Forget about controlling your breathing. Just go to sleep as you normally would. And when you count, don't count too heavily... Just make it something that's in the back of your mind. I have the same problem. What happens is, we think we're relaxed, but we really aren't. We're stressing over staying still, counting, looking for signs of SP. So, in reality, we're too stressed to fall asleep. We end up laying there just staring into the blackness of our eyelids, which is enough in itself to keep us awake without all that other stuff.

You might read this and think, "oh man this guy can WILD"! Well, I can't. I've read everything there is to read about it, and I still can't do it. And I will never understand what I'm doing wrong. And the thing is, nobody can fix it for you but yourself. I believe the two most important keys to a WILD, are how relaxed you are, and how long it takes you to fall asleep. So, lately I've been experimenting how long it takes me to sleep, and I've noticed that it takes about an hour for me. Which sucks because do I really want to lay in bed and count for an hour? Or imagine myself doing something? Hell no. Yet, I'm dying to know what it feels like to go through sleep paralysis, fully concious, and get up from my bed to a world that is amazingly real, yet all in my head.

Anyways, like I said, just go to sleep normally, but do something that requires MINIMAL effort. What will happen is, you'll drift off into what I like to call mini-dreams, which may last only a couple seconds and then you regain awareness and think, "how the hell didn't I catch that?". Eventually, you're going to slip into one of these mini-dreams fully aware, and in a matter of time, it will develop into a full and solid dream.

It's funny, I should really take my own advice. But I guess my mini-dreams take too long to appear, and once they do, they disappear and then I have to wait another large amount of time. I really don't want to give up on WILDs... But as you can see from my join date it HAS been three years ... Sigh. Life's a beach.