why do lucid dreamrs seem to have more FAs than most people?

i definitely agree with your claim. when you are attempting to ld, you start playing around with advanced concepts so to speak and i think, at least at first, there is sometime some internal resistance. i think an important question is ‘why do false awakenings occur?’ whether it’s answered from a psychological, evolutionary, spiritual perspective, or whatever.

I don’t know why FA occur but maybe normal dreamers and lucid dreamers have by some average the same number of FA’s. But we as LD-ers we remember our dreams very well so maybe we have just a better recall of FA. Because at the beginning I also couldn’t remember many dreams… So this is just mine opinion… maybe I’m wrong… :tongue:

Maybe a FA is a “defense mechanicism” from our mind or body. LD’ing is not “normal” and maybe our body tries to reject and block your attempts by using FAs?

Very interesting points, and I have a theory myself which popped into my head whilst I was actually having an FA.

I tend to have FAs before I wake up (if I have one at all), perhaps after a dream (LD or ND), and I have the idea that my subconscious hasn’t yet pulled my body out of SP for me to wake up. So it dumps be in an FA until it has done so (I am infact paralysed in my FAs, in a sense).
As I said, this idea popped into my head one time when I was lying in an FA.

That does make some sense, HandTrick. I can remember FAs though while I wasn’t aiming for LDs (or maybe it was during that time, but I think it’s about half and half so far, depending on how often I LD) and yes, I have found that it can be VERY hard to move in an FA. For example… I remember when I was in naps and I’d have an FA of my radio playing loudly or something and I knew it was later than it should be and I would try to get up or turn off my radio but I couldn’t move to do it.

But yes, another reason for FAs being more frequent while focusing on LDing could be that so many times we have an LD and feel as if we’re going to wake up; so when one ends, sometimes we might assume we’re waking up when we’re not and so we go into an FA.

I find it intriguing how you also find difficulty to move in FAs.
When I say “In a sense” I mean that in respect I have 2 bodies in my FAs.

I have the one that I can physically see in the dream, and then there’s one that I can feel myself moving. For instance, I could lift my arm up and out of bed, I would be able to feel this, yet when I look at the arm that should be lifting, there is nothing. The only thing I seem to be able to move is my eyes.

I can’t remember any FA’s before I started to LD and my dream recall wasn’t bad, so I should have noticed them if I regularly had them in the past.
I’m not so sure it’s sleep paralysis related. Personally, I’ve never noticed any form of SP at all. Even during a WILD I completely skip the SP part and during all FA’s I can move normally. The transition between sleeping, waking and being able to move is totally not noticeable for me. I can’t even be 100% sure if I actually get paralyzed during sleep, because I often seem to act on dream situations by sleep walking.

Example:
Just 2 weeks ago I had a FA in my bedroom. There were family members in my bedrooms…I got out of bed, I see them leave the room and I realize I must be dreaming, because my family doesn’t live in my house. So I am standing at the bedroom door and do about 10 RC’s, because I knew 100% sure I must be dreaming…I wasn’t and was completely awake standing at the door.

To me it feels more like my SC is trying to kick you out of a LD by tricking you with FA’s.

I would have to side with the “better recall” theory here. It seems to be a cliche to people I talk to that false awakenings occur, even among people who have no interest in lucid dreaming at all. They aren’t always paired concepts, so, I assume that when people only remember one dream per night, when they actually had several, there may have been some false awakenings in there that they were unaware of once conscious.

I doubt that non-lucid dreamers have less FA’s than lucid dreamers, they probably have the same amount, but they either don’t talk about them as much or don’t remember as many. Keep in mind, people who practice lucid dreaming also practice dream recall.

It is completely obvious that nonlucid dreams quite never contain false awakenings while lucid dreams very often have them. You just have to read back your DJ, if you have one. By the way, this has been observed from a long time, and LaBerge has even written some pages somewhere about the fact he got many FA’s the first years when he practiced intensively LD’ing, then they progressively disappeared.

I’m unsure it’s due to some “resistance” or other psychological stuff. Sudden dreamscape changes often result in finding oneself in his bed or bedroom. For instance, LaBerge himself - once again - noticed that when you spin - and when spinning causes teleporting - you generally teleport in your bedroom.

Then of course, when you dream you’re in your bed, it’s likely that you make a false awakening.

