Missed RC opportunities?

Ok I am new to LD, I read a bit about RCing.
Last nights dream was quite vivid and I recorded it in the journal but one distinct thing I remember..

During the dream I saw my hands, when I eventually woke up after the dream the very first thing I thought to myself was I saw my hands! Why did I not RC? Dam I'm stupid I missed the chance.. Etc..

Anyways the moment I saw my hands they where in welding gloves and I was in quite a confrontational part of my dream so I may not of had time to or even thought to RC, or could this have been for some strange reason my subconscious mind attempting to prevent me from RCing and then LDing.

In any other instance id have called this dream a nightmare because of the violence but I felt calm and not scared.

Are looking at your hands a common dream sign? We tend to reality check when we see recurring elements in our dreams, so it could be that looking at your hands is a rare occurrence or you simply haven't considered it a dream sign.
The subconscious likes to hinder as much as help, so that is one possibility. Finally, reality checks aren't entirely foolproof and you can easily forget about them in a dream. And I'd say you'd have to be scared for it to count as a nightmare.

Hmm ok thank you I understand this now, reality checks are reoccurrences in your dreams you lookout for.
I guess because I have never been aware of my hands before it was me simply dreaming about what I had been reading because that what I was looking for.

I will keep up with writing a journal and learn more about my subconscious.

The way I see it, we are talking about 2 different things here.

1. If you saw your hands, because you are practicing during day the "looking at hands" RC.

This means, that your practice is starting to show in your dreams. Which is a great sign. Now what you need to do, is add awareness. If you just look at your hands when you practice, you will see your hands in your dream, but it will not trigger lucidity. Same way, as you experienced it in your dream.

What will trigger lucidity, or the urge to RC in your dream, is your awareness training. You have to associate "wow, this could be a dream" feeling to your RCs. Everytime you RC during day, you have to believe, that RC will work, because you could be dreaming. The more you believe that you are dreaming at that moment, the better.

Then, this belief that you are dreaming will happen in your dream when you look at your hands, or just before it and it will urge you to look at your hands and you will become lucid.

Check out this short awareness + RC + mantra techniques http://www.dreamviews.com/dild/13212...ods-dilds.html


2. Dream sign

If your hand (or any other object/activity) would occur in your dreams often, then you could RC on them during day. Then when you see them in your dream, you would RC and get lucid.

This you could do with anything that occurs often in your dreams. Like water, school, friends...