Two records together
Flying and realising you are dreaming
The most positively reported experience in the database, and the one most likely to become lucid. The link between them is not a coincidence and it is usable.
What the combination adds
Flying is described in stronger terms than almost anything else people report, and it is also the commonest doorway into a lucid dream. Those two facts are connected.
Lucidity is nearly always triggered by an inconsistency, and the standard list is short: a light switch that does nothing, hands with too many fingers, text that will not hold, a second moon. Flying belongs on it and is the most unambiguous of the lot. There is no reading of the situation in which you are simply airborne.
The practical route is well reported. Jumping is the most common way in: dreamers describe a leap that does not end, a moment of noticing, and then recognition. The jumping record covers that on its own.
The warning from the lucidity page applies here more than anywhere, because flying is exactly the discovery most likely to produce it: excitement ends the dream. Dreamers who stay calm and engage a sense, touching something, looking at detail, report holding it far longer.
The two records
Each is a full entry in its own right, and each covers ground this page does not.
- Flying
Flying is the most positively reported dream experience there is, and the most strongly associated with lucidity. Many people who realise they are dreaming try to fly, and many who fly realise they are dreaming.
- Knowing you are dreaming
Lucid dreaming is one of the few things in this entire database that has been demonstrated in a laboratory rather than inferred from reports. Sleepers have signalled from inside a dream with prearranged eye movements, on cue, while verifiably asleep.
Worth asking
How did I get airborne? Did I realise? What ended it?