Hello. I'm 16 years old and have never had a lucid dream before. I saw something about a lucid dreaming article on Wikipedia, and have been dying to get more information ever since. The whole thing sounds so cool, I have tried some of the techniques discussed for the past three days with basically no success. I know it is a bit soon to hope for a result but, it is hard not to get excited about something that sounds so cool! Anyways, I have a few questions that perhaps the vets here can answer for me:

1) How long do you have to lay still to get into a lucid dream? Sometimes I feel like I lay there for an hour and nothing happens… Is one position better to lay in than another?

2) How often do you have lucid dreams? Once a month? A week? A night?

3) Is it like you are in the real world, like you see things now, only without the physical restrictions? It's not like some 3rd person thing, right? That would be OBE? I have a vague idea of what it might be like, but until I experience it, my enquiring mind is dying to know!

4) Is it possible to slip into a lucid dream with some noisy thing like a heater going on in the background? It isn't that noisy but when I try to sleep the sound seems to permeate throughout the room, and I can't seem to fall asleep. I also seem to get itchy after I lay awhile and my hands go numb.

5) How long does it take for paralysis to set in? I tried that one users technique, the HILD i think they called it, where you wiggle your fingers. I tried that last night for a while, but everytime I got numb my body started to itch a lot and I couldn't help but scratch. Drove me insane!

Anyways, these are my questions. I hope tonight I can induce one of these dreams, they sound so cool!