I do not know if other people have this problem, but I can do pretty much do anything I desire while dreaming, but for some reason in my Dreams, I am unable to RUN.
I know this sounds like a stupid post, but in Dreams where I am trying to run, I just seem to stay in place or just walk normal speed. Hell, I have been able to fly with no problem, but Running is impossible. I don't know if while sleeping I am kicking my legs back and forth against the wall making it impossible to Run.
When I wake up, I am thinking to myself, why was I running in place? It is a weird feeling. I once dreamt that AGA was trying to kill me, but I could not run away.
Next time, maybe I should just fly away.
Anybody else with weird dream problems?
Not being able to run is extremely common, especially with nightmares. But if it's just normal dreams, then I'm not entirely sure the connection. I had a thick book on dreams once upon a time, and I'm pretty sure that it said motionless running was really just a reflection of your desire to succeed in life but not being able to achieve it. Don't worry, it doesn't mean you WON'T achieve, it just means you've recognised recently that you're maybe struggling in an area or two, that's all.
I've had a lot of vivid dreams recently. The other day I dreamt I had a motorbike and was able to jump from one tiny ramp to another about 50 feet away. I've had some fantastic dreams lately about driving and sailing ships, too. A couple of nights ago I smoked a spliff in front of Gordon Brown and he didn't care, LOL. But I generally don't strike "problems" in my dreams.
We had a huge discussion here once about lucid dreaming, and I think quite a few people tried it out, myself including. I managed to lucid dream one night, and one night only, for, in dream terms, about 20 seconds, before which it got too much for me and I broke out of it and woke up in a hot sweat. It really is something. It's like a damn good drug without any substance abuse! So I would recommend people to try & give it a go. The sense of power over yourself is also something great.
Here's more thoughts on running in dreams for you, Domino. Good luck :)
http://en.mimi.hu/dreams/running.html
I have a reoccurring dream where I'm being chased and no matter how I try my freakin' legs just don't want to work.
As Mods said, I always interpreted it as my subconscious telling me I'm "running" towards something big, but I'm having trouble achieving it.
I've always been fascinated by dreams.
Whenever you are being chased by someone--that's usually the only time that you are unable to run.
Yeah when I was a bit younger, I had dreams where I'd be trying to get away from people and would make it to the end of the sidewalk to where I was no longer able to go any further no matter what. Not able to run, nor walk away, just stuck there all the time. Weird eh?
But I think it was something to do with freedom and fear, because I don't have those dreams anymore and I think they signified a desire to go somewhere in life but being too young to make my own decisions. Heh or maybe it means that a little boy was buried underneath that point in the sidewalk, and he was trying to communicate with me from the other side?! =o
I've probably said all this stuff before, but seeing how bad my memory is (or how long ago that was), I'll just say it again.
There have been some occasions when I haven't been able to run, and at the time it made perfect sense. Like this one time I couldn't move while on train tracks with the train coming, then I realised I was actually in a dream, so I checked my pockets for something to save me. I found a toffee, ate it, and woke up. The funny thing is, for some reason, I have to rationalise and explain everything in my dreams. Like even when I 'fly', I realise that I can't really fly, so I end up kind of 'gliding' (running around, and then suddenly lifting up my legs). And it makes perfect sense at the time!
Lucid dreaming is fun, but it only ever happened to me accidentally. I'd realise suddenly that I can do whatever I want, try my best to do it as quick as possible, then wake up. Another weird thing is I've not had a nightmare in years and years. I have the weirdest and most warped dreams, the most absurd and memorable dreams, but not nightmares- what few nightmares I've had, I still sort of remember.
I've heard that the "not being able to run thing" has something to do with the mechanism that partially paralyzes us will we are sleeping. Such a mechanism is required else we would go about wreaking havoc in our sleep.
I also had heard that a chemical in the brain that paralyzes the body so we don't flail around at night also affects short term memory which is why it's so hard to remember dreams... Pretty fascinating!
Though I should look into that again because it was a while since I last heard that...
Quote from: RickJ on Thu 30/10/2008 16:04:16
I've heard that the "not being able to run thing" has something to do with the mechanism that partially paralyzes us will we are sleeping. Such a mechanism is required else we would go about wreaking havoc in our sleep.
I never thought of that before. That's very probably true! I often have sleep paralysis. I wake up from a dream (partially) but cannot move because my body is still paralyzed. For those that don't know, what Rick is talking about, is that when you sleep your body excretes some hormone that paralyzes your muscles to prevent you from acting out your dream(s) while sleeping. Sometimes the mind partially wakes up but the body is still paralyzed and it leads to some interesting (and often terrifying) experiences.
