Dream control without lucidity?

Since becoming interested in lucid dreaming and starting my dream journal (less than a month ago), I have recalled many dreams in which I am able to exercise control over the dream environment without actually becoming lucid. For instance: once I was trying (and failing) to punch someone effectively in a dream, and I was able to ‘rewind’ the dream several times and and try another punch before he could hit back. Another time while having sex in a dream, I was aware that the girl’s appearance was different from how she looked in real life (“her legs should be longer” and suchlike), and I was actually able to correct the dream just by thinking about it.

However, while I am able to do all this I am still very much inside the ‘dream world’ and suckered in by the perception of reality - and so my control over the dream can never go beyond changing little peripheral details while never questioning the overarching reality. Has anyone else experienced this?

Welcome to the forum Schrecklichkeit (That’s an interesting username, I wonder how you pronounce it :eh: )

Everyone including those who’ve never even heard of lucid dreaming have some control but they tend to not have the awareness that us lucky lucid dreamers have :wink: I remember lots of dreams where i have influenced the events, unconciously chosen what i wanted to hapen next but I wasn’t lucid - I didn’t know what i was experiencing was actually a dream.

When i first read about this a few years ago i was kind of surprised because i’d never thought of typical dreams having much control. It seems so obvious now but i think i used to confuse control with lucidity, well … i looked on them as very similar things. Anyway, It just made me realise how achievable and natural lucid dreaming is for people. I’m amazed by the lack of recognition and understanding it gets from most of the world.

Yes, this always interests me - the realness of dreamscenes. It’s weird how accurate the surroundings are as well as being able to smell, taste, feel etc. So convincing, I’m often fooled by it in lucid dreams! believing that my dream body is moving around the real physical world and not the internal copy of it in my head, can get very confusing :tongue: