Quality is always before quantity but in this case quantity is also very important. You said that RC takes a lot of effort and that they interrupt you, well that's actually a good thing because only if you take time to see if you are awake or asleep you'll realize whether you are in a dream or not and I guess that you do them right but just for to be sure I will try to describe how a RC should be performed:

Let's say your in your room studying and you decide that you will do a RC: you stop with everything, look around and ask yourself what are you doing, answer on that question. Then ask yourself what you were doing for the last hour, if was studying then go past that time and try to remember different actions. Then ask yourself what are you going to do after whatever action you were doing. After that you can do a physical RC...

Sometimes RC as RC won't do much in my experience, RC should be an action of the mindset, there should be always a little doubt in your mind whether you're dreaming or not... I've also noticed if you stay in once place for most of the day for most of the week or month or if you stay in some small surroundings and if that becomes your routine RC just somehow loses it's purpose...

I would suggest to stick to them, I also find them as very good tool not only for realizing that you are in a dream but also for confirmation that you are in a dream and by that I stabilize my dream and prolong them, so I guess there are something more in a RC then just something that should be performed to see if you are in a dream or not...

Good luck!
          Current LD goal(s): #Find/Meet Dream Guide#  

Very interesting. I do think you should keep up with them... and make sure you try more than one or two of them. Maybe four or five, and rotate them.

I am not a good LDer... but realization is not my problem. I went through a phase where once I realized I was in a dream, the realization and the excitement was too much, and it broke the bubble. I may be wrong (like I said, hardly an expert), but I think when you go to sleep with a goal for a LD, and you realize you've made it, that acknowledgement of success bursts the bubble. I think you have to want it less. Be calmer and more easy going - in life and in dream.

I would continue to try and do things to raise your alertness in everyday situations. Checks of things you're mind cant process in sleep (like reading, leaning against walls, looking at your hands, etc). Expect that one of these days, you're going to get the "wrong" result. And don't freak out when it happens. After all, the whole reason you were doing it is because you expected it. If you freak, you wake.

Thinking about this, I feel developing a tendancy towards being self-conscious about ones flaws (or remembering/relating to times when that was the norm... the awkward pimple in junior high, for example) is a good way to develop effective reality checks. Maybe this is why I've never had this problem. I'm a pretty self conscious guy. Acne in high school. Not great body image. A mother who said everything smelled bad. I was constantly checking myself. Now I have the confidence and feeling of relative potence I lacked then, but I still keep an eye out, have very grounded ideals for what it real, and what is clearly a dream.... and I just roll with it.

Ok, probably rambling. Hope you get some help from any of this.  

@cosmic.iron: I have to disagree entirely with you. While it might be your experience that RC's are a waste of time during the day, they have been immensely helpful to me. Now I'm the first to admit I am bad at keeping the RC's up, but I have had several periods in which I have maintained them frequently. During those times my LD count has risen significantly, much more so than when trying more active techniques. Part of it is the awareness.

In fact, while I've had some success with WILD, most of my techniques come from autosuggestion, DILD and RCILD. All of these are vastly improved when I increase my awareness during the day. Sure, your dream self is usually disjointed and all over the place but it is still a part of you. Making a significant change to one part changes the other.

Also, your theory on "frequency" doesn't come into play. When practicing lucid living, in which I incorporate very frequent RC's, the "reality check" never stops. It is a constant mindset. Frequency doesn't come into play here. Again, my LD count isn't in the "thousands" but when I do practice this I go from a few LD's a month to 3-6 per week.

I'm not saying RCILD will work for everyone. In fact, I think it's very rare to find a technique that everyone can grasp. I like the concept behind your SILD and it has shown mild success, but that doesn't mean it would work for everyone. The fact is you can't say doing RC's won't help. Sure, the bland action may not do much but the mindset it brings is key in my opinion. Everything, every technique is based on awareness, even SILD. What's the harm in doing such a thing to increase that awareness?

