Flying: Stuck At a Certain Altitude
Whenever I have a LD, my first impulse is to fly even if I have another goal set. However, I've had a persistent problem of getting no more than 50 feet in the air before I stop ascending. I usually float back to the ground or end up floating around at whatever altitude I'm at. I find it especially odd that I've flown twice before but I haven't been able to for almost two years now. When in a LD, I'm aware that the law of gravity doesn't apply but I'm still kept from flying somehow.
Does anyone have any tips?
Thanks!
I've got the same problem. Sometimes I can't get off the ground.
My first impulse is to fly as well. However, sometimes when I "wake up" in a dream I am very unsteady and leaning every each way, which as you can imagine make it very difficult to lift off. I try random techniques, sometimes the best thing to do is just swim through the air. Try to trick your mind into thinking that it is possible to fly, maybe use a jetpack, or flap your arms like you have wings. You have to find what works best for you.
I only seem to fly or levitate in non-lucid dreams. I may ask myself "wow, can I really do this? Neat!" and that ends my inquiry, and pretty much proceed with the dream as if it were real, bypassing any sleep paralysis event (or awareness of it).
There are two types of flight I experience. One is simply levitating off the ground a few inches and floating around my environment by pure will, it seems. A variation of this is when I leap up or down steps in huge stairwells, where my bounds in either direction defy normal strength or resistance to injury. I am just moving very quickly in an environment that is usually very taxing and slow.
The other type is my super-flight dream. It is usually a non-terminating dream response (that is, not the kind that usually ends my would-be nightmares just as they begin) where I am suddenly aware of some danger I want to avoid, or a person chasing me who I sense I'll never lose - instead of waking up or becoming properly lucid, I execute what appears to be LITERALLY a fight or FLIGHT response, in which I am propelled immediately (again, by pure thought - no arm flapping) HIGH up into the atmosphere (and beyond) until the earth is a sphere beneath me. Then I feel safe, but also dangerously high and possibly lost.
Sometimes I don't fly quite as high, but don't feel your limits in altitude. I may be floating away like a balloon then experience a mild panic / concern than although I may be able to go UP I have no idea how to come back down again, and might be forever lost as a result. This disturbing thought may sometimes end the dream as I begin exerting desperate "gravitational" thoughts to bring me back down, and awake.
Iv'e been LD for about 4 years now & flying is my specialty so far. It was the first thing I tried on my first LD & flying is how I always verify my LD. So I will offer what has worked for me below. First off I will say, that I had to work hard over the last few years to get good at flying. So don't give up, its worth the effort.
My first two tips: Altitude was my first hurdle to overcome. I would jump off a balcony and float to the ground. Very fun but I wanted more. I began to focus on what I would SEE if flew. I began with simple landscapes of trees to fly over. I choose trees since I am very aware of what trees look like from all angles & found it easy to see the landscape beneath me if I flew over something simple I could imagine. Flying over trees worked great as I could increase the distance from the trees and then began to fly higher and higher in every LD since then. I often will fly back down into trees to really get the feel of distance & then fly upwards again. Flying UP THEN DOWN helps me greatly. Other handy landscapes to tap into are what you have seen in the past such as flying in an airplane, a view from a tall building, or even go online & look at a lot of aerial photography.
Speed was my second hurdle. I think the key to speed is SOUND & the feel of WIND. I then created a list of memories of speed and sound that would be useful. Next time you are driving, stick your head out the window & take note of the feel of the wind rushing by your face. The sound of 65 mph wind hitting your ears. USE THE MEMORY when flying in your LD. Two years ago I went on a roller coaster and observed the feeling of vertigo, the sounds, the way thing flew by me quickly. I tap into these types of memories when LD flying. Use low noise & low wind for slow flight and increase with fast flight.
So to summarize...work on what you see when you gain height and what you body would "feel" when flying at different speeds.
