Thread: I'm not sure if this is a dream

Hi, sometimes when I wake too early in the morning and I've not slept enought, this happens: I see (with my eyes closed) a very very fast succession of images.
The images are not related, they could be for example my car, the ocean, a person I met yersterday, my teacher at primary school, object imeges such as a TV, a spoon, a rainbow...they are completely unrelated, and so fast I can barely remember 2 or 3 of them, even if in 2-3 minutes I can see hundreds of them.
In that moment I'm nor awake nor sleeping.
They lasts a few minutes, from 2 to 5.
It's one of the most pleasant things that could happen to me, and when it happens I wake up very rested even if i have slept less than usual.
I can provoke it with a lot of concentration, but the provoked one are less intense and less fast that the normal ones.
Are they lucid dreams? They have nothing to do with a normal dream.
Any idea?

Sandra

i don't think that this is a lucid dream... but i have no idea what this could be. it sounds very intense though. very cool.

Those are probably hypnogogic or hypnopompic imagery. These happen when you are hovering at the edge of REM sleep. A lot of lucid dreamers use them to carry them into a lucid dream. I try to focus on the visions as though they were real things and a lot of time I will get pulled into a full-on lucid dream from that state.