Reality Checks - RCs

[oolally]

Sounds like you're building great habits with your RC practice nia02, I'm sure within no time you'll have your first LD! Keep at it! I also like that this thread has been reignited. It's got some great advice in. For me, nose pinch ticks all the boxes; I'm able to do it using only 1 hand, I don't have to change where I'm looking/lose eye contact if I'm with people (as I almost always am in dreams), I can do it in complete darkness, and the sensation of successfully breathing through in a dream is so powerful it jerks me into lucidity - more so than something like reading jumbled text or counting. However, I have had a few recent occasions where it's failed. I believe that is because I've maybe rushed them IWL, so I'm working on doing this really methodically, along with thorough mental checks. I also do a couple in a row, and really focus on the sensation of breathing through my nose before pinching it, and then expecting that to happen. I'd been using it successfully for about a month before this happened. I know people mention mixing up RCs if your mind gets used to them - has anyone had success with sticking with the same one and maybe even recovering from some that have failed in dreams? Or is it the case once it's failed, you should move on? I'm worried about switching the RC and causing a long LD drought as my brain catches up, and then having to do this again a month later when my brain catches up with that one. I wonder if many people have this relationship with RCs? I've also been thinking about my own RC being reaching into my pocket and expecting something to be there, like a wand (which isn't something I tend to have in my pocket often ) Does that sound like a good idea?

[TravisE]

I've been using pretty much the same primary one or two RCs for several years and have never really had any long-term problems with them. On occasion I'll have a few cases here and there where they don't work properly, but it hasn't been a chronic thing, so I don't worry about it much. I haven't had issues with droughts when deciding to try out a new RC, either. The worst that normally happens is that I forget about the new RC and just do the old ones as usual, and indeed trying anything new in an LD usually takes me some time and effort setting the intention to actually remember to try it instead of falling back into my usual habits. (This seems to be true of everything I do in LDs in general, not just RCs. I often find impulse and habit particularly strong when I'm in a dream state, so it can be a bit of a challenge at times.) One defense against RC problems is to keep at least a couple in your arsenal so that you can try the alternative one(s) if the first doesn't seem to want to work (especially if you find yourself still suspecting that something doesn't seem quite normal). After some practice, I started finding that if I was in a dream and an RC wasn't working, I would often be suspicious enough to keep trying (either with the same RC or giving another one a chance) until I had proven to myself some way or another that I was indeed dreaming. Very rarely, things might go super badly and even this fails, but not very often. The key, I think, is to learn to trust your suspicions regarding waking vs. dreaming state (this might come with experience) and be persistent in confirming them. And yes, I'd say feel free to experiment with your own invented RCs. Pretty much any action you expect to have a different result in a dream from waking life can theoretically work. The main idea behind RCs is that you suspect you might already be dreaming, so you do something knowing that it will behave differently in a dream in order to confirm it and strengthen that lucidity.