Half your body in a dream state, and not the other?

[Another]

Sometime during a low quality normal dream, I realised I was dreaming - then dropped everything I was doing. The scenery turned black straight after, and I had assumed I had woken up. I lay in bed for a while, then could feel trainers in my hands... I knew I was lucid at that point, cause I could hear my fingers going over them and feel like they were changing form, but that was it. It felt like only my arms were in the dream state, and everywhere else was in the real world. Sure enough, as soon as I opened my eyes, the "dream arms" disappeared and my physical ones in bed took over, which took more effort to move. Did an RC, and was definitely awake. When there's this sort of disconnection within body parts in a dream, is there any way to save it?

[Sivason]

This happens in the sleep stage nREM1. Test subjects often denied having been asleep, due to being able to feel parts of there body or hear real life sounds. The equipment in the sleep lab had confirmed they were asleep. While in this state you must avoid attempting to move, unless physical discomfort is going to fully wake you anyways. Just lay still and try passively observing H.I. or attempt visualization. You just need to stay aware and relax, so that you can get into a deeper nREM level, then hopefully REM. You can lucid dream in each phase, but nREM1 still has bodily awareness (say 30%), and other nREM states will be interesting but tend to have low graphic resolution, and limited plots in dreams. REM is the state with exciting dreams that appear very lifelike. Short verson: Try to stay aware, but relax into the next phases of sleep. Enjoy the experience, even if REM never hits.

[Another]

Wow, thanks so much for the information! (I got this a couple of times when I was younger too... just never tried to grab an explaination before) Are you guys like, professionals/scientists of some sort?

[Darkmatters]

When you start paying attention to your various sleep states and some of the waking states you never noticed before, you become a scientist of sorts, though not professional. And of course, those of us who are really interested in this stuff read a lot of the actual science of sleep and dreams and the mind. In sivason's case (as with many of us) he's studied a lot of Eastern beliefs like Buddhism and possibly yoga and - I don't know what else. But in the Orient there's been a many-thousand-year's study of things like states of consciousness, which scientists in the west are only getting started on studying. For some weird reason though, in most of the modern (western) world people don't talk about states of consciousness or dreams - there's almost an embarrassment surrounding it, like it reveals too much about you or something, so people treat it as something to be ignored and laughed at. But primitive peoples around the world such as American indians have always had shamanic practices involving dreams and visions etc, and apparently all of these ancient peoples are very well aware of these subtle states of consciousness. There's a lot to be learned from them.