Thread: Some questions about some of my short lucid dreams this morning

It has been about half a year since I last had a lucid dream, but this morning I suddenly managed to have two of them (I believe I was more prepared than usual to recognize the dreamstate last night, before I fell asleep, so that's probably the reason).
However, just like most of my lucid dreams, these ones started as "Awakenings", which felt pretty much like getting out of bed, but knowing that I was dreaming.
Anyway, what I did was that I simply assumed that I was dreaming before I had even opened my eyes, and this worked 2 or 3 times (it was definitely more than once);
but each of these lucid dreams just consisted of me slooowly getting out of bed (for some reason I always move slowly in these dreams, I think it took like 10 seconds just to leave the bed!), and then I stood there in the darkness and tried a bunch of stabilization techniques, like rubbing my hands and spinning around, and this seemed to have a slight effect on the brightness - not much, but a little bit - and in the first dream I woke up, probably because I started thinking of my physical body.
Then I managed to become lucid again, in the exactly same way as before, and I acted the same way as well.
This time the dream lasted for a little longer, so I thought that maybe I could stay lucid more easily if I found a bright place - so I tried leaving my apartment through my bedroom window, since that was the brightest spot - but then everything suddenly turned black without any warning, and I found myself in bed again.

What are your comments on this?
Why did these dreams just end like that?
It seems to me like the slightest attention to my physical body makes the dream collapse.

Maybe I spend too little time on stabilization techniques?
I think I spent perhaps 10-15 seconds on them in both of these dreams.

Hi,

The first one lucid might've been just a spontaneous or result of technique
And second one probably DEILD.

The stabilization of lucid dream could've failed because of one of these things:
- Not strong enough stabilization tech
- You were at end of your rem cycle?
- Thinking of real body plus low stability of dream = bang?
I doubt thinking of real body or real world will cause to wake you up
Same for sex, closing eyes n' similar stuff.
This stuff is most probatle to cause destabilization but i'd say only when dream's stability is low and your not anchored in it?
After stabilizing strongly enough it shouldn't screw your dream up?

Also i think you should get off your head the idea of thinking about real body waking you up
You might accidently create false awakening like that?

I'd suggest you trying out this stabilization tech:
Dream Stabilization and Clarity Tutorial - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Thank you for that link, I will try that when I manage to catch another dream like this.

I just noticed this morning that I had another series of False Awakenings like this, although I didn't actually become lucid in them.
I "woke up" and drank some water (I always keep a glass of water by my bed), and then I felt annoyed that it was almost empty - and this happened 2-3 times, until I woke up for real, and then the glass was almost full!
And then my university class started spamming text messages to each other (we are connected in a way so that we can send messages to the entire class), which forced me to turn off the message signal, and this led to a dream where all the other students stood by my bed - I was just like "what are you doing here?", and then I woke up for real again.

What is this all about?
Do I have a natural capacity for False Awakenings, or something?
Most of my lucid dreams have started that way, and they seem to be very frequent if I pay any kind of attention to my brief awakenings.

If your having lots of false awakenings daily at morning then you could maybe try building habit of doing one or few reality checks everytime you wake up

Originally Posted by MisakaMikoto

If your having lots of false awakenings daily at morning then you could maybe try building habit of doing one or few reality checks everytime you wake up

Yeah, I am thinking of making that a habit.
The biggest problem is that sometimes those False Awakenings feel so realistic that I just assume that it must obviously be a real awakening, etc.
But then again, those False Awakenings have turned out to be amazingly realistic, so why not?

It seems like every time I firmly decide to test if it might be a dream, it is indeed a dream.
I can always tell that from the way I move out of bed, it's this slower and more "floating" quality to it.

Also, one slight annoyance about these dreams is that they have a tendency to end very quickly, like in 2-3 minutes or something like that.
I am not really discouraged though, because there have been moments when I have managed to stay in them for a reasonably long time, perhaps 10 minutes.
I don't know what I did right in that dream, but basically it was much more vivid from the beginning (pretty much 100% crisp and clear, although I could temporarily only see with my left eye for some reason, and the upper part of that eye was covered by some mysterious darkness) but I was really amazed when I got full vision again, like "wow, goddamn, I have perfect vision in a vivid dream!"), and I somehow managed to anchor myself in that dream so well that I could walk around and explore without constantly having this feeling that the dream was about to collapse at any moment.

Maybe I can incubate these dreams, and vividly imagine myself waking up.
That should technically lead to a lot more dreams like this, hopefully during a long REM period.

If you want and have extra time you could try some basic 'Dream Control' stuff during your reality checks at mornin'

So for example:
If you'd use looking at hands reality check to see whether your dreaming or not, then before doing so tell yourself with full belief and confidence that yesterday dr. evil modified your hand and now you have seven or eight fingers (Or something similar ).
If it would be dream and even extreme false awakening then with this small memory trickery your look of hand would probably change from realistic to dream-alistic

2-3 minutes is not too short, that's a decent time to take several actions and observe the results. Yeah those 30+minute marathons would be nice, but be happy you have enough time to look around a bit and do some TOTMs perhaps. Some here have posited a theory that dreams are longer the less you're worried about dream length (sort of a paradox of intent). There also is a theory that always keeping a short-term goal in mind (something to do next) really helps you stay in the dream. I still want to try Dreamer's in-dream journaling technique where she thinks about what shes going to write about the dream later, sort of like keeping a running narrative during the dream.

Just as FryingMan said

It's better to not worry at all about waking up.
Those worries if not shorten dream they may give you a false awakenings.
Even if you are able to counter false awakenings they might screw up something you were doing in dream
Example: Talking with random DC.

If you don't want dreams to end fastly then simply use stabilization techniques when you enter dream and whenever it starts to destabilize