Before last night I did not know what a lucid dream was. I heard someone mention it on the radio, looked it up online, looked up techniques for inducing them, followed about two out of the about 20 steps, and fell asleep to a lucid dream. It lasted about an hour. It was seperated into two parts, in between which I thought that I had awakened. I only realized afterwards that i wasn't awake because i saw my dog in my bed when he really wasn't. Right before I woke up I dreamed I was spinning over and over in my bed and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to stop. When I did awaken I couldn't move for a minute or two. As far as the details of the dreams nothing really abnormal happened except for that my girlfriends hand had only four fingers. but I knew they were dreams and was controlling what i did. Even though nothing bad happened in these dreams, they affected me greatly and wasn't able to sleep again through the night. It is difficult to explain the effect these dreams had on me. I would like this to happen again. I just need someone to I guess explain about this to me and tell me why the not much more than the knowledge that they existed triggered a lucid dream.