Memories of dreams about controlled flights

[SlavaOn]

All day yesterday, I was reading a book. It was Solzenitcyn's "Bodalsia telenok s dubom". I enjoyed the reading and it must have stirred something within my psyche, but the content had nothing to do with what I want to tell you about...

Then, I woke up at 4am this morning, remembering specific dreams that I had over a decade ago. Actually, I was surprised that I forgot about these dreams!
I couldn't pinpoint when they started and ended, though. I knew that it should had happened before 2008, otherwise they would be in some of my poems...
In these dreams, I started to learn flying first. Initially, I would run down some path in a particular garden and had to jump forward, with the arms extended up above my head, like if I am diving, and want to slide on the ground. At that moment, I would tense the stomach muscles and that action would keep me floating and sliding a few inches above ground. I remember making progress over the weeks and learnt how to fly higher and higher. With a confidence, I would jump from windows - low and high above ground and would slide through the air. I guess that experience lasted over several weeks...

Somehow I forgot all about it :( Can any of you do (or did) controlled flights in your dreams?

SlavaOn

 

[Palinurus]

I recall a prolonged episode of repeated dreaming about a device that nowadays is called a jet pack. That wasn't invented yet in those days but I had read a typical boys adventure novel about something similar, one of my first ever loans from the municipal library.

I must have been around 8 or 9 yo then (i.e. around the mid fifties of the previous century) and in the dream I learned how to fly without such a device, totally on my own power. I had to, because I wanted to be able to continue flying while the device wasn't available due to scant supply, maintenance or being scheduled for use by other candidates.

The way in which I turned out to be able to do that flying (in my dreams, of course) was rather peculiar: I had to stand totally still and upright, arms stretched downward along the body and then start taking increasingly deep breaths until my lungs were overflowing with air. At a certain point I could feel a slow take off as my feet apparently no longer carried me -- and then came the tricky part: by slowly but surely moving my hands at both sides alongside the body in a sort of circular motion alternately interspersed with some sort of flapping I could sustain a hovering motion, and from there was able to fly forward much like a helicopter would.

At that stage of my life I had heard of the existence of helicopters but I hadn't actually seen any, be it standing on the ground or let alone flying.

Coming to think of it after all these years (thanks SlavaOn), the flying motion in my dreams did bear a likeness to the activity of water kicking and subsequently floating, a skill I was then learning at a nearby swimming pool. My dream flying had a similar feel of calm to it but I didn't make that connection there and then, only now.

 

[MrEightFive]

SlavaOn
I have flying episodes in my dreams from time to time (without any device), not often. I do not perform any special activity with my body (such as motions with my hands or running and jumping). From my perspective it is achieved purely with precisely controlled thought, which is very hard to achieve. My episodes of "controlled flight" do not last long, but I remember only one episode of actually losing control before "soft landing" and falling down.

 

[SlavaOn]

The "body activity" was all in a dream, while sleeping. Thus, it was all controlled by thoughts, in your definition.
The fact that puzzles me the most - how could I have forgotten such an amazing experiences! And how it was retrieved, completely accidentally, and I was able to invoke/re-awaken the feelings that I had had back then...

 

[MrEightFive]

The "body activity" was all in a dream, while sleeping. Thus, it was all controlled by thoughts, in your definition.

That was what I meant - no thinking on performing any activities with hands, no thinking on running, jumping, etc - while dreaming. The thing is - the thought itself to even try to lift off ground very rarely comes.

the feelings that I had had back then

What were they? For me it was a tiny remembrance of long forgotten mastery of a controlled thought. And through that connections to my other existences.