Thread: What happened? Post Your WILD Attempts, Good or Bad, Here

Darkrobin:

Originally Posted by Darkrobin

Sageous: I've been trying to WILD now for 3 days. I even tryed with the wbtb.. Problem is that i just cant fall asleep again.. Ive tryed on the back for the most of the times, but i keep thinking if i have my hands on my chest insteand of laying them down i will fail it.
Even after being laying still for 20 min still nothing happens.. Even after 5 min of waking up.

What is wrong with me here?

There is likely nothing wrong with you here, aside from a nit of impatience.

Here are three quick thoughts you might consider:

First, three days is not a long time to be attempting WILD's. You may need much more time than that before you get all the timing down properly, or settle on the specific falling asleep technique and position that works best for you. Three days really isn't, generally,a substantial enough amount of time to get everything in tune for a successful WILD.

Next, 20 minutes is not a long time to wait for sleep to return. I, for example, regularly take more than an hour (sometimes as long as two), to get back to sleep. You might consider allowing yourself at least an hour before being concerned about not getting back to sleep -- if you can manage to not be concerned at any point, you might find yourself a bit more relaxed and thus able to fall asleep.

That said, if you are truly having trouble getting back to sleep, you might consider what you were doing during your WBTB: The basic purpose for WBTB is to help you wake up just enough to gather your waking-life self-awareness, but this must be done without waking up too much, and abandoning your sleep cycle (aka, convincing your body that it is time to wake up for the day. So try to avoid things that might wake you too much, like using your phone or computer, talking to people, watching TV, etc, and try to keep your mind at ease and filled with dreamy thoughts, like where you might be going during your upcoming LD.

Finally, it really doesn't matter where your hands are when you lay down to WILD. Put them where they are most comfortable, and leave it at that. Worrying about anything during a WILD is a distraction and not a good thing, so if you think putting your hands on your chest will cause you to fail, then you very likely will fail.

tl;dr: One major key to successful WILDing is patience, Darkrobin.


Oneirin:

Originally Posted by Oneirin

Anyway, I'm wondering if there would be a great/better way to go about focusing on the tactile feel of my body as a whole unit, as well as sinking/relaxation. This seemed to be my intuitive take on it.

I think you're describing something similar to the SSILD technique. You might want to look into it, if you haven't already, as I've heard that it is a pretty effective technique for WILD.

(I can discuss the head vibration/relaxation that comes during my transition phase, but I don't want to deviate too much from the course).

Thank you for that... I get so tired of repeating my "noise doesn't matter" speech!

So today I tried to WILD at like 2:30 PM. (Usually all my attempts are during an afternoon nap)

I put on my headphones and started playing some background sounds like waves and etc. I also put on a blindfold because even with the blinds, my room is too bright. I lay on my back.

So first of I relax my body. I used to relax every muscle separately, but now I am able to relax them all at the same time for 2-3 min.

After I am comfortable and relaxed, I start breathing slowly. My left hand was in a fist and it started to hurt a little so I laid it flat and it went away.

Then I started counting 1. I'm Dreaming 2.I'm Dreaming ...... all the way to 300 and something. I kept loosing track of my counting (I was seeing snippets of me playing a game - Overwatch), but always managed to continue counting. Sometime during the counting I got a sudden vibration from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. But only once. My left foot started to jerk a little for 10 sec. But after all of these things I got pretty tired of this attempt so I tried visualizing a circle, but nothing formed. Actually I haven't really gotten hypnogogia ever since my first tried back in February (so maybe a 100 attempts and all of them failed ) I was pretty tired during this try, and still I failed bad. Someone in the other room was knocking on something and I gave up since I was too aware because of that. The whole thing took like 30-40 min. It always seems like my attempts go nowhere. Also it's worth pointing out that I don't do stuff like RCs and DJing since WILD is more my style and I don't like DILD because you can't control when the dream will happen. Even if this attempt was bad I sometimes get pretty good ones. I've had ones where I lay for 10 min and I start spinning, swinging, flashing behind my eyelids, but I always chicken out for some reason.

^^ Thanks for sharing; here are a couple of observations that you might consider:

* If you are comfortable and relaxed, then your fist will not be clenched. You might consider going back to that muscle-by-muscle relaxation technique you were using initially, so you can more thoroughly relax.

* If your counting manages to get to 300 or more, you probably should consider another anchor, like a mantra. I usually don't recommend counting in WILD, because it can have a tendency to wake you up rather than help you settle into sleep, which may be the case for you. For instance, you may have been on the verge of going to sleep and starting a dream when you had dreamlets about Overwatch, but your effort to continue counting may have drawn you away from sleep and dream.

