Last night I had one of the longest LD's most certainly in years. I fell asleep around 1h30am and woke up proximately at 2h15am without any recollection of having any dreams without being at least half-lucid. During that period I putted my best efforts to test dream control, dream exploration, meditation inside a dream, everything I could remember that had been on hold since forever.

There were periods I was almost loosing awareness, where the dreamworld seemed to influence my mindset and play with my emotions (scaring me or infuriating me so much I was afraid my reactions were actually happening to my sleeping body as well, like screaming in my sleep for example). However, I was able to escape those scenarios and hop into different ones, over and over again.

Then it happened. That familiar, extremely painful, shock wave that seems to pierce specific body parts and never fades, no matter what I try to do, no matter how focused I try to be in changing the dream. It's always a sharp electric pain in my sleeping body that pulls me out through exhaustion of not being able to handle it anymore. This time, it was so sever I was wide awake (no sleep paralysis, I checked) and I still felt the muscles numb for some brief seconds. The whole experience drained me and I was only able to type a few paragraphs lazily on the phone before getting back to sleep.

When I'm entering a Lucid Dream, this type of event seems more manageable, it only lasts for so long until I enter the dream... but when I'm inside the dream it doesn't seem to stop, growing worse and worse until I decide to quit and wake up. It's frustrating, leaving me wondering if that didn't happen for how long would I be able to stretch my LD.

Is this type of phenomenon a defense from the body to say that enough is enough? Is there a turn around to at least diminish the painful effects? Curious to see how other dreamers in the community manage this type of situations.