Have you ever felt physical pain while in a dream? Many people have the luxury of never experiencing pain in their dreams. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. I feel pain in my dreams just as vividly as I feel it in waking life.
If you don't feel physical pain in your dreams, you can use the lack of pain as a trigger for lucidity. If you are injured and suddenly realize you're not feeling any pain, perform a reality check to determine whether or not you're dreaming.
Have you ever been injured in a dream and woken later to find yourself experiencing pain in the same part of your body that was hurt in the dream? Or how about the reverse — have you ever injured yourself in waking life only to have the pain seep into your dreams?
In my own experience, physical pain is fully capable of crossing the border between waking and dreaming. I recently injured my foot and a few days later dreamed of hobbling along a wooded path, stumbling a few times due to pain in that same foot. In my dream, the pain in my foot felt just as intense as the pain I was feeling while awake.
It provided an opportunity for lucidity because I paused long enough to wonder why I was walking through the woods instead of resting at home with my foot elevated. I questioned the scenario and realized I must be dreaming. Interestingly, the pain didn’t go away even after I discovered I was in a dream, nor after I considered that my dream self had no reason to suffer the pain my waking self was dealing with.
Even more intriguing is when the situation plays out in reverse. On two separate occasions, I have dreamed of being injured and then awakened to find I was feeling severe pain in the same part of my body that had been injured in the dream. The pain carried over from the dream into my waking life.
This raises a fascinating question: how does a dream injury trigger pain in your waking self? Does the dream injury occur as a result of pain in your sleeping body (perhaps due to sleeping in an uncomfortable position)? Does your mind interpret pain signals from your sleeping body and feed them into your dream, producing a dream scenario that involves the same pain? Or, does the dream injury occur with no prompting from the body and is then translated into physical pain by your waking self?
The answer just as likely may be “all of the above”. The mind-body connection is a powerful thing. In any case, experiences like these always evoke in me an even deeper respect for the mysteries of the dreaming mind.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
great topic. my first take is as you say “all the above.” especially when you add psychosomas like “phantom legs” to the mix, as well as relationship with dreaming and deep emotional traces. we hobble around all day without knowing the causes of our current moods too, when often they can be found to lay in half-forgotten disturbing dreams from the night before. and when you flip it, the potentials for dream healing become the next possibility….
A few years ago, I tried experimenting with the concept of feeling pain in a dream. I was aware I was dreaming and intended to inflict pain on myself to see what it would be like…. & the funny part is, my plan didn’t get too far , because…well, it hurt so I stopped. Kinda like real life.
Conversely, one common dream testing technique I use is to put my finger through my hand, and this never hurts. I’m sure b/c I never think of this action in the context of any pain, it’s just my “dream hand” and my “dream finger”.
I think expectation plays the biggest role in shaping physical sensations in a dream.
Ben Q.’s last blog post: The Joker
Does anyone have unexplained pain during Lucidity? I look at lucid dreams as more of a problem then a fun time. I have them most every night and they are most always wake induced. Most of the time I have a sever pain somewhere, not always and not always in the same place. Though most of the time the pain is in my right side, around the lower part of my ribs. If anyone could lend a helping hand I would really appreciate it. Also, does anyone else experience loud sound, bright lights and fear going into and out of wake induced lucid dream?
Thanks,
Clinton
Oh MG Clinton…i HAD THAT LAST NIGHT.
The dream was myself getting a hug….and the pain started..right side of the ribs..even when the person stoped hugging me inthe dream…I stil felt the pressure..but then it turned into something else…very painful..and when I tried to wa…nothing came out of my mouth….I felt like there was something inside my rib cage intentionally hurting me. The pain was so bad….tears came from my eyes…and nothing could come out of my mouth
Very scary…..
