Aware in Nrem - What was this?

[ezzolucid]

So after a 15 min WBTB last night, I settled into a MILD mindset with the hope that it could become a WILD. I lay on my back and repeated 'is this a dream' over and over ( as i usually do) Anyway, after a short time i was aware that i was lightly snoring. I lay there completely aware that im snoring and therefore must be asleep. So im thinking that I have fallen consciously aware into non rem! As i lay there i determined that if I am indeed consciously aware as my body is sleeping then my sleep cycle would soon transition to REM and a dream would encapulate me in the traditional WILD sense So has anyone else had this awareness in Nrem? Also if i had not been snoring then I would have felt as though I was just lying there awake. Thoughts :-) Ezzo lucid

[gab]

Haha yup, I think that is a common trap for those that WILD. To be already asleep, but have no indication of it. This can happen often, when there are no HH of any kind that would let us know that we are already dreaming. So we naturally assume, that we are still awake. Also, people woken up from light sleep swear that they were still awake. That's why using a mantra from the beginning is a great thing. Like you did. That way, it reminds me what I'm doing. (My mantra is "I am dreaming".) Once or twice I did hear myself snore, but this was before I started with lucid dreaming. Was a very interesting experience. Once I, haha, felt myself pass gas. It was a surprise, because I guess my body was completely asleep so muscles were relaxed and i had no warning of impeding fart. Once when I was WILDing, I lost my outside hearing and instead, I was hearing things as if they were coming through some internal hearing. I felt myself being inside of my body, deep down, like when you put your head under water. You can still hear sounds, but they sound muffled and you are aware of your ears. What I started doing a while back, is to try and enter a dream way before any indication that I am asleep. Simply because indication may not come and I fall asleep too deep into non lucid sleep. So I do my mantra - I am dreaming. I start with phantom movements. I try to rock my body from side to side, like in a hammock. Or from feet to head, as if on a board with some wheels. Or moving any part of my body, like a hand or leg, even into some impossible angle. Like maybe bending your leg downwards when laying on your back. You should not be able to do it, because you are on a bed. Daniel Love talks more about IMP - Impossible movement - http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...Bvideo%5D.html I also try to stand up or roll out of my bed by simply thinking about doing it. I'm sure I told you things you already know, so sorry bout that : D

[Nefets]

" Haha yup, I think that is a common trap for those that WILD. To be already asleep, but have no indication of it." wait, being asleep feels like being awake? SO snoring is a sign of that im sleeping already? Other than that, if so , how can i even be sure that I'm not just awake ?

[ezzolucid]

Hi great reply :-) however if I'm lying there I usually perform 'indirect' techniques such as 'listening in' and body roatation etc and if I'm in REM then these motions will usually become obvious such as very loud noise or arm lifting etc, I can then roll out BUT if I'm in Non rem then nothing will work at all so I guess I'm asking if you have any advice on how to test if I'm in non rem when I am in non rem ( but aware of it)? I GUESS BEING AWARE IN NON REM IS EXACTLY THE SAME FEELING AS BEING AWAKE?! :-/ oops excuse the caps - damn cap lock :-) Ezzo

[Sageous]

I GUESS BEING AWARE IN NON REM IS EXACTLY THE SAME FEELING AS BEING AWAKE?! :-/ oops excuse the caps - damn cap lock :-) Well, no, it really isn't. Aside from the fact that, consciously speaking, lucidity in general "feels" the same as being awake, being aware in NREM is very different from lying awake in your bed waiting to go to sleep. Because you are asleep in NREM, connections to sensory input have been cut off or reduced, so you likely will not feel, say, the pressure of your sheets or the weight of your body on your bed (but you can, as you discovered, hear yourself snore, because hearing is "turned on" during sleep). Also, NREM sleep tends to include reduced brain activity, especially in early sleep stages, so, should you be aware, your presence might feel a bit "odd," your thoughts a bit more, well, call it "calm, or "simplified." Both of these things are very different from being awake, by any measure. Also, and of course, the signature signal that you are aware in NREM is your presence in the fabled Void... and this presence is very, very different from lying in bed, awake, with your eyes closed. Finally, dreaming can occur during NREM, though the imagery tends to be much simpler and more thought-based, if that makes any sense. All that said, there really is no need to wonder or worry about being asleep should the question arise. Whether you are still awake or in NREM, your dream is still just around the corner. Instead of concerning yourself or doing tests to judge whether you are asleep or awake, why not just enjoy the peaceful moment, and then go back to focusing on your dream? If you are awake, you will fall asleep eventually, and your dream will come; if you are asleep and in NREM, your dream will come. Either way you win...unless you get distracted by concerns about your state, in which case you lose, by either waking up for real or by losing focus and allowing lucidity to dissipate. According to your OP you seemed to already be doing this; perhaps you had the right idea in the first place? So has anyone else had this awareness in Nrem? Sure. I started a more extensive discussion a while back on a thread called Exploring Delta Sleep, though you might already be aware of that. If not, you might want to check it out. [EDIT: Just noticed that Gab said the same thing w/link above... oops!]

