A mixture between LD and imagination

Sup. This morning I had an intriguing experience. I don't think I have seen or heard anyone talk about an experience like this before, so that made it even more intriguing.

I woke up and found myself at a state of unusually deep relaxation. My body was very warm and I felt a little numb. I could have WILDed but I didn't feel up to it, so instead I just closed my eyes and started imagining stuff, as I oftentimes do.

The weird thing is, my cousins who I was imagining started to do things without me "ordering" them, like in a dream. There was a CS map being played and it too was carefully oriented - without my intellectual approval beforehand. This all would have been understandable if it had been a dream, but it wasn't. I had just closed my eyes, and even though I was in a state slightly more relaxed than I usually am when I am imagining, I could have opened my eyes anytime. As the dream/imagination progressed I even had some conversation with one of my cousins (his words being made up by my subconscious) and he talked something about being a dream character.

I'm not an expert in lucid dreaming. I have had many short LDs but I'm not too skilled in the process. Still I'm fairly confident when I say that this wasn't one (although close to one). What do you think?

Welcome to Dreamviews. :)

That sounds exactly like hypnogogic hallucinations. These are the beginnings of dreams - sometimes they are just shapes or colors. They usually evolve into pictures, and sometimes short scenes. Since hypogogic hallucinations occur during sleep paralysis, that would explain the warm, numb feeling.

If you actively try to create a dream, where you are fully lucid, your surroundings feel real, etc. from these hallucinations you usually can.

Feel free to ask if I was unclear or you have any questions.

Welcome to DV,

That is a good ability to have when you work on WILD, is the ability to recreate senses like sight, I myself have these kinds of experiences all the time, the technique is known as DEILD (Dream re-Entry Introduced Lucid Dream) in where you wake up and do not move, I most often use tactile sensations (touch) but I want to try experimenting with visualisation, before I enter an LD if I can do it tonight.

this happens to me a lot. usually I just find it annoying because it's like being in a dream in which I can't become lucid. Well, at least it wouldn't be a real lucid dream if it's just borderline on imagining things. I know what you mean though, it was kind of weird at first but i've gotten used to it. i never noticed it until I heard about LDing because I never really payed much attention to my dreams until then. I guess it could work to my advantage if I was patient enough to try to fall alseep and let it become a dream, but it usually happens in the morning when I have to wake up anyway

Thanks for the warm welcome and information :). I feel a little stupid now, seeing that this is not an uncommon phenomenon. Nonetheless I'm glad I can put a name on the experience now. And to clear things up, I was lucid whilst in this stage, it wasnt't the basic kind of hypnagogic hallucinations with patterns or random situations, this one had a continuity to it plus the lucidity.

I'm gonna experiment more with DEILDs. The problem I've had is I'm too tired in mornings to WILD or try anything interesting. Through this visualization aspect it could work better, as it came naturally to me one time already.