Sometimes, when real life situations seem particularly surreal, and the normal looking at hands and plugging nose don't seem to do anything, I try to fly just to make sure those RCs didn't fail. I was wondering if anyone uses attempting flight as a regular reality check, just like people look at their hands and plug their noses?
Some might say that it wouldn't be a good method, because some find it difficult to fly in their dreams, but I don't think that is the case for me. So far, I've had only one real DILD, and it only lasted for 10 seconds, but I flew in that time :P.
Meh, I might as well tell the story:
I was sitting in the bathroom, and out of nowhere I just did a plug-nose reality check. It was funny because it just seemed like an autopilot sort of thing, and I wasn't even really thinking of dreaming. In any case, I was able to breathe through my nose still, and I was so surprised! I got very excited. I thought to myself "but everything seems so real!!!". Nothing seemed dreamlike at all, but the RC suggested that I was dreaming. I figured I would try to levitate, and as soon as I tried I immediately floated up to the ceiling completely in control. Then the dream started to fade away, and I realized that in all the excitement, I forgot to rub my hands together to prevent this. As the dream was half faded out, I began rubbing my hands together, but it only slowed down the fading, and didn't bring me back into the dream, and that was that. The whole thing seemed to last about 10 seconds or so. It was very exciting, and gave me some hope, but I haven't really been close since then and it's been over a week...
But in any case, back to the topic. So if you're able to fly easily in your lucid dreams, would it be effective to try to fly as a reality check? Sometimes lookin at your hands or plugging your nose is a bit awkward, and trying to fly seems to be my only unawkward option. I do fear, however, that if I try this RC in a dream it won't work, because of the bias that flying normally doesn't work in reality.
I was also thinking of taking this a step further perhaps, by spending at least a few minutes a day really actively trying to fly. Like doing ridiculous things like flapping your arms around while jumping or something like that, and trying to make yourself fly as you would during a dream (with the mind). Eventually, if you start practicing flight during a non-lucid dream, and it ends up working, you will then know that you are dreaming.
So what do people think about this? Has anyone here tried using flight attempt to induce a lucid dream in some way or another? I think that trying to fly for a few minutes every day, in addition to doing flight-based reality checks might prove to be more effective than just the traditional reality checks. Maybe i'll practice trying to fly a bit today :P.
