The Mind Wandering Thread

[ilovefrootloopz]

If you need to have your mind wander to fall asleep, post here. I just want to get a general idea of how many people are like me on this forum.

Also, can you answer these questions:

Have you ever successfully WILD? If so, how?

If you are tired enough, does the mind wandering to fall asleep rule apply?

As far as you remember, has it always been like this?

How long (as in minutes/hours) have you tried methods like MILD, VILD, and FILD without success?

Thanks.

[justme]

If you need to have your mind wander to fall asleep, post here. I just want to get a general idea of how many people are like me on this forum.

Also, can you answer these questions:

Have you ever successfully WILD? If so, how?

If you are tired enough, does the mind wandering to fall asleep rule apply?

As far as you remember, has it always been like this?

How long (as in minutes/hours) have you tried methods like MILD, VILD, and FILD without success?

Thanks.
[/b]

Ya whenever i try to sleep my mind just keeps thinking.

1. I do something kind of like a wild. Sometimes I wake up at around 5 and by habit try and remember my dreams, then while thinking about dreams I fall asleep agian and sometimes have a lucid dream.

2. When I'm tired its kind of differnt. My mind doesn't wander but I always feel like I have to move.

3. I can't remember far back, but yes.

4. Umm I got about 4 minutes into a WILD, or maybe 2. Then I get bored of thinking about that and think of something else.

Maybe you can try a WBTB (walk back to bed) I think thats what its called. You get up at about the same time as a wild but instead of just thinking to yourself the same thing over and over agian you actually read something about dreams for about an half an hour then go back to sleep. I think that's how it goes.

[Gemini Man]

1. No, but I'm making progress. What you have to do is when you find your mind wandering, realize exactly what you're thinking about and redirect focus. Keep the focus there. Constantly keep your mind there. If you have a random thought, just acknowledge it, and refocus. It's really hard, but I made it into SP so far. Also, you need to be genuinely tired and calm before you try it or you get nowhere. If something in particular is bugging you, it wont work. I've been trying this for ages, have patience.

2. For me it always applies, the more tired I am, the less time it takes. Hopefully WILDing will be different.

3. Yes.

4. VILD, MILD, and FILD got nowhere for me. I spent about an hour doing FILD for several nights before giving up. VILD didn't work, although to be honest I put only a few more nights into it as I did with FILD and only tried for one or two hours each. MILD never worked because I ended up staying awake and giving up. That lasted only a few nights for about 2 hours. These are all rough estimates, but the point is that I probably could've tried more, but WILD just seemed to work better becuase it is easier to relax and focus on breathing than a whole visualization over and over again. FILD, well it just simply didn't show any progress. I might try these again sometime but I'm making more progress with WILD right now.

[Eminence~]

If I'm not very tired, yes, my mind has to wander for me to fall asleep. But if I'm at least moderately tired, I can be thinking up a scenario in my head when all of a sudden the people in it start falling through holes in the ground or something random like that. It's extremely irritating.

[Umbrella]

I'm one of those people.
Unfortunately, I've never succesfully WILDed.
There have been times where I spent over an hour trying to WILD in the afternoon, but since I wasn't tired at that point (obviously) I didn't fall asleep.
Even when I'm tired, my mind has to wander before I fall asleep. It just happens immediately after I close my eyes.
I can remember not having this habit when I was little. But then the news showed a story on Marc Dutroux. After that point it started becoming harder for me to fall asleep, as I was scared that I would be kidnapped. I'm not kidding either.

[ilovefrootloopz]

Anyone else? I want to get a good idea of how many people like me suffer this "disability" lol.

[SKA]

Anyone else? I want to get a good idea of how many people like me suffer this "disability" lol.
[/b]

Actually, while some people are naturally more able to focus attention than others, most people have this: Their Mind just doesn't stop ''Thought-hopping''. It jumps from one thought to the other spontaniously. It is the way our Mind works. You hear the noise of your mom washing the dishes downstairs. Your Mind associates Dishes with Food. Your thoughs wander off to food. Your Mind wanders off from food to fruit. Your Mind links the thought of Fruit to Passion and Summer. From there it gets linked to The Bright Summer Sun and the Summerfeeling.

During the day we often Find ourselves thinking about something spontaniously. It is when we become AWARE of our own spontanious thought-process. Try tracing back where your last thought came from. You'll see that your Mind really ''went for a walk'' and innitially was set in motion by external Stimuli picked up by one of the 5 senses while being in very deep thought (Trance State. Dayly trance.happens everyday to everyone)

This however is normal and most people have to TRAIN to gain a strong undisturbed attention focussing ability.
Try meditation. Meditation is all about training your attention and strengthening your awareness.
Read something on the BASICS of meditation and make up your own personal Meditation-Technique out of it. A personal way to take some time and Train Focussing your attention longer and more undisturbed. You'll make progress overtime. It is not as hard, mystic and illusive as it often sounds: Meditation.

Unlike it is often presented Meditation is Not ''floaty'' and spaced out at all, more Sober and clearminded instead: learning to control the thopught-process and to calm the mind, to focus attention and increase awareness. To get any results in Increased awareness and Strengthened Attention, you need to keep doing Meditation as a dayly ritual, in whatever way you feel most comfortable with as long as it contains the basis of what Meditation is.

I believe there was a site called www.plotinus.com of .net I'm not sure. They had some really good articles on Meditation and expecially what the basic idea of it is. It really explained alot to me about meditation.

Someone posted that link here once. Can't remember who. Try googling foor ''plotinus''