Being conscious while you are dreaming can be important, especially if you are at the mercy of an intense dream. You may want to check what state you are in when trying to have a lucid dream or you may want to understand if you are awake or dreaming, especially after a shock or an accident. Sometimes dreams can feel more real than the life we live while awake, but you can learn to understand when you are asleep and when you are awake.
Steps
Part 1 of 3: Evaluating Appearances
Step 1. Check if you are dreaming when you are awake
While it may sound contradictory, lucid dreaming advocates suggest that it is important to test for this phenomenon during the day, even if you are not sleeping. The reason for this experiment is that, if you can get used to it in everyday life, it should happen automatically even when you dream.
- By mastering this mastery during daylight hours, you will be able to accustom your mind to practicing one or more of the following methods of checking reality: reading a piece of paper when you wonder if you are dreaming, trying to move objects, or seeing what time it is. When you try to perform these actions in a dream and fail to do them "normally", the negative outcome will give you confirmation that you are dreaming.
- If you are truly awake, then you should understand why you are concerned about whether you are dreaming or not. For example, have you used drugs or been poisoned? Are you a victim of an accident? Do you suffer from hallucinations? Could you have suffered a concussion or some other injury? If you are mentally and emotionally hurt or overwhelmed by events, seek medical attention or do your best to seek help from someone.
Step 2. Implement a series of "reality check tests"
If you are dreaming, things are not what they usually appear. A reality check is a normal part of lucid dreaming and is a means by which you can get more dynamically drawn into this kind of dream activity. Some people who have lucid dreams do not disdain to take this test during the day because in this way the opportunities for lucid dreaming increase.
Step 3. Analyze your surroundings
Appearances can be deceiving in the world of dreams, where distortions are frequent, if not the norm. When lucid dreaming is set in your home or some other place where you spend a lot of time, look at the usual objects. Do you notice any differences compared to the last time you saw them? For example, is there a window instead of a painting? These are clear signs that you are dreaming.
Step 4. Consider the people around you
Talking to people who have been dead for a few years is also a clear indication that you are dreaming. The reason you engage with them is in another area of dream interpretation, but the fact that they are present, as if they were real people, means that you are dreaming.
- Do you talk animatedly to your enemies as if they were your best friends? You are surely dreaming!
- Does your grandfather suddenly have extraordinary powers or has your brother started being nice to you?
- If you are in a family context, can you recognize the people around you or are they all complete strangers?
- Do people in the dream behave in an unusual way compared to real people? They are, for example, extremely attracted to very normal objects, they are not surprised by the fact that you are levitating, they are terrified of something absolutely harmless and at the same time they do not care at all about a volcano in full eruption.
- Don't they know things that they should know? For example, is there someone who claims to be a geography teacher but is convinced that America does not exist?
- Does everyone know your name, even strangers? Do they know details that a stranger shouldn't know (for example, a stranger you casually meet on the street who knows you've always wanted a dog even though you never mentioned it)?
Step 5. Observe yourself
Notice your hands, feet, legs, and other limbs. Are they normal? Do you have all the fingers? Do you have any part of your body that is disfigured? Is the color and length of the hair as usual or has it changed? Find a mirror. How is the reflected image? In a dream it is probably not like in reality. The reflection is often distorted or out of focus.
Part 2 of 3: Test Yourself
Step 1. Test your strength and skills
Obviously, if you can fly or lift very heavy objects, you are not awake. However, keep in mind that lucid dreaming can be an excellent opportunity to practice real physical actions that can help you in daily life. Some health professionals use it to help people recover from injuries, teaching them to imagine the body as it heals. Nonetheless, the following skills indicate that you are dreaming. Test them like this:
- Try to levitate or float. If you can, you are dreaming.
- Can you speak normally? If your voice is very hoarse or you can't speak, it is very likely that you are dreaming.
- Try jumping in place. Can you jump to the moon? Are you able to stay in the air for a very long period of time? Or did you leap into the air causing a thud when you landed?
- Can you move objects around a room or area without touching them?
- Are you able to turn on appliances and lights, and then turn them off with the power of thought alone? Also, be aware that rarely in dreams does the intensity of the light change when you turn on a switch. However, not all lucid dreaming advocates believe this to be a reliable test - for some, nothing changes when a light goes on and off.
- Can you make objects appear by just wanting it?
- Can you breathe underwater or teleport from place to place? If you can do it, you are certainly dreaming.
- Do you have superpowers?
- You seem to be perfectly normal, but are there any strange things happening in the place you are? For example, if you are walking the streets of Paris and at some point you get lost and find yourself in New York, you are certainly dreaming.
- Have you forgotten how to do normal things? How not to suddenly know how to spell your name or even how to speak.
- Are you doing something extremely ridiculous? For example, you are trying to stop a leaking barrel with a shovel or you are peeing in the middle of the road for no reason. Likewise, if you are doing a ridiculous thing, no one seems to be surprised?
- Similar to the toilet dream, people sometimes pee in dreams, but they still feel the urge to pee. If this happens to you in reality, it could be a symptom of a urinary tract infection, but if you are okay, it could indicate that you are dreaming.
- Are you younger or older than you should be?
