Originally posted by Grey Dragon
Hmm... I've been looking around the site and I'm wondering what actually consitutes a \"lucid dream\". A lot of the dreams I recall clearly (so lucid in that clear-sighted sense) I don't really control. I just let them take their course. I only change them if I don't approve of them somehow.
I think there is a whole spectrum of lucidity. At one end you are vaguely aware its a dream at the other end you know fully its a dream and you can change every aspect of it.

When I was a teenager I could sleep a lot - every weekend more than 12 hours a night. During the later stages of sleep, I would feel in my dream I was starting to wake up, and I would make minor changes to the action of the dream to keep it going.

Patricia Garfield writes of the term "Dream Composing" which kind of fits with that experience.

In my twenties I started to have spontaneous lucid dreams 4 or 5 times a year, where I wasn't controlling the plot or background of the dream, but my dream self was more aware and I could fly around and do fun stuff.

Now I'm using specific techniques to induce lucid dreams (WBTB and MILD). These dreams are much shorter, but the degree of sensory awareness and realization that I'm dreaming is the highest. These experiences are very enjoyable. So I don't feel I've lost ability through aging.