Lucid dreams offer a world of possibility. We have all heard the stories of lucid dreamers living out their fantasies and experiencing things in their life-like dreams that they never could in real life. But are there any limitations to the experiences you can have in a lucid dream?
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Can You Do Anything In A Lucid Dream?
Can you really do anything you want in lucid dreams or is it all just hype?
You can do anything you want in lucid dreams but this type of control takes practice.
A lucid dreamer can have any experience they desire, while in a lucid dream, because they are in total conscious control of everything.
You are only limited by your imagination.
What You Can Do In A Lucid Dream
Because lucid dreaming happens in the mind you can basically have, do, be or experience anything you can think of.
If you can imagine it, then you can experience it in a lucid dream.
Within lucid dreams there no borders or boundaries on what is possible.
You can experience life in exactly the same way you do in the real waking world or you can create an entirely new reality for yourself.
And, the cool thing is that even if you recreate a dreamworld as a mirror image of the real world, you don’t have to be limited by the laws of physics, social restrictions or physical limitations.
You can therefore live the life of your dreams (excuse the pun).
So, in lucid dreams you can experience real world events and situations that you may never get the opportunity to experience in real life – like hooking up with Scarlett Johansson or Jamie Dornan!
Or, you can create entirely new scenarios such as being the captain of a Starfleet vessel or simply a crew member aboard the USS Enterprise.
Maybe flying in a spaceship is not your bat.
Perhaps you would like to just take off from the ground and fly around the sky without the need for a machine or even wings?
Below is an old YouTube video. The picture quality is somewhat dated but this video perfectly illustrates exactly what you can do in a lucid dream.
If you want to know what is possible in lucid dreams then watch that video.
7 Examples of impossible things you can do in a lucid dream
Anything you can imagine in your mind you can create in a lucid dream.
Or to be more accurately put, anything you can imagine in your mind you can direct your subconscious mind to create in a lucid dream.
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen.
‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” [Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll]
What can you do in a lucid dream?
- Experience things in a real world environment that you could never experience in real life.
- Experience a completely fabricated world – like an alien planet.
- Alter the laws of physics.
- Be with anyone you want.
- Do anything you want.
- Be anyone else that you want to be.
- Display god-like powers over everything.
Doing impossible things in a lucid dream (video)
Are There Any Limits To What You Can Do In Lucid Dreams?
So, are there any limitations imposed on you in your lucid dreams?
Yes and no.
Trained lucid dreamers have complete and total conscious control over their dreams and everything in them.
They have learned how to manipulate the dreamworld through the use of lucid dreaming techniques and practice.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that trained lucid dreamers have learned to better communicate to their subconscious mind exactly what they want to occur within the lucid dream.
This would be more accurate than stating they have complete control over the dream.
After all it is the subconscious mind that creates the dream and implements your intentions within it.
So, by training yourself to better communicate with the dream exactly what you want, you can gain complete control over that dreamworld.
You can do this with advanced lucid dreaming techniques.
Untrained lucid dreamers, usually those people who naturally have lucid dreams every night or people who have had only one or two induced lucid dreams, may experience limitations within their lucid dreams.
These limitations can take several different forms from being unable to hold a dream scene in place to being unable to produce their intentions properly and concretely.
How does this lack of control manifest itself within the lucid dream?
For most lucid dreamers who experience limited control within the dream it will manifest as “poor representation” of their desires.
For example, if they want to fly they may only be able to hover a few feet above the ground and maybe they find that they can only fly for only a few seconds.
Similarly they find things not working correctly in their environment.
For example they may find their spaceship keeps losing its dilithium crystals and has to continually land. Or, when they try to punch someone in a martial arts fight it feels like hitting a sponge.
These limitations, and any other limitations that a lucid dreamer may encounter within a lucid dream, are the result of a lack of practice and a lack of skills.
Even spontaneous, natural lucid dreamers must train themselves to gain complete control over the dreamworld.
By practicing simple dream control techniques, that will often be taught as part of a good lucid dreaming course, it is possible to move past this phase quickly to gain full conscious control when dreaming.
Once you have had a few lucid dreams and practiced controlling them, anything is possible.
You are only limited by your own imagination.
So, why not learn to lucid dream now because it is well worth the effort.
Follow the advice in my free lucid dreaming course and you will be well on your way to your first lucid dream.
Once you are lucid dreaming take an advanced course to become an expert lucid dreamer.
Dream restrictions & lucid dreaming misconceptions
Lucid dreaming does have some restrictions, though they are likely not what you think.
Unfortunately, for some people, lucid dreaming has gotten a bad rap largely due to many misconceptions introduced by the film Inception.
Inception was a great movie, with great characters and a great plot.
But, although the film was based on lucid dreaming, it took some major liberties with the topic and propagated some dangerous untruths.
