Lucid Dreaming - False Awakening

Hi everyone! Sleep well?


Last time, I talked about some ways to fly in lucid dreams. Today, I'm going to talk a bit about a common and fairly annoying phenomenon that lucid dreamers often encounter: False Awakenings. (FA for short)

A false awakening is when you dream that you have woken up. You act pretty much exactly as you normally do when waking up in the morning, and usually it feels so convincing that you don't question it at all. Then, suddenly, you wake up for real and realise it was all just a dream. This can be very frustrating. It has happened to me a number of times, usually after an LD, and it is just as annoying every time.

So how do you avoid them? Well, I would rather want to answer the question: "How do you take advantage of them?" In a few of the FA's I have had, something was a little bit off. In on of them, a friend of mine was in the room with me when I woke up, and the bedside lamp would not turn on when I flipped the light switch. (A common occurrence in dreams, by the way.) Feeling that something was off, but not really questioning it, I just went with it until I woke up. Now, had I done a reality check right then and there, I would have realised I was still dreaming and could have enjoyed some more lucid adventures.

I can't really tell you how to avoid FA's, but I can give you this advice: Always do a reality check right when you wake up. Once you are really sure whether or not you are awake, you can go on with whatever it is you usually do in the morning. (Or dream some more, depending on what the outcome of the RC was, of course.)
If you always do an RC in the morning, your chances of taking advantage of any false awakenings you might have and turn them into lucid dreams greatly increases.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Until next time, sweet dreams!