Thread: what constitues a reality check?

i was thinking....
what works about reality checks?
is it the mere fact of changing your routine so it will show in your dreams?
or is it learning to recognize this "dream feeling" and become lucid?
i learned that your supposed to believe your in a dream when you RC...and ive been RC'ing for about a month now and have yet to become lucid. (trying for DILD)

....so, how does it work for YOU?

Reality checks work because during a dream the logic portion of your brain is turned off, or at least very little active. This allows for things that would normally be constant in waking life -- how many fingers you have, how clocks work, etc, -- to change and vary. In waking life you always have 5 fingers on each hand (unless you were in an accident/birth defect/amputation) but once you're in a dream the logic portion of the brain can't regulate this. In turn your brain "rolls the dice" and whatever it lands on is how many fingers you have. Sometimes it's still 5 on each hand but often it's anywhere from 0-7.

The reason doing reality checks in waking life helps you become lucid is because it trains your mind to question reality. A small portion of each day is present in that night's dreams. If you are questioning reality than that is likely to spill over into your dreams. The reason you do reality checks is because not only does it help you question reality but it also gives you something to confirm what's going on. In waking life you can't breathe through a plugged nose but in a dream you can do whatever you want.

If you're having trouble getting lucid by doing RCs during the day then try to be more sincere about your thoughts. When you stop to do a RC truly think about reality. Does this feel like waking life? Is everything as it would be if I was awake? If you don't thoroughly question reality during your waking life then you won't during your dreams and there's a good chance you won't get lucid from it. In addition you could try MILD or even a form of WILD. They can be added onto doing RCs during the day and MILD is one of the easier techniques. If you pair either of them with a WBTB you increase your chances even further.

Hope this helps and if you have any more questions feel free to ask .

For some reason I always feel like I have five fingers, no matter what deformity or amount I have in my dream. One time I was driving a car and everything was really dark. Dark enough for me to think this might be a dream! When I looked down at my hands I saw nothing. Even though it was light inside my car. I rubbed my hands together to stabilize and noticed that no matter what I couldn't see my hands, but they operated the car and I could feel with them.

(later in the dream I took that car into space like a true Harry Potter fan!)

very interesting, thanks.

Yeah my RC is my hands.

For about a month, six times a day I looked at my hands and questioned if I was dreaming.

Then one night, after waking up from a vivid unlucid dream, I was falling back to sleep, and suddenly I was in front of a door (I believe it was WILD) My dream self questioned this as I thoguht I was awake, merely seconds ago.

Peering down to check my hands, I noticed that I have four fingers on my left hand (two of them were combined, I noticed) and both hands were "fuzzy" or distorted in picture (maybe my dream wasn't clear) as it was my first LD, I didn't think to "improve clarity" this may be the reason.

But yeah, as Burke nicely put. Just keep doing reality checks during the day like I did - do it religiously, and sometimes durind my day I found myself looking at my hands automatically. This must have carried over to my dream.