Greetings fellow Oneironauts!

Hello everyone!

In this post I will shortly introduce myself and describe my current progress with lucid dreaming.

I live in Switzerland and I'm currently in my first year of college (Computer Science major); [insert typical bland introduction here]... I will cut this part short and move on to the more interesting part.

I first became familiar with the concept of lucid dreaming after watching the movie Inception, but I didn't give it much thought; for my sleep deprived self it seemed that a lot of work and dedication were needed and I hadn't considered all the things you could achieve with lucid dreaming. So I let the subject sleep for a while and it wasn't until recently that I set my mind into seriously trying to become a lucid dreamer. I surfed the web for information, read Dr. Labergue's book and one thing seemed clear: I had to improve my dream recall. And so I went with my dream journal trying every morning to remember my dreams in a half zombie state, but it was worth it; under two weeks I went from one dream recalled every week to peaks of 3 dreams per night. During the day I also did as many reality checks as I could and it seemed to pay off as I had a lucid dream at the end of these two weeks.

As a side note, I don't believe this was my first lucid dream; when I was much younger I was able to get out of nightmares by forcing myself to wake up, unfortunately I never used this to control the dream actively. My dreams seemed also much more vivid back then...

After this breakthrough, I made the big mistake of putting away my dream journaling and focusing only in induction methods. My recall went downhill from there and I quickly lost what I had gained. Since last week I'm attempting to get my recall back and I have already recorded 10 dreams (having more time to sleep really helps). I want to try MILD but as I use a mantra to remember dreams I don't how I can mix up the two (I don't want to use an alarm to wake me up at night). Can you use a mantra to wake yourself up after every dream and recall them? My dreams seem also very foggy; does it get better with time? Because I really struggle to extract stories from these vague images that greet me every morning.

Thank you for taking the time for reading this and I'm looking forward to your replies.

Greetings friend !
Welcome to dream views :D !

-Just keep your dream journal and everything will be fine. 3 dreams per night is awesome recall !
Yes.. if you were able to know you are in a dream when you was a kid, and could force yourself to wake up, i THINK it means you are a natural lucid dreamer >.>' ..
Same happened to me.. i discovered lucid dreaming when i faced my fear in a dream.. lucid dream.. looooong time ago..

anyways.. you had your first lucid dream, so you KNOW it is possible, and that it is not so hard, now is it ? Now.. it can't get any harder than that + with practice you will master it in no time and have a lot of lucid dreams.. [[ONLY IF YOU PRACTICE]] ..

-By PRACTICE i don't mean do as lot Reality Checks as you can, but simply being aware of your surroundings and questioning reality.. Check out King Yoshi's guide on ADA [All Day Awareness]..

-It depends from night to night.. sometimes dreams are very vivid, even more than waking life, and others are kinda foggy.. But actually if you get lucid, you can stabilize the dream by rubbing your hands or focusing onto textures in that dream, and it will become perfectly vivid..

-Lucid dreaming is a skill, like any other skill, it takes practice effort and determination. You are on a good road to success , just keep walking and you will do great ! im sure..

Good luck on your journey friend :D

p.s. The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything. :)

Change your current mantra to make yourself wake after every dream throughout the night. I set my intention twice. When I first go to bed, I tell myself I will wake after every dream and record it. After recording the dream, as I fall back to sleep, I tell myself I will recognize the next dream and become lucid (MILD).

Thank you for your warm welcome!

Yeah I think that this forced awakening during nightmares is more common than we may think, I've various reports of people doing the same.
What really aroused my interest in lucid dreaming was the possibility of dialoging freely with the unconscious; I don't know if you are familiar with Jung's theory, but basically he states that we become more complete beings by integrating parts of our unconscious into our whole Self. Unfortunately Jung had not acces to lucid dreaming and his technique to reach the unconscious was called Active Imagination (a form of focused daydreaming), which is not really effective in comparison to lucid dreaming. What really is great with lucid dreaming is that you have the deepest way to acces the marvels of the unconscious!

I will follow your advice and persevere in the practice and hopefully I will able to lucid dream much more often!

Thank you for the link about ADA, it really seems useful, I'll read it tomorrow as I'm heading to bed right now (a new opportunity for dreaming!). :)

PS: with all this lucid dreaming going on my head I have a hard time falling asleep as I get pretty excited, do you have any advice for falling asleep more quickly?

[EDIT]: I'll try your suggestion tonight Robot_Butler, thanks for the tip.

Well.. just make sure you are aware during the day, and it will eventually be same within the dream world :) ..

-All lucid dreams occur when you suddenly become aware of your presence in a dream, so if you train your mind to always be aware of the stuff happening around you, your every dream should be a lucid one :)

-Reality Checks are only used to confirm that you are inside of a dream, and not recognize [that's your awareness's job] .. Because you want to make sure you are dreaming before you do crazy stuff , right ? xD .. So don't just do reality checks all day long, but instead be aware and question reality.. that's the key to success..

-So no need to stress about it, all you need to do is relax before sleep, and train your mind when you are actually awake.
p.s. Once you get lucid don't get too excited because your dream can collapse and you will wake up or loose your lucidity.. so just stabilize the dream and keep your head cool :) .

The mantra to wake me up worked and I was able to attempt a MILD yesterday, well it didn't succeed but it's good to know that I can start practicing inducing techniques.

Thank you for your advice Vortaix; ADA seems much more useful than random RCs, it's only logical that it would produce better results than simple reality testing throughout the day. I think I will use it in combination with MILDs to increase my chances. :)