I'm new to this forum and new to "lucid dreaming" altogether. Prior to stumbling onto this website I had no idea what lucid dreaming was and barely had a grasp of the definition of the word lucid. All my life, even as far back as childhood I've had the ability to "wake myself up" out of a bad dream. Basically it was just a realization that the bad dream was not real and therefore, not wanting to be in it anymore I'd physically shake my head until I woke up. That was the limit of my control.

I read some of the information in other parts of these forums regarding how to attain lucidity and it seemed really complicated so I never followed through. Then last night, I was in the middle of a typical dream when I felt myself waking up and for a brief moment and was caught between that state of being half awake and being in a dream. Literally, I could describe it like being in a tunnel, where the dark end was the dream state, with images of the dream slowly fading, and the light end of the tunnel was being fully awake. Being in this sort of no-man's land afforded me the realization that I had a level of control. Had I been fully awake, it would have been too late, if I were still fully dreaming, I would not have had that realization. So that was the moment you could say that I achieved lucidity. I decided to head back towards the dream end of the tunnel and without much effort, I was in the dream again, right where I left off. The setting was one of a brightly lite white tiled tunnel, that branched off in different directions. It's hard to describe fully. The only difference was, now that I was lucid, all the people were gone. This level of control and more importantly the awareness of that control was incredible. I reached out and touched the small tiles on the walls, just to test my control and sensation. At first, I felt like I was still floating a little, like my feet weren't fulling touching the ground with every step, but eventually, I gained control of that too.

What an experience.