Dear Contributors,
Please place your ideas for the Touch experiments in this topic area.
Thanks,
Scot Stride
I think this is an under-appreciated sense in dreams, in mine anyway. I often don't notice it unless I specifically focus on it, unlike sight and sound.
Should we come up with a list of substances to attempt to find? Just report particularly strong sensations we have felt?
One thing that I have read about that was studied was the sensation of "wet". It is supposedly a very rare or impossible feeling in a dream, but soon after that a DC threw a glass of water in my face to disprove it, and I've read several accounts in DJ's to prove that wetness is felt not infrequently.
Another interesting sensatin to study would be pain. I myself, as well as one or two people I know, have never felt pain that wasn't linked to my physical body being in pain, but other people say they have. Possibly figure out how feelig pain relelates to dreams and if there are any that are more prominent than others?
Oh, good one. I just had a lucid walking on gravel; it was just like IRL, but not related to any pain I was actually having. Maybe this one should be its own thread?
Dear Moonbeam,
Like the other senses we need a list of very familiar touch sensations...rough, smooth, jagged, cold, hot, sticky, slimey, soft, prickly, etc. Each sensation can be assigned a number of objects that produce that sensation. I don't know that pain is a good one to throw in. In an LD once I walked barefoot over broken glass and it did not produce pain; I definately felt it and my feet were cut, but they healed up almost instantly.
Sincerely,
Scot Stride
OK, then maybe we can have a list of things to conjure and feel; for example, sandpaper, velvet, etc. In addition to taking advantage of opportunities to do things like pet an animal, experience fire, etc. (Again, these are things that many of us have done multiple times in our dreams)
I know usually things don't cause pain in dreams; that's why it stands out so much when they do.
Pain and wetness both sound interesting to me. But I think that pain and temperature should be in a separate category. We're going to have to put proprioception in somewhere as well.
I notice that in dreams my sense of touch only exists in certain places at certain times. For example, if I'm walking I may only notice the sensation of my feet contacting the ground while the rest of my body is devoid of sensation. Perhaps we could examine this?
Quote from: Alex Lou on October 05, 2008, 01:01:37 AMPain and wetness both sound interesting to me. But I think that pain and temperature should be in a separate category. We're going to have to put proprioception in somewhere as well. Good ideas. I don't have much awareness of proprioception because often I am not really aware of my body. Of course that is true while we are awake too, right? I can't figure out if it is more so in dreams or not, because I never stop to examine whether I can feel my whole body.
QuoteI notice that in dreams my sense of touch only exists in certain places at certain times. For example, if I'm walking I may only notice the sensation of my feet contacting the ground while the rest of my body is devoid of sensation. Perhaps we could examine this?
I think that's true for me too, for the same reason as above.
I must have been thinking about this thread last night. I was with two beautiful women and after they shed their clothes I was feeling one of their thighs with my fingers. It was warm, soft and smooth. Very sensual.
That was a lot more fun/interesting than broken glass.
I so remember walking in warm puddles. The feeling of water raising up onto and then falling off/clinging to a foot when walking through the puddle is very sensual also.
Quote from: Moonbeam on October 05, 2008, 10:36:29 AMI don't have much awareness of proprioception because often I am not really aware of my body. Of course that is true while we are awake too, right? I can't figure out if it is more so in dreams or not, because I never stop to examine whether I can feel my whole body.So far I haven't noticed a difference between proprioception in dreams and out. But I do notice the moment when falling asleep when my proprioception goes from real to imagined. And I haven't spent much time looking for a difference in this sense in dreams. I'm guessing that if we find a difference it will be similar to the difference we've seen with sensation: if we purposely look for it in a certain body part at a certain time we may not find it. in contrast, while awake the information is always available whenever we need it, even though it's not always in our conscious attention.
I believe that balance is the only sense that hasn't been mentioned yet. Although easily overlooked it's rather important and I would expect to see differences in our sense of balance in dreams.
Quote from: dallyup52 on October 05, 2008, 12:15:59 PMI must have been thinking about this thread last night. I was with two beautiful women and after they shed their clothes I was feeling one of their thighs with my fingers. It was warm, soft and smooth. Very sensual. Quote from: Alex Lou on October 05, 2008, 09:36:31 PMI believe that balance is the only sense that hasn't been mentioned yet. Although easily overlooked it's rather important and I would expect to see differences in our sense of balance in dreams. These two posts just made me think of another one.
Quote from: Moonbeam on October 06, 2008, 07:04:08 PMQuote from: dallyup52 on October 05, 2008, 12:15:59 PMI must have been thinking about this thread last night. I was with two beautiful women and after they shed their clothes I was feeling one of their thighs with my fingers. It was warm, soft and smooth. Very sensual. Quote from: Alex Lou on October 05, 2008, 09:36:31 PMI believe that balance is the only sense that hasn't been mentioned yet. Although easily overlooked it's rather important and I would expect to see differences in our sense of balance in dreams. These two posts just made me think of another one.
Not exactly I separate sense . . . but yeah, I've been wondering if we should get into that here.
I figure I'll give this a little bump due to a dream I had last night. I got lucid, and one of the reality checks I remember using was running my thumbnails down my fingers. IWL this produces a hard, sharp sensation that is not quite painful, but in the dream my fingers felt numb, like they would if they had fallen asleep. I still felt the pressure, but I wouldn't actually feel the sensation like I would IWL.
This reminds me of my College on a Mountaintop dream. I distinctly felt tree branches hitting me as I ran, but it gave kind of a double-feel: the branches being bumped aside felt like it does IRL, but at the same time there was a second feeling that happened as well. I can't really describe it except that it was like a jolt of energy that spread through my body in an instant, and even that's not very accurate.
Touch is a sense I used in stabilizing this really tricky lucid I had back in August. I remember one of the things I touched was a wood door. The wood felt rough. Not tree bark rough, but like it had only been sanded partially, if that makes any sense.
Also, whenever I touch glass, it usually feels cool.
So I guess the questions are a) what purpose would this experiment(s) hope to accomplish and b) how would such an experiment best be laid out. Also, c) would anyone participate. The categories we would want to do, it seems, are sensation (hard, soft, rough, etc), pain, temperature, and proprioception.
I have always seemed to have a huge amount of physical sensation in my dreams, I'm always touching things! I like this idea of an experiment, because I think it would be nice to shed some light on a facet of dreaming that usually differs completely from person to person. I think touch, like someone else previously said, is underrated as it really does bring my awareness to my present environment and always makes my dreams far more stable . I like the idea of experimenting with pain, I have had a few dreams lately which deal with painful situations.