Have you experienced physical pain while dreaming?

[vivian]

I'm trying to do a poll, so hopefully this will work...

I was recounting a dream that I had to one of my friends this morning, and discovered something surprising. If my friend dreams of, for instance, a battle or some other situation where his dreaming self is being struck, stabbed, etc., he doesn't actually feel the pain. He explained to me that it is more mental anguish at the thought, or perhaps debilitating fear which feels something like pain, but is in fact very different from physical, localized pain in response to physical, localized stimuli.

I on the other hand, feel the pain very specifically if I am attacked in my dreams. I feel it as a physical bodily sensation that appears to be of a realistic intensity level.

So I'm curious...Do you all experience physical pain in reaction to any physical damage that you might experience while dreaming?

Sorry for the morbidity of the subject - But I would really love to hear from people about this.

Best Wishes,
Vivian

[Veles]

Well... I certainly can sense things in my dreams just about the way i do in real life. I mean, i can smell things, i can touch them and it all feels physically real(it is also one of the factors that makes it difficult to distinguish dreams from reality). I cannot recall last time i was being damaged in a dream, but i would imagine that it would be felt just like any other sensation. People usually wake up from such dreams, due to intensified sensations. That would be my guess... Obviously this pain cannot be taken into the real world when you wake up. Since i've started working on my dream memory, now, after every night i can recall at least one moment of "clarity"(as i call it) where i either touch, taste or smell (etc) something, and the sensation seems to be crystal clear. When i wake up i look back at it as if it has actually happened yesterday. I believe that pain is no different from any other sensations that can be experienced during a dream.

[Jimbobjoejr]

i was stabbed in my chest in a dream. i felt a sharp pain then nothing and felt my lung collapse. i think i died right after that and at the same time woke up.
all day long i could feel the stab and my lung collapsing if i thought about it at all.

it felt extremly real and i imagine just how it would feel if it actually happened.
thats the only time i remember feeling physical pain/ being attacked.
oh yeah, i used to pinch myself in dreams(to see if i was dreaming) and felt the pain from that. haha, forgot about that.

[vivian]

OK, so maybe it is a strange question...I often end up in some sort of battle while dreaming, and honestly, I always assumed that other people felt pain like I do during nightmares of that sort - Not just fear. But Josh (my friend that I mentioned in the original posting) called my assumption into question when he told me that he doesn't feel actual pain while in a dream, no matter what happens to him in that dream.

So I thought I'd try to get a wider sampling on the issue. Thanks for your reply.

Best,
Vivian

[wstein]

I experience all of my physical systems when I dream, including pain, as if I was awake.

When I wake though, there is only the memory of it, no lingering physical symptoms in my physical body.

[myhoran]

Many times(especially during the past 5 years) I have awakened from a dream(which I remember vividly every time) in which I have been attacked from behind in two different modes;1) some type of negative astral wildlife has gripped my legs from behind squeezing me until I thought I would "pop" resulting in deep dark large bruises on both legs2)a very tall strong entity has come up behind me holding my arms in a paralytic vice-type grip resulting in bruises and scratches that look as though they were inflicted by talons. I have been successful 50% of the time by breaking the grip calling upon JESUS which immediately made THEM release me. What is more formidable is the fact that I still bear the remnants of these talon scratches and bruises in a faded mode which can readily be seen on my body still. Believe it or not, I had a scorpion thrown @ me last January in a dream the result being my left upper arm on which it landed left a puncture wound with a wax seal on it for a week(I also stayed up for 6 straight days without sleep requiring medical intervention). Yes, I surely felt the pain of these attacks while they were occurring. Blessings to all in 2007, myhoran

[RyanParis]

It's called the subconscious mind. It's just as real as the conscious mind.

[jalef]

hmm i voted yes but its more appropriate to say that i experience pain rather than feel it. its more like i just know that i have pain but i donthave this nrgative reaction like in real life if you know what i mean...

[cainam_nazier]

Dream pain can get rather annoying. I won't go into too much detail, again, about the various inuries I have had in dreams. However I have experienced some of those same injuries in "real" life and they felt exactly the same in the various dreams. Which leads me to believe that of the experiences I have had in dreams and not in the real world I believe I know what it would physically feel like.

There are usually for me a couple of different reactions to dream pain. Some times the pain forces the dream to teminate. This is either because the pain if too intense or it causes the dream character to die resulting in the end of the dream. Some times, and this is usually the case with certain sensations that have repeated, the pain is there but not uncontrolable. For instance I have been shot so many times in dreams now that yes the initial pain hurts considerabley but I can push it to the side so the dream ends when I want it to and not as a result of the injury.

I have also had a handful of instances where the dream pain carried over into the real world. This has done so in the way just the sensation to having visible marks from it. Example, one of the times I was shot in a dream and did not die. In the dream I walked around for about 3 days with my hand over the whole in my stomach. When I woke up I had a large red spot in my stomach in the same location where I was shot in the dream. The skin was tender and irritating to the touch. However with that example in particular I am unsure if wether it was the issue of being shot in the dream that made the spot or if durring the night while having the dream I had my physical hand on that spot becuase of the dream I was having. Note, I have not had physical marks, that I am aware of, in locations on my person that that I can not reach to possibley and accidentally self wound as a result of the dream. This being done by either scratching or rubbing one spot through the course of the night. So I almost always leave that open as an option and do not just say the dream caused it. More like it is possible that the dream caused me to do it through repetative action.

[Jaco]

I don't feel real pain in my dreams, even if I get injured it's rather like some kind of intense unpleasant numb feeling, but not like pain in real life.
Only time (that I remember) I felt real strong pain was when my one of my dreams become lucid and I wanted to project. To do that I decided to raise some energy and to stimulate my main chakras and I wanted to push energy through my spine, so I did that. The energy wave was going up and every time it passed through a chakra I felt extreme pain in it. First it the root, the second later in the sacral, and the second later in the solar plexus chacra... That's how high the energy wave went, because by that time I was screaming in pain feeling like my spine would be torn apart. That feeling was, how to put it... really intense . I woke up because of the pain, and the whole thing lasted a few seconds in my dream
Besides that I don't remember feeling dream-pain as a actual "like when you're awake" pain.