Was I Lucid?

Hey everyone,

I've been consciously focused everyday to induce lucidity for the past month by reading books on the subject, applying the techniques and also self hypnosis.

Last night, I went to bed at around 23.30. I was saying suggestions in my mind such as "tonight in my dreams, I will realise I'm dreaming," I kept saying it until I drifted off to sleep. Then, next conscious moment, I was all of a sudden in my car with my wife and daughter sitting in the back seat. The car suddenly powered off and I couldn't start it (battery flat), from what I can remember the scene outside looking through the car windows appeared to be pitch black. I thought "hold on, this is a dream," so I looked at my hands and I remember being told by a Lucid dream expert to pull one of my fingers, so I pulled my index finger and it stretched!! Then, I thought, stay calm, by saying “you're lucid dreaming” every 10-20 seconds to stabilise lucidity. So, I decided to get out of the car, opened the door, yet, the area was pitch black (weird). I was a little overwhelmed, excited and woke up! The time was around 12 midnight.

As I type this, I’m confused, was this a lucid dream? I didn’t even reach the REM stage.

This sounds like a genuine lucid experience. I think you said you had a lucid experience when you were younger, you could try thinking back on how that felt, if the memory is still there? In any case, uncontrolled excitement is a common element to someone's first few lucids, I don't know the reason for it though presumably to do with the vast amount of potential with regards to choices and decisions; you did well with trying to calm yourself. I've had the same happen in some of my older lucids, where I did try to calm myself and ended up waking up anyway from excitement. You did reality checks and tried to stabilise things, so it sounds good to me. :cooler:

For most intents and purposes, you can ignore sleep phases. When I was a kid, I had pre-sleep lucid dreaming experiences; there was no way I was in a "REM" phase at that point and the experience was identical to lucid dreams I've had in my adult years. Most people assume that you only dream during REM, you can still dream even outside of REM phases, it's just that we're more likely to recall dreaming from the REM periods, since the brain is naturally "more awake", so to speak. Besides, dream-like experiences can be induced even while awake, so the word "dream" is a tiny bit relative to semantics, to some extent.

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I still do recall that first LD I had back in my 20s, a dream figure approached me in a bar setting and told me I was dreaming and triggered lucidity at that point. I felt amazing and euphoric the next few days in waking life. Yes, I think the reason people wake up from excitement is the notion that layers of our limitation have been stripped away and we're in a realm where ANYTHING is possible, it can get overwhelming.

Regarding sleep phases, what you wrote makes sense. Has there been reports from people inducing LD during daytime naps?

Yes, and you'll probably find some reports from people about here on Dreamviews too. I might be misremembering but I think LaBerge does mention something about it in his EWOLD. I'll have to look back through it and see if my memory is correct on that...

Personally, I've had a couple of loosely lucid experiences that I can recall from daytime snoozes, though I usually don't nap anyway because I generally don't get along with them. :P So my personal experience with dreaming from naps in general is limited anyway.

Yes you went lucid