The Looking-At-Your-Hands technique for lucid dream induction was popularized by Carlos Castaneda in his books about apprenticing as a Yaqui Indian Shaman. For a holiday present my mom gave me The Power of Dreaming by Castaneda and through this my interest in working with my own dreams was reinforced. At the time, I took Castaneda's stories of Mexican sorcery – supervised by the old, wise, and agile don Juan – as non-fiction. As it turns out, Carlos did not have a long and intimate training under a top-ranking Yaqui Sorcerer and the practices he described are not indicative of the local traditions. Never-the-less, the books made you wonder. Although not specifically about lucid dreaming, the tutorials that "don Juan" handed to Castaneda have been absorbed and applied by two generations of dream explorers.
Before getting to the hands thing, I want to mention another idea relayed from ole' Carlos. He said, or don Juan said, that most material in dreams is from your own mind but sometimes there are visitors from another dimension. "Non-physical" entities. These not-from-here objects may be alive or non-animated, like a cane or an umbrella, and although easy to over-look they emit a kind of alien presence. I don't necessarily believe this is possible, but I think we have all seen some out-of-place things in dreams that actually feel like they couldn't possibly come from your own mind. Anyway, back to the hands… |
The premise was that if Carlos could remember to look at his hands in a dream this would trigger heightened clarity and awareness of the dream-world, and with this special consciousness a Shaman can perform important spiritual exercises to improve their supernatural powers. When instructed to do this by don Juan, Castaneda had a hard go of it. At first, the closest he came to success was dreaming of lots of hands but never recognizing this as a sign to look down at his own hands. That was key for some reason. After much frustration Castaneda finally does the deed, and after looking at his hands can advance to more pressing dream matters.
First of all, why would looking at your hands have this effect? My disclaimer is that I didn't have my first lucid dream until many years after reading the Castaneda books, and I've never tried to use the Looking-At-hands technique. And I'd be fine with discrediting this induction technique, except it seems to have worked for many people. Success rate – I don't know. But it can work. So what is it, why should this work at all? Two words – Mental. Anchoring. |
Mental Anchoring is the act of creating a bridge between a physical act and a mental state – such as excitement or resourcefulness or creativity. The physical act would be something simple, like patting a fist to your chest, or tugging on your earlobe. When athletes make a yell before an explosive thrust to the goal, or politicians talk while jutting their thumb toward the audience, mental anchoring helps the user access skill-sets conditioned to be unleashed while or after the physical link is engaged. The laws of conditioning state that for two events to become associated, they need to occur within a proximity to each other. Further, the mind's appreciation for cause and effect requires the triggering event to come before or during the intended, elicited-state while the learning phase is occurring. For instance, you would look at your hands (while awake), and immediately proceed to do a reality check. Remember, always hold an expectation while checking reality that you could, really, be dreaming right now – the check could and may come up positive. With enough emotion and/or repetition a connection will develop, and when it does, looking at your hands will trigger the urge to do a reality check or otherwise suspect lucidity.
My contention with this technique is that there is nothing in particular about dreaming that should make looking at your hands likely. The reason it has worked, at least on occasion, must have to do with dream incubation – by focusing on an intended dream event or theme, people find that they can often experience that dream material in a relatively short time. [Note: If something is going to make it into your dream, it will probably be included between one and seven days after it happens, with the likelihood greatest towards the edges of this time-window and least probable around days three and four (this is from the Time-Lag Theory of Dreaming).] Dream incubation can result in intended dream themes, with or without accompanying lucidity. The thing with looking at your hands is that if you have been training yourself – through rehearsal – to realize that you are dreaming when looking at your hands, then this type of incubation can double as a dream-content-incubator and for lucid dream recognition. Still, I'd guess that success with looking at your hands will be low. Not the most likely route to go on. |
I think that your time would be better invested in conditioning yourself to suspect dreaming during predictable, programmable events. This is the premise for the Lucidity Institute's NovaDreamer and other dream masks that blink LED lights into your eyes during REM-Sleep. I've experimented with reminder watches for this also. Timed vibrations, lights, and even smells can be used as conditioned-triggers to elicit a critical mindset. You can have training sessions where you have your device alert you at random or specific intervals (while moving around or while laying or sitting quietly), and after each alert you perform a reality test. Them once the connection between the trigger and the critical mental setting is created, you arrange for the trigger to alert you when you are most likely dreaming. Whatever you choose as your trigger, mental anchoring is a powerful tool for your lucid dream induction program.
|