A fals awakening by any other name...

Starting a couple weeks ago and, most recently, about 3 times last night, I have been on the opposite end of a false awakening. I get ready for bed and I feel like I'm having trouble falling asleep, then a "false" dream hits where I still feel awake, I'll envision myself downstairs saying good night to somebody, or in the bathroom getting ready for bed, etc. It never lasts long and I always seem to wake from them but...

...are these the same type of episodes as FAs?

...could I use the same FA tips in order to gain lucidity in one of these "false sleep" dreams?

...have any of you ever even had these with any kind of regularity? :P

I'm imagining that I should reverse the role of the reality check. Instead of trying to remember to reality check whenever I wake up, I should see if I could get into a method/habit of quick step awareness checks leading up to bed. If this were you, would you do this before, after, or on both sides of a pre-sleep meditation?

Also, I don't get too deeply into a mantra, but I try to repeat some general suggestions leading up to the first waves of sleep. Would you break this up with RCs or do you think it would be counterintuitive?


-Kevin

I think those are hypnagogic images, or dreamlets.

FAs are a regular dream, in which you happen to dream about you waking up.

Sounds a bit like the daydreams one has just before sleep. You state that you envision yourself downstairs . If you did not willfully envision yourself then you were in a NREM dream (or dreamlet as GAB stated) . See if you can control any aspect of the dreamlet next time this happens. NREM lucids can be very exhilarating. Good luck to you!

What are dreamlets, may I ask? ;)

dreamlets are just fragments of a dream or mabye some images in your head when falling asleep. They not really a complete dream.