I’m not sure what this technique is called, but I’ve read from multiple sources that it’s possible to remind yourself to do a reality check in a dream by having a sound play in the real world when you enter REM sleep. The idea is that the sound should be associated with doing a reality check (e.g. a voice recording telling you that you’re dreaming or even simply a noise that reminds you of lucid dreaming), but should not be loud enough to wake you up, and thus, could bleed content into the dream, reminding you to perform some checks.
My questions about this technique:
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Why is it suggested that the sound source be timed properly to coincide with REM sleep? As long as it starts playing some time after you fall asleep and continues to play until it’s manually shut off, shouldn’t it run into a cycle eventually anyway?
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Has anyone used this technique successfully without deliberately timing the sound to start playing right when REM sleep occurs? Considering that the timing of sleep cycles varies from person to person, and can even change on a day-to-day basis, trying to deduce the best time for the sound to start playing just seems unfeasible (unless of course you’ve constructed or bought one of those fancy, expensive devices that can detect when you’ve entered REM sleep).
Specifically I had what I refer to as "AILD"s or “Audio Induced Lucid Dreams”. Basically, I put on a song before I went to bed and had it playing on loop throughout the night. In both cases the sound leaked into my REM state and made me lucid…
Consecutive nights with the same or different song tend to fail. My brain filters out the music given it’s anticipated subconsciously now. Perhaps you could have AILDs on a regular basis, but you (or at least I) would need to have nights in-between in which there was no music playing. I should probably try this out later.