What to do next?

I seem to have Dream Recall covered; I can usually remember at least one dream per night with decent clarity.

I have had 1 lucid dream ever, and that came from joining this site over a year ago an using auto-suggestion before I go to sleep, it worked. I stopped bothering with lucid dreaming for pretty much all of last year, but have recently started again.

Despite having started a dream journal, and having consistent dream recall I don't seem to be able to become lucid again. :(

There have been a few moments during dreams where I could've become lucid, where I have questioned the legitimacy of the situation, but still no lucidity.

Has anyone got any tips or anything that may push me in the right direction? I do RC's as often as I remember to do them, but they don't seem to have any effect.

Do a wbtb it will increase your chances 50%

Don't give up on those RC's just yet! Everyone is different, it took me 3 months of RC'ing before they popped up in my dreams!!!

Like Mike said, WBTB is a very good technique! Try to read about lucid dreaming when you do a WBTB, and do plenty of reality checks during the WBTB! WBTB will wake your mind up and you'll have increased awareness when you go back to sleep!

I also recommend the MILD technique! It's a very powerfull technique, if you can master it, there's a good chance you can get lucid on demand! I personally try to use it when i wake up at night! But if you don't wake up at night you can also do your MILD excercices before going to bed!
MILD can also take a while before it works, it depends on how good your prospective memory is! It's like a muscle and you'll have to train it!

Look around in the tutorial section for more info!

Also the fact that your questioning things like that in your dreams means that you're getting very close to achieving lucidity! Keep working at it! You'll soon get lucid, no doubt about it!

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Originally Posted by feist303

Like Mike said, WBTB is a very good technique! Try to read about lucid dreaming when you do a WBTB, and do plenty of reality checks during the WBTB! WBTB will wake your mind up and you'll have increased awareness when you go back to sleep!

I also recommend the MILD technique! It's a very powerfull technique, if you can master it, there's a good chance you can get lucid on demand! I personally try to use it when i wake up at night! But if you don't wake up at night you can also do your MILD excercices before going to bed!
MILD can also take a while before it works, it depends on how good your prospective memory is! It's like a muscle and you'll have to train it!

Look around in the tutorial section for more info!

Also the fact that your questioning things like that in your dreams means that you're getting very close to achieving lucidity! Keep working at it! You'll soon get lucid, no doubt about it!

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I've tried WBTB, but I just don't think it's for me. Once I wake up, I can literally never get back to sleep without the use of sleeping pills, which I don't really fancy taking every night when I don't really need them. It's also a bit impractical for me.

I think MILD is what I'm already doing. RC's in the day, auto-suggesting with mantra's at night before I fall asleep. Ever since starting auto-suggestion I've been able to recall dreams pretty well, but just not been able to become lucid again. Is there any mantra's in particularly I should be doing?

Also, what's the best RC? Right not I'm doing the finger-through-hand technique, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.

I'm just like you! I don't use WBTB because i never can go back to sleep!
I do wake up naturally alot at night, sometimes it takes me an hour to go back to sleep!
So whenever i wake i try to do some MILD! But like i said, it isn't required that you wake up at night, you can do your MILD excercices before bed to! But you'll probably have more chances of it working when doing it before going into a new and long REM-cycle, so that it's fesh in your mind!

There's more then just using mantra's to MILD! You want to use cue's (like dreamsigns), and you want to visualise yourself recognizing those cue's!
Basicly you want to say : "When i see my old house, i will do a reality check", then you visualize yourself doing that as if you are in the dream, getting lucid. Then you repeat this process a few times...

You have to train your prospective memory, you have to train yourself to remember to remember! You can do this during the day by picking a random dreamsign. You do your mild exercise in the morning and see how many times you have RC'd to the random dreamsign you have chosen during your day. By doing it every day you're prospective memory will get better and better and so will you're chances for using MILD before bed!

As for the best RC, i think that depends from person to person!
I think that the best RC is the timecheck, it seems to work for almost everybody!

Personally i use :

timecheck,
biting my finger,
counting my fingers and inspecting my hands
mindcheck : ask yourself where you are, who you're with, what were you doing before this, how did you get here, do you remember waking up...
Also check out your surroundings, pay attention to the details and the lighting, does everything fit, are all the objects here in their context, is the furniture in it's right place...

Also when you RC, you really should expect it to work, even though you know you're not dreaming, try to visualize the RC working.
When you expect it to work in a dream, chances are likely it will work, cause that's how dreams work!
Basicly pretend that you're dreaming whenever you do an RC!

As for finding wich RC may be best for you, try testing out alot of RC's in your next lucid and see wich work best! That's what i did!