I have always been very open about my explorations into the dreamworld with everyone in my life. Often I will bring it up with someone who says that they have been having LDs their entire life. It's interesting how they have developed many of the techniques for LDing on their own.

For example, a co-worker told me that she has frequent lucid dreams. I asked if she could fly in her dreams or does she float back down. She said thats she floats back down, so what she does is put on a ring that can make her fly which is a very popular technique that's been brought up numerous times on this site.

Anyway, I've been noticing something in common between the people who say that they are natural LDers. She mentioned that when she was young she had really bad nightmares and so her parents taught her to recognize the common factor in their nightmares, or dreamsigns, and that is how she learned to tell she was dreaming.

And then I thought about it. My little brother is a natural LDer, and he also had severe nightmares when he was young, and my parents taught him to do the same thing.

While this is probably not the case for all natural LDers, I think it is a large contributing factor to the difference between me and them.