We all want to fly and it will eventually happen, but sometimes it’s tough in the beginning.

I was pretty lucky in my second lucid dream. I had already been flying around before I became lucid, so it was pretty easy for me to take to the air, even though it lasted only 5 seconds.

I don’t know about you, but I still get the occasional flying problem when my head doesn’t seem to be in it. I’ve even had to swim the breaststroke to gain momentum because I couldn’t catch a bus.

Read on and your problems may be solved.

(Reader Story, by Olga Astakhova)

Everyone new to lucid dreaming eagerly awaits their first flying experience. It’s fun, magical, and the most obvious sign you’re in a completely different world.

You’ve improved your awareness through meditation and have had your first few lucid dreams, but still no flying. Weeks pass by and you start to get frustrated because all you want to do is take to the sky.

You can’t fly, no matter how hard you try. A small piece of this puzzle is missing. Whenever you’re close to your first experience, you can’t get off the ground, or you face one of the classic problems of a newbie flyer.

I recall feelings of sadness waking up after another disappointment, another flying failure at the beginning of my lucid journey. But I found the ‘golden key’ and you can use it to unlock your secret door.

Theory is not enough

Can you fly in reality? People say they had flying dreams when they were kids. Kids believe in real magic. But with every year of your adult life you become more and more convinced flying is impossible without special equipment, and rightly so.

Can you use your imagination to fly? It’s hard! You can guess, but you have no idea how to fly. You can add a physical sensation like the wind on your tail, but it might not help much unless you frequent a vertical wind tunnel or hang gliding club.

Your body doesn’t know how to fly

This is the core problem. Your body doesn’t know the movements necessary to fly. It doesn’t know how to control the balance during a flight, or what to do with your legs dangling down because of gravity.

You have to unlock the door using the ‘golden key.’ You have to teach your body to fly, the same as you would teach it to walk. You don’t have problems walking in your lucid dreams, do you?

How to teach your body to fly

You learn a new trick and practice, practice, practice.

I received this knowledge in a lucid dream when I was desperately trying to jump into a strong headwind. A voice – my subconscious or an emissary (like in Castaneda’s worlds) – told me, “Do it like this,” and gave the detailed explanation and I’m going to share with you below.

First, you should understand there are many different types of flying and in this post I will only speak about one of them. Due to the great impact of “Superman,” this method is the most common among newbie flyers: taking to the sky like a bullet, one hand ahead, one hand behind.

This is what a voice from my dream told me about this technique…

Build your own handgines

(Note from Jamie: handgines = hands + engines. I spent 5 minutes searching for the meaning before I realized what it meant. Should have read to the end first.)

“The position of the hands ‘one ahead, one behind’ is absolutely unnatural and you shouldn’t use it,” said the voice. “Two hands above your head may help you to gain more altitude when you are well into the clouds, or to dive down, but they will not help you take off.”

“Being a child of the technological world,” said the voice, “you are familiar with acceleration being produced by propulsion, which pushes an object forward. You take it for granted a space shuttle has powerful engines which create a momentum against gravity.”

To fly you must use your hands like engines.

So you see, you must build your own ‘handgines,’ which you can see in the picture above.

Technical explanation of the handgine

Stand up straight, with a little slope forward. Stretch your hands along your body and move them a little behind you with the fingers pointed down. Stretch your middle fingers, push them inside. Other fingers are straight, but not as tense as the middle finger.

Focus your attention on the middle fingers. These are your engines, which will create the acceleration needed to get you off the ground. When you’re up in the air you can reduce the power in the handgines and use other flying techniques.

The voice also explained how to do a ‘handgine’ exercise in reality…

Keep your handgines warmed up

During the day, when you have a minute, stand up and practice the following exercise:

first, both hands together

and then in turn:

the left middle finger tensed, the right middle finger relaxed
the right middle finger tensed, the left middle finger relaxed

During the practice, pay attention only to the muscles in your hands and fingers. In the evening, do the same exercises laying in bed while laying on your back. Simply straighten the hands along your body and train your fingers.

Always keep the tension in the middle fingers. The other fingers should feel comfortable. This time pay attention to the warmth and pulsation which appears in the middle fingers, if you do the exercise correctly. Concentration on this pulsation may be a good entry into a meditation and it’s great awareness practice.

“It’s time for you to fly,”

Said the voice. I activated my handgines, jumped in the air and easily flew through the strong headwind, which was often a trouble in my lucid dreams.
The voice also gave me the instructions for other flying movements, but that’s a story for next time.

Try to build your handgines, play about with them and write in the comments how you feel when doing them while awake. I expect you might find the results enjoyable, if you focus your awareness properly.

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Olga Astakhova is an informational analyst by day, a Reiki practitioner through life, and an old fan of lucid dreaming. Olga is also the owner/chief editor at the English version of the School of Natural Voice. She discovered, besides getting your voice better, real voice exercises create unique opportunities in lucid dreams.