First step - achieved Lucidity.
This morning I was having my regular Sunday lie-in. I get up, get some milk and cookies for my daughter and set up a DVD for her then sleep while she watches it. I also had to make a couple of quick phonecalls so woke myself up more than usual.
As I went back to bed, I kept repeating to myself that I would remember my dreams and notice I was dreaming. I kept on doing the breathing RC and glancing at my alarm clock and after 15 mins or so of listening to Shark's Tale in the distant background, I felt myself starting to drift. At this point, I was half awake, half dreaming, kind of both at once and my breathing RC worked! I'd closed my nose but was still breathing. The dreaming was like daydreaming but I wasn't creating the images, just going with them. I was walking down a dimly lit corridor and came across a small office to one side, like where you'd pay to get into a nightclub. My ex-colleague H. was on the desk and again, I reality checked thinking "H. doesn't work there, she works at a school. I'm still dreaming". She grinned and waved me on through like I didn't have to pay. Next the corridor came out to the side of a building, the walkway continued with a covered area on the side of the building, it was dusky and there were trees to the left around a small park. Again I reality checked, thinking "I've never been to this place before, I don't even know where it is, I'm still dreaming".
At about this point, my daughter walked across the bedroom to get a tissue and the movement in the room woke me up a bit more. I tried to re-capture the state I'd been in but didn't manage and fell fast asleep again.
So no control, but definitely awareness that I was dreaming and several reality checks that worked - breathing through a closed nose, recognising someone out of place and recognising a location that didn't (to my knowledge) exist. A good start!