One time I 'awoke' but couldn't move. I was on my side facing the window. The window was open and three HUGE dragonflies flew in through the window and hovered over me drooling all over me and glaring menacingly at me with evil intent!!
Another time I awoke, on my back, and there was a little man standing on my chest. I couldn't lower my head to look directly at him, but I could just see him in my lower peripheral vision. He didn't talk, but just stood there. I could even feel his feet on my chest.
This happens to me quite frequently. I think I'm just prone to it. I don't have the facts, but I'd wager that sleep-walkers are people who's bodies don't always produce the paralyzing hormone.
A tiny man standing on your chest :O That's sounds so utterly awesome. I'm a really easy sleeper myself. Of course at time I too have problems falling asleep or I see nightmares, but usually I just dream my own and wake up and remember the same amount with no pre/post-dream experiences. Though little gnomes on me would really be something I'd like to experience, at least once.
I've had sleep paralysis before, but no visions. Instead, I have these terrible feelings of an other-worldly presence, somewhere out of sight. Of course I can't turn my head to look, I just lay there, unable to move, while a loud buzzing sound scares me half to death. I have to literally jerk my body, like "snapping" back to reality.
Quote from: TerranRich on Thu 30/10/2008 16:49:59I've had sleep paralysis before, but no visions. Instead, I have these terrible feelings of an other-worldly presence, somewhere out of sight. Of course I can't turn my head to look, I just lay there, unable to move, while a loud buzzing sound scares me half to death. I have to literally jerk my body, like "snapping" back to reality.
Yeah, same thing for me from time to time.
I have a theory (and it's not just my theory) that 'alien abductions' are actually just cases of sleep paralysis.
Indeed Darth, there's a nice interview with a lady who did a study on sleep paralysis and ended up talking to people who said they were abducted from aliens. Turns out everything they said happened during their supposed abduction lined up pretty well with common sleep paralysis.
She also goes into [trying to relate this from memory...] how the commonly held image of aliens changes as the years go on and as the television got more popular. It started as demons and then monsters and then humanoid aliens and then the grey aliens we see a lot of now-a-days but in the UK they started with robots and eventually ended up with the greys as information spread and people started to subconsciously change their perception of sleep paralysis... Sure a little off topic but still FASCINATING HOLY CRAP!
I wish I could find the podcast, it was either Radio Lab or Are We Alone by SETI
Strange.
I don't have any unable-to-run dreams.
There are a few things that are common in my dreams:
I don't fly NEVER. I've never flied in my dreams. Instead of that, I do long, very long jumps. But it's not exactly flying. I just kick off the ground and I do a normal step, that is about 15 meters long and about half a metre above the ground. I walk the streets like this. And, sometimes the horrible part comes. I jump and am unable to reach ground again. I keep floating, and when I try to do something, I just jump even higher. That's a perfectly odd feeling. It's difficult to describe, but these long jumps are very comfortable and relaxing, as long as I can reach the ground again.
And one nightmare keeps repeating on me every few years. When I was a kid, I've had a dream that I'm in an elevator going normally down and between second and first floor, the elevator slows down, leans on the right and scratches on the sides of the shaft, sounds of screaping metal are everywhere and I'm slowly going down below the basement level into the shaft. Also some thick metal rod crashes its way into the cabin in the first floor. Horrible.
I have the same problem except it isn't running I can't do, it's punching. Whenever I have a dream I'm fighting, I can't for the life of me punch hard enough.
I also never realize it is infact a dream until I'm awake. It's extremely rare that I know I'm dreaming.
My Dreams are Very Vivid, I can pretty much recall everything that happened in them...Colors, smells, locations, people, etc. I go in to work the next day and tell everybody about my Dreams and they think I am weird.
I have had a few dreams the past few nights where i have met a really nice girl, end up falling in love with her (no sex), then wake up and saying to myself...Damn, why did that have to be a dream.
Probably because I haven't had a serious relationship in 10 years. How sad. :'(
Perhaps, you never know, you're just seeing what's going to happen. Someone's trying to give you a signal to go out there and do your best! :D
the damn brakes NEVER work when I drive in my dreams so I always end up swimming out of a river or crashing into a tree or something like that..
running is often a problem too, but when I have those dreams when you know you're dreaming, then I can force myself into a run by bending very low with my torso.. kinda like He-man from the old masters of the universe series.. that way i'm real fast.. dunno why, but it works
Oh, and do you guys see yourself dying/being hurt?
I am never hurt/dead, but when the situation is going to hurt/kill me, I immediately wake up. I can see the moment before I am killed/hurt, but that's it, it ends there.
