 Hey, what's up guys? Today we've got a question for our buddy Mark and he says he's talking about a reality check. He says the centre of my palm is starting to hurt because I keep doing the reality check. You know the reality check where you sort of press your finger through your palm and then in a dream it goes through of course and then reality doesn't. He says his palm is starting to hurt because of this. Are there any other reality checks I can do? A bit of a funny question really. Obviously if your palm is hurting, stop doing that reality check, find another one. So yeah, I'm going to suggest a few that you can try and yeah I'll tell you my favourite one and why it's my favourite one and I'll also suggest another thing you can try at the end of the video. So let's get started. First reality check I would invite you to try is to pinch your nose like this and then try and breathe through your nose. So what it feels like is in the dream you'll pinch your nose and you'll try and breathe, breathe in and you'll actually hear like a whooshing sound of the air going into your nose. It's not actually air because you're in a dream of course but that's what it feels it sounds like, at least for me. But yeah, so pinch your nose, try and breathe. In the dream of course you will be able to because you're not actually breathing air in the dream but in real life obviously you won't and you'll feel that very quickly. Another one is to look at some sort of text so find some writing maybe a book or a signpost in the dream look at the text read it maybe for a few seconds just pick a word or two look away and then look back at the same text and read it again and the chances are it would have changed it would be different okay so you know that when you do that in real life obviously it's not gonna change you're gonna look away it's gonna be the same when you look back at it but in the dream it's gonna change it's gonna be different it might also seem like almost cryptic sometimes like a load of random symbols it don't actually make sense when you really look at it so that's another one to try. Thirdly is to look at a clock and much the same way as the you know looking at the text reality check works if you look at a clock and then look away again and look back if the time will be different it will have changed sometimes it won't even make sense at all you'll find that there aren't actually numbers or the numbers will be jumbled up or they'll be letters or symbols or they'll be like this happened to me the other night actually there's more than two hands on the clock so sometimes on your watch you know you'll have the minute the hour and maybe a second hand right maybe a fourth for like an alarm or something like that but sometimes in the dream you'll find like maybe just one hand on the watch or maybe like eight or something random like that so that's another good one is to check your watch so yeah fifth reality check I would say to try is it's actually a mental reality check it's not a physical one but I'm going to explain a bit about how it works and I'm going to explain why it's actually quite a good one to try so normally you have a physical reality check right you'll try and breathe or you know you'll try and push your finger through your palm look at some text look at a watch whatever the case may be it's looking for something physical to have changed or not changed right whereas a mental reality check and I think I covered this in a blog post before is where you ask yourself a question or you're analytical about the world in some way internally in your head so example of that would be you are walking down the road and you see a car parked you know on the side of the road so you would ask yourself in your head lots of questions about that specific thing so you'll say like why is that car parked there what make is it does it look normal is it out of place in some way because this is a huge one for those dreaming is when something's not in the right context you know when something's out of context so say if you're walking down the road and you see like a zebra walking down the same road that's that's unusual right it's not something that usually happens when you're walking around town so you know that when something out of context like that happens you're a dream or at least you know that you should in some way test it so you do another reality check double it up with a physical reality check yeah so the mental reality check I'd like you to try is to ask yourself where you were 10 minutes ago every time you see something slightly out of context so say if you're walking down the road in town or whatever and you see something doesn't look quite right or you get some tiny feeling in your mind that something's unusual okay at that exact moment do that mental reality check ask yourself where was I 10 minutes ago and how did I get here retrace your steps in your mind to where you were 10 minutes ago or even an hour ago and that sort of critical awareness will help you become lucid pretty much as effectively as a physical reality check word okay so that's that's gonna wrap it up for this one I've given you some examples to try if your palms hurting from the other other reality check and my favorite reality check is actually a combination of the one you've described where you try and push your finger through your palm and the mental reality check that I've just described so I'll do both at the same time okay so I'll literally be trying to press my finger through my palm at the same time as being aware of what's around me and thinking where was I 10 minutes ago how did I get here and am I dreaming that's the critical question right so I hope this has helped if you have any questions please do subscribe to my email list there's a link right at the top of the description saying like 35 free lessons or something like that subscribe to the email list and you'll be asked to sort of reply to the emails and I can answer your questions make videos for you that sort of thing so thank you for watching if you haven't already if you're new please subscribe because that way you'll get all the video updates I'm planning to do a lot more videos in the future and I don't usually email my list about the videos it's more sort of lessons and blog post so if you want to get the video updates and make sure you don't miss any then please go ahead and subscribe right now and I'll see you in the next video