a strange problem..

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hi guys i’m really not sure anyone will be able to help me with this but i might as well try it…

whenever i manage to get a lucid dream (it always happens just like that, i can’t use those dream inducing methods), after a really short time my legs start to itch, and i wake up. It’s infuriating… This has been going on for the past two years or so…
so any ideas?

(…or is it just possible that i get other lucid dreams as well, but don’t remember them… my recall is not that great; still it happens way too often so i believe it’s not just a coincidence)

2

Hello KGS,

:confused:

That’s confusing, I think you are right calling it strange.

Let’s try to understand the situation first.

I think that there could be three possibilities:

  1. Maybe you get a LD because they get to itch, and you just notice the itching afterwards?
  2. Are you too excited when you get lucid that could cause the itching?
  3. Your LD starts earlier than that but you don’t have enough recall and just remember the ending.

It would be easier to help if if knew the cause.
Besides that, you could work on improving your recall, it would surely help.

3

so all in all i have to improve my recall in order to get more info… idk when i’ll get around to that, but it was kinda what i figure
/though i hope there had been something like …/

4

In waking life, my nose itches sometimes. I put some mentholated ointment on it and the itching goes away, or at least gets eclipsed by the menthol. Maybe you could try to do the same thing in the dream, or before you go to sleep?

5

Interesting problem. The question is, do they itch when you’re awake? Either immediately when you wake up from such dreams, or in general?

If they itch in waking life then, obviously, treat that first! Any moisturizer or some steroid cream will do. If it’s just in lucid dreams, then it’s probable you’ve built it into your dreams as an expectation. It’s happened a couple of times, and now it’s a become a law. You know those nightmares where you always know what’s coming next and you can’t do anything about it? It could be like that. Nothing is sacred here - you may think a phenomenon is too “meta”, that it’s on another level to the dream; that it concerns your real legs. But your subconscious can fake anything. Anything.

Now if that’s the case, the problem is that to cure it you will have to stop expecting it to happen - belief is everything with LDs. But as we know, don’t think about elephants! What are you thinking about? “Scarlett Johansson. I mean elephants.” I recommend perhaps setting yourself a really firm challenge for your next LD. Try the quest, if you like. Your best bet is to be so focused on doing something positive you forget that you’re supposed to be itching.

The other possibility which occurs to me is that if the itch is a kind of inner tingle rather than a skin itch, it may be the sensation of coming out of sleep paralysis. Does it feel like pins and needles? It may actually be waking up that causes you to itch, rather than the other way around. If that’s the case, work on your dream recall. You may begin to remember LDs you have in slightly deeper, earlier sleep, which won’t be affected by the process of waking up.

Good luck and I hope we can help you solve this annoying niggle!