New here - Hello, and question ^^

[owl]

I signed up about a month ago, and have since been reading up on lucid dreaming. I started my dream journal about two weeks ago, and it's been helping quite a bit. I had a mini-lucid dream this morning - it lasted less than a minute, and I ended up being unable to move before I "woke up". As far as I can remember, I've never consciously experienced Sleep Paralysis... does this sound like it could have been SP as I woke up? I guess I'm still not entirely certain what SP is supposed to "feel like". This is the dream from this morning: I wake up, and hear my niece and nephew's voices; they sound like they're coming from downstairs - it sounds like they're laughing/playing. I think to myself, "I just had a dream about a family gathering, and I think they were in it. Then I realize that I should not be hearing their voices in my bedroom, considering they live 30 miles away. It must, then, be a dream! I glance over at my clock, and my suspicion is confirmed. There's an unfamiliar rectangular white clock on the bedside table (analog, but I don't notice the time). I glance at my normal clock and it reads "12:07". It was enough to see the unfamiliar clock to reach the actualization of dreaming, but I checked my regular clock a second time, and there weren't any numbers, just some random red lines. My room otherwise looks pretty normal - my dresser/jewelry box are where they should be (there's no mirror - I check for this, since the mirror was there in my last lucid dream), my blanket is its usual purple/green/beige color. I'm excited and wonder if that will make me wake up sooner, so I remember that I should "ground" myself, so I feel the sheets/blanket. I'm trying to think of what I should do next, but I can't move my blanket. I want to look at my hands to see if they look weird because I'm dreaming, but again, I can't move my blanket. Then I can't move at all, but my mind keeps envisioning throwing my blanket off. Next thing I know, I open my eyes, and the clock reads 9:37. Sorry for the long first non-journal post, and thanks for any thoughts!

[ninja9578]

SP shouldn't feel like anything entering SP can be anything from feeling nothing to feeling like a roller coaster. You probably were paralyzed at the end of your dream because you were waking up and the mind was getting messages from the body and they were conflicting with the ones made by your dream. Real inputs have precedence over dream inputs. Congrats on your lucid, I'm sure that you will have many more, don't worry if the first few are short and boring, they'll get longer and better

[AlexLou]

Were you able to move your head to look at your clock? If you weren't it sounds like SP to me.

[owl]

SP shouldn't feel like anything entering SP can be anything from feeling nothing to feeling like a roller coaster. You probably were paralyzed at the end of your dream because you were waking up and the mind was getting messages from the body and they were conflicting with the ones made by your dream. Real inputs have precedence over dream inputs. Congrats on your lucid, I'm sure that you will have many more, don't worry if the first few are short and boring, they'll get longer and better Hmm, thanks for the reply! Maybe I was taking the paralysis part of SP too literally. I'm still learning all the terms, and this one's new to me. Were you able to move your head to look at your clock? If you weren't it sounds like SP to me. I was thinking it was at the end of the dream, when I stopped being able to move, since I was waking up. I thought I had read somewhere that SP could be experienced at the beginning/end of a dream, since your body is in SP while you're in REM sleep so you don't act out what you're dreaming. But I'm new at this, and wasn't really sure

[ninja9578]

You're not just in SP during REM, you are paralyzed the entire time that you are asleep.

[Vex Kitten]

Ninja speaks the truth. As soon as your body falls asleep it's in SP (whether you feel it's effects or not) It stays in that state until you wake up. I've experienced SP in dream, usually when I WILD and I think almost all instances of it are at the very start of the dream.

[owl]

Thanks Ninja and Vex for your input/information! Looks like I need to read up more on this