in dreams, body refusing to function, etc

I've had this problem many many times, started probably before I can even remember. Sometimes when I dream I don't seem to have full control over my body, or objects that SHOULd be under my control.

Say it suddenly becomes important that I run away from something, or I get into a fight, sometimes parts of my body, or all of it will become really hard to use. It will feel heavy, numb, dysfunctional. Often I'm unable to run, I even start to float so I have no traction on the ground, so I have to WILL myself to move in the direction I want to go.

And in one particular recurring dream- I'm running down my hallway in my house towards my room with some sort of evil entity chasing me with who knows what in store for me, as I'm running down the hall I start to lose control of my body and I slow down, feel quite lame, but when I finally manage to force myself to my door, I get inside my room and try to close the door. THEN once the door should be closing and I should be safe, the door warps, changes shape, and will no longer close in the doorframe.

In the 2 or 3 real lucid's I've had I haven't yet gotten into any situations that I would expect to trigger that. But in some of the lucids where I was aware I was dreaming, but not in full control it still has happened.

Anyone else have this, or been able to overcome it?

I used to really stuggle with the problem you described. How I hated those dreams of running away and not being able to will my legs to move! Or I'd try to yell, and nothing would come out. So frusterating!

I almost never have this happen to me anymore. I made it get better by doing a few things.

1. I turned around and conftonted what/whoever was chasing me. I asked them why they were chasing me and told them to stop. I did this over and over, until I no longer felt afraid during these dreams.

2. I got more exercize and better sleep. This helped the feelings of sluggishness in my dreams.

3. I talked to someone about the waking life problems I thought were the cause of the bad dreams.

4. I seriously persued lucid dreaming -- getting lucid as often as possible, and as "clear headed" as possible.

I know that this is often a complex issue and can be hard to deal with. Often there is no "quick" fix. If you want to talk more about how I got past this kind of dream you can PM me anytime.

I've had similar problems. In some dreams I just can't seem to move my legs as fast as I should be able to move them. Once I noticed this and realized I was dreaming, so I dropped the DC I was holding and flew away. I haven't had it happen in a lucid dream. But it is quite annoying to try to do something you have no problem with in waking life, but be completely incompetent while dreaming. Trying to scream and not being able to make a sound also used to happen to me. It hasn't happened since I stopped having nightmares though.