Last night I went to bed not even trying WILD, thinking “If I must have an LD, I’ll have one. If not… I won’t have an LD”. I was too tired to try WILD, and went straight to sleep.
And indeed, my dream was lucid, but it was the lowest level of lucidity I ever experienced, and when I started flying around I began to lose my lucidity (that happens to me often when flying).
After that I found myself sitting next to a good friend of mine and we saw a girl who did a reality check and then scratched her chin. The reality check she did was closing your nose and then trying to breathe through it (and it is my personal favorite). What she did seemed strange to my friend and I had to explain to him what a RC is. And the rest of the dream doesn’t even matter…
My question to you is, is there a technique to help notice dream signs and how to retain lucidity when it starts to slip away?
I think the best technique to help noticing dreamsigns would be RC’ing during the day every time you see something strange. Now if it’s a very common dreamsign, you can use autosuggestion or visualization when going to bed (repeating “next time I’ll see this DS, I’ll realize I’m dreaming” or visualizing this dreamsign and imagining that you perform a RC and realize you’re dreaming).
Spinning or rubbing hands are likely to work though they are generally used when the dream fades and you lose visuals.
A good prolonging technique is focusing on something from time to time, for instance your hands. When you reach lucidity, you stare at your hands, then every 30 seconds or when you feel you lose lucidity, you stare at them again.