* Hypnagogic imagery (HI) is not a requirement for a successful WILD. If you don't experience HI during a WILD you should consider yourself lucky, because you are avoiding the distractions of the noise that can accompany a WILD dive.

You might remind yourself that your goal is the dream, and not HI like spinning, swinging, flashing behind my eyelids; if you make these things important, or consider it a failure if you don't experience them, then you may be allowing the dream -- your actual goal -- to take a back seat...and that is never a good thing.

* Even if WILD is your transition choice, it is still very important to do RC's and keep a dream journal. Whether you are doing WILD or DILD, mindset is critical for successful LD'ing. Daywork like doing RC's and journaling go a long way toward developing an overall lucid mindset by bringing the dreaming life into your waking-life activities. Indeed, even though it is generally considered a DILD technique, you might consider practicing MILD for a while, because it helps you form a good baseline of this mindset.

* Try not to chicken out. There is nothing that is happening during a WILD dive that doesn't happen every time you go to sleep -- it's just that during a WILD you happen to be there to notice them. Try to be confident throughout your dive, and reinforce this confidence by not caring about the "scary" things you might see or feel, like HI.

Thanks for the answers, I will tell you if something important happens.

Although I still have one question, even after reading your guide I don't know whether I should let myself fall asleep or should I just stay and wait for the dream to form behind my eyelids. Also should I stare at the back of my eyelids or the usual way when falling asleep?

Originally Posted by xArDDe

Although I still have one question, even after reading your guide I don't know whether I should let myself fall asleep or should I just stay and wait for the dream to form behind my eyelids. Also should I stare at the back of my eyelids or the usual way when falling asleep?

Since you must be asleep in order to dream, you must of course allow yourself to fall asleep. WILD is about hanging on to your waking-life self-awareness throughout the process of falling asleep, and not about preventing yourself from falling asleep...preventing yourself from falling asleep sort of defeats the purpose, I think.

I also suggest that you don't worry too much about where your dream forms. There is no need to wait for something to form behind your eyelids; just wait for entry into your dream. In a sense, the dream forms everywhere around you, just as waking-life reality does; trying to pin that formation down to one spot might limit the breadth of the dream. Also, the expectation that your physical eyes are involved in the formation of the dream (they are not) might serve to diminish the quality of your dream.

By the same token, there is no need to stare at the backs of your eyelids during WILD. It takes a bit of practice, but I like to actually turn my eyes upward during WILD, because it seems to help with further separating my physical eyesight from my dreaming perception, and for some reason makes visualization a bit easier.

tl;dr: just fall asleep, as the dream won't form until your body is sleeping. And don't worry about physically looking at anything during your WILD; just relax and stay focused on the upcoming dream.

So basically trying to stay awake as long as possible? How do you know if you fall asleep way too early or too late?

^^ No.

Basically you're trying to fall asleep as quickly and normally as possible... just like any other time, except duing WILD you're doing this falling asleep while maintaining your waking-life self-awareness.

I know it sounds like a bit of a paradox (because it is), but that really is the object of the WILD game: maintain your wakeful consciousness while your body falls asleep normally. The last thing you want to do during WILD is try to stay awake; after all, your LD can only happen when you're asleep, right?

Because of this, there is no need to be concerned about falling asleep to early or too late -- your body will fall asleep when it will, and you just need to let it do so without losing touch with your Self.

So the bottom line here is this: don't try to stay awake, just stay aware.

I hope that made sense, because this is pretty important.

First, Hello! I've been lurking here for a while now, perhaps three weeks. I'll post a more detailed introduction in the proper sub forum later. Second, thank you to Sageous, who is obviously very dedicated to this forum and assisting us newbs with an elusive technique. Now on to the WILD attempts...

I've been practicing, with some limited success, various LD techniques for about a month. I've been trying WILDS twice a day now for almost two weeks, and I feel that I am SOOOO CLOSE! Here is an account of my best effort to date:

I lay down for my afternoon nap and go through my normal relaxation routine, which I've gotten pretty good at by now. Before long, the "noise" starts, and as always, I try to maintain an air of detachment about the colors and sensarions. By now I've even learned to ignore the familiar voices calling out my name (this was extremely difficult at first...it can be quite upsetting to hear a lost loved one call your name clear as day). On this occasion however, the HI started to solidify into little dream snippets that would come and go quickly. They were short, but very real. By this time, my entire body was numb, virtually non-existent. Then one particular image (a snow-capped mountain scene that looked exactly like the mountains behind John Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park, where I had been all day). This image, instead of passing by, suddenly and very quickly just rushed towards me. Very fast! Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, I was "there"! The transition was so fast, and so sudden that its startled me awake. This has since happened to me on several occasions...every time I "pop" into a dream. I pop out of it after just a second or two.