So it’s also possible that FA are due to sudden dreamscape changes that are managed differently in LD’s and in ND’s. In ND’s, due to your non critical mindset, you don’t notice anything and a sort of continuity is created. In LD’s, you’re more aware of your environment so you notice a change. And without a lot of experience of LD’ing, you may believe that it’s due to your awakening thus recreate your bedroom.

Interesting fact, however according to each technique you use, you are most likely to get FA’s or not.

When you are new to LD’s you get more FA’s because it is hard to master how to keep inside the dream without fading out.

However, I’ve got many ND FA’s, having noticed it as false after awaking up for real, before trying LD inducement techniques, maybe because I had many natural LD’s earlier.

So, my (silly) question is: “Someone that have never tried or had an LD can identify having a FA?”, probably yes, I suppose.

Interesting. Could you precise your idea?

Errr… If you are in a ND, that is you don’t know you’re sleeping, how can you believe that you wake up? :confused: (I’m sorry but I’ve not maintained a DJ for a long time :shy:, so that I can’t remember yet an example of such a ND FA. :neutral:)

Well… maybe it is specific to me but… when using WILD you get inside dream awake and it is not common to get a FA, only if your dream fades.
When I use MILD, I’m used to wake up inside a dream and then detect it as a dream after.
When I use DILD, the chances of fading out and getting a FA is quite high once I detect it as a dream.

After I wake up I can recall the awakening occurrence and then notice if it actually happened. For instance, if I’ve done something inside the FA, I can later search for it to see if it were real, or maybe, clock time mismatches: getting a FA where the time is later than IRL…
I agree that is hard to be sure if a ND FA actually happened (if you don’t have a proof), but I am sure that many happened.

(I hope having answered your question.)

For me that’s easy…FA’s usually occur in my old bedroom. :tongue:

the answer is in your statement… a FA is dreaming that you awake…so if you have a FA then you believe you woke up. if you truly awake after this, and your recall is good, you can distinguish the different levels of your dream. I have had plenty of ND FAs. both ND and LD FAs are the same. in both you believe that you are awake and were previously dreaming. the only difference with a ND FA is that you believe you were unconscious of this dream

This is an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve talked to enough people about FAs to have any idea whether LDers have more of them or not, but if it is true, I wonder if maybe we’ve become aware enough of our dreams that we subconsciously add in things to make the continuity a little more easy to believe. Like instead of “I was walking down the road with my dog and then SUDDENLY AND INEXPLICABLY I was in Florida riding a camel” it’d be “I was walking down the road, then I woke up and remembered that I was actually in Florida.”

But this is just an idea, and I wouldn’t even say I believe it myself. It’d be interesting, though.

I’m not sure if I’ve noticed any major difference. It may be because you pay more attention to your dreams now and before when you got an FA you wouldnt think about. I think I’ve had a few FA’s before i started lucid dreaming.

Sometimes I change the position of my bed,
this way, in FA’s, most of times I awake on my bed in another position than IRL.

I used to write down when awakening so I could count how many of them were real.

You’re perfectly right. I was certainly not very well awake yesterday cause I can’t understand how I forgot some impressive ND FA’s I have had… and which are even very briefly related in the second post of my old dream diary! :bored:

They didn’t happen exactly how you describe it cause I didn’t remember a previous dream: I just believed I was awoken by my girlfriend moving in the bed… and when opening my eyes, there was someone else standing in the bedroom. It was surprising enough to make me wake up for true. These FA’s were a bit special, they looked almost like a LD cause my consciousness was very clear (with the big difference though that I didn’t know I was dreaming).

This happened before I knew anything about LD’ing, so it can’t be related to practicing it.

And there are also some more “normal” sorts of FA’s when, after being awaken by your alarm, you fall asleep again and believe you put on your clothes to go to work. This may happen to everybody who doesn’t practice LD’ing.

Now, about the classical FA which consists in writing down his dream (thus is obviously related to the remembering dreams practice), I can’t remember if it may happen after something else than a LD… :shy:

But if you consider the impressive amount of FA’s that you can find in LD’ers DJ’s, it is far more important than these ND FA’s, IMO.

I think this answers my earlier question! Thank you!

Quite revolting huh? I have got many of these. What about having to rewrite everything? But I’m getting off topic…