Drawings by Suzanna Hart

Kryptonite Factors of Falling and Flying Dreams

• Echoes of feeling out of control in the waking state (including vertigo, light-headedness, the sinking feeling, feeling unsupported, adrift or like the ground is dropping out from under you)
• Fears and worries (aviophobia (flying), acrophobia (heights), agoraphobia (open places), guilt, grief, greed, qualms, yearning for the impossible, embarrassment, loneliness, alienation, loss, fear of failure, fear of exposure or recognition, fear of failure, low tolerance for suspension of disbelief)
• Mental factors (mundane focus or overactive imagination, inner critic)
• Physical elements (replay of an actual fall or close fall, over exercise, sleep position, sleep environment)
• Physiology (hormones, illness [especially inner ear], mental disorder, liquor, change in diet, prescription drug, brain chemistry)
• External world (media influence, cultural constraints [impossible goals, urban legends, superstition or bad advice], relationship troubles [manipulation, threat, abuse and war], psychic or charismatic influence)
• Nature of sleep (borderland: sleep paralysis and myoclonic jerks; dream state: difficulty maintaining lucidity and wires in the sky)

Will I suffocate if I fly out of the atmosphere?

No, your dream or astral body doesn't have to breathe air. That's also why you can "fly" through the water, too.

If I fly too fast, will I disassemble?

You might. The scenery can streak to nothingness and you may eventually lose your body sense. But having no body isn't a problem in dreamspace. In fact, it's rather cool. When you need a body again, you just act as if you have one. Reach out an imaginary arm and it usually appears.

Is flying dangerous for females?

This is taking the idea of "Yin" and "Yang" way too seriously. In Chinese literature, the "Yin" is described as "passive female," while the "Yang" is "active male." Just take a look around your community and you'll find passive males and active females, including female pilots. Ditto with the dreamstate.

What about Icarus who got too close to the sun and fell out of the sky?

What about his father, Dedalus, who was smart enough not to get too close to the sun and actually finished his flight safely? Can anyone say "common sense"?

Yes, it's true that some people flit from one thing to another and some people have an over-inflated opinion of themselves and some people live on trauma and drama. And some would rather go around gathering excuses than find practical and courageous ways to overcome their problems. Well, fine, I wouldn't recommend they take hang-gliding lessons, either. Common sense has to be practiced to be effective.

Ask yourself: am I an Icarus or a Dedalus? That's your answer.

Isn't flying bad because it takes you away from the spiritual path?

How do you picture your spiritual path? In Judeo-Christian art, both angels and demons fly so, in itself, flying is neither good nor bad. As with so many other things in life, it depends on how you regard and interact with it.

Aren't people crazy when they think they can fly?

I wouldn't recommend jumping off a building, unless you were either dreaming or playing a virtual reality game. That's the key: can you tell the difference between one reality and another? If you can, no problem. If you can't tell what's physically real, practice until you can or get medical help. When I'm not sure, I jump up instead of down.

Do I have to be a lucid dreamer to fly?

No, you don't have to be aware you are dreaming to fly. Consider the "fight or flight" nightmare. Flying away from a monster is just about as non-lucid as you can get. In fact, flying dreams span the range from deeply unconscious to highly conscious. Flying can be an automatic reaction, a precisely directed intent, or anything else in between.

Fixes and Cures for Kriptonite Factors

What you do to resolve them, of course, depends on what is stimulating the sensation. Here's some suggestions:

1. Shift biochemistry and bedtime habits.

2. Pay attention to literal falling sensation during the course of the day.

3. Prevent imbalance by being proactive. Fix your tires, buy new shoes, get new glasses, repair your home environment.

4. Practice balance like children do. Walk a straight line on a sidewalk crack, fall backward into your bed, roll down a grassing slope or splash into a waterhole.

5. Play with the intensity of emotions and sensations by allowing them to flow, then stopping, then starting once again. A movie house is a good place to practice being enspelled by the emotions of the story, then pulling out of the spell to look around the theater, then allowing yourself to be drawn into the drama once again.

6. Process falling sensations by allowing yourself full memory of them just prior to sleep, then letting them dissipate.

7. Change your negative mindset. Think of falling not as a problem, but as ride in your inner amusement park. Cultivate a sense of humor.

8. Learn to fly by playing a video game.

9. Re-imagine your falling dream with a new ending. Let yourself go and hit the earth. Convert falling into a delicious flying dream. Fly faster, slower, lower, higher.

10. Look outward instead of inward. Imagine rescuing others who are falling. Make it less about you.

11. Rehearse landings in your imagination.

12. Induce and practice lucidity.

13. Use protective psi measures.

14. Incubate a new dream in which you'll face your fears.

Are there any common misconceptions about flying dreams?

The primary misconception comes from the attempt to "interpret" a dream. Many dream dictionaries or dream theories can give you the impression that there are only a few possibilities. Actually, there are hundreds! Each age, culture and community has a different viewpoint of flying dreams. Each field of study (such as philosophical, psychological, scientific or religious) has its own slant on the subject. There is no evidence of a "universal" dream language. Think of how many languages there are in the waking world. Why would it be any different asleep?