          Current LD goal(s): Defeat Xander in our lucid duel!  

Reality checks do work. They just, generally, have an extremely low success rate. Also, whenever you do RCs, make sure you really mean it. Don't just check your breathing. Actually look around you as well.  

Rhewin wrote:
@cosmic.iron: I have to disagree entirely with you. While it might be your experience that RC's are a waste of time during the day, they have been immensely helpful to me. Now I'm the first to admit I am bad at keeping the RC's up, but I have had several periods in which I have maintained them frequently. During those times my LD count has risen significantly, much more so than when trying more active techniques. Part of it is the awareness.

In fact, while I've had some success with WILD, most of my techniques come from autosuggestion, DILD and RCILD. All of these are vastly improved when I increase my awareness during the day. Sure, your dream self is usually disjointed and all over the place but it is still a part of you. Making a significant change to one part changes the other.

Also, your theory on "frequency" doesn't come into play. When practicing lucid living, in which I incorporate very frequent RC's, the "reality check" never stops. It is a constant mindset. Frequency doesn't come into play here. Again, my LD count isn't in the "thousands" but when I do practice this I go from a few LD's a month to 3-6 per week.

I'm not saying RCILD will work for everyone. In fact, I think it's very rare to find a technique that everyone can grasp. I like the concept behind your SILD and it has shown mild success, but that doesn't mean it would work for everyone. The fact is you can't say doing RC's won't help. Sure, the bland action may not do much but the mindset it brings is key in my opinion. Everything, every technique is based on awareness, even SILD. What's the harm in doing such a thing to increase that awareness?

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Dear Rhewin,

This subject is still much in debate nowadays, so I can't say you are wrong. In fact, the so-called Lucid Living or All-day-awareness had always been the primary building blocks in many ancient spiritual practices, and no doubt they worked. Also, in case you have not noticed, my previous reply started with a big "IMO" which stands for "In My Opinion".

This whole constantly checking reality thing kind of remind me when I was small, I used to practice an ancient martial arts technique which asks you to swing your fist in order to extinguish a candle from certain distance. It is said that if you continue doing this hours after hours, days after days, you will eventually (after many years) be able to kill someone from a hundred feet away without ever touching him. I practiced it like crazy for two months, and then suddenly I was able to put out the flame in an instant with a very light punch from eight feet away! Not that it did anything else for me but it was pretty amazing just to be able to do that! Of course, I never reached the point where I can kill anything because soon I got distracted by romance, video games, and the whole nine yards  

Again, there are much debate on this subject in the academic world, therefore I don't want to enter any deeper discussions here. I'm just trying to help the poor guy who spends countless time to practice and rarely sees success.

On my forum we grew from less than 1,000 to more than 60,000 active members in less than a year. We exposed these people to all kinds of techniques and collected their stories and experiences. I'm sorry to report that there is no single successful case of the RC technique being registered. We do see cases which the RC tech seems to play a role in increasing LD counts when combined with other techniques such as MILD and WBTB though. On the other hand, ever since the release of the SILD technique in late August last year we see success stories on a daily basis. Since then we've collected many hundreds of such reports yet we believe they are just a small percentage of the actual successes.

You are absolutely right in saying that techniques may not work for everyone, in fact, many LD techniques, from my experience and observations, only work for few people, and usually the first few times. SILD, on the other hand, has shown a lot of promise. It may still not be the method for "everyone", but from our experience it is darn close.

The SILD method, in a way, is not the product of a single person but collected effort from hundreds if not more people. The reason I'm posting it here, in addition to helping people, is that I hope together we can further refine it and improve it.  

Rhewin wrote:
Very nice reply there, actually

And yes, I did notice you said IMO (which I greatly appreciate) as did I ^^.-------

The other day my older daughter, who is 14, told me that she developed an habit of doing an RC every time she goes to bathroom at night. She had LDs every single night for a week! You can tell I was astonished. Interestingly in the following week she couldn't remember to do the RC at all! LOL.