- Are you pregnant even though you haven't had unprotected sex recently or are still a virgin?
Step 2. Check out the daily events
A great test of whether you are dreaming or not is to figure out if your habits are different or inconsistent with what you normally do. For example, if you usually turn the key only once to open a door, while doing it three times in the dream, although it is not possible in reality, here is another sign that you are dreaming.
Step 3. Take a reading test
Try it when you are awake. Read the newspaper, look elsewhere and then go back to reading. Hopefully, the text hasn't changed! The goal is to consolidate this action in the mind, whether you are dreaming or awake. In dreams it is difficult to read as the words are distorted. Try to look away from the text and refocus on reading again: if it is a dream, most likely what you were reading will have transformed into something else.
- Put something to read near the bed. If you have just finished a lucid dream, it is possible that you are still dreaming. Otherwise, if you can read the book you keep on your bedside table, it means that you are awake.
- Watch a digital clock. This is another kind of distortion, like text distortion: if the clock numbers change, are blurry, or don't make sense, then you are definitely dreaming.
- Check for intricate designs or patterns (another variant of text or clock distortion). Look closely at the lines of the bricks, flooring, or furniture decorations. Do they stay the same or do they change?
Part 3 of 3: Dream Versus Reality
Step 1. Learn to recognize the most common dream signs
There are particular and recurring clues that can tell you if you are dreaming or sitting and awake. Often these are dreams that creep into our unconscious fears. Sooner or later almost everyone has this kind of dreams. However, scholars have realized that we have a strong control over our dream activity, in fact we are able to use techniques to avoid dreams that we would not prefer to have.
- Think about what you want to dream about before going to sleep.
- Focus intensely on an image connected to what you intend to dream.
- Keep this image in your mind as you fall asleep.
Step 2. Take into account the physical reactions in the most common dreams
Feeling physical sensations while dreaming is a widespread phenomenon: you can experience the sensation of flying, falling or running. Furthermore, in this state it is also common to wake up jolting due to fright and lose sleep. Among the most common dreams of this kind are:
- Flying without any form of help.
- Fall, without ever reaching the ground (even if it would be enough for you to crash during a fall to wake you completely).
- Being chased or attacked by a monster, a dangerous person, or a strange creature.
- Paralysis (you have the feeling that something terrible is coming, but you remain sitting or standing because you cannot move).
- Confusion (you are unable to see clearly and often this state is accompanied by the inability to control thoughts and actions).
- Missing body parts and, even more common in dreams, tooth loss.
- Time behaves strangely. For example, a day seems to pass in a few minutes or it should be 9 am and it is already dark.
Step 3. Ask yourself if you feel nervous during a dream
It could depend on some action we have committed, on the fact of being naked or otherwise unprepared, and sometimes it is linked to episodes in life that make us nervous. Some of these dreams are:
- Getting lost in a familiar place.
- Being naked in public (walking in the city center, sitting on a bus, sitting in class, etc.).
- Failing to use machines and equipment that would normally work perfectly, especially if you need to get away from something.
- Taking an exam without being prepared. Take a naked exam without having studied!
- Dreaming of going to the bathroom. It could be a horrendous dream to sit on a toilet thinking you are awake and actually wetting the bed. It doesn't just apply to children! It is a similar dream where you are not nervous, you just have to pee and you don't wet the bed, but you can't find a bathroom. While needing to urinate is normal in reality, it could be a dream if something ridiculous is keeping you from peeing, such as the fact that the bathroom is visible to everyone who passes by on the street.
Step 4. Are you watching something on TV or are you reading a book?
In this case, check that everything makes sense. While some programs may seem very random, like some cartoons, there must always be some sort of logical thread. If nothing seems to follow that line, it is probably a dream.
- Does the plot make sense or is it just a set of random events?
- Do the characters behave in a completely unusual way for no apparent reason?
- Are characters from different shows mixed up in a bizarre way? For example Rugrats / Star Wars, Arthur / The X-Files or Star Trek / My Little Pony.
- This is a story you are familiar with, but does things happen differently?
- Doesn't it make any sense according to what the canons are?
- Doesn't that make sense based on the tone of the play? For example, talking animals can normally be found in Animaniacs, but if you find one in Bones, you are probably dreaming.
Step 5. Consider where you are
Sometimes, in a dream, the place we are in doesn't make any sense.
- Do you remember how you got there? If you don't remember, and you have no mental problems, you are probably dreaming. Even if you know how you got to that particular place, it could be a dream if you don't remember preparing for the trip or if you don't remember waking up in the morning. Even if you got lost, can you remember how you got lost?
- Is it a jumble of places? For example, if you can describe it as "kind of New York, but like Chicago", it's probably a dream.
- Are you in a place that doesn't exist? Like Narnia or Hogwarts.
- Are there any improbable or impossible things in this place? For example, purple grass or something like that.
- Can you move to other places starting from where you are? Places that would be impossible to reach in reality: for example, a building in Australia that has a door overlooking London.
- Are you working in a place that is not your workplace or are you in a school / university despite being a vacation period or are you not the ones you frequent? What if you're in school or other places you go to learn, are they teaching you weird things like levitating?
