Thread: First Lucid - How to do it again??

About a year ago I started trying Lucid Dreaming and have developed my own reality checks and stuff based on every day life (the door to my apartment building and checking messages on my phone; can I walk through the door/are all the messages on my phone conversations that I remember having?). But my first lucid dream just came completely out of nowhere long after I stopped really trying to have one.

It started out in my mom's old classroom where she used to teach me and I was looking through her desk for something. There was this girl there (I can't associate her to anyone I know in real life) who was gleefully pestering me to find whatever it was. I got frustrated and yelled "Well if this is a dream what's the point!" She smiled and clapped, saying that I finally figured it out. I spent a good ten minutes or so taking a good look around the classroom. I hadn't been there in probably 10 years, but all my memories of it were so specific, even the essays on the bulletin board were readable. I remember the wood of the desks and the view out the window of the gas station across the street.

Shortly after that I tried to think of people I wanted to see in my dreams, but just as they seemed to materialize in the classroom they faded away again. The girl told me I wasn't ready for that yet and advised that I should try changing the setting. I thought of a beach and when I walked out the door it was where the gas station was supposed to be. Shortly after that I lost consciousness in the lucid dream and went back to normal dreaming.

Since then I haven't been able to attain full lucidity, but have come close a few times. I'm wondering what I can do to find easier reality checks (I tried the light-switch thing but I never run into those in my dreams). Also: am I putting some sort of handicap on myself since that girl told me that I couldn't control people in my dreams yet?

Another thing is that last night I was falling asleep and thinking hard on that sensation of falling through the bed into sleep. About 20 minutes in I realized I had no physical consciousness in my body and that I couldn't really feel anything below my face. For the next 40 minutes or so (I was listening to a song to time myself) I maintained that feeling and my head and mind felt like it was floating. I could almost feel parts of my brain shutting down and it seemed like I only had one layer of thought. Then, being nearly asleep as I was, I rolled over and the whole sensation was ruined. I was ready to pull my hair out because I knew something was happening. Shortly after that I fell asleep and I don't remember any dreams at all.

Was what I experienced last night the start of a WILD? If not is this a good way to try entering a lucid dream?

Sorry for the wall of text. I got all excited when I saw such a big community for dreaming.