Thread: reallity checks

There's different types of reality checks you can do. It's essentially anything you can do to prove that you are dreaming, and that the situation you're in is not reality.

Common ones are:
-Pinching your nose and trying to breath through it
-Checking a clock, then looking away and back and seeing if the time has drastically changed
-Looking at a book and checking if the words have changed
-Trying to make one hand go through the other
-Counting your fingers to make sure you have 5

From what I've learned, you should do these whenever you see anything out of the ordinary. If you see something during your day that looks weird, or out of place, do some sort of RC to confirm that you are really there. This way, if you see something out of place in a dream, you will instinctively do a RC and become lucid. The key thing is for it to become instinct. Anything you would normally do in real life, you will most likely do in a dream (including reality checks).

It is important not to just check and know that you're not dreaming. You have to really ask yourself seriously whether you're dreaming or not and be aware of the reason the reality check succeeded, and what the alternative out be if it had failed. Apparently it also helps to think about what you would do in the situation that the reality check failed and you found that you were in a dream.

To piggy back his question: What do you guys mean by "odd" or "out of the ordinary"? In my daily life strange things don't really happen that often so I don't think I'd RC very often if I went by that rule.

It just means that in anything does occur that strikes you as unusual. Don't just wait for unusual things to happen though, because they will likely be few and far between. Also, lower the bar for what is unusual. Say you're reading something on the net and there's a typo, you could do a reality check then. Or maybe it's just something that you don't see every day, but might not be too strange, like a city fox out during the afternoon or a pink limousine (two things I saw recently.) You also want to be on the look out for dream signs that you see frequently in your dreams and reality check when you encounter them. So, if you have dreams about spiders then you should reality check whenever you see a spider. It doesn't have to be exact either, so if you saw a spider on TV or just something that reminded you of a spider like bug spray or another insect (yes, I'm aware spiders aren't insects.)