When I had a lucid dream a few nights back, I looked at my hands and I didn’t notice anything strange about them at all! The size was right, as was the number of fingers. Now I think that maybe, there was a slight bit more hair on them than there really is, but that’s not something that I noticed in my dream!
So why doesn’t it work for me? Could it be because I was already lucid?
No, It is because you havn’t convenced your SC that it should use your hands as a method to let you know your dreaming. 
That is one part of the RC’s that often gets overlooked. The standard RC’s, like reading text, looking at clocks, looking at your hands, etc. work because we expect them to work, and for most people their SC doesn’t think it is necessary to make them 100% correct. There is no RC that works 100% of the time for 100% of the dreamers. Your SC can make everything perfect if it wants to. 
You need to work on teaching your SC to make the RC’s that you use work like you want them to. That is why one step in doing RC’s when you are awake is to imagen how it would be if you were dreaming. You are telling your SC what you want to happen when you are dreaming so that you can become lucid. 
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It’s not a subject about the hand RC. It’s a lucidity induction method. The goal is not noticing that your hands are strange or something like that. The goal is finding your hands in dreams and once you find them, however they look, you realize that you’re dreaming.
Topic merged into the hand method. It’s exactly the same topic cause the hand method comes from the ‘Don Juan technique’.
I’ve tried just about every trick I could think of: WILD, MILD, WBTB, lucid food, music/sound assocciation, meditation… I just couldn’t get a lucid dream.
But just this week I discovered this trick on the Lucid Dreaming article on Wikipedia that is simple and quite effective called ‘Don Juan’s Technique’.
First, I sit up in my bed and clean my mind of all distracting thoughts, focusing all my mind on my hands, which I hold out in front of me. In my mind, I constantly repeat to myself- “Later, when I am dreaming, I will look at my hands and realise that I am dreaming.”
I keep repeating it until I become tired/bored, and then turn the lights out and go to sleep, still focusing my mind on my hands and repeating the mantra in my head.
It was very successful- I had my first lucid dream just two days after doing so. When I was driving a car and I saw my hands on the steering wheel, I became lucid.
congrats for finding something that works for you ^_^. Maybe I’ll give it a try sometime
Nice technique, unfortunatelly my hands don’t look odd in my dreams
I once became lucid while driving, but I noticed because I was driving very well and I still don’t have a driver license. It ended almost instantly because I crashed it, I noticed I was dreaming, looked around, and when I remembered that I would crash while looking around, it happened.
This night I learned that we shouldn’t worry in our dreams… worries there make them worse.
Yeah, I kidna noticed that I was lucid becuase I was driving WELL… normally in my dreams I or the driver keep smashing into trees and buildings, or end up in a ditch.
Congrats on you first LD, StantheGarbageMan! 
By the way, I’ve to correct what some people says. The method is just finding your hands in LD’s. It’s just finding your hands that makes you lucid. Your hands don’t have to be bizarre. When you see them, as you really want to find them in a dream, you know it’s a dream.
Many methods may be used to find his hands. Don Juan didn’t give any tip by the way, he just said: do as you want, but find your hands in your dreams. The method I used looked like yours. I was sitting on my bed and I stared at my hands. I imagined I was in a dream and I discovered my hands. Then I repeated thrice something like : “I’ll find my hands in a dream”.
Thanks for the tip, I’m going to try it again. Last month in a LD I looked to my hands and looked how they are perfect, maybe if I had tried before getting lucid 
The difference with the hand RC is important indeed.
When you perform a RC, you question reality. So if your hands look like normal, you’ll say, it’s reality.
In this technique, you want to find your hands “in a dream”. So, when you find your hands, you’re likely to become lucid cause you already know it’s a dream. By the way, it doesn’t necessarily work immediatly. I remember that I had some normal dreams in which I could see hands (at the TV, or gigantic shadows of hands on a wall, etc.) But one night, I had a look at my hands and it made me lucid.
hmm… I think I’ll try this technique again. I tried a few months ago but I was no where near as motivated as I am now.
I’ll see how it goes for me tonight.
i think ill try that tonight… goodnight fellas.
Well, no luck last night, although I did have vivid dreams, in none of them was I aware of my hands. I think I’ll keep at it until I successfully induce a lucid dream using this technique.
Sorry for bumping this, but I have a question.
When i try this method, I cant fall asleep. Do anyone have any advice for me? I tried yester for two hours, but I just could’nt fall asleep.
Oftentimes I have noted that when I can’t fall asleep it is because I am thinking abut going to sleep, I get that thought that says “Yay, I almost asleep” and that wakes me up again. I don’t know if thats your problem but perhaps it will help.
As for the method…it seems okay but very much like a reality check type method, it is easy to do and should yield occasional LD’s although I’m not sure you could LD at will with it.
Ok, I’ll se tonight if it helps. Thank you! ^^
i tried this 3 nights in a row but it didnt work…i followed all the steps…maybe i should try this with WBTB.
The problem with this technique, for me at least, is that you have to observe your hands in the first place, and then you have to actually register that something is wierd. I never register such things, as evidenced when the heaters started to bleed in my school.
I am really starting to understand the power of wanting to have a ld but not wanting it too much. Before I go to bed I simply look at my hands and say something about having a ld. I only do this once and then off to bed. This has worked two nights in a row and a number of times in the past.
All those methods don’t work immediatly. Just keep up with it. It’s very simple to know if you make progress, cause you’ll see more and more hands in your dreams.
Patarak, you don’t have to notice that your hands transform or anything else. It’s just viewing your hands in a dream that makes you lucid. It’s not a RC method.