Okay so I know that sounds like a very strange question, yet believe it or not many people can actually wake themselves up willingly from an unpleasant dream or nightmare.
I am lucky to be one of those people.
When I was a teenager I used to get nightmares more often than not ( darn hormones!). If you read my post ( what are your top 3 strangest dreams?) then you already know how weird my "normal" dreams are.
I absolutely HATED nightmares. So I decided to take control. First I had to reconize that I was dreaming. As we all know that can be tricky in itself because no matter how odd things get in dreamland, for some reason they feel absolutely natural ( "look mom it's an allikangamonkey! Can I have one please?" LOL!). Once I realized I was dreaming I would focus on the word "No!". Then I would try and say it. If you've never actively tried to speak out loud in your sleep before you don't realize how hard it can be. My focus word was a great help, however it was not enough to snap me up and awake so then I practiced trying to move a body part while trying to speak. UGH! No matter what body part I picked I felt as if it were made of lead! My first few attempts left me exhausted however practice makes "perfect" so in time it was na too difficult for me to snap out of an unpleasant dream.
As well as this works for me, I can't help but wish I came up with another technique. There is just one draw back to this technique for me.....
When a dream turns weird and I want to wake up I find a place to lay down, close my eyes and go through what I stated above. This (as I said) usually works well. However there are some dreams where instead of waking up, I "wake up" into another dream. Sometimes I reconize right off the bat "hey this is na right!" but usually the dream I wake up in is a lucid reality based dream (like I wake up, get dressed like I normally would and go through my normal awake routine in life). This would na be so bad if this type of dream did not suddenly wonk out.....forcing me to realize "whoooa nelly! I'm not awake yet!" This of course leads to another attempt at waking. LOL! I've had a few dreams that went through this mind numbing ( and exhausting) type of loop several times before actually waking up ( which left me feeling not just confused but mentally and and physically wasted).

At any rate I am rambling on so ...
If you are one of those people who can wake yourself up from dreamland willingly I ask of you these :

What is your technique?

How long have you been able to do this?

Where did you come by the way of your technique?

Well I do not really dream very much. Sometimes I do, and I am sure that I do it more than I can remember. You see; most of the times I have forgotten the dreams when I wake up. I guess that can be wonderful sometimes, but I would rather like to remember my dreams. There is one dream I remember I had... it was something with a war in my neighborhood, and all this people came and wanted to kill my family. It was really freaky, but I am glad it is over.

The only thing that do wake me up from dreams, is the sound of the clock that wakes me up in the mornings, every single time. Sometimes some horrible people in 8th grade play it on the bus, and it feels strange. Like it is a dream that I am sitting on the bus, and that I am trying to wake up! I hate that sound, it is one of the sounds I hate the most in the whole world, haha.

But I do not have a technique... If you are afraid of dreaming you can always make your alarm clock wake you up every 5 minutes.

LOL! Oh dear heavens no! I have no need for a minimal interval wake up system. I have a puppy who is rapidly becoming dog sized and have to fight for bed space from him, my husband and one of our many cats. That right there keeps me in and out of sleep.

Actually I am not afraid of sleeping or anything like that. Most of my dreams are normal ( well normal for me). It's just those nasty occasions when nightmares come into play. UGH! I can't deal with nightmares so I wake up.

A friend of mine has an interesting technique to awaken at will. He focuses on his breathing and hyperventilates to wake up ( though I am not sure if he is physically doing so mind you). Although it works for him I am not keen on adopting that method lol!

wouldn't realise you were dreaming make you conscious therefore not dreaming? Whenever im usually dreaming and become conscious of the fact that im dreaming my imagination takes over and then i realise im awake.

Hmmm.....

Well there are several levels of sleep and dreaming. Some levels of dreaming are deep ( you are asleep asleep) while others are lighter ( when you are semi- conscious.....mostly sleeping but slightly aware).

An example of of the semi-consciousness would be the famous alarm stories you may here. What? Have you ( or anyone you know) ever experienced a dream that near the end had an odd noise plug itself in ( like screeching, beeping or music) only to find upon waking it was your alarm clock? I know I have had that done. I've also watched someone else experience this. Actually I argued with him while he was still dreaming! LOL!

Huh? Okay tangent for a moment here. He was my ex boyfriend and he was a trucker. Big rig ( semi-trucks/18 wheelers ) use air brakes to slow and stop. If you push them too long an alarm goes off letting you know you are running out of air pressure ( which means you won't have brakes for awhile). So the alarm went off for him to get up and he started mumbling......
"Baby get off the brakes..."
-What?
"BABY! The BRAKES!!!"
-What brakes? Wake up!
"Baby you HAVE TO RELEASE THE BRAKES!!!"

I shook him awake. He was very confused to find that he was not in his rig. I was confused as to why he thought I was driving his rig in the first place! LOL!!


Anyways that is just one light level of sleep.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though you may become aware that you are dreaming does not necessarily mean you are conscious. In fact most people refer to that level as "lucid dreaming" which means to be aware that you are dreaming. When people experience that level most find that they can influence their dreams more directly instead of just playing along or going along for the ride.

I know a great link on levels of dreaming and lucid dreaming if anyone is interested.

I have personally never been able to wake up from a bad dream even if I'm aware of it. In the dream I often try to force my eyes open or stand up but it never works. I think that's really cool you can do that, I wish I had a command over my dreams. I used to dream about being able to fly and I would just fly all over the place for a couple of hours and then wake up. Now that I'm older I don't really have that many nightmares, even though I have had a few in recent memory. When I was I dreaming a lot about flying or whatever I had some pretty intense nightmares, some where I even died. I heard it's a really bad sign psychologically is you die in a dream but whatever . Anyway, I will definitely try shouting NO! next time I'm having a bad dream.

This post has been edited by Revan: Feb 2 2008, 06:23 PM

You can also try focusing on a body part like a finger and try moving that. I found out ( the hard way) that moving in your sleep ( willingly) is hard ( you feel so heavy) and the bigger the body part ( say your head or arm) and more complicated the action ( like trying to move your hand and make it wave around) the harder it will be to accomplish.

As for the "NO!" thing don't get too dissapointed if at first you don't succeed. I am surprised to find out I could accomplish that for even though the mouth is a small body part a lot of instructions are relayed from the brain to the various muscles used to speak . That is why I also suggest trying to focus on a small body part to move too.

I hope you are able to wake yourself up if necessary. I don't find I have to very often anymore, however I am glad that I still can.

i dont think i've ever not ben able to to stop dreaming when i want to. now, i dont have bad dreams or nightmares, so i guess im a bad example. in most cases my dreams tend to be some sort of spin off of my actual life, with people i know, places i've been to, and situations that natraly occur. the only thing i ever notice about the difference from dreams and reality is that the weird things that do happen in my dreams are usualy just exressions of whats in the far back of my head. like if im worried about how my bosses are going to react to me getting a raise, or if im concerned about a certain friends relationship with him mom, or something. those situations tend to simply play out the way i think they should or how i want them to. the fact is that if i have a good dream or a nightmare its really caused by some inbalance in my thinking. sometimes i'll have dreams where i've got millions of dollars, and i dont know how, but then cops show up, and i realize that i've stolen the money. usualy in those dreams i end up getting shot in the back right as im about to make an epic escape.