Thread: Some Beginner Questions

Hello all,
This is my first post on these forums, but I have tried lucid dreaming before. Once I started college I had taken a long break from lucid dreaming because I couldn't keep a stable sleeping schedule. But now I am back to lucid dreaming and I've found that I am plagued with all the problems of a beginner, not to say I ever got anywhere the first time I tried lucid dreaming, I've only done it a couple times. So instead of making a bunch of threads for each of my questions, I'll post all of them here. Some things to note is I have been keeping a regular dream journal, and I've been doing reality checks and randomly asking myself if I'm dreaming during the day since I've started trying to lucid dream again. I would really appreciate an experienced lucid dreamer's advice on these questions. Thanks.

Most of my dreams I am not in a body, I'm either overlooking my own body in the third person, or my perspective is above the whole dream and I'm watching whats happening from afar and when I am in my body its like everything is scripted, there's no thought of what or why things are happening, everything is just moving, even myself. How do I realize its a dream when I don't have a body to do reality checks? And is it normal to feel like things are just going through the motion in a dream?

I've been practicing asking myself where I just was and where I'm going and doing reality checks for about a week now. The last time I tried to lucid dream I was doing them for months and I still wasn't getting anywhere. The only lucid dream I consider a genuine lucid dream, was when my pet cat had just died and he showed up in a dream and I realized that he had died, which I'm pretty sure wasn't because of reality checks. Any advice?

Over the course of my life I've had around 7 dreams in which I realized I was dreaming, but only to the extent that I wanted to wake up ( they were all nightmares, and I wanted to escape what was chasing me ). Whenever these happen I don't even stop to think about it more, I just realize I'm dreaming and then immediately wake myself up. Is there any advice to give me that will help me stop and think about it a bit more?

Whenever I keep a regular sleep schedule, during the course of my sleep I wake up naturally around 4-6 times, which I assume are after a REM cycle because I can remember clearly what I had just dreamed about. Instead of doing DILD should I consider other techniques? And which would be best for my situation?