What is a reality check?

I am new to this, I only started recording my dreams last night, which worked out better than expected. I woke up naturally at the perfect time to record my dream. But what I am wondering about is the reality checks; I have done some light reading about them, but I'm wondering what exactly they are, how do I go about doing them, and how often should I do them? They seem to be a vital part of the whole process. Help? Thanks.

A reality check is a method of actively testing your state, usually used in the context ofa critical state test. A reality check consists of any action that can be performed to reliably discern weather you are dreaming or awake. An example would be pinching your nose and trying to breath through it. This is probably the most common. The idea is, if you are dreaming, you will recieve the stimulus fron your actual nose and be able to breathe despite having your nose pinched, thus you know you are dreaming. If critical state testng is asking weather you are awake or dreaming, a reality check is a way of producing evidence one way or the other.

Don't just perform routine reality checks throughout the day, because if that is all you lead yourself to do in a dream, it will aid you sporadically at best. What you want to do in a dream is awaken your critical thinking that causes you to question your state while dreaming, a faculty that is normally incapacitated when dreaming. Once this is acheived, a reality check is only needed as confirmation. Reality checks can also be performed throughout a dream once already lucid to reaffirm lucidity (making it less likely to lose lucidity, as the longer it's been since you actively thought to yourself "I'm dreaming", the more lucidity seems to slip away, that's my experience at least) and stabilize a dream.

Some other common reality checks are counting your fingers (for some reason you will often find a number other than 5 when dreaming), trying to push a finger through the palm of the opposite hand, turning on and off lights (which often malfunction in dreams), really you can use anything that works for you.

And that's about it. Was I unclear on anything there?

Personally, I preform the nose-pinch test during the day everytime I see or hear something odd. Apparently I really lucked out, as it has only taken me about 5 days to get my first lucid dream. (Well, first that I can say I knew for certain I was dreaming and was conscious.)

Heck, I had to do it twice in one sleep session. First time I spun myself right outta lucidity. I eventually did another nose pinch when I realized I was a 'camera' (I.E. in cutscene mode.) then bam, conscious. For whatever reason, my most signifigant things I did was testing a few RC's. A lightswitch (Oddly enough,worked mostly as expected.) and pushing on a wall (Expecting to go through it, I didn't).

Beyond that, I called out trying to summon my subconscious... Which failed completely.

Can someone tell me how I would increase my awareness in my waking life. Because that's the point of a reality cheching right? When I was doing reality checks I didn't real feel like I was actually doing them with meaning. I feel like I was just saying "am I dreaming" and then perform a reality check without really thinking about it.

OOOOOOH. Nose pinching sounds good, see, here I'm thinking that every time something odd happens I have to count my fingers and shout "reality check!", which sounded too embarrassing and difficult to have to explain to anyone who might hear.Also, do I have to really like..feel it and mean it,like a mantra, or is it just a matter of reciting it?

Well, as I said (in, granted, maybe a few too many words :P), you can't allow it to become a mindless routine. The action you want to carry over into your dreams is not the physical action of the reality check, but the mental action of seriously questioning your state. If you want to really mean it in your dreams, you have to really mean it when you're awake - and it won't realy work in your dreams unless you really mean it, with all seriousness. It may seem silly to be so serious about it when you know that you're awake, but remember, in a non-lucid dream you believe yourself to be awake.

Definitely I have to make sure not to trivialize it as well. =/

I recently added 2 things to my RC routine: I check my left hand (I have a very distinct mole on the back of it.), and look far left at my glasses frame that goes to my ear and adjust them. (I noticed I wasn't wearing glasses when I was lucid and my vision is poor without them.)

Seems like the glasses check could work very well in theory... Anyway, there are lists aplenty regarding RCs, so finding discreet ones shouldn't be too hard.