Two possibilities from my experiences. 1. dream control is not high enough. Work on focus and self awareness of what you are doing. 2. you may be trying to rationalize what is happening and there by limiting yourself to a certain "safe" height. You might over come this by either practicing over water to make it seem safer or use artificial means to gain more height. Jet pack or jumping out of a plane come to mind. ;)
Wisconsinite89 wrote: Whenever I have a LD, my first impulse is to fly even if I have another goal set. However, I've had a persistent problem of getting no more than 50 feet in the air before I stop ascending. I usually float back to the ground or end up floating around at whatever altitude I'm at. I find it especially odd that I've flown twice before but I haven't been able to for almost two years now. When in a LD, I'm aware that the law of gravity doesn't apply but I'm still kept from flying somehow.
Does anyone have any tips?
Thanks!
same problem in LD
I like the guy's idea about looking up some images of aerial photography. Since dreams are just memories and they say we can't dream (especially not vivid lucid dreams) about things we haven't experienced. That would definitely explain why some of us find it hard to get too high. I think it's both a mix of the "brain doesn't believe it" concept, and the fact that some of us, once we get up past a certain point, have no idea what we're supposed to see, lol, so rather than our LDs allowing us to get to that point and draw a total blank, they just don't let us get that high up.
I, for one, have never flown in real life (on a plane, I mean, lol). So I haven't seen the world from up high. Aerial photography would help me to picture that in a more realistic, concrete sense.
But with that being said, It is also my first instinct to fly in LDs... funny, I thought I was the only one who finds their dream goal being interrupted by the distraction of the ability to fly :P (or hover/levitate, in some of our cases). I don't have waking ADHD, but in dreams?? Omg. I'll have my heart totally set on my dream goal but then when I get into the dreamscape, my squirrelly ass just starts flying around. "Ohsht, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be _____________ " :P I do it so much that it's become my primary reality check and means of transportation. I hover/float as opposed to walking, which is fun and also serves as the perfect continuous RC.
There is actually an ideal speed to height ratio to maintain good flight.
In order to have movement, you have to be moving relative to something else. Fly too too slow too far up into the sky and the perspective can make you lose your sense of movement. Fly too fast too low to the ground and everything around you blurs out, ruining your sense of movement.
As you fly higher, you need to increase your speed to compensate for the shifting perspective. Slow down as you get lower.
Or... You can get around that by having a local "satellite" flying with you to use as a reference point.
"Ponchot". I loved how you described everything.
The only way I can fly is flapping my arms. Fast I flap, the higher I go. Stop flapping and I slowly float down to earth.
I also can't fly too high or I hit a "ceiling". I can punch through, and lands me to another ceiling. I can never fly higher than that.
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Again, I rarely fly, and when I do I don't seem to be properly lucid, but rather it is an ability I have in a non-lucid dream.
When I "levitate" it is as if I have an anti-gravity power, purely mental, like I am a positive magnet being repelled by the floor which is also positive. Hard to explain, but I seem to maintain this constant distance between myself and the floor.
When I "fly" it is either I am free floating upward, but not in control, and fear floating TOO HIGH where I am worried I won't be able to (or know how to) come back down, like a runaway hot air balloon that can't lower its temperature. So an inability to reach a certain altitude is not the issue, but rather a worry of going TOO HIGH. The other flying dream (again, hasn't happened in years) is me ESCAPING a danger, pursuit or situation. I want to "get out of Dodge" and so (mentally) propel myself upward many miles in a single second, where I am in orbit, essentially, beyond which notions of "too high" have no meaning since you are then in outer space.
Maybe you should try dreaming of being in space, doing space walks or just floating freely among the stars. Then the issue, if you find earth, is how to COME DOWN and LAND with a proper re-entry!
I'm 15 and I've been lucid dreaming every night I think for a couple years now and, I'm always able to fly it's just I can't control my dream enough to make myself go higher an sometimes if I'm goin in a direction I can't control myself to go where I want sometimes can anyone help me with that?
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papamidnight32 wrote: I'm 15 and I've been lucid dreaming every night I think for a couple years now and, I'm always able to fly it's just I can't control my dream enough to make myself go higher an sometimes if I'm goin in a direction I can't control myself to go where I want sometimes can anyone help me with that?
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I'm 16 and I have the same problem! :D Not with a direction but I can't fly higher than a few metres. When I want to go higher I usually have to jump off from a high building or mountain or... whatever. It's still a bit difficult but definitely works for me.