Dreaming about flying
Flying is the most positively reported dream experience there is, and the most strongly associated with lucidity. Many people who realise they are dreaming try to fly, and many who fly realise they are dreaming.
Also searched as: flight, flying dream, floating, levitating
Flying dreams are the great counterweight to everything else in this category. Where falling, chasing and drowning dominate the frightening end of the dream vocabulary, flying is consistently reported as one of the most pleasant experiences people have, asleep or awake.
Two things make it especially interesting.
The method varies enormously and is remarkably stable within a dreamer. Some people swim through the air, some push off the ground, some simply will it, some can only manage a few feet. People generally fly the same way every time.
The lucidity link is strong in both directions. Flying is what many lucid dreamers do first, and the strangeness of flying is what tips many dreamers into realising they are dreaming.
Common associations
- Freedom and release, the dominant reported feeling.
- Perspective. Seeing from above, literally.
- Competence and control, particularly where the flying is skilled.
- Escape, in the smaller set where flying is used to get away.
- Lucidity, as both trigger and consequence.
Positive readings
Reported with more consistent pleasure than any other dream content. Dreamers describe exhilaration, calm, and a distinctive physical sensation they usually struggle to convey.
Flying dreams are disproportionately represented among the dreams people describe as the best they have ever had, and many report remembering one from childhood for their entire lives.
Difficult readings
Losing height (flying that decays, or that requires increasing effort) is the commonest negative variant and is reported as disappointing rather than frightening.
Power lines, ceilings and branches. Dreamers frequently report obstacles at low altitude, which is a curiously consistent detail.
Being unable to get off the ground, which reads more like the frustration dreams than like flying.
Psychological perspectives
Vestibular explanations are the most interesting available: the vestibular system remains active during REM, and dream sensations of flying, floating and falling may share a source in vestibular activity without corresponding movement.
Continuity does not explain flying, nobody flies while awake, which makes it one of the few dream contents that clearly is not drawn from experience, and therefore genuinely worth thinking about.
The freedom reading is what dreamers themselves report, consistently, and it is offered as such rather than as a finding.
Cultural and historical
Flight as a marker of spiritual attainment appears in an enormous range of traditions. Soul-flight and journeying are formal practices in a number of shamanic traditions across Siberia, the Americas and elsewhere, named as those specific traditions rather than as a generic category.
Tibetan dream yoga treats control within the dream, including flight, as part of a structured practice, and is covered properly in the Lucid Dreaming section.
What the sleep science says
Flying dreams are among the most commonly reported typical dreams, and among the most positively rated.
Flying is strongly associated with lucid dreaming, both as a trigger for realising one is dreaming and as the most common first deliberate act once lucid. This is well documented in the lucid dreaming literature.
Vestibular activity during REM is a plausible contributor to flying and floating sensations, though the link is not established as causal.
Your own context
- How did you fly? The method is the most personally consistent detail in these dreams.
- How high?
- Did you have to work at it?
- Did you realise you were dreaming?
If this recurs
Recurring flying dreams are common and usually keep the same method. Where the ease changes, easier or harder over months, dreamers frequently connect it to how much control they feel over their waking situation.
If flying recurs, it is one of the best available lucidity triggers, and the reality-check guides use it as a worked example.
Emotions often reported
- joy
- wonder
- awe
- peace
- urgency
- frustration
Specific flying dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
Where it happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- How did I fly? Is that how I always fly?
- How high did I get?
- Was it effortless or hard work?
- Did I realise I was dreaming?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
3 references. What these labels mean
- 1.The Typical Dreams of Canadian University StudentsPeer-reviewed research
Tore Nielsen and colleagues (2003) · Dreaming
Cited for: The cross-population consistency of "typical dream" themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, being unprepared for an exam) and their relative reported frequencies.
- 2.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 3.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of flying have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- ActionFallingFalling is one of the most reported dreams in every population studied. The jolt that often accompanies it, a hypnic jerk, is a well-understood physiological event, and it is frequently the cause of the dream rather than its result.
- SymbolWaterWater is the most frequently reported dream element, and its readings are unusually consistent across traditions: emotion, the unconscious, and whatever is too large to be argued with. Depth and clarity carry most of the meaning.
- EmotionPeacePeaceful dreams are under-reported rather than uncommon. They are less memorable and less likely to be searched for. When they are reported, they are described with unusual warmth.
- ActionBeing chasedBeing chased is the most reported dream theme in most surveys. What matters is almost never the pursuer. It is that the dreamer is going away from something, and what happens if they stop.
- ActionBeing unable to speak or moveBeing unable to move or make a sound is extremely common, and it sits on the boundary between an ordinary dream and sleep paralysis. Working out which one you had is the single most useful thing this page can help with.
- ActionBeing watchedThe sense of being watched is one of the most consistently reported dream experiences and one of the hardest to describe, because the watcher is usually never seen. In sleep paralysis it has a specific, well-documented physiological basis.