Anyone here able to have lucid dreams?

I was wondering if anyone around these parts was able to have lucid dreams, how they go about getting lucid, and what they've been able to do in those dreams.

I've been trying off and on for a while, but always wake up when I realize I'm dreaming and try to take control. This usually happens when I'm at the cusp of consciousness anyway.

I used to have them quite frequently in the past.

I still occassionally have very vivid dreams, except now I'm just a spectator to the horrors of my own mind.

Did you just suddenly find yourself lucid, or did you do any preparation?

I get them all the time! When I dont eat right before I go to bed!

No preparation. The only things I would do would be to start writing my dreams down as soon as I wake up. As you start getting used to that, you can start to tell when you're dreaming and you can take some kind of control of the outcomes.

The only thing is, if you try too hard to do it, or if you try to do too much, you will wake up. You gotta "go with" whatever the dream is about and try to do all you can do while within it's context. It can be fun, sometimes you'll wake up immediately and then you cannot go back.

I think the best time to try this is to sleep during the daytime. Your brain is more active then. Taking a nap during the day would be a good time to try it.

Some of my best dreams were ones in which I was able to take action. Like actually speak to the people in my dream, walk around and explore wherever I was at the time, and sometimes even just decide to fly and it happened. But like I said, if you get too "into it" you could wake up suddenly. It takes practice, but you can't try too hard, ya know?

Wants,
Once I got about a year of daily meditation under my belt all my dreams became easily recognizable and easily manipulated. It just kind of happened one day, and has never required specific effort. I now regularly manipulate the dream state, or turn it off completely to suit myself. I back up dreams and run them again if I like them (like with a DVD Movie) or I back them up and change a variable or two to change the outcome if I don't. I change locations and people at will, and I even set myself down to accomplish tasks that await me in the "real" world. With meditation, you will learn much about how the mind works and how we perceive reality - lucid dreaming is but one of the positive outcomes.

So I would say one method of getting where you want to go is to begin meditation (just an hour a day of good old Buddhist mind emptying!) Certainly there are others, but this way you get Lucid Dreaming and a whole lot more!

And I will also say Godsize's suggestions sound eminently workable too, and perhaps require a smaller time investment...