Is there any advice for me here? I feel like I'm on the right track, but something is holding me back.

As a side note, I've noticed some wonderful waking effects of all this effort and regular meditation (sensory awareness, mainly): 1) My internal dialougue will occasionally stop, sometimes for as much as five minutes. I've never been able to do this before. 2) Spontaneous and intense feelings of well being. 3)There are times when I feel as if my mind just....stretches. It's hard to describe. All here who have achieved lucid dreaming know that the shift in awareness is a feeling...trying to describe it is kind of like trying to describe what "red" looks like to a blind person. Anyways, during my daytime meditation, I sometimes catch a whiff of this feeling, and my body responds with a full-bodied shiver, accompanied by the feeling that my waking life is just as illusory as my dreaming life.

Anyway, TL;DR: I'm very close, but always get startled out of a dream as soon as it starts.

Thank you!

^^ Welcome, SeaDreamer!

Very close indeed; I would say that you seem to be right at your dream's doorstep!

At first glance, I can offer only the usual advice for your exiting your dream right after you've "popped in": Try to stay calm (including setting an intention to be calm before sleep), and rest assured that, with experience, this sudden exit will fade away as a problem. But that was at first glance, and probably not what you want to hear, so how about this:

It could be that what you experienced wasn't really a full-fledged dream but rather a dreamlet. Dreamlets, which are basically small snippets of coherent imagery that come and go quickly, occur as you ride the fence between wake and sleep. So, since you are still partly awake, your chances of waking up fully are pretty good when the dream causes a rush of excitement. What you might try doing when it happens next time is tell yourself that this is a dreamlet and not a dream, and simply, calmly, wait it out. You can also try to use the image to form a dream (i.e., as the mountain approaches, try jumping onto its peak and having a look around), but you must do so with the thought that you are still not fully asleep in the back of your mind, so you can stay focused on finishing your transition to your dream... oh, and if that imagery actually is a dream, you will know for sure soon enough and your efforts to let it pass or to form a dream should have no negative effect.

Good luck on your next dive!

I keep getting so close! Same thing, the HI gets more and more solid, and I'll experience these short little lucid dreamlets and then promptly pop out again. It continues to get easier to get to this stage though. Also, had a successful WBTB LD (even though the WILD failed and I just fell asleep). However, I made two rookie mistakes, pretty much instantly: forgot to say outloud "I am dreaming", and then I promptly tried to mount the first attractive lady I saw. Woke up instantly :/ I did however remember to rub my hands together, which was awesome! One, it worked. The dream instantly solidified. Two, I did it without any conscious thought, which tells me all this prep work, expectation and reading is making a difference. On a side note, there have been a couple of the dreamlets that sprang out of oblivion just from my mantra. For example, I was using the "I will see my hands and know that I am dreaming", suddenly I was looking at my own two (wierdly distorted) hands! Thanks for the advice, I'm super excited about my progress!

I feel like I might actually have done WILD last night, but I'm not sure. I started hallucinating a bit, and my hands got numb, then I finally entered a dream. However I entered it with only a little bit of lucidity in the beginning, then it went to a normal dream. So I'm not sure if this counts as a successful attempt at WILD or even a successful LD to be honest.

^^ Sure, I would say that was a succesful WILD, indeed!

You seem to have made the WILD transition okay, but lost your way after the dream began... so successful WILD, but not-so-successful LD, I guess. But hey, it was a step in the right direction, anyway!

I would suggest that with your next successful WILD you might take a moment when the dream begins to regather your Self: Maybe do a RC or RRC, try to remember your goals for the night, concentrate on a single object or your hands, or basically do anything that helps you remain self-aware and in the moment as your dreamworld descends upon you... just do one of those things, of course, and remember to stay calm.

Next time!

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Sure, I would say that was a succesful WILD, indeed!

You seem to have made the WILD transition okay, but lost your way after the dream began... so successful WILD, but not-so-successful LD, I guess. But hey, it was a step in the right direction, anyway!

I would suggest that with your next successful WILD you might take a moment when the dream begins to regather your Self: Maybe do a RC or RRC, try to remember your goals for the night, concentrate on a single object or your hands, or basically do anything that helps you remain self-aware and in the moment as your dreamworld descends upon you... just do one of those things, of course, and remember to stay calm.

Next time!