[gab]

It could be, that being in NREM can feel same as being awake. But I would say only in that part of NREM, which is called light sleep. Now, mind you, I know nothing about this. I'm just going by what it feels like to me, when WILDing. And I'm sorry, I don't know how to test if you are in NREM or REM. Sometimes I can initiate all kinds of sensations, but I don't see any images. Is that NREM, or REM with me just not seeing the dream yet? I bet sageous knows : D Have you seen this? http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...lta-sleep.html

[Kuyarei]

Under stong coffee influence and heavy stress, i often found myself semi-lucid in the very first dreams of my sleep. The only way i can know this is from how different they feel from ordinary dreams. in my case, the dreams were very dimmed and carry a unique feeling. They're pretty weird, i had one when i slept at 2AM i had a dream where i was with someone in a car driving on the street near my house, everything was so dark i barely could see in the dream. The street itself carried an eerie feeling and if i recall correctly there was grass all over it. In other instances i had a false awakening but my dream body was very unstable. Its been roughly a year or two so i don't exactly know what it was, but i kept having these weird dreams very shortly after i intended to sleep. There is probably a post of mine about it as i remember telling sageous about it back then. I believed them to be NREM dreams as of then.

[Goldenspark]

Hey Ezzo, you opened saying that you did a WBTB. At what stage of the night was that? What's to say you were in nREM? Maybe you drifted quickly into REM? Just a thought.

[ezzolucid]

Hi, so the WBTB was after 5 hours. Im quite sure that I wasnt in REM because as I lay there i intentionally carried out some non movement reality checks such as 'listening in' and 'impossible hand movements' / levitation etc, there was no hypnogogia either BUT I was snoring and observing myself snoring I even knew that my wife was gonna wake me up if I carries on with the snoring ... so i wasnt awake but neither was I in REM. If i was not snoring then I would have assumed that I was awake

[TravisE]

I encounter brief episodes of conscious, lucid NREM from time to time, usually unintentionally (it just seems to happen for some reason). In my case, though, it's pretty easy to tell. In light NREM (the type that occurs just upon hitting sleep), the most common sign is a sort of rumbling in my ears like being underwater or having something plugged deeply into them (probably very similar to what gab described above), though on rare occasions I've heard some kind of garbled, rather weird and difficult-to-describe sounds instead. Sometimes there is HH present, which is a fairly obvious indication. On the few occasions I've been aware in deeper NREM stages, things are generally quieter, but when self-aware I was able to tell pretty quickly, somehow, that I was asleep (and as Sageous mentions, the state can feel quite different from waking life in ways that are difficult to describe or even remember). Oh, and also as Sageous mentioned, another thing I've noticed at times is a noticeably reduced sense of my physical body, sometimes almost as if it doesn't exist and the only thing present is my own raw consciousness (especially in the deep end, but often seemingly to at least a minor degree during lighter NREM as well). Basically, provided I'm in an actual lucid state, I don't think I remember ever being in much doubt whether I'm asleep or not; I always seem to be able to know some way or another. But I suspect different people experience conscious sleep differently, so it could well be that for some, conscious NREM feels very similar to lying awake with only minor symptoms (if that). So Sageous's advice to just stay focused on the dream is probably the best bet. Even when I know I'm in NREM, that's pretty much what I always do: relax and enjoy it while it lasts (I find it quite enjoyable in itself) while keeping an eye out for possible entry into REM. Often, I get unlucky and happen to have this happen right after REM or when I'm otherwise on my way toward waking up, but every now and then I do manage to navigate myself into REM, where I get to witness a dream form from scratch and then explore it with the lucidity I already happened to have handy.

[Letaali]

I agree with Sageous, and after what Sageous told me, I think I have had lucid dream that started in NREM/delta sleep: Years ago I had a lucid dream that sure felt like WILD, but I recalled a dream from before I became lucid, so maybe it wasn't. But it happened after WBTB. I kept counting down from 300 and saying "I'm dreaming" between counting. I must have fallen asleep normally while doing it. Then, after a dream ended, I suddenly "woke up" surrounded by nothing and I could hear myself saying the mantra over and over. "I'm dreaming...I'm dreaming...I'm dreaming..." I didn't feel anything around me, I didn't feel my form, but I felt like I was moving forward really fast. I wanted to stare at my hands to keep the dream stable and just let the dream form around me. My hands appeared in front of me and I kept flying forward in the void. Then a blob of light appeared up ahead, like the end of the tunnel. The colors turned to shapes and I saw a small round table with a vase full of flowers. I kept looking at my hands and a couple more seconds later I realized I was in my parents' house. The vase was nowhere to be seen, but the house looked very real. So I experience this void when I'm falling asleep and when I'm waking up. It's complete darkness unless I actively make something appear in it. It doesn't match with your experience, Ezzo. I feel like I'm inside a vast void. This void being delta sleep sounds believable to me, considering many of my lucid dreams end up falling apart and sending me to the void. I think I also have non-lucid memories from NREM. One night I woke up after the first hour of sleep. I recalled everything after falling a sleep. I recalled a void, having no physical form and just thinking about how news travel in the Harry Potter universe and seeing glimpses of a Daily Prophet on a wet street. After the glimpses, I recall white light appearing, turning into snow and eventually I was in a dream.