Hello, fellow dreamers! I am new to to the forum, finally deciding it was time to join the forum and discuss some of my more striking dreams with someone other than my fish haha I've been reading related threads and decided I'd like to share mine and see if I can't get some feedback... Here goes! Usually, I have varied and colorful dreams throughout the week: water, storms, ex-boyfriends, the beach, nightmares about spiders or ghosts, etc. Recently, however, I've had the same recurring theme in my dreams, back to back and night to night: no matter how hard I try to run, I always revert to running on all fours, as if I were a dog or a horse or one of those silly Planet of the Apes actors. I'm always running because I'm being chased (I'm never the chaser) and I'm always running in a 3-beat gait like a canter or gallop, never a four-beat gait or a two-beat pace or lope. I'm clawing my way across the ground, forearms and shoulders ripping me forward as the balls of my feet dig in and push me faster. Sometimes I feel like I'm powerfully fast, other times it's as if I'm trying to run through an atmosphere of Jello. It's pretty cool, I suppose, being able to do something at night that I can't when I'm awake, but there's just one problem... IT'S SO PHENOMENALLY REAL. Seriously, when I'm awake, I'll stare at the grass and know exactly how the grit feels under my nails, exactly the smell of crushed grass, exactly how my wrists, hips, and knees crack and pop when they flex out of the day-to-day range. I even know how far I'd have to reach and extend my gait to avoid the awkward hip motion that comes from arms being shorter than legs. If it weren't for the fact I'd probably break my fingers or cause the neighbors to call the men with the butterfly nets on me, I'd do it in the yard. I've never had a sensation so real... I've had dreams so real I could smell the specific detergent on my long-gone ex's shirt and see the splinters on the boardwalk, but when I woke up, I could always tell they were dreams after a minute or so. Here, I sometimes honestly can't tell whether I had a dream or recalled a memory. So to get to the point, could someone take a shot at providing some insight regarding why these animalistic running dreams are so important to my subconscious? Background details that might be helpful (or just take up your eyeballs' energy): 20-25 yr old female well into college; single for past year or so; dreams inconsistent with dietary, hormonal, and nocturnal shifts; 2-3 traumatic incidents regarding strangers within past three months (will go into detail if asked); in pretty decent shape but not Olympic material (lol). I am an open book; I will ask just about any question, so feel free to prod. Thank you for at least reading my silly post, even if you choose not to reply =] Off to bed; let's see what's on tonight's REM menu...
Hi northstar. Based on the experience of the other dreamers on the forum, running on all fours seems to be a common phenomenon in dreams, so I've just found two older threads on the subject, merged them into one thread and stickied it. Maybe reading through it will help you.