Thread: Couple of basic questions

Welcome to the forums!

1) Lucid dreams themselves shouldn't make you feel any more tired than regular dreams, but if you use an alarm to wake yourself up during the night to accomplish them, that can make you more tired. If you're naturally waking up anyway, it's worth it to try a WILD, but purposely waking yourself up every night can possibly get tiresome over time, although you can always take a break if it's starting to effect you too much (or you can try methods like MILD, which don't require you to wake up during the night).

2) I've actually found more often than not that I don't have any problem reading in dreams. It does occasionally happen where the words might change after I read them a second time, but the majority of the time the words are fairly consistent. So although it can be used as a Reality Check, I would advise something a little more reliable. My personal favorite is the nose plug - pinch your nose and try to breathe through it, if you can then you're dreaming. It's quick, doesn't require looking for stuff to read, and works about 99% of the time.

3) Sleeping me's are usually quite dumb. The logic portion of the brain actually shuts down during sleep, which is why we don't really question when things get weird. But like Efthemia said, the best way to get yourself to question reality in the dream is to get into the habit of questioning reality when you're awake. Eventually, that habit will carry over into your dreams, and you might find yourself doing one instinctively and cause a DILD. Over time, once you have more experience with lucid dreaming, you'll be able to catch anomalies in your dreams and RC from there, but when you're just starting out, it's usually best to just let habit take over.

Hope that helps!