Advice on subtle reality checks?

Hi everyone! I am a pretty new lucid dreaming adventurer, but from journalling I have definitely noticed that a very clear repeating theme in my (non-lucid) dreams is talking to people, which makes sense for an introvert like myself, since interacting with people in my waking life seems to be a challenge of it’s own. But I am trying to entrain myself to do reality checks every time I am interacting with people, and I’m starting to realize that the reality checks I know are just a little too obvious. Jumping in the air is obviously a no-go! And even trying to push my finger through my other hand isn’t always that subtle; I’ve had people get distracted from talking, wondering what I’m doing with my hands. And the looking at my watch twice thing seems a little distasteful if someone is talking to me, so I was wondering if anyone had some advice for me on reality checks I could do that the people I’m talking to wouldn’t notice?

Thanks everyone!

You can think of which room you were in before this one. (If you can’t remember a room before this then probably a dream)
Just look at your hands to watch for extra fingers or similar.
Try to read texts on their clothes.
Look at your nose.(If you can’t see your nose you are in a dream).
Just ask the question to yourself, am I in a dream?

Maybe something of this helps.

All I can add is “EXPECT ‘something’ to happen” which will prove it is a dream.
eg Next time I look at their tie it will be blue

What a great idea! Thank you :smile:

I think that trying to push a finger through the opposing hand can be really subtle. Don’t even look at your hands when you do it and it can just look like you are clasping your hands.

And instead of jumping, just try to make yourself fly mentally. I don’t know how fool proof it is, but it’s never failed for me in a dream.

Another thing that I do and ymmv, is to look at details of things around me. Even in a very vivid and realistic dream, chances are something will be off. You could even scrutinize the details of the other person’s face or the way their mouth moves as they talk. Or, look into their eyes and try to make their pupils expand. They will probably be impressed with your eye contact!

You’re right, the finger through hand trick can definitely be subtle, as long as I’m not doing something with my hands already! So far looking away and expecting giant pink sunglasses to be on their face has been and enjoyable method that feels pretty foolproof but I’m looking forward to trying to dilate their pupils as well.
Ah these poor people, the things we put them through :wink:

Anything to deal with the cold logic and the Mercury inducing things.

Speed - Time - Writing - Numbers - Letters - Forms - Passages - Friends - Talks - Languages - Pets - Mutations

Hands are directly connected to the writing and intellect, completely opposite of what Dreams are. Hands represent knowledgeable and recognizable symbols which are logical and have a distinctively clear form.
Dreams are not at all logical in terms of the obvious, but use the metaphors. As such they are the complete opposite to anything that Hands represent, in this case writing, letters, numbers, time etc

You may always use that constant to figure out whether you’re dreaming or not. When you get proficient enough you won’t even need to investigate it anymore, a simple thought will trigger it in no-time. You do need a catch of some form to help you with it. That catch can be anything that represents “a passage”. A picture might do. Door might do.

be careful of the windows, though, because they are the triggers for nightmares. Especially when they suddenly become wide open :smile: If the light changes, and you see your friends and family in another room, and your room suddenly becomes dark and the window is suddenly open… expect the worst to come at you at tremendous speed. :shy:

The last couple of days I had two different LD (and the best quality ones for me so far too!). I am quite a begginer in these, had a dream journal couple of times but never got much of a result… just a LD of litterally 1 second. During the last few months I’ve been investigating again and finally is producing results!

Thing is in the last one, something weird happened. I became lucid after a few things striking me as really odd, which triggers lucidity, and then I said to the characters in the dream something like “ohh, here I am with my dream, I am just dreaming!”. Everyone looks at me like if I’m crazy and for a moment I doubt if I am actually nuts and this is the physical reality… so I decide to do a reality check by pushing mi rigth index through my left hand and… Nothing. It doesn’t go through. I keep working (in the dream I was at work) feeling weird and stupid and the odd elements of the dream disappear for a while, like if the dream had became more realistic in order to “deceive me” or something. Fortunatelly, something odd happened again and I became fully aware of the dream for a decent few seconds.

I am happy of my progress and extra happy that I got a streak of 2 in a row (wow!) but it felt weird that the reality check didn’t work on the dream… I imagine it can be because of my expectations. Probably the reaction of the dream characters was so well played that I really believed that I was in waking reality for a while, hence the reality check “not working”.

Has anyone had any similar experiences?

PS: Let me take the chance to say thank you for sharing, this is my first post (not counting the presentation) and I think the forum is great.

Welcome skatioloco! Yes, it is a great forum ☺ï¸
I have been practising lucid dreaming for quite a few months now and changed my reality check from the finger through the hand method to one that seems much more foolproof. I read about a reality check where you pinch your nose closed, and try to breathe. In a dream, because you’re breathing is so connected to your sleeping body, you can’t really NOT breathe in your dream. So I’ve found it really successful. There was only one time where it failed me, and it was quite ironic. I was having a dream that I was in this underwater tunnel, and I suddenly thought it was a dream and decided to do the nose reality check. I could still breathe, but I was convinced it was because I didn’t plug my nose properly. Ironically I didn’t stop to realize that I must be dreaming because I was breathing underwater 😂

Thanks Earthly!

Yeah I like that reality check too, I’ll give it a go more often. I had once this dream in which I was underwater, I was holding the breath and was going to die basically (I’m a horrible swimmer here!). When I gave up and breath lots of water into my lungs I was surprised to see that I was able to breathe water. I think I woke up then, it didn’t become a LD.

PS: my nose is blockrd now so don’t even need to pinch my nose for the reality check hahaha