New to the forum, Ive been aware of knowing within a dream I was dreaming and taking control of dreams since probably around the age of 8, but didnt learn the term Lucid dreaming until I was about 16. In my single days I would tend to lucid dream a lot, on purpose and unintentionally. Sometimes with a greater degree of success at control than others. (damned flying a foot of the ground).

Ive now got 3 kids and one on the way, and am having some issues with sleeping, (other than the child induced lack of sleep). Basically I can go to sleep just fine but I wake up one heck of a lot through the night. Sometimes as many as 8 times in the night for no reason I can tell off. Whilst looking up sleeping problem I came across lucid dreaming, and followed that branch of investigation, and came up with the idea that by raising my level of awareness whilst sleeping I might be able to pin down whats causing me to wake up, or bring it more under control. (I remember I used to be able to tell myself to wake up in a dream, and the spinning idea to keep yourself in a lucid dream sounds really interesting)

With having the young children and all I havent really had much dream recall at all over the last couple of years, my first thought upon waking is normally "sleep more" I found this site yesterday and decided to give it a go to have more asleep control again. Im not sure quite what definitions my techniques of inducing lucid dreaming come under as they were quite varied.

Anyway after a year or so with very limited dream recall, last night I set myself the goal of remembering my dreams again and not throwing myself straight back to sleep asap, originally my intention was to write them down as I had them, that worked with the first dream but the next 3 I was just too tired to make the effort to write them down as soon as I awoke, but I did manage to record 4 dreams by the morning. there were at least another 2 that I have only glimpses remaining off.

I think I attained lucidity on two occaisions, once I lost the dream and woke myself up by trying too hard to control the dream again straight away, the second time I managed to obtain control for a few seconds, nearly lost the dream, managed to spin to keep the dream, but somehow conjured up some highly distracting elements to the dream (ridiculously fast flooding rain) that distracted me from my awareness it was all a dream, and then played out as a normal dream till I was woken up.

Anyway thats me and why I'm here, no new age beliefs just insearch of a better nights sleep, and if I cant have that I might as well have a fun dream to remember when I do wake up.