Quote Originally Posted by dellclown View Post
Hey, I have been trying the staring at your hands technique and repeating "tonight when I dream, I will see my hands and realize I am dreaming", as described in the book "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self".

Last night though, this little voice in the back of my head kept questioning the technique, and I found myself wondering how just seeing your hands can make you realize you are lucid. I am afraid it won't work at all if i think it won't, and I was wondering if anyone could explain to me why it does work.
I read about this technique in Castaneda's books. Don Juan said to Castaneda, look for your hands in your dreams. So I got into the habit of looking at my hands as my sole reality check during the day - I don't use anything else.

Anyway, one day I'm dreaming, and I decide to look at my hands. I stare at my palms, and after a few moments my fingers start getting longer and longer, just growing. So I understood I was dreaming, of course, and started a LD right there.

My theory is that the dream body is unstable, it doesn't have a fixed form, and as a result it cannot "fake" some hands for more than a few moments. Probably if you tried to look in a mirror as a RC, you would get the same kind of effect - but then you would need a dream mirror .