A nightmare dream wake-up

One way I'd successfully tried seeking lucid dreaming ages back, was MILD (mnemonic-induced LD). This is when you first try to open the waking mind to the possibility of dreaming lucid, by active suggestion during the day... then build on that to full, true lucidity.

For example, you write on a small piece of paper or carstock 'I will lucid dream tonight', and place in wallet or something you'll refer to often. Every time you open wallet, you'll see, focus on and read the mantra to yourself once, then forget and go on with your day. The 'forget and move on' part, is crucial.

If you want the subconscious mind involved (and you do), focus the waking mind on a task / subject for a moment ('setting intention'), then disconnect from it completely, moving to the next thing. Waking mind functions best when paying 100% attention to the present moment; the subconscious needs the high overhead of waking mind to move out the way, so can do its thing. So if waking mind's constantly trying to replay moments in itself on loop without returning to the here and now, the way into your dreams in a sense gets choked out.

I once held my arms and hands in the classic military 'attention' posture, of turning palms inward toward my legs, as if to grasp the hem of the dress greens trouser, just as trained. When taking up bodywork, learned this resting arm posture weakens the shoulder joint due to not seating all the muscle attachments to the upper arm correctly -- your natural resting arm posture, should be thumbs towards the body, palms back, elbows directly facing outward.

When trying to un-learn the habit from my nervous system... had to do a wordless version of the mnemonic trick: whenever I'd noticed my hands and arms unconsciously assuming the military posture, made the change to correct posture, then forgot it and moved on. Every time that happened, repeateed the deed (committed to doing it as long as it took) -- and after ~ 2 - 3 wks, were noticing it wasn't as necessary... and 3 mos later arm posture were unconsciously enforcing the new order 100%.

Give that a try on dreaming, and update us on what happens