Question: is there any sense that doesn't "work" in your dreams or is different from real life? Taste, hearing, smell, touch?
After a dream last night, featuring a Johnny Depp who had the most unfortunate body odor, I thought about how senses work in dreams. Going over my most recent dreams, I get the feeling that my sense of taste is pretty much non-existant in my dreams while my sense of smell is overexaggerated. Hearing and touch seem pretty realistic.
I'm thinking of doing reality checks tailored to that. Smell is going to be easy – I can plant someting in every room of the house that I can easily grab at any time to smell and ask myself: does this smell as it's supposed to? Coffee beans, my bottle of rosemary oil etc.
Taste is going to be more tricky, because I don't want to actually have to eat something every time I do a reality check! Maybe I'll just use a drop of vinegar or something else that has a strong taste.
What do you think? Do you have a sense that might work as a litmus test for the question: Am I DREAMING?
I do use smell as a reality check, but I take more of a passive approach with this. Whenever I smell something strong during the day, I take notice of it and make sure it matches the environment I'm in. This helps me practice a type of "All day awareness." I think we should try to be extra aware of all our senses throughout the day. Hopefully this transfers into the dream world!
I forgot to say in my post: to those who have not read "Are you Dreaming?" yet, there is a chapter called "Exploring your senses". Daniel speculates that sense and taste might be less apparent in most people's dreams because we give little attention to them in real life, unless we have a strong reason to do so. He suggests to make them more meaningful in real life if you want to experience them more strongly in your dreams. So that's a possible reason why a sense might be stronger or less strong in your dreams. It would explain why my sense of smell is actually very strong in my dreams: a lot of fragrences like scented candles or strong-smelling soaps or laundry detergants trigger allergy symptoms (worst case, they make my throat swell up), so I am always aware of the smells, because I'm trying to not get too close to things with a strong artificial odor.
So smell should be good for reality checks. But I wonder: if I do try to incorporate taste into my reality checks – will I gradually sabotage them by doing that?
At the moment, taste is extremly bland in my dreams, but if I keep giving attention to the sense of taste via reality checks, will that cause it to get more strong in my dreams?
My experience of sight and potentially sound is fairly normal also, I couldn't swear that my hearing is but certainly i don't remember NOT hearing stuff being an issue or has stuck in my mind afterwards.
A memorable non-lucid dream for me was eating a chocolate wafer biscuit, the first time i truly remember tasting anything and it was a very powerful memory when i woke.
I have used touch to help stabilise a lucid dream, the one i remember in particular was stroking the seat of a motorbike over and over again.
I have used drops of essential oils on my pillow to help with sleep and potentially aiding dream recall but to be honest, I've not thought up a practical way of incorporating it into reality testing, interesting idea. Even though I don't ever recall smelling anything in a dream, i could certainly try to use particular smells in waking life (like coffee) to trigger reality testing and that may creep into my dreams i guess?