Thread: Reality Checks

Count fingers
Pinch nose
Look at text, look away, then look back
Finger though palm

Look at the numbers on a clock, look away for a few seconds, look back.

Bahaha By the way, I love your new signature picture Loaf. xD

When I am out and about, I ask myself the below questions:

1. Why am I here? (I am at work, for my job or I am on a train, on my way to work)
2. Where am I going? (to the post office)
3. Where did I come from? (from home)
4. What are some things I did today? (spoke to a friend)

When I am at home:

* look at digital watch/text, away, again
* look for oddities in my surroundings

look at your surroundings and try to remember how you got there

Stare at one spot for ten seconds. Movements are crucial to REM and things will distort heavily.
Can you see your nose with an eye closed?
Are you seeing perfectly without glasses?
Can you see the frame of your glasses and the blurred area outside?
Expect something to happen genuinly, did it?
Pull on your fingers, do they stretch?
Look at your clothes, do you own them?
Think about the past five minutes.
Did you just do something you're scared to do in real life? (Initiate sex, yell something embarrasing)
What time is it? Does this make sense?
Why am I here?
Just realize you are dreaming, did you feel free?

I could go on longer.

Think about sex. If you wake up, you were asleep.

I'm sure most people will naturally use that RC.

I do these:

- Finger through palm.

- Breath while pinching nose.

- See your hands and count the fingers.

Any really obsure ones that no one knows about?

Originally Posted by Alexander1656

Any really obsure ones that no one knows about?

Mzzkc would joke about jumping out of a tall building, but I wouldn't recommend that.

There's one I want to try but I have no idea if it will work (I will try it in an LD and report back):

(In R/L) Look at an object in the distance then hold up a finger about 6 inches in front of your face but ensure your focus remains on the object in the distance. You should see two fingers. Is there a difference between what you see in R/L and what you see in an LD?

Originally Posted by Alexander1656

Any really obscure ones that no one knows about?

I've been trying to invent totally new ones but I've also been trying to make my use of the existing ones more dynamic.

I've done this because I've found RCing all day - without results - really frustrating and I wondered if the constant RCing becomes too much of habit so that your brain no longer dreams about it. I mean, I spend a lot of my time in the day biting my nails or repairing the damage I've done biting my nails and I'll also bite my nails last thing at night but I've never dreamed about biting my nails. It also occurred to me that I'm constantly pushing my glasses back onto my nose but I never dream about that either.

To attempt to overcome the problem of the "RC habit" I've now started ensuring that each time I do an RC it involves utilising my environment in some way. For example, to do a nose pinch I'll pick out a random object in the room and ensure that the object is involved in my nose pinch. So, if the object is a pen I'll pick up the pen and the pen plays the role of the thumb and pushes one nostril shut while my other thumb closes the other nostril.

Another nose pinch variation I've devised is the "mutual nose pinch" where I'll visualise me nose pinching a DC's nose with my hands, and the DC nose pinching my nose with his hands. Like a, "Hey, let's help each other realise this is a dream" kind of thing. I've only been doing that visualising a week and on two dreams this week I've had DCs put their face right up to my face and in one of those dreams I became lucid.

Originally Posted by Alexander1656

Any really obsure ones that no one knows about?

I do believe some I posted were unknown for the most part.

The only RCs I use are pinching my nose and see if I could breathe, and look at a watch, then look away, look back again and see if it changed.

Though it never hurts to look at my surroundings and questioning myself.

remebering what you have done since you woke up earlier this morning (assuming it's later in the day) -a backwards logical trace

Originally Posted by I_C_U

Though it never hurts to look at my surroundings and questioning myself.

I find that mental reality checks always wake me up

Let me see, only ones I have used.

Don't work:

Pinch your nose, close eyes, look back and forth for text and clock, look at the shadows, motions and actions of people, movement of other objects, behaviour of animals, sun, clouds speed, feeling of air, smell of stuff, hearing radio, music, tasting some stuff, night, moonlight, synchronization between movement of the mouth and the sound that comes out of it, looking at mirrors, my hair, location of objects on my room/school/street, stuff that is within shops and the owners/people buying in them and mental RC, like wondering about what I did before.

Work:

Gravity and Air pressure.

hi walms,
can you be more specific about what you mean about gravity and air pressure? one is -i'm guessing - your ability to fly? and the other?
thanks

Eh, Gravity = how my body feels, pretty much the weight. While air pressure is the way that breathing feels for me, like... uh... change from a city to a forest <.<

Originally Posted by Walms

Let me see, only ones I have used.

Don't work:

Pinch your nose, close eyes, look back and forth for text and clock, look at the shadows, motions and actions of people, movement of other objects, behaviour of animals, sun, clouds speed, feeling of air, smell of stuff, hearing radio, music, tasting some stuff, night, moonlight, synchronization between movement of the mouth and the sound that comes out of it, looking at mirrors, my hair, location of objects on my room/school/street, stuff that is within shops and the owners/people buying in them and mental RC, like wondering about what I did before.

Work:

Gravity and Air pressure.

That's strange. The only reality check that ever worked for me was nose-plug. But mostly i just look around and realize I'm dreaming

Yeah, air pressure and breathing are the biggest things for me.

phone, computer, etc. not working properly at all, screens morphing, numbers messing up
time on clocks or the sky

I'm like Walms, most reality checks don't work for me.

However, text often doesn't appear properly. I either can't read something at all, or it's never the same thing twice.

Staring at something and trying to morph it (since I can morph things easily in dreams).

Gravity (ex. my own body weight. I don't feel weight in dreams).

Looking down at myself. Am I wearing clothes?
No -> It's a dream.
Yes -> Do I remember putting them on?
No -> It's a dream.
Yes -> It's not a dream (or I've got some kind of wacky dream clarity going on).