awake and dreaming

whoa, weiredest thing yet happened last night. i was dreaming this long vivid dream.. (It was how the story of Halo 2 SHOULD have happened) and anyway, i became lucid. (not sure how, the dream was getting fuzzy at this point). and it occured to me, to wonder what my body was doing right now. then, next thing I know I'm sort of awake... i can't open my eyes, or hear anything, but i can feel my body moving when i want it to. It's a really weird sensation, like when a limb is numb and tingly (from lack of circulation) and it "doesn't quite move right", you know? just sorta flailing around half-limp. eventually i decided it was sorta lame, so i switched back to the dream. but.. it didn't go back quite right. it was like... i was half in the dream and half awake. my eyes opened (my real eyes) and i could see now.. and when i moved in the dream i was moving around in real life too (though in real life it was more flailing, since my limbs were still numb and tingly) and i'm like OH NO! I can't finish this dream! i'm gonna flail around and hurt myself in real life! so i woke myself up.

anyone else ever had something like this?

Yes, I am almost always sort of half-awake in my lucid dreams. Unless I have a really intense natural one (which only happens about once a month), I can sort of feel myself in both the dream world and the real world. I don't actually move myself, but I can feel and hear everything in my bedroom. If my cat knocks something over, I usually hear it as if it happened in the dream.

I think this occurs because, by lucid dreaming, we somehow bridge the gap between our conscious and subconscious, and so our conscious mind can read our dreams. But if the conscious mind is active enough, it can multi-task and read both the dream and the real world.