I never do reality checks. I just get lucky sometimes and find out out im dreaming. I tried reality checks one day- counting fingers, holding nose, pinching my self, etc…
But the only one that worked was the look back look away trick. But i only practiced dream signs for 2 days and that was the only one thT worked. But it only hapoened once. Should i keep on using the look/look back technique. Please help.
The two reality checks I’ve found to be most effective are the text/clock check (digital clock is better than text), where you look away and then back again to see if it has change; and the nose check where you pinch your nose off and see if you can still breathe through it. That said, the best way I feel to go about doing reality checks is to have a rountine where you do 3 or so in a row. This ensures that if one fails you have more to fall back on and don’t falsely conclude your awake.
If you want to use reality checks as an actual method for inducing lucid dreams (as opposed to just being a litmus test for if your dreaming or not), they need to become habitual. There are two really good ways to approach this. One way is the do reality checks consistently throughout the day, maybe every half hour, until it becomes a habit; which then eventually carriers over into the dream state as well. The other method is to do your RC routine everytime something seems odd or out of place to you. Once again, this can become a habit so that when something in a dream feels odd you do a RC and voila, your lucid!
One final crucial note about RCing: it is very easy for reality checks to become a mindless going through the motions. If RC’s are done consistently this way, you’ll probably do them just as mindlessly in a dream, never seriously questioning whether or not your dreaming and as a result never becoming lucid. When doing RC’s make sure you’re always asking yourself the seriously question of whether or not your dreaming, and convincingly prove to yourself that you are, in fact, not dreaming. Mindless or infrequent RC’s won’t get you far. To use reality checking as a viable method of LD induction it must become habit forming.
First off, listen to everything Lucidity_Master said about using RC’s as a way of inducing LD’s. RCILD usually results in very stable and vivid dreams for me. Now, to answer your first question, yes keep using your look-away-look-back technique, but make sure to have a few back ups. There are many cases where one will show you aren’t dreaming, and the other will show you are.