When you are preparing to do something impossible in your dream, like fly, is their a certain ritual, or specific steps you have to follow before you can do it?

I went through a flying ritual. When I first started learning to fly. I would have to walk very fast or run then step up into the air, just about an inch above the ground. I would have to try a few times before I’d float. Then once I was floating I’d be able to fly. I got progressively better over the years. Then I was able to just take a step up as if their were steps but their weren’t. Now I can just fly whenever and am attempting to teach others in my dream to fly. It is such a weird but amazing progression that has taken years. I LOVE it!!!

For me, flying in my dreams is much more like treading water. First I jump up and use my arms and legs to move the air. At first I only float a couple inches for a couple seconds, but slowly I start to get the hang of it. I can get as high up as, say, a two story house. But never higher. I’ve always wished I could experience the kind of flying dreams I hear about.

@RedPowerLady Whoa! I’ve never met anyone before who walks up steps into the air. I thought that was just me! I wonder if there are certain common tropes to dreams. Maybe they are built into our brain architecture?

I never really tried to learn how to fly. It just happened. I always assumed it just happened for other people, so it surprises me to learn that people have to practice it. Is that common?

I used to enjoy flying in dreams, but these days it’s not something that is appealing. Maybe it’s that I’m having a hard time sleeping these days. That seems more important.

Or maybe my daytime fantasies are already so consuming, it does the same thing as dreams? It’s a little frightening to me that I can enter a daytime fantasy, and sometimes forget that it isn’t real. When I close my eyes, there seem to be an infinite number of movies showing.

@LC_Beta You can! You have to believe! I flew to outer space once! It was way, way awesome!

@daloon “I wonder if there are certain common tropes to dreams. Maybe they are built into our brain architecture?” That’s exactly why I asked this question! But….I didn’t know the word “tropes” back then, when I asked this question, and I still don’t.

I think flying has something to do with a belief in our future. “The sky’s the limit” kind of thing. I wonder if the older you get the less you fly? It’s been quite a while since I flew….

@Val123 I haven’t flown in a while either—at least, not that I remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve remembered any dreams at all.

I was thinking that as you get older, perhaps you get more grounded—more in touch with life. Flying is about rising above it all. Escaping perhaps. Wishful thinking. I’m just thinking off the top of my head. I don’t really have a theory.

@daloon Hey that is neat about the stairs. I’ve never met anyone else either who has the same thing.

I didn’t intentionally try to fly. It just started happening to me. I’m not sure if it is common that people have to learn to fly. But that would be a question worth asking around about. I wonder what makes it that we have to learn. Perhaps because it is a skill we don’t possess in waking life? So our brain has to learn it like it would any other skill?

@Val123 I still fly all the time. I started as a teen. Many would still consider me young though (26, shhh)

I think not flying in awhile is a result of poor sleeping habits we develop as adults. Or I find the less good sleep I get the less I dream, period. So that includes flying.

@RedPowerLady I’ve flown as long as I can remember. However, that’s because my dad probably told me I could fly when I was really little.

I wonder if it has to do with serious imagination, or perhaps lack of, if you don’t fly?

I had one true flying dream and that was it for me. The most I can ever do is start to jump into the air, and it’ll look like I’m jumping up invisible steps. It’s extremely difficult and I have to put all of my weight into it just to get another “step” higher. Generally, there are power lines above my head so I can’t go very far anyway.

Or, in order to fly, the only way I can get off the ground is if I’m holding on to a little piece of paper. If I don’t have it, I can not leave the ground. However, once I manage to get off the ground while holding the paper, I lose control and start going higher and higher, faster and faster. I have to let go before I hit something or fly into space. So basically… I never get off the ground no matter what. :-/

@Val123 That reminds me. I think I heard other people could fly—maybe I read about it—and I was kind of annoyed that I had never flown in dreams. At some point it just started, and I was happy when it did. I enjoyed those dreams the best for so many years. Now… I just find that I’m not really interested. I mean, it was kind of cool, but I feel a sort of “been there, done that” feeling. I want to do a different kind of flying now.

@daloon and @RedPowerLady Oh wow, I just read that you guys did the “step” thing, too. Hmm. That’s kind of interesting.

@DrasticDreamer OMG! It’s the invasion of the Step People! RUN!!!

Yes, that is quite interesting…...

Put me in the “treading water” camp, but that was before I was able to control my lucidity. It felt a bit more propulsion-y, kinda like how a frog swims. But again, with much less resistance.

Now, it’s a simple “lift”. I just lift my body off the ground, and control myself almost as if a jet aircraft would, albeit with instant angle changes.

I don’t fly much in dreams, but too many times, I am driving a pickup truck across a bridge that is only two rails. I have to keep the tires on the rails or risk falling off into the deep water.

I hate that sort of dream.

I’ve flown in a variety of different ways over the years: as a child I just stretched my arms like Superman, and usually found myself flying without realising it.

Then there was a period when I just jumped really high into the air. I really believed in it, and it happened, and if I really tried hard enough, I could defy gravity altogether. It felt very real, and the normal gravity rules seemed to apply in the dream, but I could break them, which was wonderful.

There was also the method of running really really fast and taking off like a plane (something like an olympic triple-jump), but it wasn’t as fun and felt “too real”.

And then once I had this really cool machine that went on my back and made me just boost into the air, but the vertical movement was sort of tricky. In that dream everybody seemed to be going around in them, literally island-hopping between the islands.

I have to get a running start and then jump! I don’t have to be on a cliff or hill, flat ground is the best!

OK, guys. The results are in. I don’t think I’ve flown in years, but I have the last two nights and….it is NOT as easy as it used to be. I couldn’t seem to get back that…free as a bird, no worries feeling that just let me zoom. It was all I could do to get to the third floor of some….mansion. Also, at one point, someone handed me a jacket that had belonged to my Mom, and I was trying to carry it and fly. It hampered me badly, but I couldn’t put it down because…..well….because she’s dead and…you know.
So I think as you get older the worries of the world weigh down heavier and heavier, you know, your parents dying isn’t something you get over really easily. IDK.

Just thought I’d let you guys know that I was able to conduct this experiment the last two nights, after probably a decade of not flying, and those are the scientific results. Ahem.