wall of text, activate:
most people have to practice lucid dreaming for at least 2 or 3 months to get any usable results... even longer to make it reliable and enjoyable. especially in the beginning, lucid dreaming is said to cause one to basically crash the dream and wake up. being conscious during sleep is pretty unnatural so waking up is an understandable reaction.
if you want this, you have to work for it.
and pick up these really annoying habits of forcing yourself to conciously read every sign, every shops name, every advertisement logo you pass, once or better yet, twice. that is so that while you dream, it may just happen to become a habit there too and reading is one of the most effective ways to realize you dream. reading in a dream is often either impossible due to nonsense letters, or its clear as day, but changes whenever you look away.
another habit is to stop, use two fingers to pinch your nose and try to exhale through the nose. in reality, this wont work, in a dream, it will without resistance. it will also make you look stupid in public, if you do it every 5 - 10 minutes. which you will have to do to make it a reliable habit.
theres like tons of more information readily available on the google. personally, i gave up after about a month, for it was just way too much work. and dream control isnt all that its cracked up to be. ive experienced it a few times, i guess im just not as sensationally receptive, for it to feel really great or interesting.
theres one way that i found to be reliable to cause short lucid dreams of sorts, but it may only work for people who have a hard time staying awake in the morning.
use an alarm clock for your pc, as those are very customizable with their times
go to
http://sleepyti.me/wake/ and check the times you should try to wake up by entering the time you usually fall asleep and plan to fall asleep today/whenever.
use one of those times and set your alarmclock to about 30-45 minutes earlier. set an alarm tone that starts out really loud (use a song or something, you basically need to be ripped out of sleep the second the clock starts so you can smash the snooze button) and chose a snooze time of 8 minutes (that usually works for me, maybe you need 9 or 10, who knows)
then, just sleep until you wake up, hammer snooze, try to focus on something dreamworthy and fall asleep again (this may or may not be easy) repeat that 3-5 times. at some point, you may experience a dream and become aware of it too. this works best when you initially are woken up from a dream and you happen to fall back into the same dream.
at this point, if you start some kind of movie or tv show or something (maybe set it of with a timer or do it while you click snooze), it will also often translate directly into your dream. while not exactly lucid dreaming, its another way to control what you dream about. (however, this seems to be a good way to figure out what times to set your clock too, i believe, when you can easily make a dream out of an episode of the simpsons running (meaning you hear the things being said, but it will probably not look like the simpsons, so basically when you make up the visuals in your dream), it will probably be easier to start a lucid dream too
the problem with all this is, its limited. if you end up dreaming lucidly, it will only be for about your snooze setting, mostly even a little less than that. it will also make make for a bad morning, as waking up at the wrong time while a sleep cycle is not finished is kinda hard on the body. you may end up spending that day feeling very tired and groggy.
also, a dream episode of the simpsons may look really ... abstract.
yeah... good luck, dont get discouraged by things taking forever if you really want this to happen. also, remember, the real world is still the only one that counts. just saying cause there really are people who think lucid dreaming would be a viable way to escape the troubles of the daily life or to be with lost loved ones or other stupid crap like that. i'd say, if you want to see your pet again, alright, but everything above that, you may spend your time better by looking for a good psychiatrist
