Presentation

With the hands reality check, you check if your hands are normal. Look at your hand or both hands and focus on them. Count the fingers in your head or out loud. They may have the wrong number of fingers, the number may change while you try to count them, the fingers can be deformed and keep on changing when you look at them. Your hands can be the wrong colour, or have other abnormalities.

As well as doing this regularly, you could also do it every time you notice somebody using their hands. You could also mark your own hands to remind you to do this reality check (or another), for example by writing something in your palm, the back of your hand, or wrist (see also Reading).

Examples of this reality check working

• I counted my fingers and realized I had the right amount, but knew I was dreaming so I asked to see this other persons hand next to me. He had 6 fingers then I knew for sure I was dreaming

• I counted my fingers. It looked as though I had the right amount, but as I actually counted them, I discovered that I had seven the first count, and six the next.

• I noticed something strange so I counted my fingers. I counted them several times because the number I counted kept changing between five and six. Eventually I was certain that I saw six fingers, and I realized I was dreaming.

• I remembered to do a reality check. So I looked at my hands and realized that they're actually claws!

• My fingers appeared jumbled up as if I had no bones

• Spiders and ants were crawling across my hand in a continuous line.

• My fingers appear floating off the palm of my hand

• I looked at my hand, and it looked like I had two or three extra fingers. When I counted them, each one disappeared when I pointed to it.

• My hand seemed fuzzy, gray, and partially translucent. Something seemed to be wrong with them. When I pressed my fingers into my left palm, I could feel them pushing through like my hand was clay.

• When I looked at my hands, one was normal but the other hand had several fingers growing off my other fingers making it appear mutated. Immediately I knew I was dreaming.

• I looked at my hands and they moved too slowly when I curled them.

• I looked at my hands and each hand had six fingers and when I went to fold my fingers into my palm the sixth fingers hurt like hell and I realized I was dreaming.

• I tried looking at my hands, and the fingers appeared blurry, and I couldn't count them.

• I checked my hand for a reality check, when it suddenly burst into flames and I woke up as planned - I was using the check to wake up.

• I checked my hand for extra fingers when I suddenly fell through the world into a Minecraft-ish void and also woke up.

• This is how I know this is true: I was having my usual dream in which I am a Panda in Animal Crossing. I looked at my hands and they weren’t Panda hands! Once I knew I was dreaming, I made Tom Nook pay off my mortgage for free.

Examples of this reality check failing

• I tried counting my fingers, but my vision was all fuzzy. Everything kept on jumping. It was like trying to count things that kept on moving. I gave up and continued nonlucidly.

• When I looked at my hand I noticed I appeared to have six fingers, but I assumed it was because the extra finger was surgically added.

• I once had four fingers, but was so amused by it that I forgot it while laughing about it.

• I failed to notice the positions of my right hand's fingers had been flipped (I.e. pinky where thumb should be), and even though I did see a new finger next to my pinky I failed to become lucid.

• When I was looking at my hands, some bombs exploded behind me, I got the Minecraft You died! screen. When I touched Respawn I was flying about a blown-up building staring at my extremely long fingered right hand, and they were mangled in all sorts of disturbing positions. After about 15 seconds of this I woke up.

• The fingers flickering in and out of existence scared me so much that I had to quit reality checking and look away.

• One time I was dreaming about France. I found a time door that led to my first grade playground, but instead of slides and swings, there was a jungle gym shaped like the Eiffel Tower. I realized I was dreaming. When I went to count my fingers, I noticed I was carrying a piece of French bread (which had not been in my hand before). My fingers looked blurry, and I noticed they smelled like cheese.

• When i counted my fingers in my dreams it was always six, but in the dream i had last night it suddenly became five. My hands felt normal and when i later counted them again it was still five. For a moment i feared i wasn´t acutally dreaming until i realised that if it was real it would be kind of odd for me to be in a futuristic space building with Dylan O´ Brien.