What happened? First lucid dream in years. Very intense.

[coaster1000]

I'm new to these forums. I came across this site incidentially, and I must say that I find this extremely interesting and just a bit mystic. I have posted this question on a smaller side about lucid dreams, unfortunately, I got no response: Yesterday, I had only had 2 lucid dreams I could remember, but today I've had 3. So, here's what happened tonight: Yesterday, I used the entire day performing reality checks and convincing myself that I was going to have a lucid dream. I had even made up what I would dream about (that part didn't work, though). Eventually, I went to bed and used the MILD method as good as I could. Well, I woke up later, at around 5:30 AM and was dissapointed that I hadn't had any lucid dreams I could remember. I sat up for a while, checked my phone but went back to bed in less than 10 minutes. This is were the wierdness started. I thought about trying the WILD method, but I figured it was too hard. "Oh well, just give it a try," I thought. I don't remember exactly what I did, but my body relaxed totally and maybe I was counting (at least breathing heavily.) After about, say, 20 minutes something wierd and pretty awesome happened. It felt like my entire body was shaking, and I was sort of "lost" in nothing. And after some 10-20 seconds, BAM, I was in a dream. No hallucations, I was just paralyzed and it felt like blood rushed all over my body, if you know what I mean? The dream was pretty mystic, I dreamt I was going with a flock of cows... Suddenly, one of the cows was anxious/nervous and could speak to me. I told it it was just a dream... We both looked into a mirror, seeing each other while we talked. Yes, I was fearing doing a reality check in a mirror in my dream. Afraid of what might turn up. Okay, so after this I thought: "Hey, this is a lucid dream, I can do whatever I want! YAY! Let me imagine my girlfriend and me, you know..." (this what I had "planned"). Well, I saw her very shortly, but not very clearly and after that everything became extremely white and I woke up. It took me about 30-40 minutes to fall asleep again, I was all So, what I'm wondering is, what was this? I can remember everything extremely clearly, it was very vivid. Actually it felt like I was 2 places at the same time, a very intense feeling! How long are lucid dreams normally? How did I do this? I want to try it again! Hope to hear from some lucid "pros".

[moongrass]

well, I am far from pro but that is very exciting, and I would say you to b very lucky, waking early and then going back to sleep is best for lucid drams and thats def. what you had, and to prolong ur dream have you tried the spinning technique?

[coaster1000]

Thank you for your response! Yes, it was a very intense dream. I will try again tonight. I just read about the spinning/rubbing hands technique, which I'll be sure to use.