I've been trying the counting method for lucid dreaming without much success. However, I recently encountered something I thought was a good sign.
I was dreaming some storyline roughly parallel to the LOST TV show (deserted island, beach, struggling to survive). However, at one point I looked up and saw a "bird" perched on a branch. It looked like a canary except that its entire body (head to tail, including the eyes) were brilliant red. And its head was like an elephant's. For some reason I was absolutely terrified of it.
My focus was on it for a few seconds during which I was completely terrified. After that, I switched to a different dream.
But what strikes me as encouraging about this is the fact I noticed the seam between dreams. Even though I fell unconscious soon after the second dream began, it doesn't seem like I should have remembered the "bird" and certainly shouldn't have noticed the abrupt change.
Am I reading too much into my apparent awareness? Any thoughts about why I would have been terrified of a harmless bird/elephant?
Your experience seemed pretty similar to my own.
When I experience fear in a dream, like a nightmare, it usually makes the dream become lucid for me. I experience the fear, then I realize that I don't have to be afraid if I don't want to be afraid. I don't have experience this or that in the dream, I can change the dream however I want.
Whatever we experience that triggers awareness in the dream-state is good in my opinion. If you experience fear, or sense that something is odd, or out-of-place, and then use that emotion/realization as a doorway to lucidity, then I would suppose that you are well on the way.
CWH