Hello!

[Arrakis]

Hi, I've just found this forum a few days ago and I am very glad I did. I think I've had LDs for the last 20 years( I am now 34) or longer. I thought that everyone dreams like that. 90% percent of them are DEILD and I always did one of following things : *repeat the part of the dream that i liked the most several times until there' s no juice in it. **jump back to a part of the dream and branch from there into another dream or develop it from there in another direction, like doing something else in the same setting or searching for another person to talk to. ***hold on to the dream and amplify it. example: instead of eating one icecream let everything be icecream, rivers of it! or instead of normal running I would start jumping or running so fast that everything becomes a blur. I've only had one dream when I used rewind, just like the function of the video player. The dream was going in the wrong direction, there was a lot of tension I started arguing with several people, they were really aggressive and I remember thinking "Why not change it?" so I rewound back to the start of the conversation. I remember I almost woke up because I was laughing so loud in the dream I could feel my real lips moving and I was for a moment conscious that I am smiling IWL and then I was again in sleep. I felt so powerful and free and filled with joy because I could see that "they" have no power over me and I can make them retrace their steps and everything just moved back to square one. And then I chose to talk to them differently and they also said something else and everything turned out alright. I was so happy after this particular dream that I have told almost all my friends about it and about the rewind and all my other dreams that I can change. Their reaction was totally negative, someone even suggested I was "special" as in insane. And nobody believed me. This bitter experience convinced me not to talk about it ever again. Fast forward almost two years (present) and I have found an e-book about lucid dreaming and I said to myself: so that's how it's called! Since last year I've started practicing meditation and now I can say it has really helped me get more vivid dreams and reduced the number of dreams when I find myself in a stressful/conflict situation. Even though many times I can change the situation it still feels like driving fast and having to take a lot of sharp turns. It's tiring. Recently my DEILDs are sometimes hard to shake off. The alarm wakes me and then I stay still and I can sometimes continue the dream I was just having or something else comes to mind but then my girlfriend who already knows this routine comes to me and tells me something like "Coffee's ready! or "You're going to be late for work" and then I get out of bed but I can't really be fully awake. I know -for example- that I have to get a clean pair of socks but I open the drawer and then I leave it open and sit on a chair and then I get up again and go to the bathroom and then I sit on the bed like a broken automaton because I still do things in my dream and I can't really concentrate on the morning tasks. My girlfriend finds all this really funny and she told me that if left alone, I can do this up to ten minutes. She usually helps me snap out of it by talking to me or sometimes the stark smell of coffee does it. Does this happen to you? P.S. English is not my native language so bear with me. P.P.S. I am really really glad I've found you!