q's for the more experienced dreamers

Ok, I have been checking out this site for about a month and 1/2 now. I've actually had 7 lucid dreams so far. This includes a good 3 or 4 where i was only lucid for a very short time. I tried giving myself goals and I can maintain lucidity a little longer. The thing is certain things come naturally - like flying and morphing things. There are other things I practice and practice and they don't seem to improve.

SPEECH:
Sometimes when i am lucid i cannot talk at all

Then in another lucid I was trying to talk to this tree (this would take a while to explain) but my words came out garbled almost like a different language i didn't understand.

Even when i try to talk to DC's they either ignore me or shy away like they are afraid to talk back to me.

DREAMSCAPE:
I can successfully spin to a different location but it is never where i am trying to go. One time I ended up at Kmart :lol:

I tried spinning with my eyes closed, when I opened them I litterally opened my eyes and woke up

SO :D The big question is, did all of your dream skills "imporve" over time? Or have you always been able to do the things you do?

http://dreamviews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27208

yeah I just wrote that for you (came out toi be longer than expected so I made it a topic) :P

7 LDs in a month and a half is a very good beginning.

I think you are on the right track to try and make your LDs last a little longer each time. And I would suggest that you concentrate on the things that you can do for the time being. Trying things you can’t do may shorten the length on your LDs.

BillyBob is an LD God and wrote a great post, but some of us have to work up to that level of control slowly. And yes, with time and practice, the things you can do will increase.

Did the spinning help stabilize your LD? Have you tried looking at your hands?

What Dust Mote said is pretty much correct. First perfect what you can do in your dreams now. After being able to the basics things well, then move on to other challenges. Some of us are naturals...others take time.

yeah I'm not a natural btw, I just caught on really quickly, different people learn at different paces.

The more your dream/lucid dream the better your dream control skills become. While it is still possible to find yourself in a dream where you have little control, overall all tasks become much easier...

About speech - if you cant talk, try telepathy.... The majority of my dreams use some mix of dreams and telepathy... Very rarely do I find myself simply talking.... Same thing with questions - if you have a question, ask it in your mind and you may get a lot of information just flashed to you...

As for spinning, I dont like that method, particularly cause I have similar problem to yours - spinning simply wakes me up, closing my eyes also often wakes me up or makes me lose lucidity... After a while I found out that direct teleportation often works well - you imagine the new setting, imagine where you are gonna be in that setting and shift your focus from that setting to the new one... This is the direct way.
An indirect way to teleport would be to draw a portal on a wall and step through it... It's very likely that you will end up in the void (total darkness) and from there you can imagine your new location...

Thanks for all the advice!

I will keep these things in mind. I have found that my LDs last longer when I just sorta float around and obsrve things. Next time I try to talk (out loud or telepathy) and it dosen't work out I'll just let it go and keep focusing on what I CAN do for now.

It gets better the more you do it. I guess because you are just more aware of it.