Thread: Senses Initiated Lucid Dream (SSILD)

Hi, I just tried this method yesterday after about 5 hours of sleep. I had a terrible experience for some reason. I also used the revised version from the link. I did all my cycles and when I tried falling back asleep I just couldn't. It wasn't a FA because I did reality check every once in a while and u couldn't get back to sleep for 1.5 hours. Any suggestions?

For me (and others who wake up fast with any mental activity), it's important to keep a really quiet, dreamy mind while doing SSILD, or else it can just really wake you up. Keep relaxing all the time while doing SSILD, maintain some attention to how drowsy you're feeling, if you start to feel too awake, immediately stop the cycles and aim directly for sleep.

The weird thing is that while I'm doing the cycles I don't feel awake at all but as soon as I get into the "I'm gonna go to sleep now" mode my mind just goes crazy and I can't fall asleep.

How can i use this to only induce ld's? i don't want to get an OBE.

Good stuff man, tried this last night after 4.5 hours sleep and it worked very well. However, I was disappointed to be woken up by an external noise I tried it again after that, but couldn't get back to sleep. As FryingMan said:

maintain some attention to how drowsy you're feeling, if you start to feel too awake, immediately stop the cycles and aim directly for sleep.

I will be sure to keep this in mind in future!

Might come back to this when I'm feeling better. I don't have the energy to try other techniques.

Wow this thread was dead until the one post of 2015 above. That's too bad as I really feel when combined with day practices, SSILD gave me a lot of momentum when I was starting out and for a long time after.

Originally Posted by TheAssassin56

How can i use this to only induce ld's? i don't want to get an OBE.

For me it has produced mostly DILDs in the middle of normal dreams. I haven't had many OBE-like experiences period and I have gotten most of my LD's during nights using SSILD.

OBE's are nothing to be afraid of. I was terrified of them at one point, but then i actually had one, and it was awesome. The key is just to trust in your control of the dream, and your subconscious will respond with an uneventful OBE. Hope it helps.

I tried SSILD a few months ago, and it worked for me! However, i don't really like DILD's, so is their a way to use this as a WILD technique? Like, can the cycles induce HG?

