Make sure you're dreaming!

Last Friday I had (finally) my 6th lucid dream! [/yeah!]

Anyway, I sort of "woke up lucid" in my dorm room and decided it'd be cool to jump out of the window and fly off. However, I seemed to remember my advice to new LDers: "Make sure you're dreaming before you jump off of anything high." I tried the finger-through-the-hand RC, but surprisingly it didn't work. However, I supplemented it with the "hold your nose" RC, which proved to be a success, even though in the mirror it showed me pinching my cheek :P

Anyway, satisfied that I WAS indeed dreaming, I opened the window and jumped out, more floating to the ground than anything else. Then I woke up. But yah, it made me laugh.

Now, for some reason I can't seem to have dreams over 30 seconds. It seems that they usually come towards the ends of my dreams, but looking back, most of them just fade back into NLDs. How can I prolonge them or induce them earlier so I can actually do something? Unfortunately they don't happen enough for me to get a good grip on them, usually about once a month or so.

(I joined forces with the Phantom last night. It was cool!)

-Amé

Hey, congrats on your 6th LD, Im still yet to have my first but cannot wait untill i can. I too want to fly seems cool.. :D
I have read and alot of poeople recommend that spinning can prolong your LD, i've also read that spinning can make you lose lucidity so its best to keep your eyes closed while spinning and reminding yourself that "you are dreaming"
Good luck in getting longer LD's back

im pretty much in the same boat as you Amethyst Star,

How about trying to do reality checks from time to time? It worked for me but eventually I forgot to do one and lost my lucidity. But I was lucid for about 5 mins.

So I guess im pretty luckyon my first LD I could fly pretty weel and even do some basic acrobatic figures tough it lasted 5min it was great.. I know its been said a zillion of time but try the spinning, rubbing your hand or shouting commands

The breathing through the nose RC never seems to fail, since it doesnt depend on willpower or arbitrary things (like text). Always does the trick for me.

I think that the best strategy for prolonging lucid dreams is to just take a moment and focus. Consider your situation (dreaming), observe your surroundings, try to remember if there's anything you wanted to try. Most of all, though, calm yourself. Getting overly excited is one of the surest ways to end a lucid dream, so the calmer you are starting off, the better your position in dream-land.

My rule about flying is that I always have to catch air from a safe surface. I would never jump out of a window. Teaching myself that it is okay to do that might have me jumping out of windows when I am drunk. I'd say you should fly out of your dorm window by floating off your dorm room floor and then moving out of the window from the air. If you leave your dorm room window while floating over the floor, you are definately dreaming.

Flying is my number one lucid dream cue (tied with my other one). Whenever I am flying by my own power, I know with 100% certainty that I am dreaming. This has the best chance of happening in a dream when I "try" to fly during the day. I will myself to float up many times during the day. When I dream, I have a good chance of trying it then. That is when it works.

The other major trick that really works is one that I learned on one of the non-discussion pages on this site. It might have been Seeker who wrote about it. Whoever it was, I need to go back and see and thank him/her because it is what created my lucid dream revolution last summer, when I finally really got the hang of it. Looking around during the day and watching really hard for something not to add up carries over into my dreams. I will dream and catch something that doesn't add up, and then I know I am dreaming. The big, historic event that marked my new level of lucid dreaming happened last summer when I was at my parents' house in bed and being bitched at by my father for not being out of bed and greeting our Tennessee relatives who had just shown up without notice. This was an absurd situation for many reasons. First of all, there is a 0% chance I will ever live at my parents' house again, unless I become paralyzed or schizophrenic or something. I have been too old for that for a long time. Also, our Tennessee relatives would never just show up, and my father would have to be retarded to bitch at me for not knowing while asleep that our relatives showed up without notice. That is more like something my mother would do. :lol: Being bitched at about something ridiculous always makes me question whether I am dreaming any way. This time, being on major lookout for the dream state, I actually realized that I was in fact dreaming. Ever since then, I have been much more perceptive of when the absurd means I am dreaming. It has worked well ever since.