The only time I can recall ever running in a dream was when I was young, I had a recurring dream where I was in my bedroom, and I would run out of my bedroom onto the landing and then jump (almost fly) down the stairs and then wake up just before I hit the bottom...
But as far as I can recall I've never had one where I've been trying and failing to run.
When I was a kid I used to have that same dream (about jumping/falling down the stairs). One time I had the dream and woke up at the bottom of the stairs. No injuries so I don't think I actually did it, but it was creepy.
Another time I had a dream I was in a cramped space ship and woke up in the hamper in the bathroom. Talk about crazy!!
If I don't realize I'm dreaming, I can't run... But if I know its a dream I can do anything.. but usually wake up after a few mins... I have had sleep paralysis twice in my life... It's the most scariest thing I have ever witnessed. I lay there only able to move my eyes.. My lungs seem to be moving on there own and I cant say a word. When I was about 14 I had the first one... My mum came into my room looking for my little brothers school work... (He use to have to get up an hour before me and we shared a room). I 'woke' up into this paralysis and I was screeming in my head trying to move / tell my mum to wake me up. When I told her after about 20 mins she was shocked and never heard of it.
scary stuff I tell u...
I use to Sleep Walk sometimes when I was a lot younger.
I remember sometimes I would sleep in my bed and then wake up on the couch in the living room, and not even remember how I got there.
One thing that scared me the other night is that I thought I had woken up and had lighted up a cigarette in bed and was smoking in bed under the covers...Then I thought I had dropped the lit cigarette onto my bed. I started flipping out because I knew that the whole bed would start on fire. This is when I must have woken up, because I got up, ripped all the blankets off my bed, moved the mattress, looked under the bed and could not find a cigarette anywhere in sight. I could not even smell smoke. I totally went into panic mode thinking I was going to start my house on fire. Then I realized, I must have been half asleep pretending to be smoking.
I was so upset during this, I could not believe it. My brain was playing tricks on me, because I never was smoking in bed, nor have I ever smoked in bed. It was part of a dream that I really experienced.
Since last week, I have been looking for any cigarettes in my bedroom and have found none.
Very weird...Very scary.
Weirdest thing for me is that my dreams always come with a "GUI" of some sort. As in, when they're starting to turn into nightmares, I usually find myself thinking "fuck this" and "quitting" the dream via a pop-up menu, thus waking up. Maybe I've played too many computer games. No lucid dreams, sleep paralysis or alien abductions here, though.
Quote from: Akatosh on Sat 22/11/2008 19:21:41
Weirdest thing for me is that my dreams always come with a "GUI" of some sort. As in, when they're starting to turn into nightmares, I usually find myself thinking "fuck this" and "quitting" the dream via a pop-up menu, thus waking up. Maybe I've played too many computer games. No lucid dreams, sleep paralysis or alien abductions here, though.
Lol! Why don't I have a GUI in my dreams??
Anyway my dreams are always weird. I never experience ordinary things when I sleep. It's always weird places, weird creatures and stuff. Sometimes.. well most times.. They're good dreams where I just wander about.
I haven't had nightmares for years (like some of you mentioned). However they've come back now.
I have them almost every night.
I'm certain the reason I have them, is because I got a new job, and I'm not yet at this point where I can take it easy. - Every day is a new challenge to me where I get uncertain and anxious and of couse this results in bad dreams.
E.g. I've had a nightmare where I thought I'd woken up in the kitchen with a glass of water in my hand. Going into the livingroom, I see three large white blankets that have been hung op, dividing the livingroom in two.
The lighting in the room comes from a small white lamp in the corner, that glows rather bright for its size.
The sofa is also cowered with a blanket and when I see it i realize that I am actually tired, so I lie down. Something about the hanging blankets disturb me and as I try to focus on the darkness behind them I wake up for real in my bed by some sudden noise.
I guess it doesn't sound that scary, but I was a bit confused because I thought I was already awake.
I had the sleep paralysis thingey ... also agree about it being a good explanation for the alien abductions.
Here's something I want to know? Did anyone when they were young dream up solutions for adventure game puzzles. I remember doing that for Simon the Sorcerer, something about a snowman in a tower and then I woke up, remembered it, after a bit i realized it didn't work though.
The other one i have is i'm dreaming, i realize its a dream, but think its a really good plot for a movie. Then i wake up, remember it, and after a bit realize its a just crap like a scoobey doo plot. Anyone get those as well?
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Thu 30/10/2008 16:13:03
[...] I often have sleep paralysis. [...] Another time I awoke, on my back, and there was a little man standing on my chest. I couldn't lower my head to look directly at him, but I could just see him in my lower peripheral vision. He didn't talk, but just stood there. I could even feel his feet on my chest.
