Hi! I'm John - Did I have a Lucid Dream?

Hello everyone. I am so glad I found this forum. I have been interested in Lucid dreaming for many years now and I believe I have had about two Lucid dreams in my life. I tried to learn how to lucid dream from a book but never really could get the hang of it so I kind of gave up although I have remained interested and always hoped it would just start happening. During this period of time I was trying to learn I had an episode of complete sleep paralysis. I feel like I woke up but couldn't move anything. Freaked me out. It never happened again.

Recently I have wanted to give lucid dreaming another shot and I've been trying to use Binaural beats without success. Although they do put me to sleep pretty well. :)

I found this website about 3 days ago and I read through some of the members techniques and experiences in the hopes that I can start having Lucid dreams. This brings me to my question.

Last night I had a vivid dream, possibly a lucid dream. I walked into a hospital. I went down a hall but the lights got dimmer and dimmer until it was almost black darkness. This seemed off to me. A woman and her child started to follow me down the hallway. After turning a corner into the darkness I decided to walk back out the way I came, I now knew something was not right about this scene.I told the lady is really dark in there. Then for some reason a thought occurred to me that I might be dreaming so I looked at my hand to see if I could stick my finger through my palm. (I read that someone on this website did this as a dream check) My finger went through my palm and all of a sudden I said to myslef in my dream John you are dreaming! Wake up and become lucid! I then tried to conjure up a friend to see if they would appear but things got static and I woke up! I was so mad, If I was lucid it was just for moments. I swear when I acknowledged in the dream that I was dreaming It was as if I truly felt like I knew exactly that I was trying to lucid dream and succeeding. It seemed so vivid. I was disappointed I woke up so soon and couldn't control the dream. Does this sound like I did have a lucid dream or maybe it was just a vivid dream where I told myself I was dreaming?

for the past few nights I go to sleep saying some mantras like tonight I will have many lucid dreams, another technique i learned here. :) The one thing I did last night was try to remember a dream the night before. Thats something I read is a good technique to help your chances.

Anyway I'm rambling now. I'm hoping that what I had was indeed a real Lucid dream and I just lost control from the excitement and woke up way too soon. I want to become very proficient at Lucid dreaming and I am hoping that if I already have had a small one after trying for a couple weeks thats a good sign Im on the right path.

Thanks for listening!

Hi,

Congrats. It was surely a lucid dream.
To check whether you were lucid dreaming or not there's one simple task:
Ask yourself if you knew that you were dreaming during dream :yeah
There's one condition to lucid dreaming ''Knowing that the world you are currently in is a dream''.
Lucid Dreams are not always controllable by you. So even a lucid dream in which you can't do any supernatural stuff like flying is still a lucid dream.

The reason why you woke up quickly were those things:
- Getting slightly excited with no prior stabilization (It's fine to let emotions flow in dreams as long as you have stabilized it before doing so. When you become lucid at first keep yourself calm?)
- Lack of stabilization (The way to extend dreams is called stabilization, we do it when we enter dream and whenever dream starts to act weird/low quality or just seem as if it were about to end)

I suggest you reading up this tutorial:
Dream Stabilization and Clarity Tutorial - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

- Goodluck :goodjob2:
If you have any other questions then feel free to ask.

Definitely a lucid John, congrats man :) and welcome to dream views.