[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.