This is a common feature of sleep paralysis, and was explained in pre-scientific times as being due to a demon called an incubus (a male demon lying on top of a sleeping woman, attempting to have intercourse with her) or a succubus (female demon; male sleeper). The Latin word "incubus" is the origin of the Italian word "incubo", meaning "nightmare".
Quote from: sharprm on Mon 24/11/2008 22:39:28
Here's something I want to know? Did anyone when they were young dream up solutions for adventure game puzzles. I remember doing that for Simon the Sorcerer, something about a snowman in a tower and then I woke up, remembered it, after a bit i realized it didn't work though.
I think that's just that when your conscious mind is at rest, ideas come up from the subconscious mind that were previously being blocked by the conscious mind. This happens to me all the time at work - I stew over a problem for ages, trying to fix it one way, then go and do something else for five minutes, and a new way of tackling the problem just flows into my mind.
I've never really had paralysis dreams (aside from just being really afraid), and most of the 'alien' dreams I have involve me punching aliens in the face when they try to abduct me and then doing judo chops on their shoulders to knock them out of the air (they like to hover like retards in my dreams for some reason).
I had a dream that I was Optimus Prime once, and then after having sex with Arcee, Megatron attacked the base. I think I transformed into the diesel and actually flew into the air for no reason.
I also had a dream I was Superman and got into a fight with Lex Luthor who was wearing kryptonite armor, and there was this recurring dream I had where this midget skeleton that glowed green kept creeping towards me for some 'scary' reason, and as I got older the dream changed to where I kicked the thing and it ran up into an opening in the ceiling, and when I followed my brother was suddenly there and we had to fight this cthulhu-style tentacle beast that popped out of a treasure chest.
Probably one of the scariest dreams for me as a child was one I had where I would be on a swing, but when I jumped off of it I would cannonball out into space.
Run?
I've been always able to run.
Once I dreamt about being in my grandmother's kitchen and one angry and big tiger chased me... I ran around and ended up jumping onto a cupboard. I don't remember if tiger caught me or not.
But mostly, my worse dreams are about being in a car and car starts rolling downhill, towards the river and I can't do anything about it. It's always in my country house, we have river on one side of the property and it's lower than house.
It's very likely connected to car accident I had when I was 4. I climbed into parents' car (ZAZ like this (http://img.olemees.ee/galleries/ise%20otsitud%20pildid/auto/zaz.jpg)) and crashed right into house. Broke my nose beyond recognization, and still have little scar to remind it. That event has given me hundreds if not thousands car dreams/nightmares...
This is an old thread but I wanted to make mention of the sleep paralysis. I've had it at least a hundred times to be sure. I was very interested in the phenomenon, so I used to keep a journal every time it happened, making note of every condition and factor that can contribute to it. Most of the times I've had it, I've gone to bed late and had been extremely tired. Also, when I drink too much coffee before bed I sometimes have it. I found that once I break free of it and go back to sleep I re-enter the state. However, if I change sleeping positions, it usually won't reoccur. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is while I was keeping the journal, I was having it more and more regularly. For some reason an idea struck me that if I stopped documented it and paying attention to it, I wouldn't have so much and so I stopped my journal and the paralysis stopped with it. At least for a while. Now I have it occasionally. And it is still terrorfying and I'll never get used to the experience. I have noticed also that while in the paralyzed state, sound is received much louder and warped than in the normal state.
I should also mention to those who have never experienced it, it is not a dream in the usual sense. The feeling of panic and terror come from the realization that you are awake and lying in bed but cannot move. The paraysis occurs upon awakening. Sometimes I'm given the impression that I can move a little, but I suspect this is a trick of the mind to reassure itself. I should like to video tape myself one day while under to see if I really can move a little.
I apologize to anyone who has a problem with people replying to ancient threads, but I'm new to this forum and was reading this thread and wanted to say something.
Maybe a bit too old (6 months) but at least it's an interesting topic.
I've actually been having dreams recently. One was about a girl I went to highschool with (I graduated a year ago, btw) who was my girlfriend in the dream eventhough we barely knew eachother. The dream I had last night was a nightmare which included a mix between the characters from the movies The Grudge and The Ring. Scared me awake at 4am and I didn't go back to bed this morning.
I usually don't dream, but it's interesting that I've had them 4 of 7 nights a week for the last few weeks.
~Trent
I recently had a weird dream. I was in an Adventure game of Ben, but actually not an existing one. I think it was many the colour scheme. However, it was a nice game and had some fun inventory puzzles ;D