Lucid Dreaming and Sleep Paralysis

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Up until last night I had never become lucid in a dream without immediately waking up.

Last night was the first time I was fully lucid in a dream, without waking up right away. It kinda was a nightmare though and I couldn’t really change things in there, so I deliberately woke myself up.

To find that when I wake myself up from a lucid dream, I have sleep paralysis. Which I also hadn’t experienced before, and which pretty much sucks. And I kept falling asleep again before the sleep paralysis could wear off, and returning to the same crappy dream, and promptly waking up again in paralysis, and so on and so forth.

And the worst part was that I felt as if someone was pressing their hand on my mouth and nose so that I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I could breathe, but not deeply.

And it was a bit scary because I couldn’t see anyone actually there so I didn’t know if someone (or something) was doing that to me or if it was part of the whole sleep paralysis experience.

After the third or fourth time I woke up like that one of my spirits came to my rescue, reassuring me that there’s no one else there trying to choke me and that if I remain calm I’ll be able to breathe normally and the paralysis will wear off, together with the pressure on my nose and mouth.

Now I don’t know if I want to experience that again. And the funny part is, I woke up and fell asleep so many times -and I slept for so long after all that- that I don’t even remember what the crappy dream was all about!

In this case, I managed to become lucid by doing reality checks to see if I’m dreaming throughout the day for a couple of days. It seems too soon for it to have worked (considering I’ve tried the same method in the past without success), but it somehow did.

What methods do you use to achieve lucidity in dreams? Do you experience sleep paralysis when you wake up from lucid dreams? Let me know in the comments!