Realize I HAD a dream while dreaming

This might sound a little strange but I want to know if it indicates a slight touch of lucidity. For past 2 nights in a row, while I was dreaming I've felt that the earlier part of the same dream was, in fact, a dream. This does not change anything about what I'm currently dreaming(my dream goes on without attaining lucidity) although I'm not sure if I'm thinking like that about the earlier part of the same dream then maybe I'm sort of realizing that the current part is a dream too?

Anyway, I'm not waking up in between the earlier and current part so this isn't really dream continuity.
I am curious about this since it started soon after I started trying some Qigong techniques to activate the pineal gland. I'd love some opinions, please.

Yeah this is odd..

I had something similar happen a few weeks ago.
Pretty crazy dream, in which I saw my grandpa who recently passed away and he spoke to me. I then woke up and realized I was laying on my couch, my dad was doing something to the TV and I began To tell him what I saw in my dream, only as I began explaining it my grandpa appeared next to me on the couch. I thought I was truly awake, but still seeing things from my dream. I shook my head and I told my dad how I was still dreaming

A few minutes later I finally woke up(for real this time) and I was in my bed.

I've never had a dream aside from this one which I straight up woke up from a dream but I was still dreaming.
Very surreal

Sounds similar but more like you had one dream followed by a False Awakening which was connected to your previous dream. The two dreams I've had have been one continuous dream without any FAs. Nothing to do but wait and see, I guess, but I wanted to know if it was any level of lucidity since I was thinking I HAD a dream while I was dreaming....past tense...not I AM dreaming.

I've actually had this happen a couple times in the past few days and I think it's a good sign of getting close. I'll have something happen in the dream and then later on in it I'll be thinking back on the event and say to myself "Well that was a dream so it doesn't matter". One of the times when that happened I actually took a split second to think about that thought like "Wait...what?" but didn't continue with it enough to become lucid in the moment. I think my brain is starting to learn to differentiate the feeling of dreaming and waking more easily even though it may not be right in the moment.

Yeah, that's closer to what I experienced. I'll be dreaming and remember something that happened earlier in the dream and think "I was dreaming that....". Here's hoping this leads somewhere!