Pinching yourself in a dream is not a good idea!

[bassaddict]

The other week, I fell asleep with my girlfriend right next to me and I had a dream that I was lying in the same position, watching my girlfriend sleep, as if I hadnt gone to sleep. The only difference was that lying on the other side of my girlfriend was a glamour model with nothing on! She was staring at me and I thought "My God this has to be a dream!" so I thought well instead of getting up and flying about like i normally do, or even doing something with this bird (wrong but when you know its a dream its OK!) I thought I would test the "Pinch yourself to see if you are dreaming" theory. Something I have never done before and wish I hadnt done in this lucid dream. I pinched my arm and could not feel the pinch, therefore telling myself I was dreaming and as this fit bird leaned over towards me, i woke up ARGH! Moral of the story - Dont prove yourself right! Just go with the dream once you know it is!

[Seeker]

Hmm... seems we've had this conversation before.. . Sometimes it is best to go with the flow and see what your subconcius is trying to tell you.

[nerve]

well of course pinching yourself wouldn't work. that test is completely obsolete. not to mention ridiculous. it irks me to no end when I see people on tv or in movies, and something great happens, and they pinch themselves and say "Well I felt that, so this can't be a dream!!". newsflash, dreams can be EXACTLY like reality. you can feel, hear, smell, see, and taste in dreams, just like you can in waking life. SO. a good reality test to use is finding a book, reading it and then looking away, then reading it again. the letters *should* be distorted, or have changed up in some way. OR you could try looking at a clock, then looking away and back, the numbers should look different. appearently these tests are subject to failure as well, accourding to a recent experience...Dreamlaws? but the clock and book tests are much more reliable than "pinching yourself".

[intent]

that sounds a bit harsh about it being obsolete. Normally I never need any hints to have me realize I am dreaming, but just recently I was having a normal dream and for some reason my dream self thought the scene was so incredible it must be a dream. So for some reason in the dream I thought 'try pinching myself' and I did. the feeling was numbed down and not like a normal pinch. so then I jumped off a cliff and started flying cause I knew it was a dream. Pinching myself wasn't or shouldn't be the main thing, it was just a subtle hint of something I already suspected. To be honest, in MILD-type lucid dreaming experiences, anything can be a cue that pushes you to finally realize it is a dream. For me it is often the fact I am flying, and I don't normally flying in real life, or the fact I am jumping so far, doing crazy stuff, etc. Or just the fact that the dream is so outlandish. 99% of the time I am doing a WILD type induction anyways. About the Dreamlaws post... Not all lucid dreams are the same, some are vastly different and follow completely different rules, some are exactly like real life, other are intensely more difficult to move/walk than real life. I've had many varieties of obe's, LDs, astral projection, whatever. some fit a different and unique classification system. In fact the deeper I go the more I realize there is more out there waiting to discover that is utterly outside the bounds of classification. So, I would say, whatever works, works. Next time try pinching the super-model girl on the bed, see what happens