Lucid Dream Reality Check

[apmac]

Ok I've been practicing the "look at your watch" repetition technique and I've now been able to recall time related activity, including looking at a watch in my dreams. However, in my dreams I don't perform a reality check. Only when I wake up and go through the dream from memory do I notice various "time" elements in the dream. I haven't questioned them in the dream. How do I get to the next step of performing a reality check while in the dream itself?

Unaware Dreamer

[SomeBloke]

When you do this in the day, do you really do the reality check?
Like every time you check the time do you really say hmm am I dreaming, look at hands see if they're melting anything weird going on?
If you don't do it in the day you won't do it in your dream, you'll just assume you're awake.

[apmac]

yes. I hear my hourly chime. I look at the time on my digital watch. I look away then I look back at my watch again. Then I check to see if the numbers are the same or not. If they are, I say to myself "Ok, I'm awake". Rinse and Repeat.

Before I started doing the reality check routine I sometimes would notice, while dreaming, that odd things would happen but I wouldn't make anything of it. Like for instance...one time...at band camp... Just kidding! No seriously, one time I remember falling to "certain death" in an elevator but then somehow I mysteriously managed to escape the falling elevator. I think I remember noting, while dreaming, that it was odd but I didn't really make anything out it.

[RooJ]

Hey apmac,
the methods i use to reality check which ive had success with are the following:
Every now and then i just think to myself "Am i dreaming?", i'll look around and usually find some text on a poster or something, i then pick out a word and try to replace it by looking away and thinking of a different word.. then turning back. I usually combine this with trying to change the colour of something (any coloured object/text etc you see around).
To be honest i dont actually think it makes much difference how you reality check aslong as you really question it as SomeBloke said. I usually end a reality check thinking "Ok, i must be awake because if i was dreaming i would of noticed the text / colour change or something equally odd happening". I add the bit in at the end so I get a second chance to realise im dreaming e.g. "hang on.. something did change during that check", instead of just saying "Ok, im awake". And as a closure ill also add that my first ever lucid dreams came from the colour reality checks.


Good Luck!

>RooJ

[apmac]

ok, i'll add in the extra wording and also try to chnge the color of things.

Yesterday's dream there were a couple of time related incidents. In one of them I indeed looked at my watch. The watch face had analog hands though, as opposed to a digital face like i use to do the reality checks. I never looked back at the watch again though to try to perform a reality check.

Are there any good movies or visuals that help in lucid dreaming? Like many people I often dream about tv or movies that I watch before going to bed. Maybe there's some stuff that will help induce lucidity. I saw Airplane for the first time this weekend and was amused by a lot of the subconscious imagery and script that was used. But i don't think it helps lucidity; hypnosis, perhaps.

[RooJ]

Im not sure about movies or visuals but i had the same idea. Ive been looking into using NLP Anchoring to induce lucidity but am having trouble finding something that i can reliably work with in the dream state to anchor to.
Really what you would need to do is create something like a simple flash animation with music or to be honest anything that would stick in your head (and you would dream about), then do reality checks everytime you see it while awake to anchor the two. So i suppose the main problem is influencing dreams, if you can find away to make sure you'll dream about a specific thing then from there it should be much easier to get lucidity.

>RooJ