I continue to have extremely lucid dreams lately. I'm not sure why this is but it does seem to be the case. This time the "experiment" was a little bit different because I had a really healthy day of exercising, eating right (including fruit!) and went to bed early. The only thing that could be a problem-causing agent here is that I took a Valium before I got into bed. This is because I have had insomnia most of my life and experience great difficulty sleeping without chemical assistance.
Well last night the dream wasn't filled with dread or a fear of living back in the United States like my dreams frequently are, but instead it was just a competition of sorts that got pretty heated.
src
I guess I am a competitive person. The only things that I currently compete in are bowling and the occasional game of pool in a pub. I'm not a terribly physical person anymore but in this dream I was.
Somehow, I ended up playing a modified game of rugby and for whatever reason the people on my team simply were not there and it ended up being me against 3 people, all of which were Asian on a very reduced size field. Every time the ball was kicked towards me I experienced that "slow motion" thing that happens to most people every time they are in dreams and need to do something quickly such as punch or kick someone that is attacking them. I've mentioned before that I am incapable of fighting quickly in my dreams and that every time I try my limbs slow down to a crawl. I have read that this is a normal occurring phenomenon in dreams and it shows, according to psychologists, that the person in question who has this inability in their dreams is actually a docile person that is not interested in fighting. So I guess I was happy to read that because IRL I actually do really hate violence.
The other thing about this dream is that while I am somewhat familiar with rugby, I don't fully understand it nor have I ever played a game of it in my entire life. I have watched it on TV with friends a bit, but that is about the extent of my experience with the game.
src
I am aware of the fact that it is a very violent sport though and injuries are frequent.
The 3-person team that was playing against me was scoring goals (yeah, I know it is a "try) time after time and it was starting to get embarrassing. Many of the times that they scored on me was because I failed to catch the ball that was heading towards me and they would end up with possession and they would therefore score easily against me. Because I am a pretty laid back person I brushed this off and just kept playing anyway. The slow motion of me not being able to catch the ball also applied to my defense where I seemed to be running in molasses and was incapable of catching anyone.
Even though I played it cool in the dream and told everyone that "it's fine" I was actually steaming about being beaten this badly.
One of the times I actually did catch the ball and I was convinced (in the dream) that I was going to simply steamroll everyone that was on the defense. My reasoning for thinking that this would be possible stems from the fact that I am significantly larger than the average Vietnamese person or for the most part, just Asians in general. So when I got past the first 2 and there was only one person standing between me and the goal line, I ducked my head down and was simply going to bash through them. My rage must have been really built up on them because I lunged so hard towards them, with zero concern for injury to both them and myself that I actually threw myself off of my bed in real life.
I didn't just roll off the edge, I threw myself off the bed so hard that I actually hit the wall on the side of the room about a 2 meters from my bed. In that 1-person struggle in my room I managed to break a shelf and also cut my foot on the now splintered wood. It took me a minute to get my bearings and when I finally realized that I was not playing rugby against 3 Asian people but instead was on the floor in my own bedroom in Vietnam, I was just hoping that I was not on the side of the bed that my dog Nadi sleeps on. Thankfully I was not.
Today, my back hurts, my elbow hurts, and my foot is still very tender from the cut I got on the shelf. To me this is a new level of dream excitement and the only time that I have physically hurt myself because of a dream.
I've been dreaming for most of my life and have always had rather intense dreams and nightmares. This is a milestone though because now I am apparently into the dream enough that I carry the physicality into the real world even if it is just for an instant.
I would imagine that at some point I would have had to be have been somewhat upright and sleepwalking to a certain degree because I can see no other way that I would have been capable of throwing myself that far across the room otherwise. This was a case of falling off the side of the bed.... I threw myself off of the bed.
I suppose it could have been worse that just a cut foot. It could have been absolutely devastating if I had landed on top of my dog or hit my head on the fall.
So now I guess you could say that I am a teensy bit afraid of my next dream and hope this was just a one off. I don't need to be flying around the room because of a fake sporting competition that only existed inside my head.
I wonder what a psychologist would say about this? Perhaps I am so frustrated with something in my life that I have a great deal of pent up rage about it and one day this is just going to explode. Who knows? I can't find anything online that relates specifically to this. There is a roundabout one that states that dreaming of fighting in a sports competition indicates repressed frustration or that I am not satisfied with certain aspects of my real life and I am taking them out on other people.
Well I hope that isn't the case and if this frustration is repressed, it is so repressed that I am completely unware that it exists. I feel as though I am one of the most content people that I know!