The BIG Reality Check topic, part IV

Today I kept forgetting to do RC’s, so when I was keeping my journal, I decided to write “RC” on my hand so I’d remember. :wink:

The RCs I always use are either holding my nose shut and seeing if I can still breath, or sticking my finger through my hand. The nose one is the easiest and best one in my opinion. They both feel REALLY weird when you do em in a dream.

Lucky Lizard King.

The nose one never works for me, either i cant breath or i cant and just dont notice what i am doing. the hand one used to work when i first started ld many years ago and now it just melts . very cool tho.

I used to ues The clock and watch it spin wonderful to see.

Lol, you all probably know about the lightswitch technique. But doing reality checks in a normal dream is somewhat impossible for me, I either enter the dream lucid, or something makes me lucid that’s beyond my control. But even in a lucid dream, I could not shut off lights in a room. I tried switches, I tried telekinesis, using my mind to break the bulbs, I tried telling it to shut off, and I tried to rip the light fixture from the ceiling…but…at that point a voice came from the lights and was very angry with me, and I ended up fleeing in fear.

Make it habit to hold your nose shut and try to breathe through it. Works the best for me and feels really weird in a dream. Without using RCs you won’t be confident enough that you are dreaming.

So how do you remember doing a RC in the morning, after you got up?

you could just put a letter in an enevelope that says “Do a RC” and open it before you go to bed and when you wake up

I’ll try it. Hope I don’t forget to look at the letter, cause I think it’s important to make a RC right after awakening.

if you know that muscle you close when you swallow, just close that and see if you’re still breathing. Hopefully you know what I’m talking about…

I’m having a slight problem with RC’s. Most of my dreams involve people trying to kill me, so I don’t have the mental capacity to do an RC. All of my energies are focused solely on surviving. Anyone have any ideas on how to combat this? I plan to try to program myself to gain lucidity when I dream of danger, but I’m concerned that that may create issues with my waking life.

the pluggging nose RC works perfectly. i started remembering to do RC’s 2 days ago and i had a dream last night and i remembered to plug my nose and i could still breathe, IT FELT SOOOOOOO WEIRD!

Instead of that, try to program yourself like that: When someone or something chases me, I will become lucid.

I decided that I would wear my digital watch to bed from now on. I’ve been meaning to keep it on when I got to bed, but I’m in a total habit of taking it off. I’m going to use it as the FA-Buster. Whenever I wake up during the night or the morning, I’ll flip the indiglo on and see what the time is, wait for it to go off, then press it again and see what “new” time shows up. I think this should work well since it’ll be right in my face, and i won’t have to move around too much to look at it. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Yeah, it’s like the same muscle you use when going underwater without plugging your nose with your fingers.

I’d suggest that its better to be able to remember without any visual cues. LaBerge offers a great exercise in EWLD to improve your prospective memory. I did it, and it really helped. You write down about 5 targets on cards, one card per day for a week. Wake up, read the card, memorize the targets. Whenever you notice a target (say, when you’re in a bathroom, or when you see blinking lights) that should prompt you to RC. It works by association rather than visual cues, if you know what I mean. I got better at it and it was weird to have these targets in the back of my mind, notice one, and instantly think “RC.” With that improvement, you can write down targets before you go to bed, and when you notice them in the dream – BAM! You’ll think “RC.” Good luck!

I read in this forum something about “hole in the wall” ore something… Please someone tell me more about this RC.

I just wanna weigh in on the nose RC–in my experience, it’s been nearly infallible. You can never breathe through a plugged nose in real life, and you nearly always can in a dream, especially if you try multiple times. Irrational rationalizations are the only way things can get screwed up–“Oh, I must not be holding my nose shut properly” or “Well, that’s just happening because I’m sick” or something.

i just started doing the nose breathing thing a few days ago, but what are some RC’s that work really well for you guys?

I mainly just do the nose breathing and it’s effective. I also look at some text look away quickly and look back again to see if the text changed any. You also could try to poke your palm with your finger and see if it’ll go through.

Since I’ve started I’ve gotten really really good at dream recall but I can’t seem to do a RC in my longest Rem phase. I’ve gotten lucid 4 times. But I keep getting swept back up into the dream because it’s in the early rem stages. Can anyone give me any pointers?