Ok cool so I did a successfull WILD transition Also yeah I see what you mean by trying to do a RC or an RRC. The RC I usually go with is plugging my nose and trying to breath through it. The dream scene I entered was my neighborhood with all my friends there. Every time I tried to plug my nose and breath through it one of my friends would tackle me so I guess I just gave up on the reality checks and that's why it went to a normal dream. Oh well. It's as you said, it's a step in the right direction!

On a side note, isn't my whole body supposed to go numb while doing WILD? Only my hands got numb and that was it.

Originally Posted by fluffbutt1

Every time I tried to plug my nose and breath through it one of my friends would tackle me so I guess I just gave up on the reality checks and that's why it went to a normal dream.

Nice friend! I guess your unconscious was inadvertently throwing up a barrier to test your patience. Next time, don't give up, or at least ask the DC why he keeps trying to interrupt your RC.

On a side note, isn't my whole body supposed to go numb while doing WILD? Only my hands got numb and that was it.

No, there are no requirements about what you are supposed to feel your body is doing, in spite of what you might read on the internet. It might be better for you if you learned to ignore noise like numbness and simply stay focused on your dream; that way the numbness (or lack of it) won't become a distraction that could lead you to lose the self-awareness necessary to finish your WILD and maintain lucidity.

That said, and to more directly answer your question: Your body isn't actually supposed to go numb during a WILD, though it can feel that way. You can certainly go from wake to sleep to dream without ever feeling any noise like numbness (or HI, vibrations, etc.); my WILD's, for instance, almost never have any noise in them. The numbness that people describe is probably a sense of deep relaxation, or their noticing the onset of REM Atonia, which is what your body does every time you dream, so as to prevent it from acting out the movements your dream body is making. Unlike actual numbness, that relaxation or REM Atonia can be easily broken with a simple decision to move. Here's an important thing to consider: if it is indeed REM Atonia that you are noticing , then you are probably already dreaming, which means that you are ignoring your LD by paying attention to the noise.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Nice friend! I guess your unconscious was inadvertently throwing up a barrier to test your patience. Next time, don't give up, or at least ask the DC why he keeps trying to interrupt your RC.

Yeah i figured my subconscious didn't want me to RC for some reason lol. Next time I successfully WILD and I keep getting interrupted like that I'll try not to give up on my RC

Originally Posted by Sageous

Your body isn't actually supposed to go numb during a WILD, though it can feel that way. You can certainly go from wake to sleep to dream without ever feeling any noise like numbness (or HI, vibrations, etc.); my WILD's, for instance, almost never have any noise in them. The numbness that people describe is probably a sense of deep relaxation, or their noticing the onset of REM Atonia, which is what your body does every time you dream, so as to prevent it from acting out the movements your dream body is making. Unlike actual numbness, that relaxation or REM Atonia can be easily broken with a simple decision to move. Here's an important thing to consider: if it is indeed REM Atonia that you are noticing , then you are probably already dreaming, which means that you are ignoring your LD by paying attention to the noise.

Ok. A little confusing but seems to make sense to me. If I'm experiencing REM Atonia, then I'm probably already dreaming right? So the next time I experience it should I try to do something like sink through my bed into another dream scene perhaps?

Originally Posted by fluffbutt1

Yeah i figured my subconscious didn't want me to RC for some reason lol. Next time I successfully WILD and I keep getting interrupted like that I'll try not to give up on my RC

It's not so much that your unconscious doesn't want you to RC, since it is a subset of You and really doesn't make decisions like that on its own. It's more that it, as your dreaming mind, simply provided a little dream activity that best matched your actions or desires. So, oddly, there might have been a little hesitancy lurking in you with getting that RC to work (which is why I suggested above that "your unconscious was inadvertently throwing up a barrier to test your patience," ) ... that's just a loose interpretation, of course, and it could've been something else altogether.

Regardless, if you run into dream characters, say, running into you seemingly in order to keep you from RC'ing, it might be a good idea to skip the RC and just ask the DC's why they're disrupting your effort... that will likely be just as good as a RC, and their answers might be interesting!

Ok. A little confusing but seems to make sense to me. If I'm experiencing REM Atonia, then I'm probably already dreaming right? So the next time I experience it should I try to do something like sink through my bed into another dream scene perhaps?

Yes and yes.

Ok so next time a dream character stops me from doing a reality check, I'll try asking them why. That sounds pretty easy and interesting. I'de love to hear their answer. Also I'll try to sink out of my bed if and when I experience REM Atonia. I hope I experience it soon so I could try it out Anyways, thanks for helping and answering my questions

Okay today I tried to Wild again with the intentions of finally being lucid.

