Reality check Woke Me Up

Well after a couple of half arsed days of practising a RC, checking my hands, I had my first RC this moring, am in the middle of this dream in a restaurant kitchen and out of nowhere think to check my hands, several of the fingers being bent straight back from the second knuckle, realise that I must be dreaming but also realize I have noway at all of controlling anything/creating anything and of course wake up.

I guess this is very common? Also I read maybe this is because I was towards the end of my REM cycle? Woke at like 5am, back to sleep about 6:30 and the RC happened after going back to sleep, RC woke me at 7:30.

What worries me about this is my lack of mental capability/clarity in be able to control and create in a lucid dream. Wondering what techniques I can use/practise to get control after becoming lucid?

The very weird part about it all was I fell straight back to sleep after the RC woke me and dreamt that I was teaching this other guy about lucid dreaming and some of the techniques to use to RC, I was even showing him the looking at your hands technique, with my own hands, of course never occurred to me to RC then :lol:

This is great! This is your first step toward clear lucidity!

My first Lucid was very similar. I looked at my hands, found my fingers goopy and bent backwards, and then I realized I was dreaming!

I was super excited, but I seemed planted in place, unable to move, and my head was kind of foggy and buzzing. I tried to gain clarity but I was so excited that I just woke up instead. This very well may happen again a few times, but stick with it! Lucid dreaming is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the better, longer, and clearer the dreams become!

~Raven

In my first lucid dream i looked my hands and tried to cross it with my finger, at that moment of course i got lucid but also got really scared because i made a black hole in my hand and didn't know what was going to happen... But quickly i started to look somewhere else hoping it didn't fade away, and it didn't. Maybe some stabilization techniques will help you on your dreams.

RCs don't wake you up. Excitement does. When you RC and gain lucidity, you also get excited. That's what most likely wakes people up. If you think that RCs wake you up, than Rcs will wake you up. But it's normal to wake up from your first lucids from excitement, or REM is ending, or you are close to wake up anyway, because that's when it's easiest to gain lucidity.

So, it was just a normal course of first LD. Next will be better:alien:

Thanks for the reply's, maybe it was excitement but I really do not recall being excited at all, more so it seemed just a total lack of clarity I think.

All is good anyway, do not mean to upset anyone who has been trying to become lucid for a while as well, but last night I became lucid and it was so much clearer, I think through at least two dream cycles and without having to use a RC. I already recognise a RC is not really the point and that it is more about awareness, what was really lovely last night that becoming lucid came from encountering an old companion, a deceased cat who I loved dearly, maybe this also helped me to stay calm and clear going into the lucid state.