Reality checks..mine is failing!
I have a red band on my wrist, I ping this on awakening and severaltimes through the day..
Recently I have had alot af false awakenings, I have used the band and 'felt' the ping and carry on with my morning..it takes another trigger to realize that I am still dreaming.
What checks do you use and why?
RC are not consistant for me so I normally WILD or spontaniouly enter a LD. Now for the contradiction, the RC that I would like to work on is the feeling of a LD, there is something totally differant to Waking Life and that is what triggers me into a LD.
I think I need to work on sensory imput during the day, smell the roses type of stuff and lighting as they are both differant in a dream
I've seen alot of posts metioning RC on the forum, I too enter a LD/OBE through WILD (or at least my understanding of) but if i wake in the night, I often end up in a lucid dream.. And false awakenings are often now.. sometimes several before awakening..
I know some use clocks, like a wrist watch...but I do not like wearing one... !
There are many reality checks! Doing math inside your head, pushing your hand through your other hand, pinching yourself, looking at your hands, asking yourself if you're dreaming, jumping, thinking, and many more! If you're not comfortable with your current reality check, then try a new one!
Sweet dreams,
lets go back one step as doing a RC is no issue and there are a lot of ways. How do you get to the stage of deciding that you might be dreaming and need to do a check
The problem I have with RCs is remembering to actually do them in a dream. Simply asking the question "I am dreaming now?" while in a dream is often enough to do it for me. Getting yourself to practice the same things in dreams that you do waking life is most of the problem I think.
Most of the LDs I've had were one simple, small observation away from success or failure. For example in one failure, I saw a misspelling in a sign and actually consciously decided it wasn't a dream because when I looked back, it changed to normal. In another, I happened to ask myself "how did I get here?" and successfully concluded that it was dream. What I'm doing is practicing detailed observation of waking life along with RCs and questioning whether I'm dreaming. The goal is to transfer this way of thinking to the dream state and then it's not so hard. It also raises your conscious awareness in waking life which is good too.
Thank you for the tips everyone :)
i was pinging my band several times a day. and on a few occations, accidenty I would do the same in a dream.. this is not when using WILD.. just when ive been dreaming normally. but lately I can feel the ping in a dream and then carry on, presuming that because I felt the ping I must be awake. More often than not I will be doing something boring, like getting the kids breakfast ready for school..then something else will trigger me to realize that im actually still dreaming.. Bit of a waste of a lucid dream doing housework!
Smell the roses, like it.. :)
Here's a direct quote from Stephen LaBerge that sums it up: "Lucid dreamers develop a *frame of mind *that allows them to recognize when they are dreaming." (emphasis mine) I think the key is the frame of mind that allows you to connect waking reality with dream reality so that you can exist in both consciously.
My nose hold check is starting to fail. I guess that stuff happens.
The Reality Check I use exclusively now is to hold my nose, close my mouth, and see if I can breath. The good thing about this test is that it is 100% effective when I am awake. I have yet been able to breath! Now, so far it has been almost 100% effective for me while asleep. Ok, once I had a cold and did it in my sleep and "half breathed" and then assumed my cold was screwing me up, but basically it works for me.
That said, the important thing is to DO the reality checks when you are awake, and seriously consider whether or not you are dreaming. My approach is to "think in my head" that I really am dreaming, and then let the reality check show I'm not (not the other way around where you assume you are awake... then you aren't as serious in questioning reality). If you do reality checks 10 times or more a day (according to a recent study by LeBerge) your percentage of DILD is much higher. Also, the point is, you don't really NEED the reality check in your dreams nearly as much as you need to do them while awake. By conditioning your questioning of reality, you almost always realize in your dream you are dreaming... the RC can help confirm what you already suspect, but it rarely will be the trigger for your. It is usually an "epiphany" that you are dreaming (at least in DILD). So, do those RCs but remember they are for the awake, more than the dreamer.
RC's are what allow me to DILD but it has always been that I "knew" I was dreaming in my dreams. I don't usually even waste my time doing the RC in my dream once I realize I'm dreaming. I used to, and unfortunately "awoke" before I could stabilize my dream, so now I just go right to stabilizing it first.