Maybe this is not new to you, but Tel'aran'rhoid is very close to lucid dreaming. And lucid dreaming's a real thing. I've known some of it but the friend that told me about it could do many more things, like controlling the dreams anyway he liked, and the dreams felt very real. After a few books, I've started to see the resemblance. Egwene either mentioned some or did some of those. Either RJ could do it himself or he did a very good research on it. Except for the fact that injuries and compulsion in TAR are carried over to waking, and that TAR is another reality, almost everything is the same.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

 

dream-initiated lucid dream = dream first then drift there

wake-initiated lucid dream = waking trance she did on horse back to communicate

mnemonic initiated lucid dream = focus on reaching it right away before sleeping

 

Edit: And focus on remembering them afterwards was the first few suggested practice I recieved back then. Egwene does that too, of course.

I remember when I was younger I had lucid dreams all the time. It makes me sort of sad I haven't in a few years, they were always fun.  :'(

Really? Hard as I tried, I didn't go beyond the initial stage of remembering and mildly aware of myself via mnemotic-induced lucid dream. O_O; It kept me tired without full sleep. (Like the TAR) I'm a bit jealous that you could do it without even trying. But maybe not the lack of sleep. Did you remember what trigger your LD and caused it?

Hmm...didn't realize. I did this on accident. A few of us were exercising in the mornings but we kept falling asleep during stretching so the guys in our pad would try and remember their dreams from the night before and we'd share them to help keep us awake. Ended up after a while that we decided to try controlling our dreams. (One of my friends had never had a flying dream before so we were determined to let him experience how amazing of a feeling flying in dreams was) and for myself (another tangent) we had gotten together and asked one of those random stupid questions...if you could be a superhero (or villain) what would your powers be? I ended up trying to dream myself into a superhero battle between the four of us and ended up in the lucid dream. Woke myself up not too far into the dream though because I was so excited about having finally controlled my dream. Haven't tried it since...but concentrating on wanting that one specific dream for a while before helped me to have it.

Oh, that's cool. I'm not sure I'd want to experience the lack of sleep afterwards though. Maybe I'm not doing that anytime soon. Lack of sleep and waking trance at work may prove fatal in many senses.

One way I remember is when you wake up in the morning and are still really sleepy or are about to fall asleep so you are sort of slipping in an out of sleep and the dreams start rolling (like I swear I've had like 5 different dreams in 30 seconds when I've felt drowsy like that before). So yeah, it is sort of like being awake and asleep at the same time.

I think yours is wake-back-to-bed technique.