Flying troubles

I had a lucid the other night:
Im in my front yard. I decide it is my dream and i can just make myself float up, however nothing happens. I try jumping, but still nothing. After i try jumping into the air several times, i decide i need to make a better effort. I run full speed and jump forwards with my arms extended hoping to fly, but instead I just bellyflop on the pavement and wake up shortly afterword. This is not the first time i havent been able to fly while lucid: gravity always seems to much for me to conquer. Any suggestions on what i could try?

Forget any one who says "just believe."
You must learn dream skills and you must overcome the brains fear of unbelievable things.
Try starting small and creating an excuse for why it is possable. Not "this is my dream, so it is possable."
Work with your poor brain, that is very upswt and shooked at you for this weird LD stuff. Get your brain used to weird stuff a bit at a time, and provide a plot that helps it accept. After you learn a skill and your brain finally accepts, then you can use that skill with no excuss needed.

Here is only one example of how it could be done.

Stage one: Leaping over cars. Excuse: You have been practicing track and feild, and are a wonderful athlete.
Stage two: Climbing up the side of a building with no effort. Excuse: You are a Ninja.
Stage three: Base jumping off the building. Excuse: You have a glider suit.

By that point you should be able to work up to flying.

Ha thanks alot. I will definitely try those oor something like this

I used to fly sometimes in my dreams but now i am having less of flying and more of levitating off the floor, when i do i am usually looking at my self in the mirror and forcing myself to go upwards but only a few feet away from the floor, maybe you should try this before trying to go big on flying.

Gravity isn't affecting you, it's your expectation of gravity that is stopping you. :D.

there are many more ways to start floating, you could try those. however, in my opinion your biggest mistake was to force it, if it doesn't work it doesn't work.I usually just lie down in mid-air in those situation. if I end up on the ground this way, then obviously flying isn't possible here. wont wake me up since it isn't violent as I just lie down on whatever ground there is and make swimming-movements.

now to the other flying techniques, as to me flying is only very very rarely an impossible thing: in addition to the swimming you could actually explore how much the gravity has to say on your dream. one big advantage of being unable to fly is that you can run. as we all know from alice in wonderland running is generally a bad idea in dreams. as I learned the fast movement of feet creates an upward-drift so you lose the grip. so you could try just that, quick movement of feet, maybe dancing or whatever. another possibility is to sit down and float up like the archetypical meditation person who gets so entrenched in the meditation that he wont notice that he's floating -- most likely an image that was inspired by dreams in all those toons where it appeared. jumping also is a good technique, but extremely unreliable. if jumping fails, and it often does, it will create the expectation that flying is impossible at all, and if it doesn't then you could possibly wake up on your way down. as I mentioned swimming is much better because it is connected to real-life experience with floating on water -- jumping isn't. spreading your arms can be done afterwards, but the floating-sensation must be done first as a reality-check. besides, if you'd take drugs and accidentally get the feeling as if you'd be dreaming, would you then also try jumping and using full speed to land on your belly? however, there is a method to safely test the flying with spread out arms: again in alice in wonderland the author described how putting your hand on the hand-rail and get down the stairs without touching them. just retract your feet and hover downwards. if done in reality the retracting of feet will be impossible because of your hand on the handrail. last-but-not-least I can give the hint to actually check how much you do weight within the dream, how strong the pressure is your body-weight creates on your feet, take off your shoes and feel the ground underneath, its structure and temperaature. if you feel nothing, then explain away that lack of feeling as actual hovering above the ground, and suddenly you will have the ability to fly again. but if you do feel something, then it's nonsense to fly in such a sensation-rich dream anyway, they are extremely rare and offer much more than merely the feeling of ground underneath your feet, there you can get feelings that you will never feel in reality.

Try to do some swimming moves and push yourself into the air with them :) That's how i get up from the ground.