Thread: Introduction and first lucid experiences

Hi everyone! I'm gonna talk here a little about my lucid experiences, and how I got into lucid dreaming.

I'm 18 years old and i've had some lucid dreams during my childhood and teenage years (It's hard to estimate how many exactly, perhaps a dozen or so) but they've always started kind of randomly when I just realize i'm dreaming for some reason. Usually they don't last very long, maybe a minute at maximum. And I have never really had any controll over these dreams (nor have i tried) except for one where I remember summoning a nuclear explosion at the horizon which was kind of cool.

I never knew how to induce these lucid dreams at will, until I got interested in dreaming-related stuff few months ago and started reading about all these things in Wikipedia and various blogs and forums, which is how I eventually found my way to Dreamviews. I was really excited about the possibility to obtain realistic dreams and being able to controll them whenver I feel like.

Few weeks ago I started doing reality checks while awake and decided to start paying more attention to my dreams and trying to memorize them. That's when i had my first "semi-lucid" experience (I don't know how to call it)

I was having some random dream and after that I remember having a false awakening. I was in the kitchen talking with my mom, and then we started to discuss about lucid dreaming for some reason. She told me at one point that our family friend has done some research about dreams (which is not true in real life). After the discussion I got this strange dizzy and tired feeling, and I began to suspect i might actually be dreaming. So i decided to do a reality check and and tried to push my finger through my palm - but it didn't go through and i just figured i'm awake

When I woke up I was little pissed that I had actually managed to do a reality check within a dream but it didn't work.

Couple of weeks rolled by, and during that time i had little to none recollection of my dreams. Last night however was the big "breakthrough".

I have almost a crystall clear memory of my last night dream. I was having fun with a friend of mine at my house and doing some other random stuff, and the next morning I was sitting in the toilet thinking back at the last night events. Then it started to hit me - I didn't remember going to sleep last evening, or waking up this morning! And when i started to pay attention to the bathroom itself, i noticed that the toilet was much closer to the door than normally (thinking back at it, the hole room was completely screwed up, for excample there was this big window-kind of thing on one wall, which is a bit unusual thing to have on your wc But I somehow didn't notice any of this during the dream.) So i reached my arm towards the bathroom wall - and it went through! It was both shocking and extremely exciting feeling, since everything up to that point had felt like waking life despite the few architectural abnormalities. I guess the following adrenaline rush destabilized the dream. I had read that looking at my hands and concentrating would stabilize the dream, but i think it had no affect cause my adrenaline levels were so high. When I woke up I had a similar feeling like after a really horrible nightmare but in a positive kind of way, if you understand what i mean My hart was pounding really hard.

I was a little dissapointed since the dream only lasted for 10 seconds or so, but it was an important milestone cause now i know that i can in fact induce lucid dreams and i'm up for the future dream adventures

PS. I'm not a native english speaker so forgive my clumsy language at some parts And also forgive my over-abuse of smileys.