A dream sign is a commonly occurring theme found within a person’s dreams. Dream signs will vary between individuals. Some common ones are difficulty reading words, the inability to run or use mechanical objects, the ability to breathe underwater and the appearance of dead people.

There are many kinds of dream signs, and they usually reflect the waking life of the person who has the dream. For example, someone who is interested in cars will probably have dreams with many car-related themes. Doctors will probably dream about performing duties in their field of specialization. The common, most telling dreaming sign is that something illogical occurs in a completely natural and self-accepted manner.

Dream signs can also reflect wants, fears, things the subject hates, and even embarrassing moments. They can manifest themselves in many different ways, depending on the dreamer.

Recognizing one’s dream signs is a technique for achieving lucid dreaming, to become consciously aware of dreaming. After that is achieved it may be possible to steer the dream and mold the dream world.

Although everyone’s dreams and dream signs are different, some common dream signs are:

• Falling.
• Flying.
• Inability to move one’s arms and/or legs.
• Jumping tremendous heights.
• Finding yourself saying mean or racist comments to a person which you would never say to someone in reality.
• Dream taking place in a movie, book or video game. (E.g. recalling a character or voice associated with a video game or a movie, and realizing therefore he or she must be dreaming)
• Clock faces, directional signs, books, etc., being unintelligible.
• Mechanical or electrical devices failing to operate in a normal manner.
• Gravity appearing to be stronger or weaker.
• Being attacked/chased by a monster.
• Appearing to be in two places at once.
• Time passing by very quickly, especially when going against the clock for whatever reason.
• Being in a familiar area that doesn’t have the same layout as it does in the real world. For example, being in Grand Central Station, except it has the interior layout of the Gare du Nord.
• Having sex (see wet dream), especially if the sex is not in your sexuality.
• Being lost in a building (even in a building that you are familiar with in real life).
• Familiar sights, such as the faces of others, or of one’s own face in a mirror, appearing distorted.
• Interacting with friends, relatives or family pets that are deceased in reality.
• Being naked in public, and being the only one who seems to notice.
• Being impervious to injury (i.e. feeling no pain), especially of the lethal variety (for example, being unharmed by an explosion or a gunshot)
• Being able to walk across a road without being hit by a car.
• Falling down the stairs and never reaching the bottom.
• Running quickly enough for the setting to change in an impossible manner.
• Sudden inability to run at the worst time possible.
• Being able to see with your eyes closed.
• Seeing in third-person view (see out-of-body experience).
• Inability to dial a number, or when supposedly dialed correctly, turns out the exact opposite.
• Hearing odd and/or irrelevant sayings or quotes (for example, “Go through the tunnel, then you can drink your coffee”)
• Inability to change the lighting levels by flicking lightswitches
• Inability to open eyes, or not be able to see very clearly
• Realizing that all of one’s wishes or demands (including those that are illogical) coming true.
• Ability to function normally despite the dreamer’s impairments. (Such as being able to see clearly without required eye glasses.)
• Inability to recall how you arrived in the place that you are.
• Dreaming of a recent memory or action, maybe doing the same actions you did in real life.

Reality testing (or reality checking) is a common method used by people to determine whether or not they are dreaming. It involves performing an action with results that will be different if the tester is dreaming. By practicing these tests during waking life, one may eventually decide to perform such a test while dreaming, which may fail and let the dreamer realize that they are dreaming.

Common reality tests include:

• The nose reality check: Pinch your nose and if you are able to breathe without using your mouth, it is a dream.
• Try to stick your finger through the palm of your hand.
• Looking at one’s digital watch (remembering the time), looking away, and looking back. As with text, the time will probably have changed randomly and radically at the second glance or contain strange letters and characters. (Analog watches do not usually change in dreams, while digital watches have great tendency to do so.)
• Flipping a light switch. Light levels rarely change as a result of the switch flipping in dreams.
• Looking into a mirror; in dreams, reflections from a mirror often appear to be blurred, distorted, incorrect or frightening.
• Looking at the ground beneath one’s feet or at one’s hands. If one does this within a dream the difference in appearance of the ground or one’s hands from the normal waking state is often enough to alert the conscious to the dream state.

Another form of reality testing involves identifying one’s dream signs, clues that one is dreaming. An individual may record their dreams in a Dream Journal and analyse the common themes to determine one’s own Dream Signs. Dream signs are often categorized as follows:

• Action — The dreamer, another dream character, or a thing does something unusual or impossible in waking life, such as being able to fly, being able to walk through walls, being able to change the setting illogically, or noticing photographs in a magazine or newspaper becoming three-dimensional with full movement.
• Powerlessness — There may typically be a sensational loss of bodily strength.
• Context — The place or situation in the dream is strange and includes fictional characters or places.
• Form — The dreamer, another character, or an object changes shape, is oddly formed, or transforms. This may include the presence of unusual clothing or hair, or a third person view of the dreamer.
• Awareness — A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual sensation, a loss of normal logic, or an altered perception. In some cases when moving one’s head from side to side, one may notice a strange stuttering or ’strobing’ of the image.
• Cohesion — Sometimes the dreamer may seem to teleport to another location in a dream, without a noticeable transition.
• Clocks — Another, unlikely, possibility is that while one looks at a clock or watch, looks away, then looks back, the time would have changed dramatically.

You can find more about the various dream signs in the article Dream Signs in Dreams Interpretation category.