You could belong to a culture that teaches you a particular meaning which eventually becomes a constant for everyone in that culture. Let's say the people in your tribe believe that flying means ill health. So every time your body feels itself getting sick (even though you aren't consciously aware of it), you have a flying dream. When you finally realize you do have influenza, you leap to the conclusion that your dream has "come true." Thus, you've been "set up" by the predetermined meaning to have a dream that means the same as the flying dream of your sickly neighbor.

The same sort of thing occurs when you join a particular belief system by reading their books or continually returning to their web site. Suddenly, you are dreaming dreams that actually do reflect what you are reading, so you think that the author of the meaning is a genius! Psychologists have a phrase for it. It's called doctrinal compliance. It's when people who read Jung will dream Jungian dreams and people who read Freud have Freudian dreams. The "meaning" may, indeed, be similar for everyone in that ring of influence.

The desire for a verifiable meaning is best grounded in a search for cause ("What in my life is triggering this dream?"). If a dreamer is not caught in the trap of doctrinal compliance, a comparison of his dream and waking life usually reveals flying to be a metaphor unique to the particular person who is having the dream (because he's living a life like no other). In this sense, it's impossible to know what a flying dream "means" unless you know the individual and the circumstances surrounding him. Dreamer plus context are required for an accurate diagnosis of this sort of dream meaning.

Does doctrinal compliance influence the type of flying dreams I might have?

You bet! It can be one of the Kryptonite Factors. Let's say your belief system (or the latest book you read) tells you that flying is dangerous or bizarre. What are the chances that you'll have trouble getting aloft? On the other hand, there are books that only give you a pie-in-the-sky viewpoint (in which case, you become very distressed when your dream flying isn't perfect). The resolution of this sort of cultural programming is beliefwork or cognitive therapy. It requires you taking a good hard look at what you've been taught to think or believe. It certainly helps to have solid new information to counter old untested presumptions.

So is fear of flying or falling just a belief?

No, of course not. It's based on the very real experience of getting hurt in the physical world. Some say that fear of falling is a remnant of those times long past when remaining high in the trees was necessary for our survival. I suspect that loss of equilibrium became a critical problem for us, as a species, when we started to walk upright. Standing on 2 legs (rather than 4) can be a precarious proposition. Since human beings are basically land creatures, to fly is probably akin to a fish walking. A great evolutionary leap!

At its best, fear of falling serves as a very useful system, warning us about lack of balance in our physical existence. And a dream, even a lucid dream, can be a reflection of an actual problem in waking life. I only dismiss that possibility when I've tracked down the cause of the falling dream. Until then, I invite the possibility to alight like a butterfly on the periphery of my mind. I don't use it as an excuse not to fly in the dream state. My dream body can be sound, even if my physical body is not. Again, it's a case of knowing the difference in the rules of each reality, then teaching your dreaming self that, in her environment, falling is safe. If you practice flying instead of falling in a lucid dream, even your nonlucid dreaming self will eventually get the message.

What if I'm having trouble getting over the fear of flying?

Do you know the first thing that airplane pilots practice? Taking off, circling the field and landing. They land over and over again. Now, circling a field barely gets you off the ground. Likewise, there is absolutely no reason to fly high in your dreams. Flying is flying, even if you are less than an inch from the earth. Unlike an airplane, you don't have to fly fast, either. Even Superman hovers.

I suggest you practice landing in soft locations in imagination (how about conjuring up a humongous bowl of Cool Whip?). You can also practice landing techniques in waking life by jumping down the step on a staircase. The last step, not the highest step! More to the point, when was the last time you leap and landed in bed? This may not work with a hard futon, but a thick mattress will do wonders to cushion your fall. Come to think of it, what's on the ground by your bed: a soft rug or a hard floor? What subliminal message does your sleeping environment send to your dreaming self?

But I want to soar out into the cosmos!

I know somebody who spontaneously soared out into the cosmos, freaked out and flew never again. Too much, too soon. So take it step by step. You don't have a lot of patience? I don't either. But I've learned that getting to the goal can be as interesting as the goal itself. When I'm having a low and slow day, I make it into a challenge: how many ways can I fly low and slow? It's easier to practice variations on my Superman stance when I'm not zipping through the atmosphere. Like doing somersaults and flying upside down and backwards. A dreamer I know specializes in hovering. She mimes a Greek statue, then shifts into a second position and then another. Her flight is an elegant dance, as languorous as it is artistic. What original style can you invent?

Germain, Anne, Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio Zadra & Jacques Montplaisir. "The prevalence of typical dream themes challenges the specificity of the threat simulation theory," in Pace-Schott, Edward F., ed., Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 151.

Van de Castle, Robert. L. "Content of Dreams," in Carskadon, Mary A., ed., Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming, NY: Macmillan Pub. Co., 1993, 137.