Hello everybody,

I've been lurking the forums for a week or so, but finally decided to join the, from what I've seen, most friendly and informative LD forum on the net.

I'm a self-development freak and about a week ago I was going through some mp3s on my Ipod. A program called "Controlling Your Dreams" came up and I listened through it. Awesome stuff! It was made back in 1987 by Stephen LaBerge, and that led me in turn to the Lucidity Institute website and their message board. I read through loads of posts and was very eager to start doing the techniques.

In the beginning I was overenthusiastic, I started doing reality checks on the very next day, but realized a couple of days later that my dream recall sucked bigtime. In fact, I hadn't even remembered a dream in about 3 months.

After some research I finally decided to get the Course in Lucid Dreaming, which I received a couple of days ago. It seems to be a very good step-by-step guide for learning and improving the art of lucid dreaming.

One week later a can gladly report that I've remembered 3 dreams but I know I still need improvement. I'm not going to start doing any induction techniques or reality checks until I recall at least one dream every night. I don't know how long this is going to take, but I figure it's the best approach to take in the long run.

I'm having a couple of questions though. The dreams I've recalled the past week have been pretty short, and they've felt pretty remote. Kind of like waking up and remembering something that happened a year ago. I'm hoping this "remoteness" will pass in time, it wouldn't be all that exciting to wake up from a lucid dream and barely remembering the overwhelming feeling.

I think the answer to this question is pretty hard, if not close to impossible, to explain - but how does it feel to be lucid? Just as real as in real life?

Do you feel distant to the dream after you've woken up? This is my biggest worry, considering my recent recalled dreams.

If you've read all this through, thanks for your time and please reply with your experiences.

See ya around