[nautilus12]

Ive noticed that my lucid dreams correlate very heavily with sleep paralysis and while lucid dreaming is fun the risk of sleep paralysis, which is like my worst nightmare is almost too great. I have a technique for getting out of sleep paralysis where I kind of metnally think of jiggling my head on my neck very rapidly but sometimes i keep falling back into paralysis so the whole experience is really uncomfortable. As a result I think when i lucid dream i get kind of amped up and wake myself up or ill remain in the dream but the quality is really low, eventually I realize im just laying awake with my eyes closed for many hours and get horrible sleep. Any tips on not waking yourself up specifically? Am i lucid dreaming in the wrong stage of sleep or something?

[bloomthrowaway]

I think staying asleep is just experience. I remember my lucid dreams when I was really young were rarely longer than a few minutes. Sometimes seconds. Its really all about staying calm from what I've learned. And trying not to focus too much. If you put too much effort into control it seems to increase awareness to a point where you wake.

All conjecture of course because we know startling little about how dreams work :)