Just discovered Lucid dreaming - need tips on staying in one!

I have been having the most amazing dreams that I am able to control, it's like walking into my TV set somehow, goes from 2D to 3D as my brain realises I am dreaming. My question is that I sometimes find it hard to cling to the dream and feel myself slipping into wakefulness. It is very frustrating. Any tips on how to stay firmly in a LD? I just hate it when it starts to slip away from me and the more I try to get it back the more awake my brain becomes.

I also find that although I can control the action once I am in the dream, I cannot control the environment I enter or the people who are there. In fact, if I am trying to conjure up a particular person they always elude me. Again, any tips?

This is all so new and amazing to me!

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Originally Posted by Wendles

Any tips on how to stay firmly in a LD?

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This is probably the most common problem people run into when lucid dreaming. I'm still no expert myself, but I've found some techniques that seem to help to some extent.

The classics are: rub your hands together, and dream spin. (Dream spinning, by the way, is literally just spinning around in circles inside the dream.) The same general principle is at work behind both of these techniques: focusing your senses on the dream world. Thinking about waking life and/or your waking body, on the other hand, will tend to lead you to wake up. When you rub your hands together, you are producing tactile sensations that your dreaming mind can focus on. Spinning around is even more effective, because you get the sensation of spinning AND the intense visual stimulus of seeing the dream world spin around you. Both of these things help to take your mind off of waking life and focus it back on the dream.

You can also take this basic principle and generalize it to other techniques. Look around you. Smell the air. Feel the grass with your hands. Hell, take a handful of grass and put it in your mouth. The more you involve your dream senses, the more you become involved in the dream (and the more stable it usually will be).

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Originally Posted by Wendles

I also find that although I can control the action once I am in the dream ... Again, any tips?

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There are many methods of dream control which I won't get into here. Here is one of BillyBob's tutorials on the subject, I think he usually does a very good job with them:
Dream Control: the Complete Tutorial
I will only offer one suggestion. Relax. Sometimes you just need to go with the flow of your dream. Sure, it's always fun to exert godlike control over your dream world, but I think you'll find that it's plenty of fun taking a more passive role as well. In any case, it's a long life and you'll have plenty more dreams you can potentially control. So the next time you find yourself in a dream and try to change the scene or conjure some DCs (dream characters), but fail, don't make a fuss about it - just shrug your shoulders and go with the flow.

Oh, and welcome to the boards. :)

Be happy with your dreams. And with your ability. Of course..now it is not developed, but it will come. Just now. I have had lucid dream, which took about 25 minutes. My dreams from before were about 30 seconds long. So dont be discouraged. When you will least expect it, the dream will get longer. And after that you will know, what to do next.

Enjoy your ride.

Firstly welcome!

As people have already mentioned different techniques the one I think works the best is spinning around. Though everyone is different, spinning around seems the more effective.