When you dream, your limbs are immobilised. This is why you often feel like they are tangled or caught.

This morning I woke up and my arms were still immobilised. I could feel their weight on my chest. Interestingly, I still had my imaginary arms. So I started waving them in front of my face. They felt like normal arms. Even more interesting was that I could see a very faint outline of them. Then I started concentrating on my real arms. Once they moved, I regained senses in them and my imaginary arms disappeared.

I thought this might give some interesting clues on how the brain processes proprioception and visualisation, maybe even the treatment of phantom limb pain (going by what I've seen on House).

The only problem is that being the transition from sleep to wake, I can't tell whether I dreamt it all. I had not been thinking about this sort of thing at all. Normally it is fairly obvious what is happening. If I start flying around the countryside, it is a dream. In terms of the psychology of what was happening, does it make any difference?

Have you seen that House episode where he treats phantom limb pain? Has your mate done anything like that? Does it work?

Yeah that's the one.

BTW, we don't allow external URLs in signatures here.

I used to get paid $45 per hour to watch people sleep.

...its amazing what is revealed.

I'm always guarranteed to have a nightmare if I sleep on my back (coffin-like).
My favourite nightmare is being hunted, attacked, etc by Aliens (movie version) and to a lesser extent, Velociraptors and other things.

Flying dreams have become less frequent (not enough points?) since taking up Scuba Diving. But I tend to think when a certain part of our own existence leaves the body ...its because of ill health more than anything 'spiritual', especially when the concept of 'spirituality' is nothing more than a 'fashionable' thing.

...don't mind the Apnea either