Thread: Reality check tips and question

Hands are almost as unstable as text in dreams. They can have between 3 and 7 or 8 fingers and are sometimes flipped (Left hand on Right arm and Vice Versa)
I thought this was gross until I actually experienced it, it's not that bad.

Yeah and sometimes they can look real wierd. In one dream mine looked like I had been in a pool for about a year.


Has anyone found that the finger through hand RC doesn't work. It hasn't for me yet, but thankfully the nose plug saved me. When I try to put my finger through my hand it feels just like it does in waking life. I just feel pressure.

I'm gunna try Rcing everytime I walk through a doorway or move into a new area. I've heard about it but I never do it My hands are always how I become lucid, then I rub them together and it makes the dream more vivid. When I try focusing on my hands they look like they are made of silk and I don't have nails, it's just long pointy fingers.

I've tried to do this before but I find it hard for me to reality check all day long. I end up forgetting and doing maybe 5-10 RC's a day.

I've only had the hand RC pass once sorta. I tried to poke my finger through my hand and my skin started to pop and crack and I felt a lot of pain. It looked weird though so thats how I knew it was a dream.

First time I did a hand RC in a dream, it was in front of a mirror. I could see the reflection of my hands, but not my dream body hands.

The second time I did a hand RC, my hands looked normal, but it still made me lucid for some reason.

My hands have never looked strange in dreams, so I prefer the nose pinch RC.

Doing it every time you walk through a door is a great idea. I personally do it whenever I look in a mirror, or see something odd.

first reality check I did was look at my hands, and its happened 3 times. It's a cool feeling to reality check in a dream.

Tests to do in dreams:

- Look at your hands. You'll have too few / many fingers (as you discussed)
- Look at your reflection. Usually it will look like someone else, or overtime it might look like you but there will be subtle differences that set you apart from your dream image
- Check the time. It never stays the same (apparently).
- Read text (as said above). I managed to read an article of text in a dream stably.
- Spin around. Are you still in the same setting? Some people say they appear in completely different environment
- If you can even remember to do any of the above and realize you are asleep, you are in a lucid dream so congrats

Those are all I know.

I have a rubber band around my right hand and a cross on the other. When I see either, I rub my hand together and other thing and see if they feel right. Then I think about where I am, what I've done and where I'm going. Then check if the rubber band and the cross is still there.

I do a few reality checks a day (5 or so). But the strange thing is that lately I just know when I'm dreaming, not because I do reality checks. So I don't pay much attention to it.

I do look to my hand and footh to make sure, the first time it scared the hell out of me. Creapy stuff.
I think that being aware of strange things is better than the reality checks. I will do the RC just to make sure I'm dreaming.

Originally Posted by Balder

Can someone describe how the hands look like in a dream.

They may look fine, but for most people they look different (mutated/wrong colour/wrong sizes/wrong number of fingers) and each person has their own differences.

In one dream, my hands were like sponge, and one of my fingers was like a flat cuboid-shaped sponge-like finger. In another few dreams, one hand would have a big bit of flesh removed, and I could see the inside of the hand.

Reality checks for me go like this: I ask (in my head), "Am I dreaming? Where am I, and how did I get here? Does my explanation for how I got here sound sensible? Then I look at one of my hands and count the fingers (excluding the thumb) by touching each finger with the thumb, thinking, "One, two, three, ..." and I try to feel more fingers after four, expecting there to be more, so that in a dream, the expectation would cause there to be more fingers.

The hand reality check is pretty reliable, for me. I will almost always have too many fingers, or strange looking hands. Plus, it has the added benefit of stabilizing you. You get to focus on your dream body, solidifying your place in the dream.

My dream hands almost always look just like my real hands, so it's not a good RC for me. The only recent lucid I had from doing the hands RC was when my dream world was animated. So when I checked my hands and they were realistic, I realized it was a dream.

Originally Posted by Naiya

My dream hands almost always look just like my real hands.

Me too, except I get the classic "extra finger" thing going on so it works for me.

All my friends think I'm crazy, spinning around, trying to push my finger through my hand, fiddling with my nose, doeing all of the above whenever I walk through a door... lol

The nose RC is my best friend. I have a lot of false awakenings so I do a nose RC everytime I wake up. It helps.

The walking through a door thing sounds like a trip, I'll start doing that. I always ask myself if I'm dreaming when I'm in the shower or looking at the moon. Those are just two times that I'm usually reminded to do my RCs. I've been thinking about the post I saw from a guy who has a tatoo on his hand and everytime he sees it he RCs. It sounds good to me, but I can see where some other people wouldn't want to do it.

The actual original 'walk through a door' reality check was, every time you walk through a door, to assess the room on the other side and make sure that everything was in the place it belonged.

Interesting how that mental check concept has faded away