The most obvious RC!!!

I don’t think I’ve seen this on forums but what about the phrase

“Pinch me I must be dreaming” That can be one of simplest rc’s as long as u don’t feel pain in dreams which I’m sure you don’t.

So just slightly pinch yourself as an RC :shy:

That could work yes, but the problem is that a lot of people experience exactly what they expect from real life even during their dreams.
That’s why beginners often have problems flying, for instance - because they expect gravity to pull them down.
Same with pinching - it could hurt in your dreams because you expect the pain, but then again of course it may not, and in that case it’s a fairly reliable RC - at least if it only hurts sometimes during repeated pinches.

I kind figured that but it couldn’t hurt to try…lol… because it literally take 5 extra seconds as a secondary RC

actually I felt pain in one of my latest LDs when I ran against a wall^^ so it may not be the right RC for me … maybe it could work for others, though!
I still like the nose-breathing-RC most because whether you have expectations on how it works or don’t, it can’t fail :wink:

This is not always true. If you are not aware of the fact that you are dreaming, there is a chance that you will feel pain, thus preventing you from using this RC effectivelly. Pinching yourself is a classical reality check, however, it should be met with some skepticism, since pain in dreams is possible. I would recommend some other more accurate RC’s like pinching your nose to see if you can breathe through it.

Yeah I always feel real pain in my dreams, once I got beat up by 3 or 4 men with iron bars and I can tell you that it felt so real, I thought I’ll die there. Also I can feel the fatigue when I run and other things like that. So it depends of the person who does the RC.

I’ve always wondered about something:
if you can feel pain in dreams, doesn’t that mean you could potentially be trapped somewhere and receive a lot of pain without being able to escape?
Wouldn’t that kind of dream pretty much ruin your whole day?

Firstly, if it is possible to feel pain in dreams, it doesn’t mean that you have to. Pain is something that can be removed fairly easily with some dream control. I personally do not feel any kind of pain in my dreams, unless I want to and expect to.
Secondly, you cannot be trapped in a dream. The dream is yours and there are several ways to escape:

  1. Teleport to another dream location.
  2. Kill or destroy whatever bothers you.
  3. Open your eyes very wide and you will, in fact, open your WL eyes, thus you will wake up. There are other waking up methods as well. No huge effort needed.

So to sum up - relax, dreams are fun :happy:.

But Paulius, I think that they are talking about feeling pain in dreams in general, not only LDs. If you are dreaming that you are in danger and feeling pain, it might be hard to stop and do RCs to turn the non-lucid dream into a lucid one…

According to my experience, only the third technique can be effective to get off from a non lucid dream without attaining lucidity.

I’ve felt pain in my dreams, thankfully not very often. All dreamers have felt sensations…even non LDers. I’m speaking of the…ummmm. “wet dream”. Maybe non LDers just find a wet spot in bed. Oh and by the way guys, we women have them too! But the whole point is physical sensations in dreams. Just a few days ago I felt hunger for the first time. I woke up and wasn’t hungry so it was strictly a dream oriented physical feeling. I remember a discussion we had about dying in a dream awhile back. Some of us have died in dreams but I don’t think any of us experienced pain when we died. Le’t redo the dying subject and find out?

As I was just talking to Thorn (IRC), I had some nightmares where I lost teeth (not my real teeth), it was painful and realistic.

I also felt hungry in some dreams and when I started eating inside the dream, the food tasted like food, but I couldn’t get enough food. I ate a lot, then, I woke up and I wasn’t hungry.

Well, if a nightmare gets too terrifying, you should wake up automatically, shouldn’t you? I do not think that there is a possibility for dreams that torment you without any escape. From my experience and from general nightmare understanding the usual “escape” is to wake up, usually with a shock.

wow that sucks i never felt pain in dreams espesially not getting beat up

but every1 has different dreams.

I rarely feel pain in my dreams. Once I dreamt that I was strolling home from somewhere near big blocks of 4 storey buildings and all of a sudden, soldiers popped up from every window armed with machineguns and they started firing at me at once. And I felt the bullets going trough my body but only as slight tickles.
Anyway as I noticed that they won’t stop firing I just played dead.
Then as they came down to inspect my body I got up to engage in melee combat as they got near, but then I woke up.

Well, I didn’t :confused:.
If you didn’t expect to be saved, you won’t be and I think that’s what happened to me. But I assume that in LD you can easily wake up from a nightmare like this because I really don’t wish you to dream that kind of dream.

EDIT: Congrats Paulius for your 5th star :tongue:

Haha that’s good, nice to know. :content:

By the way, I have always found your 3:rd point very fascinating, the whole thing that’s it’s actually possible to affect and interact with your RL body on command.
I used to play with the thought that you could perhaps dream up a “teleporter to reality” in your dreams whenever you wanted to wake up, and then it turns out that it is a very possible way to wake yourself up. :tongue:
I also remember Tim Post used to talk about “going to sleep in the dream” since that would simulate lying in bed and thus allow you to wake up.

Yeah, if you’re lucid, you can easily wake up at will. However, usually it’s a bad idea (why waste a good LD?). The thing with nightmares is that you don’t know that you are dreaming. If you aren’t lucid, you might have problems waking up. I didin’t have those problems, since I wake up automatically when it gets too bad, but it apparently depends on the person.

Oh, thank you :happy:.