[seletskiy]

Yeah. Read "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" book by Stephen LaBerge. It proposes a number of techniques, some of them works better than other for different people. If you are not predisposed to lucid dreaming (some people are), then the main obstacle is will or motivation to keep practicing.

One that worked for me is having a mechanical counter of some sort (like lap couter or just miniature code lock so you can use it as a counter), which you reset every morning and increment during the day every time after you ask yourself "Am I dreaming?" and doing some basic "reality check" (e.g. trying to breathe in through your nose when you pinch it, or checking clocks twice in a succession and validating that it makes sense, or just looking at your hands). The goal is to consistently do a number of reality checks during your waking life, which inevitably will increase the chance that you will do it in your dream. That will likely would cause you to wake up immediately for couple of times, but then you'll get used to it. It works simply because "if you don't ask yourself that you are dreaming during your waking life, what is the chance that you'll ask yourself it during sleep?".

There are number of other and more advanced techniques that borderline with "magic" to me, like falling asleep without loosing conciousness (and then waking up the same way), but I had this experience only a couple of times I guess.

[borbulon]

It’s not the getting to lucid dreaming that’s the problem, it’s the “oh! I’m dreaming!” part. Wakes me up every time.

That and I have dreams about flying, but as soon as I realize I’m having dreams about flying, I wake up and the flying dreams stop.

[seletskiy]

It is a common problem when you starting to get lucid dreams. There are number of techniques to combat that too, but it will generally go away after you become used to it. You just get too excited when you get lucid dream.

Maybe sound absurd, one technique that worked for me is to just "start spinning" around in your dream, so you can't focus on any specific part of the dream for a long time. Continuous attention to one detail in a dream somehow starts to breaking it apart.

[munksbeer]

> Continuous attention to one detail in a dream somehow starts to breaking it apart.

But that doesn't make for a very interesting experience. I actively attempted lucid dreaming about 25 years ago, and was succesful after a while using the various reality check techniques and dream diary. And the habit has weirdly stayed with me over the years such that I still occassionally realise I am dreaming even now. But all I can ever do is wonder around for a minute or two. Over all that time I've never managed to do anything interesting like fly or conjure things or really scrutinise the dream. Those wake me up every time. I've tried the spinning technique, but that just dissolved the dream and then woke me up.

[seletskiy]

I guess it is a matter of experience and practice, as with anything else, really.

There is a very subtle mental state between "I am too aware that I am dreaming" and "there is no awareness of dreaming at all". I don't really know how to put it in words, but it seems that you BOTH need to supress part of the brain that wakes you up and prevent loosing awareness at the same time. It is very apparent during "ordinary" falling asleep, when you suddenly catch yourself that you are "seeing pictures" (hypnagogia phase) and become fully awake again. The trick is continue "falling asleep" without loosing awareness. Same applies during the lucid dream. You need to maintain balance.

You basically need to continue experimenting to notice those subtle changes to know which mental state would wake you up and which would not, so you'll get more precise control.

There are other factors at play for sure, like if you will manage to get your lucid dream right after first deep phase of sleep, your body would likely be not rested enough to quickly reach wakefulness, so you'll have more time.

I don't think that lucid dreaming is easy, and it was never easy for me. It was actually pretty hard work. It was almost impossible to get lucid dream if I was already mentally exhausted during the day. As soon as I stopped to practice, lucid dreams stopped too.

[munksbeer]

> It’s not the getting to lucid dreaming that’s the problem, it’s the “oh! I’m dreaming!” part. Wakes me up every time.

Yes, same here. I can sometimes manage to keep the dream going for what feels like a few minutes, if nothing extraordinary happens. If it is just mundane walking around and feeling the dream, it is fine. But when I start trying to make something interesting happen, I wake up.