I have been trying to have lucid dreams ever since I read about them in an 80′s issue of Omni magazine, and I’ve gotten much better at doing so recently. There are many more resources out there on the subject now, many of which have helped me. I would have to agree that wake-induced is by far the easiest, at least for me anyway. I can also confirm the loud sounds and to a lesser extent the lights, it tends to happen so fast and in that state of mind- that limbo between consciousness and subconsciousness- it’s hard to process everything. As far as pain goes, I’ve felt it in dreams before and coincidentally just had one. I’m sure that this affects everyone differently and I’ve never had a dream where I experienced pain to a degree where it was uncomfortable even if I was having any kind of actual pain in my waking life. The pain that I experience I call “super hero pain,” and this is because it is like what I imagine pain would be like for someone like superman or wolverine. More precisely, it’s a sensation but not anything like what you would feel in real life. In this particular dream, there was an incredible storm forming in the night sky and the people around me were terrified as the clouds began to swirl and the lightning struck extremely close to us. I offered to go up and see how bad it was(knowing that I could fly because I was lucid) and I launched straight up. I got up about 45-50 feet and the wind tossed me violently to the ground. While I did feel a sense of pain from it, it was nowhere near what someone tossed from that height would feel upon impact.
last night,i saw a terrible dream.in the start we and my friends were gathered at my house talking,saying jokes and having fun and then a big shaped thing something like a monster arrived and starting killing every people around me and i was terrified.I ran away to escape from it but then i was again inside my house,in the living room (where everything started) and heard this kind of ‘monster’ coming to me, i tried to hide and then wake up but nothing happened and finally the thing got me and i was experiencing unfortable pains near my spine and my ribs,i couldn’t even breathe.This wasn’t the first time thought .In my early years as a student when i had such nightmares i used to have many times pain in different parts of my body
Hi Billy,
Nightmares are never fun, but they can sometimes lead to a deeper awareness or insight. You can also use lucid dreaming techniques to help you whenever you have nightmares. You might find these two posts useful for that purpose:
How to Turn a Nightmare Into a Lucid Dream
Using Lucid Dreaming to Overcome Nightmares
~ Kris
funny thing i have had many pain dreams like someone sticking a finger into my ribs and i can not move. or try this one i was eating lots of chicken wings and i dreamed i was pulling feathers out of my throat until i pulled out my lungs. traumatizing! i eat way less wings lately.. any ways keep you posted
oh heres one that freaked me a huge pain in my large toe then it explodes the skin opens leaving a hole but no blood just a large hole .the pain was terrible. i woke up looking at my foot . freaky yet when i was 16 i dreamed about a terrible storm, and that day the deadly tornado hit edmonton trailer court killing many, i woke up that morning and packed my bags and went to edmonton , i arrived just after the math. it was like i seen it or been there.
I’m 19 and I have a back disorder called spondylothesis my back hurts all the time. However I have lately been having nightmares and when I wake up it’s like I’d never slept and as if someone had taken a crowbar to my spine. I’ve also experienced two or three times having a nightmare and in it My nose is bleeding or I’m drowning, and when I wake up, I cannot breath. I haven’t experienced these dreams in a year but the others with the back pain I am feeling every night now.
My situation is even stranger. I have no clue why this happened to me. I was dreaming that someone or something was forcing me to dig my thumb nail into my forehead. As I’m going through this dream, I wake up and realize I’m actually doing it! I feel my forehead and realize it’s wet with blood. So I rush to the bathroom to see the mark and blood myself. What in the world made me do this is beside me. I still have a big scab from this and it happened 3 nights ago. Very strange and a little scary too. I’ve never experienced anything like this and I hope it never happens again. Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this?
Dwane, I have sometimes woken up with scratch marks or bruises after falling or fighting in my dreams. I THINK it could be a type of sleepwalking.
My biggest fear of feeling pain while I sleep comes from someone telling me “once upon a time” if I was shot or stabbed in my dream that the pain would be excruciating and I might really die. I hope writing it doesn’t make it happen
Hi Carole,
Before I started studying dreams, I’d heard the same warning — “If you die in your dream, you’ll die in real life.” I’m glad that turned out to be a myth. I’ve died in dreams at least a dozen times and I’m still around.
Thank goodness – I used to dream of airline crashes right down to the name of the carrier thankfully those stopped – C