Paralysis

Non-Dream Repeated the mantra: "I will wake up with my eyes closed, remaining still," and imagined doing so. I woke up, but unfortunately did not keep my eyes closed, and did not remain still. Nonetheless, I decided to count myself to sleep, using the phrase "1..I am dreaming...2...I am dreaming..." etc. I was far too excited, and could not relax enough to fall asleep. To relax, I tried a breathing technique that involved inhaling for 4 seconds and exhaling for 6, for a 10 second inhale/exhale cycle, resulting in 6 breaths per minute to slow the heart rate down. I learned about this technique in a sport psychology class, and decided to try it given that apparently there is some empirical data to support its use. My heart rate gradually slowed, and I am pretty sure that I felt my body enter sleep paralysis but am not certain. After the counting approach was not working I tried to passively watch the hypnagogic imagery but nothing was happening. I was fighting with my mind too much, fluctuating between trying to do these exercises, trying not to try too hard, and the like. I decided to give up and go to sleep, which did result in my first lucid in a long time, but through a DILD rather than <PERSON>. Dream I am standing at the end of my driveway, and the entire street is completely flooded. I look to my left and there is a group of golden retrievers jumping onto kayaks for fun from the side of the road. They are accompanied by two other non-golden retrievers, and they are forming a pyramid on the kayaks, like human gymnasts do. I try and take some pictures with my phone for my girlfriend, but realize I have her phone and not mine. I take some pictures and try to record a video, and wonder whether I should drive the phone to her. With the girlfriend, there are some gangsters that are mad at us in their car while we are walking. They yell at us and I yell back. Then we start threatening each other with tiny guns. Then we start taking shots at eachother, but they are little bb's that just sting a little, and we are not aiming for lethal parts of the body. We do not actually want to kill eachother. Later I am with girlfriend in huge mall, where there is a party, and we notice people are running, and we assume that there is a shooter. A guard informs us that there is no danger, and cites our earlier bb incident as evidence that everything is fine. We go outside onto the road, it is winter, and there is a crowd of people, and a trough of ice along one side of the road. There is a girl from the show WestWorld there, I realize I am dreaming, and rub my hands together to stabilize the dream. I try not to think about waking up, and try to focus only on the world around me instead. I run my hands over the ice, and spin around to try and further stabilize, but I wake up instead. I go into the basketball court and am the worst player there, and people groan as I attempt to make a shot and miss wildly. They do not want me on the team. I run to the locker room in shame, and another younger player tells me I should quit. I defiantly refuse, but he threatens to accuse me of sexual misconduct if I do not, so I end up quitting.