Back to lucid, problems.

Hi there,
I decided to do "try" lucid dreamin again after probably one year. When I ended lastly with LD I had 1 lucid dream (DILD). I'm using my old DJ, do a lot of RC and every night I relax to medidative music with some mantras, but I think I'm not doing very well. I do it for only one week now however, so I know it's too early to get some better results. I mostly remember about 1-2 dreams per night while sometimes I remember 5 dreams or 0 dreams. I thought I will have faster process now (knowing how to do RCs etc.) yet I think I'm not doing very well. Could do guys give me some encouragement please?
Also I think I'm pressuring myself too hard, being unsatisfied and doing so much RCs, mantras and etc. I think I'm oversleeping. It currently 3 a.m. In my country and I simply cannot sleep. Every day I go to bed around 9 p.m. (10 p.m. +- I'm sleeping) and I automaticaly wake myself up arount 2 a.m. without any alarm device.
Today I'm pretty much disappointed, because friend of mine I met last month on my new school gave me some Calea Z (that tea... It tasted super awful). I took it and thought I gonna have some awesome dreams yet I woke up arount 2 a.m. without remembering anything and I can't sleep right know. I simply don't feel sleepy enough. :(
Could you please tell me some tips or so?
Thanks guys

Dude dont worry about it, the key to it all is mindset, motivation, and awareness. Dont get stressed if you feel like nothing is working. It took me a good 2 and a half to 3 weeks to get my first lucid. All I did was start doing Reality Checks daily but i did them without a schedule, meaning i didnt do them based off of time, i just did them when i felt i hadnt done one in a while. Then before I knew it I had my first LD. for the first week of trying i felt like you did. But then i started relaxing and i knew id have one soon enough so I didnt worry. And of course, I had one. Just keep trying man cause you will eventually have one, probably sooner than you think. Personally, i think all of those drinks and other stuff that "help" you get a lucid dream are crap. Even if they worked you would eventually have to become dependent on them and you would only be able to have a Lucid Dream when taking whatever drink it is you drank. Just do it naturally because then you will have the ability to have an LD whenever with depending on anything but yourself, which is a big advantage. But yeah bro, just never give up and keep going. I would suggest a mindset of something similar to "I KNOW I WILL HAVE A LUCID DREAM" because that boosts your motivation and it actually works. It works for me. Just dont over try, just try normally without stressing or worrying. Trust me it works, I did it and I just started trying to have Lucid Dreams for the first time in my life about 2 months ago.

Thanks mate. I'm probably just overdoing it. Maybe I should take it more easy. As I said I already had one LD when I was learning LD one year back, but I thought it's gonna be easier now to get back on the track

Try doing some exercise in the few hours before you go to bed... go for a run, a bike ride or a swim...whatever is easiest for you. It will help you get to sleep at night and to feel tireder. Also, you could try relaxation techniques (look some up, there are heaps) like focusing on each part of your body in turn and relaxing it as you lie in bed.
Yeah, for the first couple of weeks, don't even think about having a lucid, just aim for increased dream recall, whilst practicing your RC's etc. That takes the stress off, and with better recall you increase your lucidity chances. You KNOW you will have one, now that you know you can, so it will happen eventually.
Don't give up...you will get there!

Thanks BarefootDreamer. I will try to have more dancing seassions to get myself tired. I mostly can go to sleep, but when I wake up at 2 a.m. I'm too fresh. Soo I'll try to be more tired :)

Yeah, it can be difficult. Sometimes I wake up and am wide awake, and it's hard to get back to sleep. I go through phases though, as I used to be able to go back to sleep very easily, but now it's harder, so the exercising more helps me. I think that I am too hurried, I want to lucid dream NOW, so I am impatient and that makes it harder to sleep. I have to remind myself that it can take me a couple of weeks. That doesn't make it much easier, as I can't wait to start LDing again! ( like you I am returning to LDing after a break).
For me, what helped the most to have lucids was focusing on having excellent dream recall, as the more detail I remembered my dreams, the more 'real' they seemed whilst dreaming the,...the more aware I was in the dream, and then I was sitting at a high awareness...everything seems real and my thought processes are clear, ...that's when I would slip into lucid dreaming. I was having several a month, not practicing any RCing.

Just take it slow, realise it's not a race, and know that everybody can do this. That's what always helps me :)

And if you ever feel down about it, give the 1000 Things To Do thread a wee read, it can be quite motivating!

If I were you, I would focus your efforts on increasing your sleep to closer to 8 hours per night. If I understood correctly, you currently get about 4 hours of sleep on an average night? That may not be enough for lucid dreaming. You need to be well rested, and LDs are more likely after one has been dreaming for a number of hours already because that is when we have longer dreams and our mind is more likely to be aware and less groggy.

So how do you go back to sleep at 2am? Have you read the WILD and WBTB tutorials? They might give you some other ideas, but the one idea that I got out of them that helped me when I was having trouble sleeping was the counting myself to sleep. Counting breaths, visualizing numbers, not thinking of anything else. And once you loose count just keep on counting either from the beginning or from a random number. The goal is not to count correctly, but to just count however whatever way, eliminating mental clutter like worries about the day or whatnot, just count and fall asleep.

Another option is trying some sort of relaxation exercise where you for example focus on your fingers one at a time, and then your wrist, and then your elbow, etc, and just relax your entire body one part at a time.

Also when I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes I warm up a cup of milk and drink warm milk and that helps me fall asleep.

Anyway, I think increasing how much sleep you get may be important for LD success. I also find that my dream recall improves when I get more sleep regularly.

Thanks for the tips JoannaB. At first I had set my alarm on 3 a.m (doing WBTB), but now I'm automaticaly waking up at around 2 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. yet I'm usually not tired. I usually don't have problem with going back to sleep. Only just now like 2 or 3 days. If I remember correctly when I had my first LD (one year back before taking pause from LD) I used same pattern as I use now. What bothers me is that I'm doing everything the same way: Going to sleep at the same time. Trying WBTB at the same time. I'm still in the same state of tired/freshnes?, but these last 2 days I'm like worse at my dream recall, clarity, vividnes. That's the main problem right now I think. I know that LD is going to come along with good dream recall and awareness, but I think I somehow stuck with it.
I read probbably all (basic techniques) tutorials for most techniques (including WILD), but I was never able to do WILD (My first semi-lucid and one fully lucid dream was via WBTB). I have that problem that when I wake up durning a night and try to WILD I'm too sleepy to try: I'm lying on the side of my body and I don't even try, I just fell asleep. Or I'm to awake and I'm not able to get into SP. The most near moment to WILD I have ever get/got? was that I felt like I'm paralyzed (I didn't feel where mi legs and arms are) and I had pressure on my chest, yet I could break from it with very little effort and I had no visual halucination and also when I got into the "pressure on the chest" stage I got too excitet/scared that the heart of mine started to race and It kicked me back.
Sorry If it's chaotic, but I really don't know how I would express myself.