Spinning makes me wake up

[Namwan]

Last night I had the longest lucid dream I have ever had. At one point I wanted to change the scenery. I've never tried doing it before, but I read somewhere that I could try spinning. Every single time I did that I woke up. I am around one meter in the air above my bed and I slowly come down. And then I fall asleep again and I'm back in the same dream, and it goes on and on like this. Isn't spinning supposed to prolong dreams? And do you think they were false awakenings?

[Arch]

Depends, to me there are two types of spinning. A first timers approach to spinning will usually be when the dream is unstable or attempting to change the scenery. For example when I started out if the dream was unstable my first intention was to spin really fast and close my eyes. This caused me to lose my grip on the dream and wake up. But if you make the action of spinning much more slow and... relaxing it tends to help the shift over to a new scenery or stabilisation. It's quite hard to describe and my experiences may be different to yours, just make sure you are doing it calmly and controlled. Oh and the slowly hovering down was probably just your minds way of telling you that you were 'returning to real life'.

[Patrick]

Everyone's different, spinning just doesn't work for some people. I'm the same; whenever I spin, the feeling of movement just wakes me up. Just try using some other techniques, like closing your eyes and opening them to a new scene. Or maybe summoning a portal which you can step through to another scene. Something like that. As for false awakenings, that's probably what you're experiencing if you wake up above your bed And as for prolonging dreams, again different for everyone but play around with a few things other than spinning, like rubbing your hands or just staying still, calming down and focussing on the details of your surroundings.

[mcwillis]

Wakes me up too so I don't use spinning anymore. Found it really cumbersome too.

[The Cusp]

When spinning does work, it's because of the feeling of movement that solidifies your dream body and your surroundings. Everything requires your attention to exist in dreams, and it is a good way to stabilize your body because the movement forces you to interact with your environment.. But when spinning fails, it's because you become too disoriented to focus on your surroundings. Again, everything requires your attention to exist in dreams, so if you spin yourself dizzy, you can't focus on anything and without that focus to sustain the dream, it falls apart. You can use spinning, just don't spin so much that you disorient yourself. But really, since it's the feeling of movement that's important, you could go with running or jumping or flying, which won't disorient you at all and are generally much more reliable.

[Namwan]

Yes, I think that's why. I spinned too fast. But I wasn't spinning to prolong the dream though, I just wanted to change my surroundings/go to another place.

[The Cusp]

Well then you might want to try doorways or portals. You could maybe try not spinning as hard with your eyes closed, just a quick little whirl.

[Namwan]

Last night I had a lucid dream again. It was a bad one...not vivid at all and I couldn't control things, so I tried to spin very very fast with my eyes closed to wake myself up. Nothing happened at all.