On the wikibook it says:
Dream stabilization
Once you are able to dream lucidly, you may find that it is difficult to stay in the dream; for example, you may wake instantly or the dream may start “fading” which is characterized by loss or degradation of any of the senses, especially visuals.
If you wake immediately after becoming lucid (make sure you do a reality check to be sure you’re not still dreaming!), you simply need to continue practising all your techniques. If you find that you are lucidly dreaming often, it will be less of a shock when you become lucid, and you’ll be less likely to wake up.
If your dreams fade out (or “black out”), you should try these methods before your dream starts fading:
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Hand rubbing
Rub your hands together and concentrate on the rubbing. You should feel the friction and the heat of your hands. If you can concentrate on the feelings that this action generates, your dream is likely to stabilize and cause the dream to become more vivid and detailed, along with some other effects. You can also keep one hand on your arm while exploring the dream for a constant sense of stimulation. This technique is most effective when used in conjunction with the “Slowing it down” technique, by staring at your hands while rubbing them together.
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Spinning
You spin around in your dream much as you would if you suddenly want to feel dizzy in real life. The sensation of movement is the key here to stabilizing the dream. Although many people report success with this, this technique is likely to have some side-effects on the dream, such as finding yourself in a totally different scene. For this reason, this technique is also effective in changing the dream scene (see Changing the dream environment below). If the dream scene disappears (e.g., becomes black), it is necessary to visualize the dreamscape to return to the dream.
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Slowing it down
Some people like to stabilize the dream by “stopping to smell the roses” and slowly staring at a dream object until it becomes clear. The dreamer would then look around elsewhere, noticing how detailed everything is, thereby stimulating the visual portion of the dream. However, others find this can cause their lucid dream to end. If you focus on one object for too long to the exclusion of everything else, you will likely wake up or lose the dream. It works best to pay attention to everything in your vision, including your peripheral vision, not just the center of the object you’re staring at. If staring at a single object doesn’t work for you, try to let your eyes wander around instead.
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Trying to recover your waking memory and cognitive capacities
This is also likely to enhance your degree of lucidity. Try to remember facts from your waking life, such as your phone number, address, etc., or do some simple math. Or, start reciting the lyrics to your favorite song. Or perhaps try some sports practice you know well — this all depends on which senses / methods of thought process you tend to rely on most in your waking life.
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Touching your dream
If you feel that your dream is too abstract and fear that it might be fading, you can prevent this by grabbing hold of a solid object in your dream and focus on how real the sensation is. A good tip is to find something you know is stuck, for instance a table nailed to the ground, and pull it with all your muscular power (no supernatural powers!), and you should feel how solid it is. The idea is that you convince yourself that dream solid and real — through tactile stimulation — and nothing abstract.
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False awakening
A couple of the users on the ld4all.com forums have had success with creating a false awakening to stabilize a dream. If the above techniques are failing and you find your dream still fading, and you really want to continue your lucid dream, do the following:
1. Expect to have a false awakening.
2. When you think you wake up (false or not), perform a reality check.
You will either have a false awakening, reality check, and then end up with an even more vivid lucid dream, or will really wake up, perform a reality check, and realize that you just woke up (unfortunately).
The most important part of this is the reality check. This is what will continue your lucid dream. You should be performing reality checks when you wake up. If you plan to induce false awakenings in order to stabilize a dream, the reality check that you perform as you wake up is as important as the one that got you lucid, if not more.
Perform every check in the book until you are positively, absolutely, and completely sure that you aren’t dreaming. A series of 10 reality checks are more likely to produce dream results in a dream, especially if you are expecting dream results. Again, this technique is for those who are desperate!
If you have had a good experience with this technique, please go to the talk page and post your experiences, as there have not been many anecdotes of it working yet.
If you didn’t do any of these, your best option is probably to try to wake up. That way, you will remember more of the dream.
The general rule of dream-stabilization is to stimulate the senses. If you listen for sounds, feel around with your hands, and pay attention to what you see and smell, you will stimulate your senses. The idea here is to load your senses with stimulation from the dream so that your senses cannot shift to the real world. If you close your eyes, you are removing a great deal of sensory information and might wake up. Staring at a single point can cause effectively the same problem if you stop seeing everything else in your peripheral vision, or don’t see enough movement. If you hear something loud in real life and are hearing nothing in the dream, your senses may shift to the real world, causing you to wake up.
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Recovering from lost visuals
There are a few things you can try to do if you lose your visuals. Most of these are less likely to help prolong your dream than the above techniques.
You can also try these if you have just woken up and are lying in your bed. You may be able to return to your dream.
* Autosuggestion
You can repeat over and over a phrase similar to “I can see my dream,” or otherwise enforce in your mind that you can see a dreamscape. (See Autosuggestion)
*Visualising
You can visualise the scene as it would be if you could see it. You could take this as an opportunity to change the dreamscape by visualising a different environment from the previous one in the dream. This can be made easier by spinning as you visualize. (See Changing the dream environment below)
There ye go.
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. By the time i’m awake enough and realise it’s a dream i wake up.
So I walk around, trying to find a place calm enough for me to realise that I’m dreaming “properly”, so I don’t wake up. Stupid indeed! It’s like “Oh wait, I’m dreaming. Oh darn, I can’t realise it because then I will wake up! I better prepare myself before I realise this is a dream!” 