Thread: First attempt at lucid dreaming

Last night I rediscovered this subject (I knew a little about lucid dreaming before) and did a lot of reading and watching youtube video's. One technique caught my interest, since it seemed very easy to do while giving immediate results. It was called FILD, where you wake up in your REM phase and try to get your body to fall back asleep with your mind still awake.

So last night I tried this technique, without any prior lucid dreaming experience. Went to bed at 5:15 AM (yes terrible sleeping schedule) and woke up at 10 AM. I'm always really drowsy when I wake up, but I somehow remembered why I was awake.

I was lying face down and after disabling my alarm I was too tired and drowsy to roll around on my back, so I just started the finger technique with my fingers in the air. I think it took me 3-5 seconds before I started seeing vague images and hearing sounds.

I then saw a huge yellow perfect-shaped arrow in front of me, and after waiting for a bit I remembered reading about how you need to "try and step into images" when nothing happens. So I tried really hard to move into it, I even vaguely remember trying the nose breathing RC somewhere (but can't remember the outcome) and kept telling myself I had to get in that arrow to start my lucid dream.

The very next moment I'm wide awake in my bed and can't move my body. Since I never got SP before I'm panicking and start screaming on the top of my lungs, and my mother runs into my room very worried. The end.

After sleeping some more dreamless hours and waking up, the first thing I did was walk up to my mom and ask her if I woke up screaming. She said she didn't know what i'm talking about, so the last part didn't actually happen.

I'm pretty confused now what actually happened. Was I on the edge of lucid dreaming? Or was I just having a "normal" dream where my mind processed all the information I read the night before?