The earliest that I remember having this dream was when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old and it happened to return occasionally until I was maybe 8 years old. It would happen not only when I was in a deep sleep but also when I was just dosing or barely asleep, on a few occasions even when i was just day-dreaming. I would be walking usually around dusk on the edge of a field with mid length grass, it was what appeared to be a horse pasture. there were usually a few flowers here and there but there was always a bare spot of dirt towards the middle of the field that attracted me to it. I never was scared of the bare spot but I knew that for some reason i should not go to it. Of course though I always would and when I would step into it i would always slowly fall to the ground gently but I would stop breathing. this was the strange part because I would actually stop breathing in real life as well even though I was trying to. I would wake up but I could still see my body laying in the dirt I would panic but knew that for some reason I could not tell anyone about it because i would not want to draw attention to the oddness of it. I am now 20 years old and would just like some other people's opinion on this and possibly some clarification. thank you for your time.

Well, it is likely that you did not stop breathing. During REM sleep, your breathing slows down and sometimes your brain interprets this as your not being able to breathe (People sometimes dream or hallucinate that they are being suffocated or strangled.)

It sounds like your brain was mixing up waking and sleeping states at the same time, which sometimes happens.

Have a look at the pages on sleepwalking, out of body experiences, and sleep paralysis.

Mixing up different brain states is much more common in children so it makes sense that this happened when you were young.