New to lucid dreaming - need help with finding dream sign and reality checks

**Pyro0073** · 08-22-2010 02:56 AM

Hi everyone! I've known about lucid dreaming for a few months now, and intended to get started then, but never really committed to it. I'm interested in getting started now that I've found a few more resources on the subject. I've kept a light dream journal ever since I started it when I found out about LDs a few months ago and my dream recall has improved significantly. I typically recall 3 or so dreams per night, but last night I hit a personal record of 6 recalled dreams while using the MILD+WBTB technique. One of the dreams I had last night was one of my most interesting and the closest dream I've had to being lucid. I actually dreamt that I was having a lucid dream, but I know that it wasn't a true lucid dream since it was a dream that I thought I was dreaming during the dream. That's the closest I've ever been to achieving lucidity.

One of the biggest problems I've been having is finding a good reality check. Lately my check has been counting fingers to make sure I have ten, and trying to pass one hand through another. However when I did this in one of my dreams last night, the check failed.*
I have also been having trouble finding a way to remind myself to reality check in real life. Nearly all of my dreams have water in them, and as far as I can tell that's the only thing they all have in common. So I've been RCing every time I see water. Is this too common of an object to RC for? And has anyone ever experienced their subconscious avoiding putting themselves into scenarios where their dream sign is missing so you won't perform a RC? I would also appreciate any suggestions for other forms of reality checks!

**matthew123** · 08-22-2010 03:02 AM

i used to use the hand RC but in my dreams my hands are dark and blurry so now i use the nose plug RC where you pinch your nose shut and try to breathe through your nose if you can you are dreaming if not then you are awake it never fails for me!

**MadMonkey** · 08-22-2010 04:57 AM

Great job on the recal improvment. You should have tried harder on lucid dreaming in the summer though. Its always harder to lucid dream in the school year (unless your no longer in school of corse). Also those dreams when you first start where you dream its a lucid but you arn't actualy lucid are so anoying.

I suggest you don't do the hand reality check as much atleast until you can verify if it works well for you. Different reality checks can be less reliable for different people. My hands look completely normal in my dreams. The two RCs that are the most reliable for basicly everyone are the noes pinch RC and the clock RC. If you plug your noes with your fingers and try to breath during a dream you will still be able to because you can still breath in real life. For the other one you need an anoloug clock or really any peice of writing. If you read it once look away and look back it will be different than it was before. If its not make sure you look back 3 or 4 times because it gets more unstable each time.

To get yourself to get better at remembering to do RCs is to either every time you go through a door way to do a RC until you get used to doing them all the time. Or what I did was write RC or LD on my left hand so everytime I saw it I did a RC. Its not necisary to do this forever, just until you can remember without aid.

Also if you were subconsciously avoiding a dream sign it wouldn't be a dream sign would it.