I voted for focus awareness, cause I could only vote for one. By focusing awareness I ment trying to focus while looking at my hands. That normally helps, if I do it as soon as the picture is getting a bit vague. But when I’m really that far from the dream already, that I almost can’t see anything anymore, then I have to start spinning. And then I’m lucid again. So I use both, spinning and looking at hands. First looking at my hands and if that’s not enough then spinning.
Spinning doesn’t work for me, so I mainly use the rubbing-your-hands technique. The first thing I do when I become lucid, is focus awareness to get a feeling of the dream and its environment. This generally stabilizes the dream immediately.
Rubbing hands works best for me.
i hold onto something like a branch or somthin works woders and movemt. bar spinng that = wake up 4 me
but there is one thing that i did once. i forced stabilty heaps and made my self deeper and deeper into the dream it was cool. but now i am just normal i dont do any techs now. strange
When I first started using Spinning, it worked well for me and would make the dream much more vivid. Then I noticed that it started making the dream fade out, so I stopped using it.
Now I usually use hand rubbing (better if it’s on a substance in the dream) while using some kind of focusing. But I noticed you can also retain stability of the dream if your focusing is not specific. I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but you can sort of focus on everything at once if you clear your mind of thoughts and just act. I think my mind wanders a lot, especially in dreams, and it takes my focus away from the dream and makes it fade out. But if I just concentrate on what I’m doing in the dream it helps.
I focus my awareness, but not an a specific object. I simply open myself to all the physical sensations of the dream world, I pet things, sniff things, and all sorts of other silly things. It really helps though.
I usually use spinning, or just “will” my dream to return. The latter method takes practice though and it doesn’t involve changing the dream scene and such
I merge my thumbs and look through them.
Spinning actually confuses me a lot in LDs. When I spin I always end up at a new location. I’ve had the most success with staring at a stable point, mainly, my hands. I get all focused on my hands and see every detail and keep repeating to myself, ‘I am dreaming now’. Rubbing my hands also works to some extent. I tried yelling ‘Stay lucid!’ or ‘Increase lucidity now!’ but those didn’t have a very big effect.
I tend to be far too active in lucid dreams and get carried away quickly; I’m a deep sleeper and an intense dreamer, and find it very difficult to stay lucid. I usually slip into a normal dream with the illusion of being lucid. I’m still looking for a powerful technique that’ll really stabilize my dream and me in it. :\ Unfortunately my mind is just as flighty and unfocused during the day… so I hope it’s not a bad character trait.
I think rubbing should be changed to just using hands… i rub my hands, focus on my hands, etc… i don’t just rub or focus awareness.
Self hypnosis, using that to slow my brainwaves down to alpha and theta brain waves and block beta waves as much as i can while i have a ld.
Also can do it by letting my dream body fall a sleep in my ld.
That still works the best for me.
Jeff
Spinning works wonderfully for me. I say where I want to go (or if I want to stay) and just spin a little.
i said focus awareness because ive only had 2 LD’s in my life(both in the last 4 days) and the first time i woke up right away but the second time i had to focus on not waking up, and it took quite a bit of effort,
so i dunno if thats what u mean by focus awareness, but what i ment was i would focus on not waking up
ive never herd of any of these teqniques, im gonna try spinning around next time, it seems interesting
Had to chime in on this older thread…
When I’ve felt lucidity fading, I like to use telekinetics to maintain focus in my dream. Sometimes, the DC’s get a big kick out of it - others, they don’t even notice. 
But it definetly reinforces the fact that I am actually dreaming; I can’t do this IRL (yet! 
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A few months ago… while i was lucid i started worrying about losing my lucidity and I thought that I can stay lucid because i can control this state.
I used to do the spinning one which sometimes resulted in a change of setting but other times just turned everything black or ended the dream. So I chose Focus Awareness. It works a bit better for me.
I usually try to focus my awarness, but I like to use voice commands too, such as “STABILIZE DREAM!” or “GET CONCIOUS”. I heard that spinning and rubbing your hands was supposed to stimulate your brain somehow, but it seems to not work for me. I think being aware is the best way to stay lucid. Just take not of your surroundings. Realizing the fact that its a dream helps A LOT.
Always when I try the spinning-method I wake up. Why do this happen to me? It seems to work wonderful for almost everyone else. ^^
I havent tried the rubbing-method yet, but I’ll be sure to do that in my next LD. 
One thing that works though is when i try to focus on my state of mind and try to take controll of the situation, like sayinf to myself that “I wont wake up, I will stay lucid and just have a good time and do some experiments. ” (but in swedish 
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keep on dreaming!
Chewing bubblegum forces me to concentrate on the texture/taste long enough to focus my thought and stabilise.
My favorite is definitely focusing awareness.
Usually if i sense my stability/lucidity shaking, i drop everything and just focus on a small piece of my dreamscape. That is all that occupies my thoughts. I want to see it in detail (because its fading) and almost immediately it ‘focuses’ into detail. Think ‘zoom focus’ on a digital camera - its just like that! (at least for me) Once this has happened, im usually good to go. The general feel of the dream strengthens accordingly.
Looking at my hands seems to help me too (though it did not in the beginning for some reason), in the same detail fashion (though on an interesting note, my hands are still a little ‘blurry’ and are ALWAYS bright, which is probably why they seem a little blurry cuz im being slightly blinded by them.) Hehe yeah, i never really thought about what my hands looked like (always focusing just on if it helps my stability or not), they are bright!..weird
I havent really tried spinning or rubbing my hands enough to see if its personally effective. I think the one time (?) that i tried spinning, i woke (not being used to the dreamscape ‘clear’ that happened to me). The time i tried rubbing my hands, that worked in the sense that it helped solidify my ‘physical’ orientation in the dream.