Wow... i´ve read about SSILD yesterday before i wanted to go to sleep but even if it was late i couldn´t resist to read the updated edition in your link. I kind of liked the idea because like 2Jupes already said it reminded me on meditating or an awarness technique. I´ve noted the easy instructions on a little piece of paper and go to sleep. I got to bed at 1 am after recapitulating detailed my day (an exercice i do to better remember my dreams and i think it helps falling asleep because you dispute with your thoughts _before_ you go to bed) i put up an alarm 6h later (7 am). After the alarm i stand up and went to the bathroom. After that i sit for like five minutes in my bed and analyse my surroundings and my bodyfeelings (RC-Style). About 10 or 15min after the alarm i lay on my back (normally i sleep on my site) and startet the cycles. First some fast ones then some slow ones. I noticed sometimes that i drifted away or begin to hear something etc. but i finished them without falling asleep (i am kind of the guy who didn´t fall asleep accidentally by watching tv or something. If i deside to watch something even if i´m tierd i watch so long till my eyes blob out because of drieness or i deside to go to sleeping...) then i turned on my site and tried to fall asleep but i did some more cycles with less attantion/effort. i´ve needed to turn on the other side because i didn´t fall asleep just like that. I noticed now and then that i drift away but i think i was to aware of whats happening and in the analyser mode so i get a litte awake of it every time. I think this is kind of practice to notice but dont get awake by it.
I then kind of fall asleep but it was very confusing. I think i woke up once and had a SP (first time) wanted to do an RC but couldnt move my arm at first. I did the RC and fall asleep again (but i am not 100% sure i was really awake or just dreamed of the SP...) Then i had a dream where i was in my room blabla but didnt get lucid by it but it was just a short one and i think i woke up after it (everything really fuzzy when i was rly awake and when i was dreaming...). Anyway i then had a dream where i was behind a house with a garden and i don´t know why but i decided to lay down on the grass and sleep (i think subconsciously i still was trying to fall asleep so i can have a LD xD) Now i am not sure again if i woke up but i think i had another dream where i was in a school with a friend blabla. Anyway i woke up again in the garden and THEN have the aha moment where i was sure i have to be in a dream. I did my nose pinch RC witch failed for the first time. I think because of the whole confusing am i dreaming or not and wake and not awake and RC with my real hand and RC just about thinking using my hand... however i counted my finger then and was sure. it was pretty funny. I talked to some DC and funny thing is everytime i asked them a question they needed like 3 seconds before they answered just like my subconcious needed to think about the apropriate answer...
-is this normal or is it because i am uncreative in RL so this "Creative task" needed some time because my brain isn´t used to do something like this?
i´ve then tried to fly away (i did it once before actively) but i fell on my stomach xD I said to myself "Come on you can do this it´s just about attitude. and i startet to float kind of in one direction (superman-style but with both arms to the front...) and then began to fly at the beginning to slowly for my taste so again i said to myself i just want to want it and fly faster. But i kind of didn´t like the setting because all the buildings looked down, cheep and like in a rly poor country. I thought about spinning a new scenario because i think i could fly for long and it wouldn´t change?
But i´ve decided to land and go to one house and said when i know a beautiful woman will open...aaaand she did it gets a little dirty from here on so i will reduce it to the minimum. However a second woman arrived and i dont know where the third one came from but i kind of had the feeling i should have known her or she was from the beginning there (i know she wasn´t) however she was then pissed that there are 2 other women and i fucked up and woke up.
The lesson of this is don´t be to greedy/megalomaniac... one would have been more then enough i think... i was a little sad after i woke up because i kind of don´t wanted to hurt this one girl even if i don´t know who she was afterwards just the feeling she was some kind of important to me...

nevertheless really nice LD with new control level while i was with this two women i remembered that i wanted to push my hand/my body through a solid wall so i pushed my thumb into the window bord and it relented. Kind of nice
another nice thing is that i´ve heard some music. In the dream where i was in the school and after the wakening in the garden near that house. This is new because before i never heard music in my dreams so that i notice...
i also looked at the wall of the house and the strukture was really really detailed.

i think it has to do with the technique because you focus on your senses in cycles so you subconsciously do it in your dream too and are more aware of your surroundings and sounds and so on.
i also had the feeling that my critical awareness was higher than usual. Even in the first dream where was in my room and in the school there was this "hmm feeling" but it was not strong enough at the beginning.

After the LD i did some more cycles because i wanted to try if i could have another LD but i think i was too upset because of the one girl... so i had problems relaxing. I had a NLD where my tooth hurt and wiggled a bit. I knew something about was not right but it wasn´t enough to get lucid by it.

But i see for sure the potential of this technique with more practice so the awareness gets even higher and you get critical earlier. And i think it needs practice to the feelings before falling asleep so you can work better with it. and i kind of saw a potential to WILD with this. (although i am a noob, but i could imagine to use it as an anchor)


Questions:
-It is possible to dream about SP right?

-How do you do RC without moving? Because if i am nearly dream and i am not sure if i still awake or alrdy in FA i want to do an RC but if am am still awake and move my arm for example i would do a step backwards to falling asleep? I´ve tried the "think about how your room looks why you are here and where you been five minutes ago" but i think it kind of don´t work when i am in between the worlds?!

-Is it possible to lay down in a Dream to fall asleep and don´t have an FA or something but a "normal" Dream in the Dream and after Dreaming it waking up again in the previous dream?! O.o or did i dream the one dream before the other and just think it was in the dream and not before?

