8-9 hours of sleep is acceptable 12 or more hours would be good but it's not necessary. A motivating thing to know is that most of my lucid dreams now is actually in the first REM period.

So it's more like playing a videogame (but in your mind) for 2 hours and then sleep normally for the rest of the night.

Don't judge yourself for the fact that you can't be aware of dream signs like a pink elephant dancing in your dream, it's not something wrong with you. When we sleep the critical thinking systems shut down and well that pretty much explains it. I have written more about that in more detail here:

http://www.dreamviews.com/f12/crazyn...3/#post1955014

How we with just intent can make these system work differently truly is a mystery, but we can use the knowledge of this to our advantage.
If we know that the critical systems increase on an awakening, then we can just wake up and go back to sleep and you will automatically with your own bioloogy increase the chances of awareness within the dream, and this is perhaps why the WBTB technique is so powerful?

Sweet (hopefully more critical) dreams.

Inlakesh.