Becoming lucid, but keep losing the dream.

Okay, so recently I have gotten back into lucid dreaming, reading up on it, doing reality checks all the time, etc. Because of this, I have had 2 dreams in the last week where I became lucid. I'll start with the first:

I was running around in some building with this kid (I don't know who he was) and I was carrying a golf club, when all of a sudden he did something that frustrated me, so I kind of smacked him upside the head with the grip part of the club. As I did this, there was a man and a woman in the room that saw it, and they were very angry for what I did. As this happened my brain went "wait a second, this would never happen," and I became lucid. As these people started chasing me, I turned around, waved my pointer finger at them as in "Ah ah, this is my dream!" I then tried to walk backwards through the closest wall to me (to change the dream) and as I went through I woke up in my bed. I was furious, but still happy that I became lucid.

So after this, I read up on lucid dreaming some more so next time I could keep the dream going.

The next dream it happened, I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before. I layed down for a nap later that day, and almost just felt myself go straight to dreaming. The dream was a job interview in which I already had (and got the job). As they were telling me I got the job, I went to shake their hands, and I felt like I couldn't even lift my hand up to shake theirs. At this point, I realized I was dreaming, and felt it fading almost immediately. I stepped back and remained calm. I started spinning in hopes that it would clarify, but the dream started to get more fuzzy. I then tried rubbing my hands together, but it just seemed to start fading quicker. I woke up to what I believe was a false awakening. I woke up violently on my couch where I was napping, and I sat up and threw up 2 middle fingers for no reason, at nobody (This makes me believe it was a false awakening, or an OBE). I then layed back down and closed my eyes, where I awoke on my couch. My body felt very heavy, almost as if I was still in sleep paralysis. But I was actually awake.


Sorry for the long post. In short, my attempts to stay in a lucid dream (spinning, rubbing hands) have all failed and I can't keep the dream going. I'm basically just looking for opinions on what I should do differently.

I have this problem myself. One thing I'm curious about that you didn't mention however, is when you woke up, about how much sleep did you have? With me, I notice that I tend to be unable to hold the dream because I'm close to the end of my REM Cycle and have been at the point where I'd normally wake up. Because of that, the dream fades quickly and I wake up, even if I use the various techniques you've described above. I've tried all those myself, spinning, rubbing hands, shouting outloud, and more.

I only ask because you might have the same problem, and may simply need to get Lucid earlier in the dream/night. It's something I'm experimenting with myself, trying to become Lucid early on (through WILD), to see if that helps maintain the dream stability and helps it last longer. I also think this has something to do with it because your mind prepares to become more active the closer you are to waking up, which when combined with being conscious already, could force you to wake up.

This is just speculation on my part, but it's something I'm trying to experiment with.

1. Upon becoming lucid you should immediately break out of the current plot/scene.
2. Do not attempt difficult tasks such as passing through walls without first applying stabilization techniques.
3. Some useful techniques include:

- Crawl on floor. This works much better than rubbing hands because it gives you a full body workout. Not only you generate much more kinesthetic sensations, you are also positioning your dream body in a totally different manner than your sleeping physical body.

- Shouting. You can shout "More lucidity now" or actually anything will help.

- Switching on lights. Find a wall and a wall mounted light switch and turn it on. Some people may not be able to switch on lights right away, but just repeatedly flipping it a few times will suffice. Even if the room itself does not light up, something will. It is not unusal that this action results in street lamps outside being turned on, night turns day, and etc. Once you switch on lights your dream world will stabilize and appear in higher definition. This method is especially useful in situations when surroundings are dark.

4. Do not think about your sleeping physical body. Direct your attentions always to the external stuff.

5. Do not talk to yourself. Reject inner voices.

6. Constantly set up small, incremental goals such as opening the next door, find the next object, and etc. Treat your next action as a goal, no matter how trivial it seems.

Above all though, you need to find ways to increase your chance to become lucid. If you only get it randomly and sparsely then you will always have a tough time. I suggest you to practice some more on-demand type techniques such as MILD or my own SSILD for this purpose.