Let me give you some examples.
One character in the film Inception, Saito, spends so long in his lucid dream that he ages, grows old and forgets his life in the real world.
The longest lucid dream you will usually have will be between 60 – 90 minutes in length.
Time passes in the same way in the dream that it does in real life.
Dreams can sometimes seem longer simply because we skip huge portions of time, in the same way that it happens in a movie.
This gives the illusion of a longer dream.
Saito also seems to have forgotten that he is dreaming. It is as if he has become completely stuck in a lucid dream and is totally unable to get out of it.
Luckily, when it comes to real lucid dreaming this type of scenario is just not possible.
You can never become stuck in a lucid dream, where you are unable to wake up.
On a purely physical level it simply cannot happen.
Your body will always wake up after your normal sleep cycle.
As for Saito forgetting that he is in a lucid dream, that is not possible either.
If you forget that you are lucid dreaming then you are no longer lucid dreaming and are simply dreaming normally.
One of the most prominent aspects of lucid dreaming is the fact that you are consciously aware that you are in a dream.
It is this conscious awareness that gives you complete control over the dreamworld.
Likewise, the idea that time slows down within the dream, and within each layer of a lucid dream (when you sleep in a lucid dream and enter an even deeper lucid dream), is not true either.
I must state that you can in fact lucid dream within a lucid dream. It is possible to go to sleep in a lucid dream to enter another lucid dream.
Many lucid dreamers have experimented with this. Most find that they will waken in stages.
Waking up from one lucid dream into the previous one before waking in the real world.
However, many simply wake up in the real world no matter how deep they go down the lucid dreaming “tiers”.
The phenomenon known as false awakenings is proof of being able to have a lucid dream within a lucid dream.
All lucid dreamers experience false awakenings at some point in their lucid dreaming journey.
A false awakening occurs when you think you have woken from a lucid dream only to find yourself still dreaming.
You can have several false awakenings during the same dream, one after the other.
This can be upsetting and even frightening for many untrained lucid dreamers.
False awakenings happen spontaneously and are not planned nor intended.
False awakenings can be upsetting for some people. Some lucid dreamers think they are stuck in the dreamworld and unable to get out.
However, these type of dreams are actually very easy to deal with as I covered in the article is it bad to lucid dream.
You cannot get stuck in a lucid dream.
If you are worried about being freaked-out, should you experience a false awakening, then you should read that article.
In it you will learn how to easily and quickly deal with a false awakening when it happens.
Another common misconception about what can happen to you in a lucid dream is dream coma.
Some people mistakenly believe that lucid dreaming can put you in a coma.
Let me state this quite plainly, lucid dreaming cannot put you into a coma. It is physically impossible.
No matter what you experience in a lucid dream, or non-lucid dream, you will simply wake up at the end of your sleep cycle.
The worst that can happen is that you might experience sleep paralysis for a few seconds but you will never go into a coma (though funny enough you can lucid dream if you are already in a coma – not the same thing though).
If you are worried about experiencing sleep paralysis due to lucid dreaming read this.
That article will teach you how to avoid this uncomfortable state and also shows you how to deal with it quickly should it ever happen to you.
Another misconception about lucid dreaming is that if you get hurt in the dream then you will show signs of that in the real world. This is impossible.
You cannot carry over anything from a lucid dream into the real world.
What happens in a lucid dream, stays in the lucid dream.
Everything that happens in a lucid dream is happening inside your brain.
So you cannot be physically hurt in a lucid dream, no matter how real the sensation of physically injury appears to be while you are dreaming.
In fact, you can fix any injury instantly within the dream. Be aware too that it’s nothing to worry about.
It is highly unlikely that you would even feel any pain even if you did sustain a dream injury within your lucid dream.
When you wake up your body will be in the same condition as when you went to sleep.
This leads to the biggest fear many people have about lucid dreaming, can you die in a lucid dream?
Absolutely not!
Even if you “dream die” in a lucid dream you will not die in real life.
If you were to die in a lucid dream only one of two things will happen:
- You would simply wake up in the real world.
- Or, you will continue the lucid dream in the “afterlife” before waking up when your dream cycle finishes.
The 4 things you cannot do in a lucid dream (thankfully)
The title of these section is a little misleading.
I have listed four things that you can’t do in a lucid dream below (covered more in-depth above).
But the truth is, you can do these things in a lucid dream (because you can do anything).
When I say you cannot do these things in a lucid dream what I mean is, doing them in a lucid dream cannot effect your sleeping body.
What can you not do in a lucid dream?
- Get stuck in the dream.
- Go into a coma.
- Get physically hurt (in the real world).
- Die (in the real world).
So, bear in mind that you can do any of these things within the dream.
They will just have no effect on you in the waking world.