I lay down put on a blindfold and put some background wave sounds. I start relaxing every muscle. After relaxing my body I started breathing deeply. And I started swaying from side to side. After that I started repeating i am dreaming. A couple of minutes pass. I start feeling my body go numb. And scaredy me starts thinking that im too aware and will just end up in REM Atonia without falling asleep and a bunch of creepy stuff will happen. You would think that after so many attempts i wouldnt be scared but i was. So i moved and wasted another try. Do i always have to go through rem atonia to wild?

^^ You are not "going through" REM Atonia to WILD, just as you are not going through SP to complete a WILD (and no; REM Atonia is not a kinder, gentler term for SP). That "going through," or "getting to" rule is a completely made-up one, and has nothing to do with a successful WILD; nothing. If you can come to understand that, then you should find that successful WILD's will be more easily achieved.

If you are actually in REM Atonia, then you should also already be dreaming, so you won't experience it until after your dream begins. I you can keep this in mind, then should you notice its onset, instead of getting nervous you might say. "Hey, I could be dreaming now!" and find your dream forming around you.

Also, there is nothing to fear, because REM Atonia happens every night, and nothing bad ever happens to you. Creepy stuff will only happen if you expect it to be creepy, so you might try adjusting your mindset to accept that the odd sensations or imagery you might encounter on the way to WILD is just harmless noise, things that are going on every time you go to sleep, only during WILD you happen to be there to notice them.

Finally, you cannot be too aware when WILDing, so don't worry about that.

I think what all this comes down to is that you should perhaps just do your WILD, and do it without paying so much attention to things which have nothing to do with your upcoming dream. Try repeating a mantra so that your mind has something to occupy itself that doesn't include wondering if you're being too aware, or worrying about unimportant things (to WILD) like REM Atonia. If you allow the distractions to fill your attention and time during a WILD, you will have great difficulty getting to the dream.

I've read a lot on SP and REM Atonia, but I still don't know if lets say, you stay still for like 1 hour, you will still be able to move freely. Unless I imagine it happening in a dream. Also thanks for being patient with me!

^^ I have a suggestion for you, xArDDe: stop reading about REM Atonia and SP! Doing so might make a big difference for you. Most of what is written, in regard to LD'ing, is crap and not worth reading anyway.

If you stay still for an hour, or two, or three, or four, you will still be able to move freely. Even if you are in REM Atonia, you can move freely, no matter how numb you might think you feel. The only exception to this is actual sleep paralysis, which occurs when you wake up, and not when you are going to sleep, and even that only lasts a few seconds, should it happen at all (SP is a very rare condition).

And you know what? Even if REM Atonia were to happen before you started dreaming, or this numbness paralyzed you, who cares? That only means that your body all set to dream, which is exactly what you want it to be anyway, right? Since your plan was to fall asleep and dream, you weren't going to be doing much moving anyway, Right?


Again, try not to make this stuff important, xArDDe, because doing so only makes it more difficult to complete a WILD.

Thank you very much I won't stop trying. I will try my best!

I'm not sure wether I actually managed a DEILD but I think it was a false one. As in a DEILD inside of a false awakening.
So I "wake up" in what I presume to be a false awakening. I try to remember my previous dream and do so successfuly. I notice I'm still lying down so I try a DEILD. I think of no particular scene and just go for it. Thoughts are racing (Unusually rapidly and hazily, might I add) through my mind and I try to maintain self awareness but do so in a hurried way, not really putting much thought to it. I'm rejoiced to see it working though as in a matter of literally seconds I manage to enter a dream which I don't remember now (Just got back to trying lucid dreaming yesterday, my recall is horrendous.) I do remember though that I wanted to wake up so that I could detail my first ever and successful DEILD attempt but I think I lost lucidity and I end up waking up for real later on.

^^ But is a DEILD done inside a FA still a DEILD?

Technically speaking, if you do a DEILD during a FA, what you are really doing is a DILD. This is because you are not actually waking up or exiting a dream, but only dreaming of doing so. However, in the process of this dreaming, and thanks undoubtedly to your excellent expectations of how a DEILD should work, you carved a path to lucidity using a DILD transition.

Is there anything wrong with that? I don't think so! It sounds like it went quite well anyway, which in the end is all that matters.

Here's a side hint, though: if you are lucid, then enjoy the lucidity! Don't concern yourself with waking up to make records of your successes; instead, concern yourself with generating more successful lucid adventures right now. There will be time later to write things down, and, if you do make the best of your lucid time, you will very likely have little trouble remembering those adventures long after you wake up for real. Also, as you may have discovered, exiting the here&now of the dream by worrying about future events like writing down the dream can be a substantial distraction that can lead to a loss of lucidity.