Help me with one more step...I'm a newbie.

Hey guys. I've been trying to lucid dream for more than a month now, and my dream recall is very strong. Every night, I recall at least two vivid dreams.

Also, my body wakes up after a dream when I tell it to. (Like after 5 hours).

I've been trying to MILD lately but I just fail at the point where you go back to sleep after waking up and become lucid.

Can I have some help?

man, if I were in your situation I would be able to lucid dream nearly every night! (unfortunately my recall has been slipping away lately) The technique I use for that is WBTB. These kinds of techniques are different for everyone, but the way I use it is if I wake up after a really vivid dream, I'll write it down. The more details I get down, the more likely I am to lucid dream later. I do reality checks the whole time I'm up (and if you wake up fairly quickly, only get out of bed to go to the bathroom. If it takes you a while to wake up, then maybe get up for a little while just so you wont fall back asleep the second you get back into bed. it's kind of hard to time it right, but you'll figure it out after a couple times.) then as i'm falling asleep I think about lucid dreaming and sort of go over what I want to do when I become lucid. If you were up too long and are taking forever to fall asleep, still don't give up. I usually think "man i'm never going to fall asleep" and i just forget about trying to lucid dream, but when I kept thinking about lucid dreaming the whole 45 minutes that I couldn't fall asleep, I had a lucid dream! :D
That's been the strongest technique for me. Hope it helps you. :)

Wow, that's pretty cool! Like lagunagirl, if I had that good of recall and could control when my body wakes up I could have many lucid dreams. :)

Hm, have you checked this thread on MILD? Also, the Tutorials board has other techniques if you wish to try another one.

Good luck! :)

Personally, the amount of time that I stay up after waking up has a large affect on whether or not I slip into an LD.

For instance:
If I wake up after a dream, say to myself "cool, time to WBTB my way into an LD!," I generally fail.
If I wake up, write the dream down, go to the bathroom, drink a glass of water, sit up for another 15 minutes and then go back to sleep, I have a much better chance of succeeding.

Amount of time and actually doing something (bathroom, getting drink, writing, etc.) are the big factors.

So, you can take that into consideration.