False Awakening and Borderline Lucidity

[WanderAbout]

I've talked in other threads about using a voice activated recorder to record dreams in the middle of the night, as soon as I wake up. I had fairly uncomfortable dream last night, and it jerked me awake, so I leaned over to grab the recorder and started to record the details. But then I began to notice that something wasn't quite right. I wasn't in my bed in my bedroom, I was lying on a couch in what looked like a fusty old theatrical changing room. There was a nagging thought in my head that I should know what this meant, but I didn't quite, like when someone's name is on the tip of your tongue. And then, in a single moment, I felt a sensation like coming up from deep under water and waking up and realizing that I'd been dreaming, that it had been a false awakening. It was quite exciting. It was the closest I've got to lucid ever, apart from a small handful of spontaneous lucid dreams over my life, some of which I associate with having a fever at the time or some other exceptional circumstance. Hmm. It convinced me that I should do a lucidity check every time I wake up from sleep, just to be sure.

[Key]

Nice!! You're super close. I've seen it suggested before to do a check every time you wake up--I can definitely see the merit!

[kellow]

My mind is sneaky and loves to turn false awakenings that I become lucid in into SECOND false awakenings that remain non-lucid. This happened to me just the other day. I woke up and noticed I was floating off of my bed, and did my preferred reality check (pinching my nose and breathing through it) and became lucid. Then I tried moving my head, which caused my vision to fade back to where I was laying in bed, pretty much like a film dissolve. I thought I had woken myself up by moving my head, and didn't think to do another reality check, but I'm certain I was still dreaming. It really feels like the mind just resists lucidity sometimes. I think reality checks upon awakening is a great habit to get into. Maybe another good thing to add upon awakening is heightened overall awareness, as you'd do with ADA. That may even be the best time to do it, because I don't doubt that I have false awakenings all the time without realizing it.

[FryingMan]

I found that when I was getting lucid frequently, I'd have a lot of FAs (a lot more than when not getting lucid a lot). Either we have a lot of FAs all the time and we just miss them, or something about being more tuned in to sleeping and dreaming causes more FAs. Either way, a very helpful phrase to play through your head at the beginning of a LD is "[Regardless of transitions], I'm *still* dreaming!"

[Lang]

^ I get that too. I also note that I get them when I'm sick. It's helpful to try to remember what happened before you went to bed and how you got there.