Sharing about lucid dreaming

I'm still learing why I have these dreams, but people seem so curious about how I can have them so naturally (if it really is natural, it's still confusing to me. I always thought of these lucid dreaming as a stressful problem, but...)

Normally when I start to lucid dream, it's because I am so familiar with what's going to happen in the dream already. You see, something is, well, haunting me but I don't think it's like a ghost, but something in my mind is haunting me. It awakens me in my dream, but a few things my mind goes through:

I am always very, very calm when I realize I am dreaming, and it's normally right at the beginning of the dream. "Oh, I am dreaming." I hardly ever talk in my dreams, but I say that, and almost like if it's a mundane fact. When I first started lucid dreaming, I couldn't wake myself out of the dream, and the things in the dream were very scary! The fear hurt physically, in my chest. Ah, but enough about that, more about offering help about LD.

First, I say that of course, and I do stay very calm, but this comes naturally to me. It's a calm I don't force upon myself, it's natural. I also start to breah very heavily. I can hear and feel the breath entering my lungs. Sometimes it's cold air. My brother has seen me sleep and says that I have been breathing heavy in reality as well-- he woke me up from my dreams when he saw it going on.

I start to feel my body, piece by piece. At first my torso, just because of the breathing. Then I feel my feet. That's all I need to get myself going anywhere. I don't do any more because I can avoid further pain by thinking about the rest of my body.

Breathing has a lot of power in my dreams. If I hold my breath, I avoid pain alltogether.

Um, let's see, what else. I don't jump to try to take control of my dreams. I guess that's a part of getting excited anyway, and I just don't do that. I follow the dream, see where it leads me, learning or... if certain elements are there, running away. (Some decades old horror in my dreams has more power than me. Mind over matter doesn't work, oh, I've tried. I'm sure you'll have better luck.)

Wow, I wanted to type more, but maybe when I understand my own dreams more I can decpher and share secrets. Well that and work is distracting me from typing. If you feel like reading my (longly written) dream, it's a few posts down from this topic as I speak.

If anyone has any questions that I might be able to help to suggest for their dream, lemme know! (I'll let you lucid dream, you take away my lucid dreams, fair deal? Hee hee.)