Thread: Introduction & Question(s)

Hello, I finally decided to sign up after a few weeks of lurking these here boards! Just had a DILD last night, so I figured it would be a great time to get more into the community and lucid dreaming in general.

I discovered lucid dreaming through a Yahoo! article sometime late last year. Began a dream journal after reading about lucid dreaming on Wikipedia and elsewhere, starting in early December of '08. Being homeschooled, I can pretty much focus my time and energy into training myself to lucid dream. I seem to be one of the luckier people, who randomly has DILD's a few times every month. More and more often have I been having DILD's, so perhaps I should pick up the pace?

None the less, I do have a question. Last night, in my dream, I became self-aware. I learned that my trigger phrase is "I'm dreaming" or "This is a dream." To the point, I did a reality check for the second time. Not too long ago, I was very briefly lucid and did my first reality check. I put my finger through my palm, and plugged my nose. I ended up waking up, but I thought this was due to an outside disturbance.

Now, last night an old friend of mine who I have not seen in years tried to convince me that I was not dreaming. Of course I was dreaming, and I was not convinced. I tried to put my finger through my palm, which...did not work. Still not convinced, I imagined my finger going through the palm of my hand and BAM! Worked just fine. Stuck my hand in front of my mate's face, saying "See?! This is a dream!" I moved on to another reality check, the plug-your-nose-and-breath. Now here is where I had a problem.

I focused too much on me breathing in real life, as I could 'feel' myself breath. This caused the dream to become unstable, and I felt my mind slipping back into my body. Without even opening my eyes, I knew I was awake.

Is there any suggestions as to what I can do to fix this? Whenever I do reality checks, I always do those two checks. But I don't want 'em to wake me up.

None the less, I notice another thing. Sometime in my dream, I looked into a mirror. I've always had bad experiences with mirrors or reflections in general...but surprisingly, this did not wake me. I did not pay much attention to detail, but my reflection was normal. I had the jacket I always wear on and everything. I guess I'm making some steady progress huh?

Anywho, going to wrap this post up. Hello again everybody, and see you all around.