From: tmpitts@charter.net   
      
   I first learned about lucid dreaming nearly a year ago, but I lost   
   interest after a few days. I picked it back up a few weeks ago, and I've   
   had a few short dreams in which I seemed to be lucid. I noticed that   
   during the two longest of these dreams (which were still only a couple of   
   minutes long), I had a false awakening in which I felt some physical pain   
   of discomfort (such as a headache) both in the first dream, and in the   
   second dream (after the false awakening), and yet when I really woke up   
   the pain was gone.   
      
   Anyway, my first question is about controlling my dreams. In one dream I   
   woke up in my bed (actually, I think I've woken up in my bed in every LD   
   I've had), and I got up, walked around the room, and as a test, I simply   
   said "I want to be wearing jeans." I felt my legs and I remember feeling   
   the denim, as if the jeans had just appeared by my command. But that's the   
   only time I can remember showing any control over a dream. During the last   
   couple of dreams (the most recent of which was a few hours ago) I've woken   
   up my bedroom, in the dark. I tried turning the lights on, but the light   
   switch wouldn't work (of course it shouldn't). Since I realized that I'm   
   dreaming, I tried "making" the lights go on, by saying "lights!" or   
   snapping my fingers, or whatever, but the lights wouldn't turn on. Is   
   there something I'm not doing right here? Since simply "willing" it worked   
   in the first dream (where I seemed to make jeans suddenly appear on my   
   legs), I would think that it would work the same way with the lights, but   
   it doesn't.   
      
   The other problem is that I can't seem to prolong my dreams. I tried a   
   couple of methods, such as looking at my hands or looking at the ground,   
   but I don't really see how it helps. I've also read about dreams "fading   
   out" (which may allow me some time to stabilize the dream), but this   
   doesn't seem to happen with me. I just seem to instantly wake up with no   
   warning. In the last dream I had, I just got out of bed, tried to make the   
   lights come on, and before I had time to even try leaving the bedroom the   
   dream had ended. Can anybody give me some advice on this?   
      
   And something else I'm wondering about is if I could practice something   
   during a lucid dream, and master it in reality. I play a few musical   
   instruments, so I could try practicing a song during a dream (I've read   
   about using LDs to practice some kind of performance or speech, and   
   overcome the fear of being in front of people, but what I really want to   
   do is to actually physically improve on playing a song. For example, if I   
   can play Für Elise on the piano by memory, but very slowly, could I   
   practice it in a dream and greatly improve my speed?), but something I   
   would really like to try is to learn how to touch type with a new keyboard   
   layout (the Dvorak layout), but only by practicing in my dreams. I already   
   learned one new layout (Colemak), and I found that after the first couple   
   of days I already knew where all of the keys were, but I was still typing   
   slowly because I had to think of where each key was before I typed. So if   
   I memorized the new layout, and then only practiced typing in my dream,   
   could I actually learn to touch type with a different layout at full speed?   
      
   I don't think I would necessarily be able to improve as much with music   
   because of the fact that playing in reality causes muscles to develop and   
   skin to callous (with the guitar, for example), so if you were to master   
   the guitar in the dream world you might find that in reality you're still   
   not very good if you still have the same weak fingers.   
      
   But with typing, I don't need to develop any muscles (although I may have   
   to develop muscle memory, by actually physically typing). But I'm still   
   not sure if I could learn to type with a new layout in my dreams. Since my   
   fingers aren't actually doing any typing, would it be difficult to adjust   
   to a new layout?   
      
   Thanks in advance for an insight into these issues.   
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