Can you find your hands in a dream and not get lucid?

@kikorangi 8 thanks for the detailed reply. I wasn't familiar with FILD. For me, initially the Castaneda method of declaring "tonight when I dream I will find my hands and become lucidly aware" before falling asleep was very effective, and my hands always look normal (except for being "see-through" sometimes and that one time that one of them turned into a metal hand that I used to punch through some walls that got it the way :)). Even now, when I have way more experience looking at the hands, rubbing them together is very effective for stabilising and keeping lucidity. Glad I asked and didn't just assume it was the same for everyone.

@Isaac My pleasure! And that is definitely the right mindset, so well done for asking 😀 Also, good on you for staying away from the "traditional" FILD (you'll know why I'm specifying that if you watch the video and read the article I linked 😊)!

To be honest, I had a feeling that that might be it, but I didn't want to ask right away in case that might have swayed your opinion, so to speak. I came across that method by Castaneda myself just as I was getting started with lucid dreaming for the first time, and I never had any luck with it... Honestly, it frustrated me to no end 😂 My immediate reaction was "But I see my hands all the time while I'm awake. This doesn't make sense to me."

And haha, I love the wall punching! That's a great example of finding workarounds for obstacles / dream control issues, I'll have to try that sometime!

@Isaac Ah, the Castaneda method does not work for me, but it obviously works for some people, like you! I don't recall looking at my hands like that in a regular dream, though I'm sure I must have looked at them every now and then. The only memory I have of looking at my hands in a dream is when I was already lucid and looking at my hands just to see if they had spouted additional digits. (Yep.)

@Isaac I saw my hands, yes, as I was able to notice that I had more fingers than normal. I paused a bit and kept counting, knowing that something was off, but, I never achieved lucidity in those two.

@StumpedSlicken a failed reality check. I see. thanks for sharing! I thought the hands have a special symbolic meaning (agency and ability to act) but apparently not for everyone.