What makes a dream different?

[Korpo]

Poeme has some good ideas right there. I'm not sure this is what is meant in the context of dream yoga, lacking the instruction to know, but I think this will work just fine.

More in general I just wondered why looking at your hands was supposed to help to decide that you're in a dream. Okay, once I had different hands than I expected, but I found that out after I had become lucid.

I think what Alienor said should work extremely well since it exploits a property of the dream state. It is different however from the most basic lucidity cues I know of, Castaneda-style. I would like to know why they work.

What Neil suggested is that I would remember falling asleep, but that's what I seldom do, and if I do I'm already half-lucid and acting accordingly.

It's almost more like proving to yourself how lucid you already are by doing something that challenges the accepted rules of physical reality or by looking for clues that they are being violated in some way.

Cheers,
Oliver

[Beekeeper]

Yesterday, a reference to the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" came on TV. This brought with it a bunch of associations from childhood. I told my kids that my brother loved the movie when we were little but that I had no particular attachment to it. Nonetheless, any time I see it it makes me feel a particular way. The best way I can describe that is as a particular energetic pattern emerging from within me. The same thing occurs with certain scents and songs. It occurs to me too that my dream lucidity often results in a similar sort of way.

[jamboh]

One of the most reliable checks is to hold your nose closed and try to breath through it. When you can still breath, you are dreaming.

I have found this is also by far the most reliable check, and if I do it in my dreams the shock of being able to breath through "solid" matter never fails to jerk me into lucidity. I haven't had any success with looking at my hands as a trigger.. they just look normal and I carry on dreaming as normal. If I look at my hands when lucid in a dream they also appear to be pretty much normal so I guess it doesn't work for me. I haven't noticed any correlation between trying to foster an attitude of 'questioning reality' and success in lucid dreaming. For me the success is directly related to how habitual the practice of regularly breathing through my hands has become. I think I could potentially omit the 'questioning' and just rely on the jerk from the shock of the reality check to achieve lucidity... but then I've never developed the 'questioning' to a point where it becomes habitual..