Cheers! :D

Hi,

As you may have guessed, I'm new to the site and wanted to say hello.

I had many lucid dreams in my childhood, but nowadays I can barely remember a single dream a month.
After one of my friends recently told me about lucid dreaming, that there's techniques that help you to become lucid, make dreams more vivid, prolong them and have better dream recall I was quite fascinated.

Quite interested, I discussed some of her experiences and techniques with her. She suggested I visit this forum since experiences differ for every person, and I'd be better off reading more generalized tutorials from more experienced dreamers.

The resources on these forums are absolutely fantastic and have helped me a great deal so far!
I have improved on my dream recall, I now manage to remember one dream each night on average thanks to the suggested techniques and keeping a dream journal.
Practicing reality checks has also yielded some results already :)

I have also started to experiment with WILD's. Thanks to the elaborate descriptions of SP on dreamviews, I didn't feel any discomfort during my first attempts, in fact I'm enjoying SP quite a bit.
At first SP was way too exciting for me to actually transition into a dream, but with every SP I became more and more relaxed.
This morning I managed to transition into a dream for the first time. (My first successful WILD, horray! :panic:)
Although it was quite a short one, it was quite vivid and the dream started fully lucid :)

Right now my main problems are:
- I don't really know how to transition from SP into a dream. Looking at these forums there seem to be quite a few people with this problem. It's like I keep drifting in and out of my real body. One moment I have no real feelings of being present in my bed, I don't feel the effect of gravity for example, and my thoughts wander without control. The next moment I'm fully aware of my body again and I can feel the SP. When I had my first WILD my dream body was suddenly catapulted out of my real body, but I have no idea how exactly I've done that, or if I have done anything at all.
I've also been wondering, when I'm deep into SP I often have the urge to open my eyes. Can I do that or will it end the SP?
- My dreams are very short (usually 1-2 minutes). During my first WILD I didn't even feel my dream falling apart, it just stopped. Or maybe I just don't remember the rest of it? I'll try to perform some stabilization techniques during my next lucid dream, hopefully it'll help.
Maybe I'm just too excited when I'm lucid :)

So, before this turns into a huge wall of text (it's probably too late), let me say: thank you! :)
You may not know it, but some of you have already helped me a great deal by posting your experiences on these boards.
I'm looking forward to becoming a better dreamer and having some interesting discussions on these forums.

Cheers,
Hyu

You said "My dreams are very short (usually 1-2 minutes)"

I have the problem where I am not aware I am dreaming... I think everything is real... but my dreams seem to last longer than when I am asleep. When I wake up, it's like I say to myself, I swear I was on a road trip that was 3 days long... but I've only been out an hour.

It would be great to have the best of both worlds... lucidity with time distortion.

Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I think the main problem is that since I have no experience with inducing lucid dreams, I get way too excited when I become lucid and the dream ends prematurely.
I'm pretty confident with more practice I can have longer lucid dreams :)
It was the same with SP. I was very excited at first, and became gradually more relaxed the more often I experienced SP.