Two quick questions

[fzongqvxp]

One: Alarms? I set my phone up so that it vibrates and asks me if I am dreaming every hour on the hour. My logic is that eventually this same thing should happen in a dream right? Should I continue this method, or is it only going to become a stale habit? Two: Totems, like in inception? I carry around with me at all times a silver marble. I try to associate my thoughts of dreaming with it, like whenever I am thinking of anything involving dreams, I hold the marble. When I do reality checks, I either try to levitate it, or look at my distorted reflection in it, look away then look back. Is this effective, or will I simply memorize what my distorted reflection looks like, and carry that over into a dream? And is it reasonable to expect the "totem" to eventually appear in dreams? I have not yet had a LD using these methods, but I just started up lucid dreaming five days ago.

[stprue]

well if you have had 3 LD's in 5 days you're doing something right.

[fzongqvxp]

well if you have had 3 LD's in 5 days you're doing something right. Not really, those 3 were all unintentional, but within the last two weeks. As for the totem, the definition in Inception was very unclear. Cobb's totem was used to tell if he was in a dream. I think I will continue this method though, see if it has any promise.

[Burke]

Doing realtiy checks like that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to make sure you do them thoroughly, not half-assing it (for lack of a better term) I've seen inception, but I've never really used a totem. I would just stick to the normal reality checks, such as plugging your nose and breathing in, checking your hands, and looking at a digital clock/text. A totem could add unnecessary complexity to simple things. I hope you have many LDs!

[Hyu]

If I recall correctly, they used the totems in Inception as a mean of verifying whether they were awake. I think the idea was that they were in another person's dream, and that person would not know how the totem should react. Since however that person had control of the dream, the totem would react like the person thought it should react, instead of how the totem behaved in the real world.

[Caden]

I set my phone up so that it vibrates and asks me if I am dreaming every hour on the hour. My logic is that eventually this same thing should happen in a dream right? Should I continue this method, or is it only going to become a stale habit? I have heard of this, soon you will come to expect this reminder but remember to follow it up with reality checks. The totem will appear in your dreams just like a watch you may have on all the time but this too needs reality checks. Still when you see it it may remind you that you are in a dream or to do a RC. Sounds like you are doing a very good job though, impressive.