What happened to me?? Dream? Dream within dream?

**skywalkerluk** · 01-11-2013 01:08 AM

Hello everyone.

I would just like a share this weird experience of mine today.

I was napping on a comfy sofa this afternoon. (Apparently I did not get enough sleep previous night.)
Very soon after, I repeatedly dreamed that I woke up and wanted to get up (don't wanna sleep anymore, wasting my daytime), and I have actually counted exactly 11 tries of "getting up". (I got up for real on the 12th try.)
For each try, I kept trying to get out of the sofa, with various difficulty, sometimes even with hallucinations that my mom has come back home (she was out, and in reality did not come back until after I really woke up).
Between each dream,and especially towards the end, I believe I was feeling the real world (but it could be my dream of the real world; it's identical, nothing weird).
I could hear everything going on around (either real world or dream, but either way, realistic). I could fully control my breathing (having a tiny bit difficulty breathing due to nose congestion), and tried to breath deeply several times). However, I want to, but cannot get myself to, open my eyes and move my body/limbs (I've heard of sleep paralysis during REM, but not sure if that was it given the actual time that I slept for). That is, of course, until the "12th try", when I actually tried to get up and succeeded, and sort of tested myself whether I was in reality.

The whole process was less than an hour for sure.

I believe this is lucid dreaming because I knew all along I was dreaming (in and out of dream). My main battle was about not hallucinating and to actually get up. But it also felt like dream within dream, and it went as deep as the 11th layer. (I woke up 11 times.)

Has anyone had any similar experience? I do apologize for such a long post..

**paigeyemps** · 01-11-2013 03:26 AM

Hi skywalkerluk, it looks like you had a bunch of false awakenings (you think you woke up but it's actually just another dream). And oh wow, 11 times! I'm not sure if you were experiencing some kind of sleep paralysis though, or if the heavy feeling and difficulty were just part if the dream itself. I do know that sometimes I have false awakenings where I can't seem to move.

Maybe next time you realize you are dreaming and can't get up, you can try to sink into your bed/sofa instead?

You can use that to teleport to somewhere else and get rid of the getting up problem.

Or if you're talking about getting up as in waking up for real..hmmm I actually don't have any remedies for that except to wait it out, and just enjoy being lucid! You can try closing your eyes real hard and think about waking up, I've heard many people tend to wake up when they do that in dreams.

Hope this helps! Welcome to DreamViews

**Scionox** · 01-11-2013 03:28 AM

Yo. Congrats on lucid dreams.

What you have experienced is called false awakening, it's when you dream that you have awakened somewhere, often wherever you fallen asleep at, happens quite often when lucid dreaming, especially if WILDing .

It's quite normal and many people who are into lucid dreaming have experienced it, that's why doing reality check when waking up every time is important.
Almost every of my lucid dreams started as false awakening, and once i had 5 of them in a row.

**sloth** · 01-11-2013 07:12 AM

I have experienced this, but purposefully. I have triggered false awakenings like this to trigger lucid dreams. I did this at work years ago. I had some time to kill, so I layed my head on the table, and just concentrated on getting up. I got up, inside a dreamstate, and walked down the stairs, and then to different places. I did this at least a dozen times. Each time would last about three or four minutes, and then I would come back and check on my computer reformats that I was performing. This was a good way to kill time.

**skywalkerluk** · 01-11-2013 11:37 AM

Wow, thank you so much for all your replies!!
It seems what happened to me has happened to many people! That certainly makes me much more relieved! And I actually searched up "false awakening" in Wikipedia. This makes me even more positive that false awakening was what happened to me, and it's even been researched in depth by psychologists!
What I don't get now is how I entered the dream state (REM) in such a short time (probably around 30 minutes). I have learned that REM sleep usually occurs past 1 hour into the sleep cycle.(The sleep paralysis confirms myself in the REM stage.)

**paigeyemps** · 01-11-2013 03:46 PM

You did mention that you didn't have any sleep the previous night, right? You could've had some REM rebound. Basically your REM gets pushed earlier since you haven't had it for a while because of sleep deprivation. That could be why you had it early on

**Darkmatters** · 01-11-2013 04:44 PM

You also were napping - that means you were still running on last night's REM cycle. Naps are the best time for lucid dreams, because you don't have to wait 90 minutes for your first REM cycle, you can drop directly into it. The REM cycle doesn't reset until you've been awake for several hours (not sure quite how long, I think it's like 6 or 7 hours?)