false awakening

This was one of the most powerfully frightening and sleep episodes to date.

I'm floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I chose to do an hour and a half session since it had been a long day. This experience happened in the later half of the float.


I'm listening to music. It's sort of a slow, funky R&B beat with a man singing directly to me. He has a wonderful, deep voice that sent me deeper into my comfort zone. I realize quickly that this isn't the wake up music for my session, it is all in my head. I smile, or at least I think I do, and continue listening for a whole, beautiful minute. It's amazing what your mind can create in sensory deprivation.

The music fades and a twitch brings me back to present. "That was wonderful," I thought. "That's more than enough to write about."

Reflecting back on all this, I now know I experienced a false awakening, and a very convincing one at that. So, in my false awakening:

I'm going to flip onto my stomach for the last 30 seconds of my float (sometimes when I know I'm about to get out of the tank, I lay face down for as long as I can hold my breath. It feels good on my back). My extremities feel numb, but I manage to flip over. I soon realize I'm paralyzed. I have no control over my legs or arms and worst of all, my face is under water. I begin to panic. A hot rush of survival fear rushes me through my situation. My mouth is muffled by water and my arms can't find their way to bang on the wall for help. I'm going to die. I hold my breath as long as I can until I realize there is no use fighting it anymore. I have to inhale. I choose not to have my life flash before my eyes, since I knew inhaling the super saturated salt water would burn out any sentiment I could gather, so I just decided to go for it. A moment of courage. With all my strength, I take a mighty breath. Farewell.

Woosh. I'm back in my real body, frantically trying to catch my breath and calm my nerves. I knew exactly what had happened, having experienced false awakenings and sleep paralysis before. Never have both happened simultaneously. I was rattled, I still am.

I accepted death. Rather than inhaling the salt water, I took the most refreshing gasp I've ever tasted. It was beautifully humbling experience.

So I've been on a little bit of a dry spell with LD's. Haven't had one in several months.. But last night I decided to set my alarm for 6am and take a vitamin B tablet and go back to bed to see what happened. I had 2 LD's before 7am. They were awesome!

They kind of blended together, as they were back to back with a false awakening in between. The first one I was laying with my ex girlfriend in a tent, and realized, why is it that I'm sleeping with you? I became lucid and somehow got to my dorm building at college fully lucid. I was really excited and sprinted around to try and find someone to talk to. After about 20 seconds or so I found a group of people I recognized and struck up conversation. They were talkative until I brought up the subject of dreaming and the fact they were in my dream. They ignored what I was saying so I tried to prove it to them. I saw a group of girls and told them to get naked and sure enough they did, and my DC's were still quiet.

*False awakening*

Then I was back in the same dorm, and looked for this girl I was seeing in the past and found her. We started kissing and i made the mistake of shutting my dream eyes. When I opened them again I lost my lucidity and was shocked that the blonde hair blue eyed girl was now black, but I wasn't in control anymore so I didn't think anything of it. It didn't strike me as odd that she had a tail either..

It was GREAT to finally break my dry spell, it's been too long. In the meantime, I'm going to keep doing the 6am and vitamin B routine. Dream on.