shaking / lucid dreaming

[thedeepsleep]

I woke up this morning and, as I often do, decided to go back to sleep. When I closed my eyes, though, I began to have very vivid imagery that started out as very small and then expanded to take up my entire field of vision. At the beginning there was a low ringing in my ears, and then I entered a dream that was like a car racing game, in which I was the car racing through a city. I'm pretty sure I was awake throughout the entire thing. I've had dreams like this before, but the part that troubles me is I remember shaking in my bed (mostly my arms) and I was unable to just wake myself up. (I finally managed to kind of shake out of it, so to speak) but when I opened my eyes again some small visuals remained for a few seconds.

This is the first time anything like this has happened, although there have been a few occasions where just before I fall asleep I feel a sensation down my spine and cannot move for a few seconds. Any thoughts?

[TimidArdent]

It seems that I am many months too late on a reply, but maybe if for some reason you came back, at least you would have an idea of what was going on. I believe you were experiencing sleep paralysis with the shaking. Basically, when you sleep your mind paralyzes your body so you don't move around when you are dreaming or else you could hurt yourself! :O I'm guessing since you were slightly awake you were able to notice that sleep paralysis was in effect but tried to shake out of it. This has happened to me a bunch of times before to, pretty much exactly how you described it.