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> To this day, I sometimes think I am still sleeping. This is a well-known problem in the lucid dreaming community. There are some surprisingly easy ways to ch

> To this day, I sometimes think I am still sleeping. This is a well-known problem in the lucid dreaming community. There are some surprisingly easy ways to check. I find the simplest is to count my fingers out loud. If there are definitely five on each hand, then I'm awake. If there's any problem coming up with a count, then I'm asleep, no matter how much it seems like I'm awake.

rebuilder 9y ago
Unless that's just a feature of the deeper dream levels, not this one... (I also have dreams where I wake up over and over and over, only to realize that shit, I'm still dreaming. It's surprisingly disconcerting, there's a kind of physical sense of losing my mind involved.)
- dreamerdoob 9y ago
  Honestly you could just lack the awareness to notice. That's not a slight against you, acute awareness in the dream state is not an innate ability and must be practiced frequently in order to be successful with it. In any dream state, you can test the rules of the world around you and see that your brain doesn't quite build the world to completeness. Light switches will not work, text will morph and shift either in front of your eyes or when you look away and turn back, the people around you will spontaneously morph into others, you can breathe through your nose when it's plugged, etc. What happened to you is referred to as a false awakening. Testing the reality of your situation by checking clocks, breathing through your nose, counting your fingers, etc. will all quickly put you into a more lucid and aware state. From there you either continue or, more commonly, you wake up.
  - techmagus 9y ago
    > Testing the reality of your situation by checking clocks, breathing through your nose, counting your fingers, etc. will all quickly put you into a more lucid and aware state. I haven't thought of that. What became my anchor for the past few years have been my schedule or being aware of it. But there were rare cases when in my dream state, the reality is happening in the dream and that totally puts me off greatly. A good example is when I'm dreaming I woke up, went to work, and got home. When I woke up, I didn't know until I arrived at the office and learned no day has passed yet.
thiagocsf 9y ago
Does pulling your hands in opposite directions work for you? It worked for me once and I got really excited. Too excited and woke up :(. Never happened again (not that I've been trying).
bfuller 9y ago
one time i tried this and each of my fingertips turned into little hands with the same dexterity of my hands. needless to say i believe i was asleep.
techmagus 9y ago
Ooh, interesting. I learned to lucid dream in my late teens or early 20s and I've enjoyed it most of the time (except those times when I'm losing control). It's true, if you're too much into lucid dreaming, there are times when you can't tell if you've woken up. Parts of the dream spill overs in the waking world.

rebuilder 9y ago

Unless that's just a feature of the deeper dream levels, not this one... (I also have dreams where I wake up over and over and over, only to realize that shit, I'm still dreaming. It's surprisingly disconcerting, there's a kind of physical sense of losing my mind involved.)

dreamerdoob 9y ago
Honestly you could just lack the awareness to notice. That's not a slight against you, acute awareness in the dream state is not an innate ability and must be practiced frequently in order to be successful with it. In any dream state, you can test the rules of the world around you and see that your brain doesn't quite build the world to completeness. Light switches will not work, text will morph and shift either in front of your eyes or when you look away and turn back, the people around you will spontaneously morph into others, you can breathe through your nose when it's plugged, etc. What happened to you is referred to as a false awakening. Testing the reality of your situation by checking clocks, breathing through your nose, counting your fingers, etc. will all quickly put you into a more lucid and aware state. From there you either continue or, more commonly, you wake up.
- techmagus 9y ago
  > Testing the reality of your situation by checking clocks, breathing through your nose, counting your fingers, etc. will all quickly put you into a more lucid and aware state. I haven't thought of that. What became my anchor for the past few years have been my schedule or being aware of it. But there were rare cases when in my dream state, the reality is happening in the dream and that totally puts me off greatly. A good example is when I'm dreaming I woke up, went to work, and got home. When I woke up, I didn't know until I arrived at the office and learned no day has passed yet.

thiagocsf 9y ago

Does pulling your hands in opposite directions work for you? It worked for me once and I got really excited. Too excited and woke up :(. Never happened again (not that I've been trying).

bfuller 9y ago

one time i tried this and each of my fingertips turned into little hands with the same dexterity of my hands. needless to say i believe i was asleep.

techmagus 9y ago

Ooh, interesting. I learned to lucid dream in my late teens or early 20s and I've enjoyed it most of the time (except those times when I'm losing control). It's true, if you're too much into lucid dreaming, there are times when you can't tell if you've woken up. Parts of the dream spill overs in the waking world.