1st Time!?

**W1zard** · 03-12-2011 03:20 PM

After reading through most of the sight last night, I was pumped to start having my own adventures while lucid dreaming. I decided that the Reality Check would be my most reliable approach because i'd never tried this kind of thing before. I got into a temporary habit of doing Reality Checks every 5-10 minutes (checking the time twice, reading things over twice, etc) I don't remember exactly how i knew, but I'm positive I must have done a reality check in a dream as soon as i started drifting.

I swear i must have been dreaming because I suddenly got extremely excited and woke up in my bed. After that, i became kind of paranoid i would experience sleep paralysis because my body was tired but my mind was completely awake. I thought i was imagining things but that was probably just my imagination.

After a half an hour or so, I drifted back off to (dreamless?) sleep. This morning I reached over to my make-shift Dream Journal, but i couldn't recall anything of my dream.

So to summarize:
1. Should I be afraid of experiencing sleep paralysis? (I've heard it's extremely uncomfortable)
2. Was this possibly my first big step to lucidity?
3. Usually i have amazing dream recall (I remember many of my dreams through the years) but is it possible that my scare made me forget?

What is your guys' advice?

**riverboy** · 03-12-2011 04:25 PM

Hey welcome to Dreamviews!

In answer to your questions.

1. People generally are afraid of sleep paralysis because they sometimes experience scary hallucinations. However the sooner you accept that this cannot harm you, the sooner you can get to enjoy it. Some people find themselves able to control these hallucinations to their own benefit after a while.

2. It's very possible that you experienced some lucidity on your first try. People read up so much when they first encounter the topic that it's occasionally possible to lucid dream prettymuch straightaway as it's on your mind. However this doesn't always last and you usually end up like the rest of us.

3. There are a variety of things that make you forget dreams, maybe you just had an "off" night. Being scared or sometimes too excited can definitely effect sleep quality so I wouldn't be surprised if your REM and subsequent dreams were affected. The good news is this causes what is known as an "REM backlog" where the REM periods in your next round of sleep are much longer to compensate. So perhaps tonight will yeild good results for you too!

Good luck W1zard, you're going to love it here at dreamviews.