insane.

You guys are a bunch of damn weirdos! LOL

Never had anything quite like that but I always used to have dreams where I was in a dangerous situation and rather than being able to run it was like wading through treacle or anything I tried was slow, weak and ineffective. Eventually I got to the stage in dreams where I knew what to do and then started doing it. I can't recall much, nothing as vivid as you guys in this case but I remember facing some skinhead in a black t-shirt who was threatening me and then I then started yelling and battered him with the same shot over and over. I didn't manage any Story of Rikki/Sonny Chiba style skull crushing though - haha. I was still scared in the dream rather than fearless and all conquering.

I look at that progression as being insecure about my ability to deal with confrontation and danger and then learning ways of dealing with it and finally getting some measure of ability.

Now I have re-evaluated my training again and am using the P of V CDs, I will be interested to see if there is another shift in content of any dreams featuring conflict or danger.

ha ha ha ha ha. nice. i'm going to giggle like a school girl over your last line all day mate.

now, where are those meds...hmmm...

ah...here it is....F-O-S-T-E-R-L-A-G-E-R... can't find the pharmecist's signiture...no matter, i think i remember:
3 before 10am, followed by 1000 jumping jacks.
no wait, that's if i want to vomit. damn my imploding mind.

p.s. Richie's last line that is. don't want Traceur to think i'm taking the piss.
just pissed (u.k meaning; drunk; 3 sheets to the wind). not really though since i'm at school...teaching...

parents...do not read this...i am in fact very responsable. burp.

Hahaha. We've gone completely bonkers. No, wait. The neon flashing hippopotamus here says it isn't so. I believe him because he is also a professor.

Well, joke aside. I didn't work in a hospital back then, although I've been working in and around the hospital scinse. Scaffolding on a new building, clearing out old equipment from the basement. Moving and setting up laboratory stuff in a new building. And for the last year I've been running a cafeteria at the funny farm. Mostly for employees, but I have spotted the odd cutter and anorexic.

Of possible toxic mind-goo to get rid of it's probably the insecurities and negative self talk type of things. Also I procrastrinate with the best of them. everything is a lot easier to do tomorrow, or at least until you catch up with the accumulated workload.

What I don't get is where the armchair came from. The gun and pistol-whipping stuff seems like a memetic effect from some Steven Segal movie, glimmer man I think. In any case he's beating some Russian mafia guy. But the armchair, in a toilet stall? Maybe I was obsessing with improvised weapons at the time. I think skull smashing was a fascination at the time, like wow, you can actually squash them like a melon if you...

The mind is an odd place. Reminds me of a subgenius quote "you'd pay to know what you REALLY think."

yeah.

i think i'll make sure to differentiate. since it was a real question.

serious: the coolest one i had--didn't help me for anything but it was really really cool. it was when i was meditating alot. i thought i was still dreaming. but i knew i never saw colours like that in dreams. and fine lines of seperation between them. my room looks way to sharp and clear--kinda like. what is this? am i awake or asleep. i started looking about the room for information that could help me decide. i spotted my one key piece of evidence. my ceiling was no longer smooth, it was that bumpy affect some old attics have. aha, i thought...then suddenly all the colours melted away. and i was wide awake (i discovered) and in my regular old dull coloured room. fuck me. and i never did acid (LSD).

not serious--but true: my very serious wife who has trouble taking a joke told of a disturbing vivid dream she had. she's a vegan, by the way. she told me she had a repulsive dream where she was eating a live bird.
ha ha ha ha ha. fuck me. it was a rocky road trying not to laugh.

Interesting thread that has kind of slipped into madness

Got me thinking about this because I used to be one of those who was interested in this, kept the obligatory dream diary and such like because some of the things I felt I learned from this was very good. Weird but mostly useful. Looking back on it now is even more interesting but at the time I wasn't in a situation (due to age, experience and learning I suppose) where I could make use of things. I had a pretty shitty time at high school because of one nob-end who decided to go out of his way for 4 years to just be a pain in the ass and at the time I had absolutely no ideas how to deal with this other than try my best to avoid him whatever the cost. I know, boo-hoo, sob story and all that. The interesting part was I used to have some really funny dreams that looking back that I feel were giving me other options of ways to deal with the situations but I never used any of them and never put any of them into practice - no, they weren't all violent in terms of squashing his head like a pumpkin and a lot of them were, what I see now as de-escalation and conversational put-downs which, looking back would have been a great help I am sure. Like I say though, at the time this didn't come to pass.

I later packed all the dream stuff in because I was worried that by striving and striving for control of my dreams I would start to lose something important, something inherently random and uncontrollable about dreams. I kinda think they are supposed to be an outlet for completely mental and bizarre thoughts because in dreams they are safe and much better belonging there than normal everyday reality.

Final point, I promise, I find that I dream more about violence and fighting when I am training more, especially more when I am working on some emotional content behind it all. Stands to reason that it finds its way into your head the more you do it...

You all still awake after that bit of useless information..?? Nope, happy dreams then

I used to have great dream recall but not so much recently.

However, after starting this thread, I had a confrontation dream. I was out and about and a chav in all the gear was larking about trying to impress his mates, throwing combos, scaring old ldaies etc. Anyway, he throws a punch in my direction and clips me on the jaw.

I squared up to him and then realised I was not going to look great if I was hammering a teenage chav so I smiled (for the cameras) gripped him by the shoulder and told him I hoped he never got into a serious fight because he wouldn't do any damage punching like that. Then I offered him a free lesson in doing it properly and ended the situation without having to fight.

Now there's no guarantee I would be anything like as calm and competent in reality but it was an interesting change to the content of my confrontational dreams.

Must be down to those NLP CDs I got from somewhere…