Hello!

I have had a funny experience this night. After sleeping for 6 hours and being awake for 1, I went to bed, counting "1, I'm dreaming, 2, I'm dreaming" etc. After some time, I did start dreaming, anyway, this imagination had all the characteristics of a dream that I'd normally have. But I was also still aware of lying on my bed, and that I could just open my eyes. It was like a very vivid imagination: I was watching myself running through the woods, feeling the excitement, the strain in my arms as I pulled myself up somewhere, but at the same time I knew that if I now tried to interfere, tried to lift my arm, my body in my bed would have lifted an arm and I would have woken up. It was a bit like watching a movie, feeling what the main character feels, but not being able to do anything.

Then, at some point, this, I'll call it dream, started really pulling at me and I felt as if I could continue "watching" it and become one with it, but at the same time forget that it's just a dream. So i reminded myself of what number I'd stopped counting at and went on counting, just to keep my consciousness awake. And as I did that, the dream became some other dream (which eventually scared me so much that I did open my eyes and I woke up).

Now my question is: Was that actually a dream in which I could have become lucid? And if so, is there any "softer" technique than counting that I could have employed to fully enter this dream without loosing my consciuosness of it being a dream, thus having a lucid dream?

Thanks a lot in advance,
-grayFalcon