Thread: Am I Lucid Dreaming or experiencing Sleep Paralysis?

Hi, This is my first post here and I am new.
I have been stumped the last while to figure out what I am experiencing while sleeping. This does not happen every single night, but the odd night it does happen. Usually the whole thing begins when I wake up from sleep and try to go back to sleep. I am fairly sure it is when my REM sleep is disturbed because the minute i try to go back asleep I get a feeling in the back of my head, a sensation of some-sort and I have read up a bit on Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming and it does not say that you get a feeling in the back of your head. Anyway, I do experience the paralysis(not able to move and talk..I often try to scream but nothing happens) and small, blurry hallucinations. One of them I was at the top of my stairs looking down. There was also a time this happened (hallucination) in my room and I could feel paws from a cat walking up my bed in between my legs. I'll never forget the feeling!
Within the last few months it has gotten more intense. The feeling in my head lasts longer, about 2 to 3 minutes. I got an outer body experience one night while asleep on the couch, I felt as if I was asleep vertically and at an angle falling downwards toward the ground but I was actually lying down on my couch with my head on a cushion and I was not after moving at all but I thought I had moved.The feeling in my head was also present.
Lastly, I woke up from a dream with this feeling in the back of my head(numbness is what I describe it as.) and I thought I was falling off of a chair. While in the dream it was a small room, brown room, brown wooden dining table styled chairs and I started humming. This got louder and I literally felt the feeling in the back of my head get more intense as I started falling, but never hit the ground, then I woke up.
I'm not too worried about it, and it does not effect me from sleeping, just curious to find out what it is that's happening!
Thanks.

Welcome to the forum!

The visual and sensory hallucinations you're having sound like Hypnagogic Hallucinations (HH), which are caused by REM Atonia, a normal part of the process of falling asleep - we just don't always notice it because we're usually already asleep by the time it happens. REM Atonia is responsible for shutting down our muscles when we sleep to prevent us from acting out our dreams in real life, so if your mind is still awake when it happens, you'll notice this paralysis as it happens (not to be confused with Sleep Paralysis, which is a medical condition that causes frequent paralysis episodes at night. More info here: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-yoga...explained.html ).

Welcome to the glorious L̶l̶a̶m̶a̶ ̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ Dream Views!

Hope you have a good time here.


And I do second what the kitty said up there. Weird stuff happens in REM Atonia .

Welcome to DV
I hope to see you around!

Yaaaa man, you were indeed transitioning into a lucid dream and perhaps already being in one!

We get paralyzed when we are in REM, so when you can't move, you are dreaming, your body is asleep and so is your mind, but you have access to that part of your brain that contains daytime memory. That is pretty much what lucid dreaming is. To know that we are dreaming while we are in a dream. (not the not being able to move part, that is not part of LDing, it's a natural process our body engages)

Those images of cat or any other images, we call them HH - hypnagogic (hypnopompic) hallucinations. Hallucinations upon falling asleep (waking up). If they get more evolved into movies, those we call dreamlets. Beginning of a dream. HH can be also tactile, auditory, or experiencing movement. At that point you are essentially dreaming and you just need to "enter" the dream. To become a participant instead of just an observer.

There are few ways how to enter a LD when you already transitioning and seeing dreamlets.

1. You can wait for dream to envelop you. (This works for some, but I always need an extra push.)
2. Stand up or roll out of your bed by mentally commanding yourself to do that. More about that here http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...into-wild.html
3.Pick a spot in the dream you are seeing and "see yourself there". I say "I am there" slowly and deliberately. At this point I feel myself moving towards that point and when I land I become part of the dream and I see it as 3D all around me, instead of just a movie in front of me as it was just a second ago.

Sensations of falling are also a type of transition into a LD. I love these sensations, but for me personally it's hard to enter a LD this way.

When you feel like you are sleeping in a different position that you know you are, I would say that is when your conscience had partially moved into your dream/astral body and that is where your situational awareness is at that moment. That is actually one of the methods how to initiate OBE. To imagine yourself seeing your room from different perspective. For example imagine you see yourself on the bed, as if you were watching yourself from the ceiling, or opposite corner of your room.

I don't think I ever heard anybody mentioning the sensation in the back of the head during transition. But I do get it. I call it headrush. Its an intresting, unmistekable feeling. Tingling, numbness, but most pronounced is feeling of that part of head being ice cold. And I can feel/hear as if some liquid was churning through some pipes. I don't feel it every time, and I do get lucid without it often as well.

Transition is one of my favorite topics so please do ask anything else.

Thanks for the reply!
Yea I love it in a way, but from reading and hearing what people can experience I've never gotten that far into a Lucid Dream. I don't even try to get in it, it just happens!(The numbness in my head and paralysis) The feeling in the back of my head is what worried me most, not knowing why I get it..but when I do it is distinctive. I know myself and say to myself right this is happening again, go with it. I never was able to take control and longest it lasted was 2 minutes I say. The fact that it has happened more led me to post my experience here.
Cheers again man, I shall wait it out and see what happens the next few times and try to take control!