- is there a good thread about sleep pattern? How to determin my REM-Phases etc? Is this consistent? Like always after 5h i start an new REM-phase etc?
i startet 6h after getting to bed. what would have been if i would start 5 or 4 or maby 7 h later? is there a correlation like the sooner the...
i can´t find anything about this here? would be nice to know how my sleep works.

THANK you and i hope to get some nice answers. i will keep on trying this technique and will let you know how it works for me.

Will this technique work with a fan in the room? Or a (sleeping) animal in the bed?

Originally Posted by robot that is lucid

Will this technique work with a fan in the room? Or a (sleeping) animal in the bed?

From what i know, yeah it will work. The important part is focusing on the senses during the cycles.

That aside.
I tried this technique today at 2 attempts, but this tech got me wandering into sleep right after 1 short cycle. I guess next time then.

I'm going to try this out tonight. Wish me luck!

Worked on my first try. I was in a really vivid FA, lamenting the failure of my attempt, when i remembered that SSILD tends to cause a lot of FAs. So, plugged my nose, and to to my surprise drew a breath.

Two nights, two successes. One only a second long, the other 10 minutes. But both were the most vivid things I have ever experienced. Both were FAs. And both had the highest level of lucidity I have ever had. SSILD works, people. It broke a 6 month long dryspell for me. Unfortunately, I discovered that I need serious practice with my dream control. I was practically a god last year, but I've lost my touch.

Whoa, congrats on both the successes! :'D

For the past several weeks I've been using SSILD on-and-off and have found a few interesting tricks that I thought everybody should know.

1) For best results, time the alarm to be near the start of a REM cycle. Why? SSILD sort of works by causing you to put a significant amount of attention on the small stuff(sight, sound, somatosensory(touch)). The closer you are to a REM cycle, the more likely it is for the SSILD to work correctly(this applies to all techniques that use WBTB). Though the exact wake up time varies by as much as 30 minutes from person to person, a wake-up time of 5 1/2 hours after the time you fall asleep is in the right ballpark. However, you will have to experiment slightly to find the optimum time for you.

2) Use a top 40 or some other non-talk show alarm (don't use beeper unless absolutely neccessary). Why? I found that if I timed the alarm correctly--and it was talk show or something--unless the volume was obscenely high, the dream would just sort of incorporate the human voices. Music, however, I found was a lot better at interrupting the flow of the dream, because It would attract my attention. The better the alarm is at interrupting the flow of the dream, the more likely you are to wake up, because it draws your attention away from the dream. The days I used a talk-show alarm, the radio would stay on for an hour until I reached the end of the REM cycle, at which point I would promptly wake up. The disadvantage of this is that you would be attempting SSILD at the start of what is likely going to be more than 30 minutes of NREM. Finally, unless you sleep like a stone, don't use one of those obnoxious beeping alarms. That gets me wide awake, and I can't fall asleep for like half an hour. Of course, this might not apply to you, but you should keep it in mind.

3) Do not skip the 4-6 "Practice rounds" at the beginning. Although you could use as few as 1 or as many as a 100, do not skip them! It's usually quite hard to actually get the cycles started if you go straight for the 30-second ones. And those are the most crucial of the technique.

4) WBTB time should be long enough for you to turn off your alarm and gather your thoughts, but not significantly longer. Why? Longer WBTB times tend to make it more difficult to fall asleep, so you would be sitting for like 20 minutes doing the cycles again and again, instead of LDing. Also, loss of sleep. Long WBTBs are not necessary or even recommendable for SSILD, and in the long run they just cause loss of sleep. The previous points also mean that you should set your goals before falling asleep the previous day, just to prevent having a longer WBTB time.

These four points have given me and my friends consistent results, and I do believe they should work(with proper adjustments) for most other people. Also, my comments about timing the attempt also apply to most other techniques that depend on WBTB(one particular example that I have tried successfully is FILD). I have not yet tried supplements with SSILD, but I do believe that cosmiciron said something about not using supplements with SSILD. Well, that's all I have to say on the matter.

