Why is it hard to fly in a lucid dream?

Direct yourself to a place rather than thinking about the flying. Think about the place.

For me, lucid dreams are delicately balanced. I think of it as a spectrum between complete immersion in the dream at one extreme, and wakeful consciousness at the other. When dreams go lucid, that’s a movement toward wakeful consciousness. If I go too far in that direction, then the dream destabilizes and I wake up. If I sink too far back into the dream scenario, I lose the lucidity. SO there’s a kind of “sweet spot” on the spectrum that will sustain both the lucidity and the dream.

Maybe because I’m not very adept at it, I can’t get too manipulative in my lucid dreams without disturbing that balance. For me to say, “OK, now I’m going to fly” strains the credulity of the dream. At that point, either “real world” physics will impose limits to restore the credulity of the dream, or I’ll wake up. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice.

I’ve had lucid dreams where I can fly. Flight usually entails tightening my stomach muscles. The tighter I go, the higher I fly. I can’t stay aloft for long because, as everyone knows, it’s hard work.
It is a great incentive to do sit-ups.

I’ve always wanted to lucid dream, but was never able to. If I ever lucid dream I want to fly. I’ve always wanted to fly…dreams are amazing if you think about it, you can make anything happen, all your hopes could come true, and they seem completely real to you. If only you could do that in real life…(unless you were a murderer or criminal or something…)

I’ve had the dream where you are running faster and faster until you end up flying. It always happens outside the house we lived in when I was a kid. For some reason the slight hill down towards my house seemed magical. It still seems that way even though I’ve been away from that house for more than 50 years.

Maybe, like disney, you just have to believe

I fly all the time in my dreams, but I’m not sure what a “lucid” dream is. Would someone enlighten me?

@Sunny2 It’s when you become aware that you are dreaming.

@Mariah Thank you. I guess I don’t do that much. Only when I have a dream that is unpleasant and I just want to wake up. When I levitate or fly I always feel or tell people in my dream, “See? This is really real!” And I never walk down stairs, I skim or ski down them.
I think it’s hard to fly because, if you’re lucid, you know better.

I wish I could answer this, but despite my trying, I’ve never succeeded in having a lucid dream.

I have flew in my lucid dreams twice, but started to fly about a dozen other times..what normally happens to me is I get really excited and wake up..and then I’m like DAMMIT!

@tups try to look at your hands in your dream, the moment you can move your figures you know “IM DREAMING!”

I rarely dream lucidly but any time I dream about flying it’s the same for me. My maximum altitude is generally at about treetop-height. I wonder if it’s because we rarely (if ever) see the world from that high so our brain can’t easily extrapolate what the scene would look like from high up.