Last night I was dreaming and decided to do a reality check. So I pinched my nose and tried to breath. So far so good.
However, I didn’t pinch my nose in my dream but in waking life. The RC had clearly woken me up. Shit happens. The stupid thing was that within a minute I slept again just continued with the same dream. It sure felt really stupid to not get lucid while being so close two times in just 1 minute.
Any ideas of how I can prevent such mistakes?
(I’ve tried some WBTB/WILD stuff, but those things don’t seem to work for me, because I either blackout or can count for hours a still staying awake)
You were dreaming, did a RC and then you did one IRL and woke up? Clearly you werent dreaming if you did a RC in real life. If anything you probably woke up after realizing you were dreaming, or something along the lines. Here’s a good trick if you’re falling back asleep.
When you go back to sleep, don’t move. But be aware of your body. After a little while, you can count during this period if you like or not, try to move your arm or something. You’ll know if you’re awake or not because once you try to move something will trigger in your brain and you’ll not want to move in case that you wake yourself up. Move SLIGHTLY, one of your hands or arms. I found that if you are dreaming, you wont have that feeling that you’re awake (durrr XP) and you’ll just continue to move. At this point you should be in a dream and be able to move around. If not, like myself, I say “Increase lucidity” and everything became clear for me. I got up, did some RCs and off I was to dream. It’s painfully obvious if you’re dreaming or not. I mean, I know some people will false awaken and then dream that they’re going to work. You can mistake a dream for real life because that’s how it is, but I could never say you can mistake real life for a dream XD
Give it a shot. Just don’t fall asleep, you want to slip into a dream and be aware of your body as you do it.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll try that arm technique, but so far I just don’t fall asleep when being aware of my body (or just blackout as soon as my thoughts drift off).
What I don’t understand is, why couldn’t I have been dreaming? I did do the RC twice in bed and I clearly was awake, but did remember what I was doing just seconds before. I never notice anything in between dreaming and waking life (besides some fading sometimes). I never felt paralyzed either. I’m very often busy doing stuff in a dream, wake up and continue doing it in waking life without noticing I’m already awake. I’m literally doing the craziest stuff in my bed room when waking until I wonder “why the hell am I holding up the curtains, looking under my bed, etc etc?”. Maybe I just exit REM sleep and sleep paralyses in a split second?