After one month of WBTB combined with MILD, more than a hundred recorded dreams and no lucidity I decided to try SSILD. On the second night I had a solid LD. Did 2 times a RC to be absolutely sure (first time ever I breathed trough my blocked nose...funny feeling!). This works (for me...now).
Guido

^^ was it a WILD, FA, or a DILD?

Well.., this is the dream, it had three parts:
I am lying in bed, and there is earth in it...I think my son must have left this. It seems to become more and more and it doesn't help that I try to remove it. Black, very fine earth. In trying to remove it, I almost fall out of bed...
Suddenly I realise that I am dreaming and I am in a big space where a film is being projected on the wall, showing people in conversation. The whole scene is enveloped in this special intense light, as if coming from the inside of the people being shown. The film is now projected on two walls at the same time and there are like 20 people sitting in chairs before me, looking at the film with their backs towards me. I am delighted, and I shout: 'I am lucid, I am lucid!', but then I calm myself down a little because I don't want to get too excited and wake up. I do a RC by pushing my finger into the palm of my hand...does not work! then I try to blow trough my nose, blocking the nostrils, and this works! I do it again to be absolutely sure, and it works. In the public I see two attractive ladies, and I wish they would come to me, but they don't and leave the room after the film is finished. I only see them on the back: one has long blond hair, and the other one short and curly. I sound 'A' to start my usual meditation, and some wonderful sight manifests in the room [I do not give details...not supposed to by my teacher!].
Then I am back in an ordinary dream: next day in the workplace, trying to tell people how wonderful my dream was...nobody was particularly interested.

I think that the first part looks a little bit like a FA.

Greetings,
guido

CosmicIron
Are you a hungarian guy?If so,pls reply here and i want to give you my mail.
Your blog is on hungarian page, so ..

He was not online here since 2012. he wont answer you. maybe you try to contact him over his blog or something

Thanks for the info, Relax, i cant see the details, since im from my tablet, i cant like, cant see the likes and the details next for the users name.I was surprised,coz i opened his blog(topic opening comment), and that is a hungarian blog
But there is an update in the opening post from '13,but maybe thats a moderator update,i dunno.

Tried it on a nap.. Interesting results and very similar to when i accidentally WILD into NREM at the start of the night.

I did the cycles then tried to sleep but i didn't lose my consciousness for some reason.
After a while of trying to sleep and after catching several illogical thoughts, that happened.. "A loud buzzing noise and the happy hallucinations" package.. Surprised, i quickly tried to calm down, i suspected i was in Atonia or SP already.. I know that i should ignore hallucinations, but i wasn't even expecting them to happen to begin with. Nothing happened as i layed in there waiting for a dream. So i tried doing something.

Onto what really matters, i tried going into a dream through visualizations. Either a picture showed up by itself or i made it appear. Whatever it was, i ended up inside it. What i experienced was a false awakening of some type. I was in my bed, i fell out of my bed but the cover was still stuck in my head, covering essentially 60% of my vision. Frustrated, i tried taking it off, i pulled it and pulled it away, it never ended. I could barely control my body and my vision was very blurry, a very typical NREM dream, extremely unstable as i think it was. A few very confusing things happened after this.. I woke up at the end of it.

Still confused whether this counts as a lucid dream or if it was a dreamlet. I think it was an NREM dream. The only doubt about it is that it's been 6 hours since i initially woke up, isn't REM available at such a time anyway? It could have been a normal unstable dream, but i don't even know as this was the first time i succeeded in entering one after a WILD anyway.

Good thing anyway, i'll be holding onto this more. It looks like my method of dream entrance should be visualization since i'm kinda good at it. I was expecting a DILD, but i'm fine that i got a WILD instead.

Success? I think so.

Also, i almost forgot. When i were doing the cycles, i decided to cover my eyes.. Right after i did that my eyes started twitching very quickly for some reason and they twitched for around a minute.. That was weird.